It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #36

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

The gang discuss the government shutdown, War Department plans to deploy troops to US cities, ICE raids in Chicago, new border wall construction, and a National Security Presidential Memo targeting political violence indicators like “anti-capitalism, anti-christianity, and extremism on migration, race, and gender.” Sources: https://www.mediamatters.org/health-care/right-wing-media-run-wild-blatantly-false-claim-democrats-are-shutting-down-government https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4309929/at-war-department-shaving-waivers-out-clean-shaven-faces-in/  ​​https://www.taxnotes.com/research/federal/other-documents/treasury-tax-correspondence/remove-irs-workers-anti-conservative-bias-group-says/7sx42  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-charge-man-who-burned-u-s-flag-outside-white-house-in-protest-of-trumps-executive-order/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restoring-the-united-states-department-of-war/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/president-trump-deploys-federal-resources-to-crush-violent-radical-left-terrorism-in-portland/ https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/23/2025-18372/determination-pursuant-to-section-102-of-the-illegal-immigration-reform-and-immigrant-responsibility  https://x.com/SecWar/status/1971342502650429458  https://www.cbp.gov/document/environmental-assessments/border-barrier-system-construction-san-diego-county-california  https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/federal-drug-prosecutions-fall-lowest-level-decades-trump-shifts-focus-2025-09-29/  https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568  https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/msnbc-exclusive-former-ice-officer-led-the-fbi-to-tom-homan-248671301528  https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/judiciary-democrats-demand-doj-fbi-release-recordings-of-tom-homan-receiving-50000-cash-bribe  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/29/stephen-miller-venezuela-drug-boat-strike  https://thetriibe.com/2025/09/feds-detain-dozens-of-immigrants-in-massive-south-shore-apartment-building-raid-in-chicago/  https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-federal-agents-surround-south-shore-apartment-building-dhs-requests-military-deployment-illinois/17908911/  https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/09/30/armed-agents-in-unmarked-vans-target-south-shore-apartment-building/  https://thetriibe.com/2025/10/video-shows-feds-choking-a-black-man-in-east-garfield-park/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist.

My Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and I'm the host of the on-purpose podcast.

Recently, I had a conversation with the one and only Madonna. When I was broke and I had no friends, nowhere to live, I was held up at gunpoint. I was robbed. Always horrendous things happened to me. I had such an unhappy childhood that whatever happened to me in New York is better than what my life was, so I'm not going back.

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover

and reveals a high-stakes game, where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built a ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZo Media.

Happy Grocktober, everybody. Oh, shut the fuck up. This is, it could happen here, executive disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today who joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of September 21st to October 1st. And what a week it was. It does not feel like it should be October, but who cares?

I guess the government's shut down right now, so all of the dozens of anarchists around the country are rejoicing. Uh-huh. as the Senate has failed to pass a short-term funding bill. That's right, everyone. We did it. We defeated the state using the power of the state. Many such cases.

As the government shut down, Trump is threatening mass layoffs and Republicans are framing this whole shutdown as being caused by Democrats who are trying to defend health care for, quote-unquote, illegals, which isn't real. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal healthy. care. That's not even what the Democrats are fighting for. Would be cool if they were. Would be cool if you're in this country you could just get health care. That sounds nice. Wouldn't that be a cool almost utopian place to live? But that's not what's happening. And the rights confronted with this, but they just do not care. Here's a Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, on CNN having a little

debate about this. If that counterproposal was enacted, is illegal aliens would be paid for American taxpayers, hard-earned dollars would be paying for benefits for illegal aliens again. We're not doing that. But it's against federal law for people who are here illegally to get help care. And that's why our reforms are so important to enforce all that. What the important thing to remember is what's happening tonight. I didn't see that the Democratic proposal that people who are here illegally should get health care. Because they don't have the level of specification that we had in our bill. It will unwind that and all those things that the CBO just verified will be reversed. We can't afford to do that. But you see my point. No, I don't see your point. No. That is a red herring in

this in this debate. So what the Democrats are actually doing right now is they're trying to extend the current currently enacted federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, which keeps millions of people able to access health care, and Democrats are also trying to reverse some of the federal health care cuts, including to Medicaid, which happened under the one big, beautiful bill earlier this year. That is what they are actually fighting for. The White House is retruthing and retweeting proposals from the Democrats that include health care for aliens,

but that's legal aliens. That's like legal documented residents and they're framing this as health care for quote unquote illegals. It's a bad faith representation as it always is. People can go all the way back to the episode that I made with Robin Sophie last year about what Trump might do

