It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #21

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

The gang discuss Israeli attacks on Iran, tragedies at Trump’s military parade and the No Kings Protests, the sale of public lands, and the Supreme Court ruling on trans healthcare for minors. Sources: https://hellgatenyc.com/brad-lander-detained-by-federal-agents/  https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/congress-making-more-250-million-acres-public-lands-available-sale  https://subscriber.politicopro.com/eenews/f/eenews/?id=00000197-7b7e-dfde-abd7-7fffacc70000  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02009/protecting-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-other-national-security-and-public-safety https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5427998/trump-travel-ban-countries-immigration-enforcement  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/after-two-day-manhunt-suspect-charged-shooting-two-minnesota-lawmakers-and-their-spousesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm Robert Evans and on my show Behind the Bastards this week, we have one of our worst subjects ever, David Byrd, founder of the Children of God cult, who we'll be talking about with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century is a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it. Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say. But that's the beauty of cults.

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Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. You sure are. Lucky you. This episode, we are covering the week of June 11 to June 18. That's right, that's right. The greatest week of all time. Actually, it's a terrible week. No, we are probably getting closer to a war with Iran,

which is not good. Yeah, no great. Yeah, we're at least getting more and more involved in Israel's war with Iran. I guess we can probably start by talking about that. Yeah. So the situation as it stands, first off, I just want to note that I don't think

the worry here is world war three. I don't think the worry here is global thermonuclear war. I think the worry here is the U S allows itself to get involved in another. Boondoggle overseas and contributes to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, largely civilians, because we again continue to back Israel to the hilt. Like that's the threat. I'm seeing a lot of, oh my God, World Wars III is coming,

and I just don't think that's the thing to be focused on. The thing to be focused on is like a massive expansion of the bombing of urban areas in Iran. You know, the fact that Trump has been talking at all about evacuating a large segment of Tehran, which is about as populous as the Los Angeles metro area and not evacuable. Yeah, it's like 10 billion people. Yeah. Yeah.

Where are they going, buddy? There's just no way to really do that. It's really bad. Now, when it comes to does Iran have a nuke? Well, they say they don't and no one's presented any evidence that they do. Like at least officially Iran stopped their nuclear development program in like 2003. There's, you know, always, and Israel has always been claiming that they're continuing to work on it in secret.

You know, we don't have a good, a good context for exactly how much work there is going on, but Iran has been, per conservatives in Israel, a week away from having nukes for fucking my entire adult life and then some. So I don't see any evidence that they're further along to that goal than they were in 2003 and until presented with that evidence, my assumption is going to be that most of these claims are based on lies. Now the strikes that Israel has carried out are mostly, it's a mix of assassination strikes like attacking

the homes and whatnot of scientists and of people who are involved in the Iranian government, who can be particularly people who may have some ties to their weapons development programs. They've also just been striking a lot of heavily populated areas, kind of under that Aegis. There's been claimed strikes and some definite strikes on what at least were research facilities and nuclear research facilities. There's very little evidence that the strikes they're carrying out could deal with the kind of deep underground research facilities that Israel claims is where Iran is making most of their progress, which is why there's a lot of talk about the US getting involved

because we have these munitions that are specially designed to go much deeper than anything Israel has. They have to be launched from a B2, which is like our big stealth bomber that might theoretically be able to reach this big underground research area that Iran is supposedly doing their nuclear research in. So that's kind of the direct reason why Netanyahu, once the US involved and that's kind of the most credible speculation isanyahu once the US involved, and that's kind of the most credible speculation is to like, well, if the US starts getting involved, what would we do? What would be the first direct act that we'd carry out? And it might be something like using a B2 to drop one of these bunker busters in Iran.

Yeah. People have been speculating wildly about various separatist groups in Iran, right? Both Baloch and Kurdish. I have seen a number of photos that are more than a decade old circulating with the claim that they are happening currently. They're not. For what it's worth, I don't see the US allying with Payak or the Kurdistan Free Life Party that's still listed as foreign terrorist

organization. Obama did that and it hasn't come off. So it would be quite a swing for the for the US to first delist them and then immediately sort of do what they did with with the PYD in Western Kurdistan. Right. So I don't see that happening in the near future. Anyway, anything's on the table with the Trump administration, right? But yeah, I think some of that speculation is maybe not grounded in reality.

