It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #29

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

The gang discuss the deployment of National Guard and federalization of police in Washington DC, a Heritage Foundation economist being appointed to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a shooting targeting the CDC headquarters. Fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/urgent-help-for-bukets-asylum-case Sources: https://www.cvesd.org/parents/family-and-community-resourceslausd.org https://www.lausd.org/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/577/Parent%20Resources/ComResourceGuideEng.pdf https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-immigration/2024/11/21/with-trump-back-in-power-advocates-criticize-gloria-for-shuttering-immigrant-affairs-office https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/business/trump-bls-ej-antoni.html https://x.com/AngulusTerrarum/status/1955320816855294169 https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/1955041060197114136 https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/stephen-miran-federal-reserve-board-e7855877 https://www.newsweek.com/trump-bls-appointment-ej-antoni-alarms-economists-2112440 https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/11/business/bls-nominee-trump https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ej-antoni-trumps-pick-lead-bls/story?id=124579471 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/restoring-law-and-order-in-the-district-of-columbia/ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8600x7dnn4o https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/texas-democrats-return-after-governor-ends-special-session/story?id=124592449 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5loldo4Vmno https://abcnews.go.com/US/suspected-gunman-cdc-shooting-fired-500-rounds-officials/story?id=124577732 https://www.scrippsnews.com/health/rfk-jr-in-interview-with-scripps-news-trusting-the-experts-is-not-science  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-formally-asked-overturn-landmark-same-sex/story?id=124465302See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the People's Princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fud Around and Find Out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court.

Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports and partnership with unanimous media. on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you're looking for another heavy podcast about trauma, the same it.

This is for the ones who had to survive and still show up as brilliant, loud, soft, and whole. The unwanted sorority is where black women, fims, and gender expansive survivors of sexual violence rewrite the rules on healing, support, and what happens after. And I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you.

Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media Welcome back, everyone, to electile dysfunction. Electile, that's a new one. Yes, yes, yes. The podcast about why President Bad, also. Why World Bad? Also, why America bad? I'm Robert Evans. Introducer extraordinaire with me today. Garrison Davis. Mia Wong. James Stout. Eventually. Special segment from James Stout later in the episode. Yes. Later, he is being held in custody by the FTC.

That's not true. You cannot say that because that is something that actually could happen over time. So unfortunately, but he is not. That's why I made it be the FTC. Garrison. People will believe us. I don't know. People will believe us. We could get arrested by the FTC any day now. We could get arrested for the FTC any day now thanks to the ads that I've been reading for British Petroleum. Even though I don't, I

exclusively use American Petroleum. This episode we're covering the week of August 7 to August 13. Yep. For now just so we wear. I think it's important to keep up because if people refer back these episodes, it's good to know what week we're talking about. I don't usually remember what day it is.

So, you know, good to do that. Good to remember what day it is. Mia, you want to start us off? Yeah, I need to issue a correction about Sesame Street. I was wrong about Sesame Street's structure. We got a very sweet message from someone who works on the show about the way I talked about it being stripped for parts. Sesame Street was never actually, like, ran by PBS.

It was ran by its own independent nonprofit entity. Sesame Workshop, I believe. Yeah, yeah. It's not, yeah, it's not, yeah, it's not called Sesame Workshop. And so the episodes that were being streamed on HBO Max, and I think they're now, they've now moved to, like, Netflix. Those episodes all did still air on PBS, however, comma, they only aired nine months later.

But, yeah, I want to be clear about that. And then Garrison, do you want to talk about PBS kind of not existing anymore? Well, PBS may still find a way to exist, but specifically the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps facilitate the, you know, the funding and the, structure and the operation of things like PBS and your local NPR after being defunded by the Trump administration is now going to shut down completely. So. Yeah. And that's and that's a lot of the how a lot of the funding for rural networks particularly was able to function. If your PBS network

is like mostly not funded by that or they can find other funding sources, it can survive, but real bad. It's pretty disastrous for public media. Yep. And like NPR specifically in all of its local affiliates are some of the best like local news journalism across the country and this is going to be a big hurdle to get over with the loss of a, of like a giant in the not just like the