to learn more about the public charge rule and how that pertains to people who are not US citizens. I don't think we really have the time nor is this a place to go over that here. But there is not and there has never been a massive federal free health care plan. for undocumented people. In fact, people who are undocumented are not going to see the doctor right now

because of the persistent and untrue rumor that ICE are taking people from hospitals. That is not something I'm aware of ever happening. I do take people who are already in their custody to hospitals and they will wait for those people while those people are treated. That is not the same as entering the hospital and grabbing people based on their immigration status. And I'm aware of several cases. where people whose life was genuinely in danger were afraid to go and seek medical attention because they were afraid that they would be targeted for their immigration status. So we'll see how long this government shutdown lasts. The last one started in 2018 lasted 35 days. If this shutdown still happening next week, I'm sure we will include some details about

government services being affected, but this could resolve in a few days, a few hours, or in a few weeks, we do not know. But luckily, not all is, is, depressing and dark in this country. There still is a ray of hope, and that ray of hope is named Jimmy Kimball, who is thankfully back on the air. I know we've all been watching. We've all been watching this, certainly. And Neckstar and Sinclair have ceased preempting his show that's back on air across the country. Free speech is hashtag so back in America. Robert, you want to talk about the Disney Plus boycott? Yes. So we've gotten some data finally on the damage done to Disney as a result of the boycott after they fired Monsieur Kimmel.

Suspended, suspended, suspended. They were definitely going to fire him. They wanted to fire his asses. They definitely wanted to fire him. And, you know, there was a lot of posting online about people canceling online. A lot of posting. About people canceling their accounts and people being like, wow. And it's, I always, it's always very frustrated to me because, like, people get very excited and it's impossible to tell in the moment, is this actually anything, right? Yes, 16,000 people share this thing about how the website for Disney was down, but that doesn't mean anything other than like someone saw the website down and a bunch of people shared and posted it. So it was very

difficult to tell like, is there actually any follow-through on this? Is Disney's bottom line being hurt? And thankfully, I'm very happy to say that it does look like Disney suffered a substantial financial setback as a result of the boycott campaign. Something like 1.7 million paid subscribers canceled. And this was immediately before Disney was looking to announce a price increase. So, like, this is, this is like a serious, I'm not surprised they reversed course. This is, like, damaging to them. We're not talking about the amount of money that a company like Disney would just ignore. Yeah. And I think the most important thing here for all of us, and this is something I talked about, we did an episode about this. This is actually before Kimmel had been

reinstated by Sinclair. But one of the really important things here is, that everyone fucking hates this government. They are hideously unpopular. All of their sort of legitimization stuff, all of the sort of media complicity they've bought, has bought them about a 4% approval rating bump from where they were this time of the administration the first time. So he's at about a 41% approval rating.

Everything that he's doing is hideously underwater. Like his most popular thing is his immigration policy, which is horrible, but it's, again, like 42%. Everyone hates these people. Yeah. You know, and it's very easy because of their control of the media sphere to believe that they have this sort of total hegemonic power over everyone in the U.S. Until the exact moment where it gets challenged and then everyone's like, wait, hold on. No, it turns out most of the country hates this, does not want Jimmy Kimmel acts from Disney.

Comrade Kimmel has joined the fight. Yeah. Yeah, there are more of us and there are of them and there always have been. And by more of us, Mia is referring to herself and Jimmy Kimmel as a coherent political class, just for. for the record there. Oh, no. The only two members of a coherent political class.

May it, Kinel isn't. But that's good news. The fourth estate, which holds me on long. The third way. And Jimmy Kimmel. And that's it.

The entirety of the fourth of state. But I don't know, there's a little bit of good news for you. A bunch of people got really pissed at something blatantly anti- First Amendment, anti-democratic, massive overreach of the state,

thought crime, nonsense. And the company suffered such dramatic within like literally in the space of a week that's 330 million or so million dollars a year that Disney lost that even Disney can't ignore that kind of money a much like regular people yeah yeah like it's people who subscribe to Disney Bluss yeah an army of ordinary liberals the actual like silent majority in this country yeah said no to Disney we're like well that's gross and scary I'm not paying Disney anymore yeah and it's good that they did that Currently, the rights trying to manufacture a counter-boycott against Netflix for having children's shows with non-binary characters, mostly using clips from children's shows that are like two or three years old. Clips that Libs of TikTok has already posted years ago. Now, Chia Re-Chicke and others are recirculating these clips to be like, look at how Netflix has gone too far as pushing woke nonsense down the throats of your children by using like ancient clips from like the Jurassic Park TV show. Like, okay, guys.

good luck with that. Have fun. Yeah. In other news, the Department of War. This actually happened last month. On September 5th, Trump signed an executive order approving the name that Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense to use an official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial context, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch, while the administration also works on changing the name officially through Congress. Hegseth nearly immediately switched all of his accounts and his office nameplate to read Secretary of War. Yeah, you know he pushed hard for this one.