There are other, it's KDPI, it's PAK, right? These sort of more amenable to the American political outlook Kurdish groups. But again, I don't see anything to indicate that the US is attempting to arm and equip a proxy force to do like land warfare in Iran yet. Yeah. We could be a few days. We could be a few weeks away from that, but there's nothing indicating it yet. Yeah.

And there's a couple of things people will bring up whenever they think that the US is about to go to war with Iran or someone else. One of them is like the Pentagon dominoes order, like basically the dominoes near the Pentagon, like how busy it is, right? The idea being that they order a bunch of pizza when everybody's going to be staying in, staying up late in order to carry out some sort of a strike or a deployment. And the other that I've started seeing is like photos of lobster being served

on various bases and people being like they only serve lobster when they're about to deploy everybody. Uh, neither of these is accurate. Yeah. The Pentagon pizza thing is a common myth, but you can find a hundred cases. Sure. You can find a couple of cases where pizza sales surged and we were carrying out some sort of attack attack.

And for one of those, you can find a hundred times where pizza case, like pizza orders surged and nothing happened because like Someone had that people had to stay overnight to get some compliance shit ready or whatever Yeah, like the fact that people are ordering pizza at the Pentagon. They do it for reasons other than war Ditto if you talk to anyone who was deployed Surf and turf and lobster are served with some regularity at a variety of bases, and it doesn't correspond necessarily to any kind of like mass movement or activation. You need to actually like look at the degree of time it took to get the forces ready that we moved in with to invade Iraq in 2003.

Because it was a massive logistical effort, and it was super obvious what we were doing, because hundreds of thousands of people had to be moved around the world with massive amounts of material. And what you're seeing right now is you're seeing a lot of our refueling planes, like you're seeing a lot of those moving into the area and we're moving the Nimitz carrier groups with second carrier group into the area. But those don't, those don't say to me, we're about to have tens to hundreds of thousands of ground troops invading Iran. Those say, number one, as we were doing previously, we're expecting a lot of incoming towards Israel and we are going to continue to help shoot down that incoming. And number two, and this is kind of the most extreme thing that I see right now, we're going to be either directly supporting or carrying out airstrikes in Iran.

And both of those are possible based on what we've seen, but what we're not seeing is full-scale military, evidence of a full-scale military deployment. There's just not evidence of that yet. Well, especially because the entire military is busy with more important matters, like poorly marching in a line in Washington, DC, including rolling over a woman in a tank, I believe. Yeah, they killed a lady with... well, it wasn't in a tank. It was the truck carrying the tank. There you go.

Mm hmm. Which is fucked up. Yeah, it's it's only it's only the Soviets who roll over people with tanks in America. We we put the tanks on a truck roll over them with that. So this past Saturday, we saw Trump's birthday party military parade, also celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US military Meanwhile across the country in almost every major city. There was quote-unquote no King's protests in protest of the Donald Trump military parade event

I think they renamed them no tyrants garrison to accept yes to not piss off Kings Yes, yes in the in the countries where there are monarchies yeah the the no Kings organization renamed renamed their protests to no tyrants yeah you'll need to hang your fucking head in shame if you're doing that shit I think but before we get to what sucked about this we should talk about some stuff that I think was good planning yeah for sure for sure number For sure. Number one, it was smart to hold a bunch of mass demonstrations the weekend of his birthday

in order to make that not the main story and also to kind of, it further highlighted the fact that his, the big military parade looked like shit. Like this was not, that was not, that's not like bad planning, right? Like you want to do it and to distract. And the fact that these were so large is not bad, right? It's not enough. It's a start point, not an end point. And there's a lot to be worried about here, including the fact that they have

no real demands clearly, which you can kind of see from the fact that they went from no Kings to no Tyrants when they were like, well, now there's going to be some sympathy protests in places with Kings. We're going to have the some Kings protest. Maybe just hold to the line that kings are bad, homie. I don't know. But I will say again, like timing was not bad and the number of people they were able to mobilize, the scale of the demonstrations, these are good things and there's, there's

cause for some optimism here. So I don't, I never want us to just be like shitting on people trying to do stuff. So let's start by saying like, there was some good stuff here. There were some good calls made. There were also some bad calls made and we're going to talk about those now. Yeah. I think if I just give an overview of the violence used against protesters and then we can get into a couple of these incidents. Sure.