national media space but like for journalism and as well as children's educational content. And it's, you know, and it's worth mentioning to you like this is one of the last as sort of local media and local radio and local newspapers have been carved out and got out of business and

destroyed a venture capital firms. And was like one of the last local journalism outlets left in a lot of places, especially in rural areas. And that's just getting worse. So we hate that. Yeah, this has been the Sesame Street correction. I deeply apologize to the cast and crew and production staff of Sesame Street. Yes. Sorry, particularly to Grover. Not sorry to Elmo. No apologies to Elmo. We saw what Elmo was tweeting. I'm on Larry David's side of that beep. For our first main story this week, let's talk DC. On Monday, Trump declared it was a liberation day for the District of Columbia to, quote, unquote, take our capital back and officially invoked section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to place the DC Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and order the Secretary of Defense to mobilize the DC National Guard. to, quote, address the epidemic of crime in our nation's capital. Along with this announcement, Trump released a presidential memorandum reading in part, quote, the local government of the District of Columbia has lost control of public order and safety in the city. The mobilization and duration of duty shall remain in effect until I determine

that conditions of law and order have been restored in the District of Columbia. Robert, who in the past have you heard talk about federalizing the police? Oh, gosh. I mean, just a couple of guys. There's this dude Hitler who worked with a guy named Herman Gehring and Heinrich Himmler to do that back in the past.

But that was in Germany, you know, a country totally different from the United States, almost three, four countries away from us. So not really relevant at all to anything happening here. And we can all rest assured it can't happen here. Yeah, we're not Germans. We have a lot of Germans, but we're not Germans. This is part of Yarvin's writing on how to take over the government,

centralizing the police is one of the key steps, nationalizing local law enforcement, putting them under federal control. And here is another version of enacting such a policy, mainly citing this crime epidemic in D.C., though, according to DC metropolitan police and their own crime figures, violent offenses, which peaked in 2023, fell to their lowest in 2024, lowest time in over 30 years, and now in 2025 continue to fall even lower than that, though Trump claims that these stats, just like the Bureau of Labor stats, are all made up, we're all fake. We'll get to that. These aren't,

these aren't real stats, and they're assuming that there's been fake statisticians who have been covering up the real crime wave happening across D.C. and even across the country. Trump cited three incidents leading to the federalization of D.C. police. One, the assassination of two Israeli embassy staffers in May, a fatal shooting of a congressional intern in June, and most recently, an alleged violent carjacking of the Doge staffer known as Big Balls and a possible future recipient of the presidential Medal of Honor or Freedom. One of the medals.

The Medal of honors only for military, yeah. Well, you know, Big Balls, frankly, might have some military credentials based on how he survived this latest this latest violent encounter. Who's to say? This assault from a platoon of Romanians? Yeah.

Yikes. Quite frankly, I feel like we're only about six to eight months out from him getting like commissioned as a lieutenant and then them giving him the actual medal of honor. That's what I'm saying. There you go for his courageous service getting beaten up by two 15-year-olds. So,

this latest incident with Mr. Balls, I think is his official title at Doge. Or now the Social Security Administration. Not related to Ed Bowles. No. Different balls. But this latest incident... Or Balls, very different guy.

This latest incident with Mr. Balls seemed to tip Trump over, though this is something that he has lofted for months and months. He's been wanting to do this. On Tuesday night, 43 arrests were made in D.C. in relation to the federal seizure of police. 1,450 officers were part of this operation, half from D.C. Metro Police, which are now federalized. So far, only 30 National Guard troops have been deployed, but around 800 are on the way. On Wednesday, Trump discussed extending his control of D.C. police passed the 30-day limit.

Mr. President, your federalization of the police has a 30-day limit unless Congress acts to extend it. Are you talking to Congress about extending it, or do you believe 30 days is sufficient? Well, if it's a national emergency, we can do it without Congress, but we expect to be to Congress before Congress very quickly. And again, we think the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost unanimously. So we're going to need a crime bill that we're going to be putting in, and it's going to pertain, initially to DC. It's almost, we're going to use it as a very positive example, and we're going to be asking for extensions on that, long-term extensions, because you can't have 30 days. 30 days is that's by the time you do it. We're going to have this in good shape, and don't forget,

in the border, everyone said it would take years and you'd have to go back to Congress. I never went to Congress for anything. I just said, close the border, and they closed the border. and that was the end of it. I didn't go back to Congress. We're going to do this very quickly, but we're going to want extensions. I don't want to call national emergency. If I have to, I will. But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously. Don't like that. No, it's pretty dictatorial on like a base level. Quote, if it's a national emergency, we can do it without Congress.

It's very palpidine emergency powers coded. And I'm not sure if if Lucas was pulling on any real-world examples for Star Wars, the prequels, or if he was just pulling all that shit out of his ass, who knows? It seemed pretty fanciful. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told his former co-workers on Fox News that it's unknown how long D.C. will be under this militarized occupation. He's got the guts to say, I'm going to federalize the police that don't work. I'm going to bring in the National Guard.

I'm going to bring in federal marshals. I'm going to bring in the park police. How long will that be? Who knows? How long? What is the... Well, it costs money, right? Sure, it costs money. And the question is, are you there for a year?

Are you there for six months? And when the troops pull out, what happens now? I would call this conditions-based. I would say it's a situation where we're here to support law enforcement. And the more we can free them up to do their job, the more effective they can be, the more we can work. I mean, this isn't my realm, but the justice, system to make sure people who are arrested are actually locked up. That's why the president's talking

about cashless bear on bail and sanctuary cities. If you're illegal here in D.C., that's going to be a problem. So all of these things that apply to law and order are front and center for us. And I don't know, weeks, months, what will it take? That's the president's call. But we're going to be there for him to execute as swiftly as possible. Conditions based. It's real like war in Iraq vibes. Yeah. A lot of those these days. Yeah. A lot of mission accomplished. coming out of the Trump administration, too. Because they've learned that, like, there's no consequence in just saying, like, yeah, we close the border

and we won. The borders won, you know, it's done. No one, no one's going to get to their base with a counter opinion that matters. As bad as things are in D.C. right now, this is just the start of what they wanted to do. Trump seeks to make a quote-unquote example of D.C., but soon wants to go further

and attempt this in other cities, first naming places like Chicago and Los Angeles, then later New York, Baltimore, and Oakland. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say. We're not going to lose our cities over this. That gets into the core part of their framing.

This idea that homeless people and criminals, cough, cough, black people are making us lose, like, lose our cities. They're so far gone. And this is necessary for such reasons. And, like, you could look at that pretty clearly. And he's naming, like, Oakland, Baltimore, Chicago, New York. Like, it's not, it's not very masked here. Yeah. I talked with D.C. resident Bridgett.

Todd this morning. We should have an episode with her perspective coming out early next week, I think Sunday night. I wrote an episode early this year laying out, you know, some of my predictions for the year. And this along with weird terrorism were two of like my big ones, right? That DC in particular, he would be attempting to fill with soldiers and probably invoke the Insurrection Act. Now, one thing that I have been surprised on is that they really do seem kind of hesitant to go full in on the Insurrection Act. And obviously, I didn't expect L.A. to get troops deployed in it before D.C. But just based on what they were saying, like, after the election, kind of as he was preparing to take office, it was very clear that they were

looking at D.C. as a focus. And part because they had, you know, during his last term as well, right? This is not entirely unprecedented. But his desire to specifically not just take away any sort of autonomy that the city has and put it under direct federal control, but to see troops in the streets and federal agents in the streets is not surprising. It's something that like, it's not even, should be, I honestly shouldn't even call it a prediction. It's just something he's been repeatedly saying he's going to do. So the fact that it's happening now, you know, the only thing that's surprising to me is that it happened in L.A. first, right? And that they really do seem to have, and who knows, you know, this could change by the time the episode

airs, but they do seem to have something of, I don't know, a block. is the right way to phrase it, but they don't seem yet willing to go for the Insurrection Act. That still seems to be a bridge too far for some reason. I'm not 100% sure why. I think they're worried about like massive backlash to it. Like they're really unpopular and they also just don't need to. Yeah, that's that's a fair point, Gare. They have this like section 740 to call on and if Trump's going to try to get Congress to pass a new crime bill, that can allow them to do this kind of stuff without having to use the Insurrection Act. So I think it's more of like a matter of necessity.