Sure. Absolutely. So I've been trying to collate a list of armed threats. I'm aware of armed threatened Phoenix where the person was arrested in Pueblo, where the person was, I guess, suppressed by like people at the parade, unarmed people at the parade, then arrested. Nashville, the person was arrested and had a shotgun with some pretty concerning right-wing shit on it.

Is that the one that had bombs or was that the Phoenix guy? I think, I'm not aware of the, I haven't read about the bombs. The guy in Nashville had a Mossberg 500 with like one three one and day's vault and all kinds of right-wing shit. And so I had a Curtis Yavin dark enlightenment patch. Jesus. Yeah. Not great. Good week for Curtis Yavin.

Yeah. Yeah. Big PR. Okay. Yeah. No Kings protester. The armed man arrested at the protest in Pennsylvania. Okay, that's another one.

Had more than a dozen explosives at home. Kevin Krebs. Yeah. Yeah, so we've seen that's four armed attacks, right? Pennsylvania, Phoenix, Pueblo and Nashville. I'm aware of there may be more. It's been kind of hard to collate these. And when we're recording pretty shortly after those protests happened.

Yeah. In Los Angeles, the armed threat came from the cops who tear gassed people, shot them with impact munitions, trampled them with horses, and hit them with bitty clubs. Same thing in Portland. We had a mass rally in Portland, like the no-kings rally, which was like mostly fairly safe and, uh, kind of like more lib and oriented family friendly. And then that did, because there were so many people out in like the eight to 10,000 range, uh, you got a much larger demonstration at the ice headquarters

building and McAdam in Portland than we'd been seeing there been demonstrations there for a while, but they've mostly been in the dozens and there were on Saturday, like 600 people or so at the height of that. And so folks managed to actually breach the door of the facility briefly on several occasions, Bortak officers pulled their live firearms and pointed them at the crowd, like unholstered handguns. And in one case is a pistol caliber carbine aimed them at people. A nurse who was showing up there to do protest medic stuff got shot in

the eye with a less than lethal munition. So just a tremendous amount of violence and something like 34 arrests so far over the last few days. Yeah. Protests continue at the ICE headquarters. Yeah. Similar situation in Atlanta where there was arrests at the big protest on Saturday, tear gas. People were charged with wearing a mask at a protest, which is a crime in Georgia. It was rescinded during the pandemic, but now it is being enforced once again. San Diego's... Go ahead, Robert.

I was just going to say, you know what isn't San Diego? Our sponsors. Hopefully, he can never tell, man. Yeah, I don't know I'm Robert Evans and on my podcast behind the bastards. We talk about the worst people in all of history We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time But this week we have one of the very worst will ever talk about David Berg but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about. David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical

Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it. Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say. Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Open AI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why open AI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen

to get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One,

Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21stst and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper.

And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down.

He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I'm aware of like, I believe, five vehicular ramings across the week, or so attacks with

vehicles, at least one person in a coma. San Diego's protest, by contrast, was, I've seen various numbers, but extremely safe, very, very lib coded. I saw a post from the police congratulating the protesters on a peaceful protest day. So it went down differently here. I have been denied my press pass by the city of San Diego because they exempted podcasts when we were mean to Todd Gloria. They really got pissed at that, didn't they?

Yeah, yeah, we got him, man. We got him. So parking was a motherfucker for me because I don't have one of the press parking placards. I suddenly caught the tail end of that. We continue the it could happen to your tradition of getting into rivalries with various municipal governments. They all hate us. You got to wonder why, man.

Because we're doing our job. Yeah, yeah. Which is increasingly rare in the media these days, especially the local media in San Diego. You can read my Patreon piece about the local media and the mayor if you want to. Let's talk about Salt Lake City, right? Salt Lake City. This was first reported as like a prevented mass shooting. Should we like break down the timeline of events? How do we want to approach this?