Yeah. Just maybe just a risk they don't think they need to take. Yeah. And like who knows what type of weird shit, they would try to push into a crime bill, including like exceptions for almost any city to have their police force be federalized. I think the interesting part of this to me is also, though, that like it feels like a lot of what their politics is, is like the spectacle of making it look like there's power there versus like actually doing the thing. because, like, you can't actually hold D.C. with 800 National Guardsmen.

And, like, you know, if you look at what happens in L.A., they kind of, like, declared victory, but then the actual thing they came there to do, which was, like, do this, like, unprecedented mass deportation wave, they did some of it, and then they got right out of the city. And so, I think, I don't know, I think, I think there's a kind of apocalyptic framing of this where it's like, okay, well, it's over, they can just do this. But also, it has not been going well for them. and like was it from DC

the video of the guy just like throwing a sandwich at the National Guard throwing a subway sandwich yes yeah right like actual regular people really don't like them

and I think I think we're just going to see escalating resistance as more than like fucking 80 guys get deployed there and I don't know it's unclear to me whether they can actually

just like maintain this or if they're just going to say like we did it Joe in like 30 days and pull out right that's kind of what some of the rhetoric looks like

is that they're going to try to arrest as many homeless people as they can, put them in jails, lock them up into hospitals, like the executive order that we mentioned a few weeks ago. Yeah. And like, scare teenagers. And that's most of what they want out of this, and they're going to make a big show

of it. And then they'll, yeah, declare that the city is now safe. And then they'll use the legitimate crime stats showing crime falling and be like, look, we proved it. So that, I think, that is probably what it will turn out to be. But if they try to push forward a new crime bill like Trump is mentioning, or call it a national emergency to help strengthen his own powers, I think that's indications

that this could have some longer lasting results. Let's go on an ad break and return to talk terror, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get to that. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as the People's Princess, but now you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy light as I try to balance it all. From my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time.

You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me. But this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to fud around and find out,

a production of IHart Women's Sports and Partnership with Unanimous Media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot

in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network, tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in the backlog will be identified in our. lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization. really attritate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering

as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And obviously the big tariff news this week, as we'll get to, well, one of the pieces of big tariff news is that Trump has ordered another extension of the kind of delay before enacting tariffs against China. You might say Trump looked at his tariffs against China and decided tariff, he don't like it. Tarry don't like it

Okay, that was my intro Talk tariffs Honestly, okay So this is kind of a light tariff news week There isn't that much Also because if you want to hear me talking about tariffs For like 45 fucking minutes, go listen to the episode on Wednesday.

You just did a tariff episode. I just really wanted to lead into the tariff thing that way. Yeah. No, there is actually a very important piece of tariff news today. Arizona Ice-T is considering raising prices for the first time in over 30 years due to Trump's 50% aluminum tariffs. All right. All right. Everyone, get off the call right now.

It is time to riot. Find the building. Burn it down. No, this is not a drill. Not acceptable. Arizona iced tea has been the shining beacon resisting inflation for decades. The proof, proof that inflation is fake is on every Arizona iced tea can. And if Trump's going to take that away from us, burn the whole system down.

Yeah, yeah. I want the Arizona iced tea CEO handing out cans to throw at your, at your, at your, at your, local government building of choice to defend the 99 cent can. It's one of the most important aspects of American culture. It's the only thing left of the American dream. It's the one last piece of the American dream is a 99 cent can of Arizona iced tea. That's all we have left. 50% aluminum tariffs will not take this away from us. Aluminium. Yeah, no, just move past it. May I forget it? It's Canadian. Okay. Where are we going on? Okay. This is actually a good way to pivot into the just complete mess at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So one of the things that Trump has been really harping on is so the Bureau of Labor Statistics published a jobs report and it was bad. Jobs no good. And Trump has been absolutely furious about this ever since. And we will actually come back to, I think, like we will literally come back to the Arizona cans after this. Thank God. But, comma, however, good Lord.

The people, they are trying to put in office right now. I, so long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I made an argument that the Trump regime is built on pure stupidity, that there is no plan at all. There is only, you know, a ravening mall of the oblivion of reason that obliterates all attempts to comprehend it and leaves only the words, yes, they really are that stupid. And this argument was about a guy named Stefan Mirren, who was Trump's chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and his plan to, like, make other countries pay taxes. on holding U.S. bonds, a thing that is just unequivocally good for the United States. And, you know, this is a plan,

you can go back and listen to that episode from a few months ago. This is a plan so monumentally stupid that the only way I could think of describing it was like yelling at the moon to stop the tides. Anyways, Trump is trying to get that guy appointed to be one of the board members

of the Federal Reserve. And the staggering thing about that isn't just that he's doing this. It's that like, this is not the guy who's in the news right now for being unbelievably stupid and getting appointed to an extremely important structural agency of the American economy because they are trying to appoint senior economists at the Heritage Foundation, E.J. and Tony as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after they fired the last head for releasing the jobs report. Right.

This guy, okay, I make fun of economists for being dumb as shit all the time. he might legitimately be the stupidest economist I have ever seen just on blue sky like the day this was announced right I saw someone dunking on him for drawing a chart where he doesn't seem to understand that people retire and that when they retire they're not in the labor force anymore

where he was doing this trend line that was based on the assumption that like people wouldn't retire there are so many just incredibly basic economics since he doesn't understand And there's a post that I saw. That was the second one that I saw. The first one that I saw. And it's really funny because this is like in the New York Times now, but I just like saw

this on blue sky was this post by this economist named Joey Politano who said, quote, an economist so dumb, I had to explain to him how the price index works will now lead the BLS kill me. Great. So he was doing his thing where he was like posting the price index and being like, prices aren't going up. But the thing about the import price index is that it calculates prices pre-tariffs. Okay.

So, of course, they wouldn't go up because they're not calculating the tariffs. And he was posting this as like, no, see, the tariffs don't do inflation. He is, he's being chosen for this position because he is just like a rigid ideologue of the Trump administration, right? But he's also, he's so fucking stupid that things are happening I have never seen with right wing economies before where other right wing economists are going like this guy can't be allowed to take office. he's going to fuck everything up because he's too dumb. Like, I am watching economists at the Manhattan Institute, which is an organization that was literally founded by Reagan's director of the CIA, William Casey.

Right? Like, the Manhattan Institute is a right-wing institute, right? Like, again, this is, this is an organization founded by Ronald fucking Reagan's CIA director. And I am watching those people go, this guy is too stupid to be put in office, please don't put him there. this is unprecedented. I've never seen right-wing economists break rank on the sort of like affirmative action program they all have for like really, really underachieving right-wing shithead economists. It's astonishing. And so, and the reason he's being brought in, this is also the reason he was like the chief economist of the Heritage Foundation is that he has been calling for getting rid of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and also thinks that again, like Trump does it. They've been like cooking the books to make Democrats.

look good and Republicans look bad. And so if he gets appointed, this also like goes to the Senate, but him being appointed here effectively signals the end of independent economic data from the federal government. Hooray.

Which is a just catastrophic, like every single part of the government, every policy organization, every like, every single element, every corporation, every elements of the entire U.S. economic system relies on this data

being non-partisan and accurate. And it's obviously, like, yeah, all data is political. But, like, it being, like, reasonably accurate is, like, the defining thing about the U.S. economy is that this data is there and functions. And this is what everyone bases their decisions off of. And he very much looks like he wants to just end that. And I want to close by noting that, like, one of, you know, at the very end of the Soviet Union, right, one of the things that was taken as, like, the giant signal that things

were going to shit there was that, like, Their leadership by like the mid-late 80s was deploying satellites specifically so they could use satellite imagery to check the output of their own factories because their control of the economic statistics had become so like just annihilated, right, by just like mass falsification. Their loss of control over the standards of their measuring regime was seen as like, this is the regime falling apart. And we are like eight months out from Google doing that shit, right? like we are not very far out from companies doing a thing you have to do with like remote provinces in China where they're like there's data falsification of like okay we're like using satellite data to like measure freight loads and like measure electrical consumption and like figuring out what factories are open at night to figure out how much shit that's you know that that that is something that is very much in our future I'm only kind of joking about the satellite shit I think we probably will live to see that assuming this thing goes through. Assuming they remember how to launch satellites. Well, it won't be them.