Yeah. So basically what happened at the event, right? Is there was a person in all black carrying an AR-15, a member of now the 50501 organization, and this was a 50501 protest, has uniformed by say, by uniform, I mean, they're wearing like yellow high vis vests, but they've got they've got marked security. All of these are volunteers. per their own claims. These are mostly like veterans and first responders and people with that kind of relevant experience. One of these protest security people saw this person carrying an AR at the protest. There's no evidence that this person took violent actions, that they were aiming their weapon at anyone,

that they were doing anything other than marching in a manner that is legal. It is legal to open carry. There is no evidence that I've seen that the person that they saw with the AR broke the law. Protest security pulled what I believe at this point to have been a concealed handgun and open fire. They wounded the person with the AR-15 and they hit and killed an unrelated person who was just at the march and who was not the person that they were aiming at and killed that person. Yeah, that person was called Arthur Falassa Alu. Yes. They are a fashion designer of Samoan ancestry with two children. Yeah.

And they died on the scene. The person who was carrying the AR-15 is a second generation Venezuelan immigrant and a long time anti-fascist activist who was wounded. And they are currently being charged. The person who was shot, not the person who did the shooting, is currently being charged by law enforcement. And basically in the same manner is that like if you rob a corner store and the police open fire to stop you and they hit and kill someone else, you will get charged with murder. Right. And the argument is that like you started the crime and there's, you know, an argument to be made there when you actually did do a crime.

But again, this individual, there's no evidence whatsoever that I've seen that they committed a crime. Yeah. Utah is an open carry state, right? Utah is an open carry state. None of the video footage I have seen, none of the evidence I have seen whatsoever suggests that this person was threatening anyone at all with their firearms. Now, I heard from some sources in the Salt Lake community, and these people had seen

the individual with the AR-15 at previous demonstrations. They forwarded me some photos of this person in 2020 at protests, open carrying and dressed basically the same as they were dressed at this protest. They told me this was a person was like kind of known in the community. They were not like super deeply tied in. They had noted that they seemed a little awkward with their gear back in 2020. And that in general, maybe they were like a little bit of like kind of an awkward person,

or at least that was the vibes that these folks got. And they were dressed more radically than was common for the rest of the protest, right? They were wearing all black. They had like, I think a bandana on their face and their suspicion when they reached out to me was like, yeah, we think maybe he was dressed too militantly for a liberal march and he was like adjusting his kit or something. And one of the security people got spooked and open fire. Yeah. Now the five Oh five Oh one organization's first statement was that, you know, basically this had been a crime that had been averted and the fact that

someone else had been shot and killed was like deeply tragic, but like protest security had, you know, taken action. And then within a few hours of that, they were like, actually it's become clear. We don't know exactly what's going on here. So we're going to continue to, to wait to hear what's happening. But obviously, you know, the presence of guns is what caused this in the first place. Some more information has since come out, including 50501 guide for healing and de-escalating people with firearms for their marked security, which is quite bad, like to, to say the least,

like deeply inadequate and quite racist and quite racist There's a part in it where there's like a bunch of words talking about like the different kind of body language that can show you Someone's about to get violent and there's just like some clip art of non-white people with guns I don't know why they put the clip art in yeah, it's bad. It's really fucked up and awkward I have reached out for a statement from 50501, but I haven't heard from them yet I have reached out for a statement from 50501, but I haven't heard from them yet. Yeah, the book is called Streetwise and Study, a workbook for action peacekeepers or event marshals. And I guess they're calling them action peacekeepers. A peacekeeper, sometimes called a marshal or action ambassador, helps keep people safe and make sure the action goes smoothly. The essential supplies for a prepared peacekeeper are a fully charged cell phone,

contacts for police liaison, legal observers and other key action roles, schedule events, map with the march route, first aid supplies, your ID, nothing in there says that you're supposed to be carrying a gun. My understanding is these people were not supposed to be armed. This person who they're saying was a veteran was armed. It's not a guide for people who are going to be confronting violence, right? Like it's it's not a very good guide for that and the de-escalation stuff Is really bad like chapter 7 is on de-escalating with guns tips for de-escalating with guns Don't panic your composure will influence the crowd and likely the gun owner keep your hands visible and avoid sudden movements