It'll be like corporations doing this. Oh, sure, sure, yeah. Like, using their own satellite grids. I mean, I can see the, yeah, the blue origin satellites launching to keep track of Amazon's efficiency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, good Lord. Yeah, I want to close on like one final brief note, which I've said this before,

but I want to say it again. This is the exact thing that, like, one is one. of the big things that brought down the military dictatorship in Brazil was that they were lying about inflation data. You know, the thing about inflation is that you can just see the price of the Arizona can go up. Just like you can see Huey-Dooey and Huey expand in our favorite inflation fetish pornography. They don't give me hazard pay for this. They really should. Do you see? I feel like this is a bonus. Oh, I guess this is also mentioned part of the reason they're trying to put this absolute clown on the board of the Federal Reserve is that they want to replace the

chairman of the Federal Reserve so that Trump can just directly set interest rates. That's a looming crisis that is coming. Trump is threatening to sue the head of the Federal Reserve right now. Oh yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. He is. He sure is. Which is a fast, going to be amazing precedent. I am excited. Oh, it's astonishing. I don't know. It's been very funny because a lot of the kind of internal publications from like the banks about this have been like ah if you're abused Jerome Powell it's not that big of a deal

like the banks can like autonomously set interest race technically without the chairman of the Federal Reserve and it's like okay I don't think you understand how bad this is going to get so we're still in cope I don't know we'll report to you back on this show when all of

that enormous cluster fuck blows up and yay Before we go on break again, I'd like to have an update for one of the stories we talked about last week, the Texas Democrats fleeing to Illinois, and then later to California, to brickworm to stop or delay a redistricting vote in Texas. And now, Texas Democrats are set to come back home possibly as soon as this weekend after Governor Greg Abbott ended the special session to redraw the congressional map, which would add five new Republican House seats,

with some Democrats expected to return very soon. Nothing stops Abbott from just calling another special session once the Democrats return. In fact, he has said that that's exactly what he's going to do. He's definitely going to do that, yes. And add in new legislation to convince some of them to stay. So we will see that they can just leave the state again if they want to. Unclear if they will. I mean, other states are threatening retaliatory redistricting, specifically.

the governors of New York and California. This is going to be a really annoying mess with different states all redrawing their maps just to create some kind of congressional balance of Florida also threatening to do the same. So we will see how this develops over time. But yeah, Texas Dems may be home sooner than expected. It's so cool that on the one hand, you have the Republicans creating the image of tyranny and then expanding their actual power and then you have the Democrats doing the image of resistance and then giving in? I mean, they're not really giving in yet. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

They are going home because this session is ended. Yeah. What still remains to be seen is if they will flee the state a second time, like a week later. Yeah, which, who knows? I have little faith in that, but we'll see. Yeah, I'm not sure at this point. Yeah. But I thought we should include that small update there.

And now we should include a secondary ad break. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as a people's princess. But now, you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy life as I try to balance it all.

From my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the next. Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time. You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me. But this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out.

Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHeart Women's Sports and partnership with unanimous media. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more,

and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines and to let me.

lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually

looks like, and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately from Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number,

a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In other news, last week on Friday, a mass shooting was targeted against the CDC headquarters

in Atlanta, Georgia. The 30-year-old shooter broke into his father's safe to retrieve five firearms were then used in the attack. The shooting started at a CVS across from the CDC main entrance. The shooter then fired upon six buildings on the CDC campus with a total of 500 rounds being fired during the incident with 200. shots hitting CDC buildings. One DeKalb County police officer was killed. The shooter later shot and killed himself. Police were contacted several weeks before the shooting by unknown individuals due to, quote,

recently verbalized thoughts of suicide, according to the GBI director Chris Hosey. This was about the soon-to-become shooter. Police found written documents from the shooter, expressing distrust in the COVID-19 vaccine. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Hosey said the shooter, quote, wanted to make the public aware of his discontent with and distrust of the vaccine, unquote. With sources who knew him telling ABC News, he blamed the vaccine for making him sick and depressed. The CDC director sent a letter to its 10,000 employees earlier this week saying, quote,

the dangers of misinformation and its promulgation has now led to deadly consequences, unquote. The Monday after the shooting, RFK Jr., who recently defunded MRNA vaccines, visited the CDC campus to express condolences for the family of the officer killed, as well as to, quote, offer support to all of the CDC employees who are a part of a shining star health agency around the world,

unquote, to quote from an interview he gave with Scripps news. When Kennedy was asked, what would be done to stop the spread of vaccine misinformation to prevent future incidents like this shooting, Kennedy said, quote, people can ask questions without being penalized. And quote, we don't know enough about what the motive was of this individual, unquote. Hate that. So that's all pretty, pretty disgusting. Yeah. Seeing narratives that RFK Jr. has promoted for his own profit for years. Yep. Being used to justify a shooting targeting the CDC.

headquarters. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's kind of unclear exactly what, because it seems like he was shooting at the buildings. He fired at least 200 rounds, roughly 200 rounds into the buildings, about 500 rounds fired total, but I've seen people say that means he was like shot 500. He did not. A lot of those rounds are the police. No, that's the total incident. Probably most of them are the police, you know, two or 300 rounds would not at all be odd for how many police would fire in response to a guy like this who is just bag dumping, you know, into a building. It's unclear to me, did he see people through the windows and was he trying to hit them or was he just shooting at the buildings to make a statement? The fact that he did shoot and kill a police officer, presumably

with intent, makes it more likely that maybe he was trying to hit people inside the building. I don't know how much it's worth splitting hairs here, but I am, like, it is kind of unclear to me. Was his goal more to make a statement or was he hoping to... like rack up a body count of CDC employees. And this was just as close as he could get. I don't think we really know. Maybe we probably never will. It seems he had trouble accessing or getting close to some buildings on the CDC campus.

This was mostly done from the CVS, which he, at a certain point, according to police reports, he could not get out of. He was locked inside the CVS. What? And tried to exit by shooting like the windows and doors and was unable to. then killed himself inside. Huh. Jeez.

So it is a kind of odd situation. We don't have a clear idea yet, because this just happened a few days ago. We don't have a clear idea yet of like the exact on the ground situation, just these kind of general facts about which buildings were hit and how many shots were fired. And then the anti-vax opinions and writing found allegedly in his home. Yeah.

So we'll see. More will come out about this. time, but I mean, the basics are pretty clear, which is that this is the natural extension of decades of anti-vaccine rhetoric and specifically the last several years of RFK, relentlessly attacking the CDC. Another piece of news this week that I should mention, though, frankly, we don't want much to stay on this because it's unclear this will actually turn into anything real or not, but later this fall, the Supreme Court will consider whether to take a case that could overturn the

national ruling on gay marriage. The specific case that they would be considering has not done very well in all lower federal courts, which is why it's been appealed to this level. The legal justifications used for the First Amendment have not made much progress in federal appeals courts so far. If the case does get chosen, it would be primarily for like ideological reasons based on specific new Supreme Court justices. But it is still unclear if this will get accepted and I'm thinking not super likely. I don't think this is something that we need to have tons of panic about at the moment. So something that, I mean, I don't know if panic's the right word, but did actually happen and is very bad, is that, so Trump issued an executive order a while

back about like getting rid of collective bargaining rights for a bunch of different kinds of government employees, like nominally under the auspices of national security. There'd been a whole bunch of court cases kind of winding the way through the courts. But last week, the VA became the first government agency to actually do it. They just straight up got rid of the union contracts for 377,000 workers. Like, 377,000 workers is an astonishing number of workers who just straight up the union doesn't exist the next day. Yeah. Right, because they just, their contracts are being recognized. This in and of itself is really stunning. And also the lack of response by the union movement, especially considering the number of people involved. It's just been like

strongly worded statements and encouragements for the Democrats to pass a bill through Congress to like recognize collective bargaining rights, which speaks really, really ill of the broader labor movement that like, again, they just took away the unions of almost 400,000 people and organized labor's collective response was just to kind of shrug. So that's really fucking bleak. It's probably going to be spreading to more agencies as this place. out. Yeah, it's really, I don't know. Even the language unions abusing it talk about it. They're like, oh, this is union busting for speaking out against anti-worker policies. And it's like, no, it's union busting because they literally got rid of the unions of 377,000 people. What are we doing here?