So so far that's good speak softly and clearly avoid shouting or aggressive tones Try to keep distance between the person with the weapon and the crowd, which should move away slowly. Have someone from your team face the protesters and if anyone attempts to rescue the situation, which can make things worse. Ha! Ha! Communicate with other peacekeepers and leaders and coordinate a safe response. be ready to evacuate or take shelter if necessary Talk calmly to the shooter and tell them you're not their enemy repeating a phrase such as you don't have to do this You don't have to go to jail today. You don't have to go to do this Move deliberately and get to solid cover walls cars cars are not solid cover. Yeah cars are not solid cover Neither are walls a lot of the time. Yeah, someone's got a rifle get the group to sit or kneel

Typically for groups with high discipline. No, don't get people to kneel if you think a shooter is about to open fire. That's not the right call. Like, oh my God. What worries me most is just both, like there's a lot of bad advice in there. Like it's not all bad, but like there's a lot of bad stuff in there.

And they immediately backed up the security member who did the shooting and who killed someone. Like they immediately backed them up and basically argued like, yeah, like it's the fault of the person who was not doing the shooting. There's so far complicit in framing somebody else for a killing. Yes. And not mentioning Arthur Follasalu, right? The man who was killed, like, like, failing to acknowledge.

Well, they mentioned that somebody died and that it was tragic. By name, right? Like this is someone's dad, someone's partner. I don't think their initial coverage did, failing to acknowledge. Well, they mentioned that somebody died and that it was tragic. Not by name, right? Like this is someone's dad, someone's partner. I don't think their initial coverage did. No. Yeah. I mean, yeah, this is fucking tragic. It, it's all round.

It, it fucking sucks. It's really tragic. It's awful. It's evidence. There's, there's a lot of things that are here. Number one, when we're talking about like armed security, a big question is like, when, when is it more danger than it could help, right? And I think number one, a situation like this, where you have thousands and

thousands of people in the street is not one at this point in which you get much out of having armed security. Number one, there's going to be police swarming around. And even if you happen to respond to a shooting, the odds that you get shot while doing the right thing are high because there's so many cops around. I talk a lot about the Normandale shooting in Portland in which a member of the protest stopped a mass shooter and saved a number of lives. That was a small demo.

There was no, no one around really. And it was the kind of situation where you need armed security because no one is going to come for you. You are not going to get any kind of a realistic response time if an emergency happens and you need to be able to defend people immediately. Right. That is a very different kind of situation from 10,000 fucking people are marching.

Right. So straight up, I would say like, this is a situation if you're wondering like, well, how do we determine like where what's a good time and a bad time for, for showing up as an armed demonstrator? I would say this is not a great time. And I would say that's the primary mistake the person with the AR made, right? Which is not to say that they deserve to be charged or that they cause this because they didn't.

The person who saw someone not shooting and opened fire and hit the wrong person is the person who is liable here. And it was responsible for things going badly. I think 50501 probably backed this person, both because they lacked perfect information and because they were really worried about their own legal culpability here. But yeah, this is just a disaster. But if you're saying anyone is responsible for this, but the person who opened fire. Yeah, I think that's just silly.

Um, especially since again, you're legally allowed to open carry in Utah. Yeah. You might not be allowed to conceal carry at protests. I'm unaware of Utah law as regards concealed carry, but you are allowed to open carry. Yeah. Some states you can be permitted and not allowed to carry out a protest still. After doing this for like a number of years now, a consistent trend I've noticed is that oftentimes the most dangerous person at a protest besides the police are really anyone wearing yellow vests.

We saw this at the DNC protests in Chicago where protest marshals, protest security, were escalating confrontations and trying to move certain demonstrators in the direction of police. Similar things happened at protests in Portland, even like pre-2020, where people seen as quote-unquote agitators would be treated incredibly hostile by protest security or protest marshals, oftentimes trying to hand them over to police custody if they were too disruptive at a protest or at a demonstration. All right. Well, you know what isn't disruptive at a demonstration? We're throwing to our sponsors again. You bastards. I'm Robert Evans.

And on my podcast, Behind the Bastards, we talk about the worst people in all of history. We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about. David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century is a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it. Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say. But that's the beauty of cults.

Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Open AI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol tests. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Inc. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone.

In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own.

Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. I have a few other notes related to protests before we can move on. I guess one aspect of the Atlanta protests that I didn't mention before, which I think is kind of notable, is Proud Boys showed up. And this is one of the first resurgences of like uniformed proud boys that we've seen kind of since J6. So I think this is a notable trend to be aware of. Also, last week, a US district judge, Charles Bramer, ruled that Trump's National Guard deployment was illegal. But the order to give control of the National Guard back to Newsom has been paused as the Trump administration appeals the ruling while maintaining command of the Guard.

So something we haven't covered that much on executive disorder, but which has been happening have been the ongoing attempts by the Trump administration to sell off public lands across the United States, specifically across the Western States, right? In this case, I want to talk about Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has authored this part of the budget reconciliation bill, which mandates the sale of between two and three million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. It's happening across 11 different states. They are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. I guess the West of the Rockies appreciators will notice that Montana is missing. That is because Montana's senators said they would

break ranks with the party over any sale of public land in their state, so they just got exempted, which kind of shows how very transactional this is, as does the exemption for mining claims and mineral leases. So it's a public land, which is when you stick a mining claim on public land, you can do all kinds of shit to that land. It technically remains public land, but in practice, these big mining interests have huge leeway and can obviously irreparably damage that public land. They're exempt. So briefly, there was an exemption for grazing.

That seems to be missing in the most recent version that I have seen. For people not familiar, a large amount of Bureau of Land Management land is leased by cattle farmers for grazing. The Wilderness Society has published a really excellent interactive map of land that potentially could be sold. I will link it in the show notes and encourage you to check it out. Look at the land where you live. The Wilderness Society has said that this will also quote, mandate oil lease sales in the Arctic Refuge, forced construction of a mining road through a national park, and more than double the amount of logging in Western national forests. This is the Trump administration's approach to fire management, right?

This is not one that is based in evidence. We have decades of evidence that logging does not lead to better fire management, but it does lead to more profit for logging companies. In theory, the idea here, and I think this is a pretty cynical claim, is that this would allow for more affordable housing to be built near cities that have a housing problem, which is nearly all the cities in the United States. In practice, BLM and US Forest Service land is almost all unsuitable for affordable housing. It's miles from utilities.

It's often not well served by road networks. I'm looking extensively at the parcels in San Diego, which could be listed for sale. They're so steep that it would be almost impossible to build stuff there. In practice, most of this land will be sold to large corporations. It may be used for large and highly expensive homes, but it's very unlikely that you're going to see apartment buildings. I read through the latest version today, states do have a right of first refusal to the land being sold. So that would mean states could effectively buy it and turn it into state public land

if they wanted to. The revenue from the sales will go into the general fund. So it won't go into conservation much of the other money you pay to the BLM or the Forest Service or like hunting license sales, for instance, often go directly to conservation, their ring fence for it. This is not. Only 5% will be reserved for deferred maintenance of public land, which is something that's badly underfunded right now. Yeah, this is pretty bad. This is one of those things that people are asking people to call their representative or Senator about, and you can check the show notes for more links on that look at the wilderness.org link.

If you're interested in that. Gay talking of housing crises, you wanted to talk about some migrants who have been housed in a potentially substandard facility in New York, right? I mean, yeah. If you consider prison housing, which I guess kind of is. Yeah, Garrison, that's the new America. Foucault mentioned. So I actually want to talk about an escape from an ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey. This was Delaney Hall, a 1,000 bed, a privately owned facility that ICE operates. This has been the site of multiple protests outside the building in recent weeks, including

that one where the mayor was arrested. And there was a protest on the night of Thursday, June 12th. Because earlier that day, unrest in the building started after detainees were served insufficient lunch, just three slices of bread, after not receiving food for more than 20 hours. People on the upper floor covered up security cameras and started damaging walls. They overwhelmed security guards on the floor, and four people managed to escape by kicking through an interior wall. Three of the men are now back in federal custody, but one still remains free, with

the FBI posting wanted flyers and offering up to $25,000 for information leading to his arrest. The executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, Amy Torres, said that quote, chronic food shortages, undrinkable water, crumbling mesh walls and inadequate staffing led to the chaos, unquote. Those being held by ICE at the facility have reported overcrowding and being forced to sleep on the floor with drinking water either scalding hot or dirty and undrinkable. Yeah, I think the initial attempt by the mayor to access a facility

came after they were unable to access it for code compliance. And there's now significant evidence. A geo group operates this facility, by the way, a prison contractor, and they've completely failed it seems to comply with the basic human dignity requirements as well as building codes. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that, I guess. Yeah. So, Garrison, I know New Jersey and New York, very, very different places, but just across the way there, in New York City, New York City Controller, I think you say

it controller, you don't pronounce the T. I want to say Comptroller. I want to say Comptroller too. The glorified accountant, right? Yeah, yeah, right, he is the city, he is the big boy accountant and one of the two kind of okay mayoral candidates. Yeah, who have crossed indoors, crossed the doors. Yeah, Ron Momdani and Brad Lander. Yeah, Lander is like a progressive Democrat. For what is worse, he's also Jewish. He was detained by federal agents while accompanying a person from their immigration

hearing. This is something Lander has done before. He linked arms with a man whose case had just been dismissed and who was targeted by masked agents. Lander repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant, while agents tried to pry him away from the man he was trying to protect. As they detained him, Lander said, quoting here, you don't have the authority to arrest US citizens. A few hours later, Lander was released from custody. The man he was with, who Lander pointed out, and like you know, credit where it's due, he tried to divert focus to the person who has not been released and probably will not be released, and as Lander pointed out, his first language was Yoruba, but was only provided

with a French translator, which is not uncommon for people with languages that are not Romance languages. When Lander was released, DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, claimed an email to Hellgate, New York, which is a great outlet that my friend Max stood up a while ago. He was arrested for, quote, assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer. Zell Noor Myrie, I think I pronounced that correctly, a state senator and mayoral candidate called the arrest and I quote, fucking ridiculous. Yeah, it was. He certainly did not assault any of those unmarked armed agents. No, quite the opposite actually.

He did not even defend himself against the violence that they were using. Yeah. So this is the second incident this week of a democratic politician being detained. Senator Alex Padilla was also detained outside a Christie Noem press conference in Los Angeles. After trying to ask her a question. Yes, trying to ask a very reasonable question. Clearly this aesthetic is something that the regime is going for right now. Violent assaults of opposition politicians.

It doesn't seem like Lander's going to be charged. I have not seen anything about charging for Padilla either, but that's not really the point. Prior to grabbing him, the agents were heard talking about if they wanted to arrest the Comptroller. Yeah. It's worth noting that Lander also has an NYPD protection detail, who I guess accompanied him once he was detained.

Cool. The last thing we're going to mention today is some more unfortunate news that came out of Saturday with the Trump military parade and the No Kings protests. Very early that morning, two Democratic politicians from the state of Minnesota and their spouses were shot in a series of targeted assassination attempts. Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were murdered. The other two targets, State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were able to survive.

It seems like the person who did the shooting, the person who has now been detained, name of Vance Bolter, disguised himself as a cop and was wearing a mask. And that was how he was able to get the Hortmans to open the door of their house. And shortly thereafter, he shot them both. I want to do a full episode in the future on this incident and the way it relates to rising political tensions across the country. Unsurprisingly, the guy who did the shooting is kind of a weird dude. Weird little guy, you might say, Garrison. A weird little guy with a mix of political motivations, including anti-abortion sentiments,

and appeared to choose to do the attack Saturday morning to disrupt and spark violence at anti-Trump protests later that day. I think that's all I need to do on this for now. Yeah, we will cover it in more detail. We're still trying to sort of gather our thoughts and our sources on it, but pretty horrible shit. Yeah, any good news to end with? No, I don't think so, but I will end with saying, 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, CoolZoneMedia.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. I'm Robert Evans, and on my show Behind the Bastards this week, we have one of our worst subjects ever, David Byrd, founder of the Children of God cult, who we'll be talking

about with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it. Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say.

Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Open AI is a financial abomination a thing that should not be an aberration a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley And I'm gonna tell you why on my show better off line the rudest show in the tech industry Where we're breaking down why open AI along with other AI companies are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country

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