I don't know. I'm going to have more on this as I get more word from union sources. There's a staggering lack of information about this and people are being slow to respond. But I want to mention here because it's devastating and hideous, and yeah, it's real fucking bad. Before we close this episode, James Stout has a special report on immigration and information about a fundraiser. James? All right, so immigration report. With the change of the month, children across the country are returning to schools. This means that ICE agents are also returning to enforcement at schools. Not just ICE agents, as we know, other federal agents, Patrol, ATF, DEA, etc. are all taking part in immigration enforcement now. They're no longer

restrained by the sensitive places doctrine, which previously stopped them from doing enforcement at schools and churches and other places where it's generally considered not worth it because doing so obviously provides a massive disincentive for families to take their children to school in this instance. In Chula Vista, second largest city in the county of San Diego, I say it's detained a parent a block away from a school, leaving two young children in the car. Like most schools in the area, Tula Vista Elementary School District will not allow ICE on campus without a warrant unless there's an active emergency. Just to explain that active emergency thing a bit, I guess, for instance, in Uvalde, because all the local cops were cowards and stood outside, it was actually a border

patrol team, Bortak specifically, who killed the shooter there. So that would be an example of when immigration agents might enter a campus during an active emergency. In Los Angeles, a 15-year boy with disabilities was pulled from a car, handcuffed and detained by federal agents at gunpoint. He was accompanying a relative who was registering at a school and he was in the car with his grandmother. The agents who appeared to be Border Patrol from videos I've seen released the boy after intervention by school staff and left live ammunition on the sidewalk for some reason. These look like five, five, six rounds from the pictures I've seen. I'm guessing it's just terrible weapons handling procedures here. It appears that this boy was not the person they were

looking for, but nonetheless, they've obviously horrifically traumatized this young man for no good reason. In response, LA Unified School District is ramping up safety patrols. These include volunteers, teachers and school cops, apparently. Obviously, school cops cannot directly prevent immigration enforcement officers from doing immigration enforcement, but they can notify people of their presence. And they're trying to have safe zones around schools so that people could either safely walk to school or safe to drop their kids off. They're also changing their bus programs. Buses are part of the school district's property, right? So just as ICE could not enter a school without a warrant, nor could they enter that bus without a warrant. And it would be

within the training of the bus driver to deny them access if they did not have a warrant, right? So the bus would potentially be a much safer way for people to get to school than having their parents drive them. And so what LAUSD is doing is expanding their bus programs. In LA, I've seen a lot of information on this in the resource guide that was published by the LA Office of Immigration Affairs. So now is a good time to remind everyone that San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria defunded the San Diego Office of Immigrant Affairs because he refuses to stop giving the cops a fire hose of our money. This has left migrants in one of America's largest border cities even more vulnerable. We're also doing a fundraiser this week.

We're going to fundraise for Buket again. I'm going to go see her later this week. I know she has hearings coming up. Buket, for those who do not remember, is an Alevi Kurdish woman. Because of her ethnicity and religion, she wasn't safe in Turkey, and she came to the USA to ask for refuge. She's been in San Diego for six months right now, and she is trying to raise money for her asylum case. She can't work because she doesn't have a work permit, and she has cancer, which is obviously something which is very difficult for her to manage alongside the massive stress of immigration enforcement right now.

She needs to raise $7,000 to pay her lawyer. I'm looking at the GoFundMe as I record this and is at $1,941. If you would like to help, you can go to www.gofundme.com slash F-Urgent hyphen help, hyphen 4, hyphen, bouquette, B-U-K-E-T-S, hyphen asylum, hyphen case, or you can just go down to show notes and click the link. We really appreciate all the support you guys have given. Thank you to James for that. Well, I guess that's our week.

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. Hey guys, it's AZ Fud. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the People's Princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fud Around and Find Out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court.

Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHeart Women's Sports in partnership with unanimous media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. shows.

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