Defense.gov now redirects to war.gov, and they're just referring to this in all public appearances as the War Department. Something that we've talked about on the show before of them wanting to do, and they're going to continue to push this and using this kind of war framing for domestic operations. Yeah. Not just international deployments. This was its historical name, right? Like way, way before it was a DOD.

Yeah, yeah. It was just to be clear for people. That doesn't mean that it's like a good reason to change it back. Trump trothed last week, quote, At the request of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noem, I'm directing Secretary of War Pete Higsef to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland. and any of our ice facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.

I'm also authorizing full force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention in this matter. War-ravaged Portland. How's it hanging out there for our Portland correspondence? It's fine. It's kind of rainy. I had a nice tapas dinner on Sunday. It was pretty good.

The crows are really nice. Does someone want to mention the nature of the anti-ice protests happening in like one square block in like the south waterfront? of downtown Portland? Yeah, it's in the South Waterfront. McAdam is what people here call it, the neighborhood where the ICE auxiliary facility is. And there have been protests off and on

pretty much since Trump took office. Usually on like a good night, you get maybe 150, 200 people. There were some nights kind of around where things blew up in L.A. that there were more like 5 or 600 people out for a couple of days. There really hasn't been any of the,

like what we were seeing in 2020 in terms of like the mass, mass gatherings and, you know, there has not really been much in the way of, like, people getting arrested or generally getting arrested for crossing a line that separates federal property from, like, state property, so to speak, and, like, step over it. And then a bunch of guys run out and grab them, right? That's, that's mostly what the arrests are for. A lot of people have had charges dropped. I mean, people get fucked up charges when they get charged, but a lot of them are not really sticking because they're not very strong, like, because there's just not

much going on, right? Yeah. We'll talk more about why Trump thinks there's this apocalypse now scenario happening in Portland. But yeah, so far, the protests have been relatively mild. Yes. Yeah, the vibe is very much like the classic Portland thing of people with like holding donuts on fishing lines out in front of the cops. Right. It's like that not like Molotovs. The response has been crazy. Like there's a video going around that's a bunch of federal agents. I think they're FPS rolling in up from a van from outside of the ice facility and arresting somebody who again probably crossed a line or through something generally is why people have been getting arrested so that the response has been nonsense that that video is from recently and I'm seeing it attributed to

Trump's declaration of war but like I saw stuff like that three months ago four months ago like it's been happening every day like they do roll up in their vans when they because they periodically throughout the day we'll have feds come in to go grab a couple of people and this is a thing they've been doing. So they've been, it's so far, at least, I have not seen either an escalation on the ground, really, in terms of like what protests,

what the protests are doing and the numbers of protesters since Trump's declaration. And I also really haven't seen an escalation in what's being deployed on the ground. We have not seen the Oregon National Guard presence that is being promised. No.

This has just been DHS officers. I can confirm, just based on some, some information that's come my way that there do seem to be an increased number of DHS Blackhawks flying with their transponders off which there's a couple of reasons they can

do that. Some of them is for if they are transporting like high value quote unquote deportees, right? People who are being deported for some sort of serious crime. Some of it is if they feel like they are under threat and are doing like emergency personnel transfers

they're not generally supposed to fly without their transponders. Although again, you can't really trust anything to work the way it's supposed to work, but there is some evidence that they have been ramping up and they have been flying more MQ-9s over the city, Reaper drones for surveillance purposes. So that I can say, there does seem to have been a degree of escalation, but in terms of we're not seeing troops marching through the city yet, and I honestly can't, it doesn't seem to me as of the moment that we're recording this, that there has been an escalation in

the level of force used on the ground, right? Now, that said, the level of force used on the ground before. Trump declared his war on Portland or whatever was still pretty extreme. That has continued. I just, it doesn't seem like what's happening right now is a massive increase over where we were two weeks ago. You know, that's all I'm saying. And I think the place where that has happened is Chicago, and we will get to that later. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Trump has continued to talk about deploying, quote unquote, troops to U.S. cities, including at a meeting of top brass on Tuesday, September 30th, where Pete Higgseth basically ranted to top generals and admirals about

no more wokeness in the military. But Trump also spoke, telling top military officials to prepare to deploy military to liberal-run cities, calling it a, quote, war from within. Let's play the clip. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They're very unsafe places, and we're going to straighten them out. It'll be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within.

Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in. The two separate issues there, that he conflated, right, protests in cities and people crossing the border. Yeah, and that's the way Trump's been. Yes. Talking about this for a while. I mean, same thing with, like, D.C., right? Combining this, like, crime issue with undocumented immigration

and also with protests against ICE operations, targeting undocumented immigrants, all kind of bundled together into this war from within. Yeah. I mean, the immigration issue, right, is one that gives him a much broader leeway in the powers, constitutionally available to him as the executive,

than policing with the military, which is on the face of a thing that shouldn't happen in the United States. It makes sense from a tactical perspective for them to conflate those two things together, I will say, even if it's not particularly real. During this televised meeting, Trump told military

leaders, quote, last month I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, talking to the generals. Because it's the

enemy from within, and we will have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control once you're involved, unquote. So they're directly addressing admirals and generals about them having to help form a quick reaction force to quell civil disturbance, which won't get out of control once they're involved, calling it, again, the enemy from within, a line that Trump used a lot during the tail end of his presidential campaign in 2024. Yeah. Which is just, it's, every single element of it is just fascist.

I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty blanket authoritarian stuff. Like, there's no, like, sugar-coding it here. No, yeah. Yeah. They don't need to, like, use coded phrases, right? They just say this stuff. Yeah, no, they're just, yeah, they're just, this is just fascism. Like, they're just trying to do it. Yeah, they're just saying the thing.

In the meeting, he explicitly labeled these, quote, dangerous cities as a training ground for our military national guard. But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a very important mission. And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, national guard, but military, because we're going into Chicago version. That's a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor, stupid. I think it's worth noting both the mayor of Chicago and the governor Pritzker have been very unhappy about this, like as much as Pritzker has kind of not been doing anything.

anything about like CPD aiding ice in raids, he is absolutely not budging at all about not putting National Guard troops in. So if they're very serious about following this through, we're going to see some kind of large-scale confrontation. And Pritzker is not the kind of like knock-needs Gavin Newsom type governor. Yeah, he's not Gavin Newsom. He's not simply just going to let Trump do this. And, yeah, and that's going to be a major source of confrontation, assuming this specific, like, we're going to send the National Guard in to Chicago stuff, like happens soon. Trump also talked about talking with Tina Kotech, governor of Oregon, about deploying Oregon National Guard and her pushing back against that, but ostensibly acquiescing

in some way, because there's been an announcement from the Oregon National Guard that they will be deploying, and people in Oregon probably aren't going to be happy about it. They won't, quote, understand the mission. But during this meeting, Trump did talk about his phone calls with the Oregon governor. Portland Oregon, where it looks like a war zone, and I get a call from the liberal governor, sir, please don't come in. We don't need you. I said, well, unless they're playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding. Sir, we have it under control. I said, you don't have it under control. I said, you don't have it the control governor, but I'll check it, and I'll call you back. I called it back. I said,

this place is a nightmare. Probably, it's certainly not the biggest, but it's one of the worst. It's brutal. They go after our ICE people who are great patriots and tough job too, but they love it. They love it because they're cleaning up our country. They love it because there's a $50,000 sign-up bonus. Well, unless they're playing false tapes. So the tapes aren't necessarily false, But if you're watching Fox News 24-7, what Fox News is doing is they're playing a lot of clips, not from the year of Our Lord 2025, but in fact from 2020, when Trump's last federal invasion of Portland happened, where he deployed Bortak, which looked much more like a war scene.

Do you know why? Because of the massive amounts of chemical munitions that Bortak caked downtown Portland in, which made it look very similar to a war scene. So, yeah, those are the clips that are playing nonstop on TV. I've been watching Fox News clips. They're just playing clips of Portland 2020 to make this look like a different situation than what the current on-the-ground situation is,

which may have some intense moments, but not nearly the intensity of five years ago, which, again, was stoked by Trump's own military police force, which was deployed to the city. So, yeah. There's some information that Trump got corrected internally, I don't know that I think that that's going to mean anything. But yeah, six-year-old footage, five-year-old footage being used to justify military deployments.

It's about what you'd expect, really. Literally yesterday I saw footage circulating on X the Everything app of someone throwing a Molotov cocktail into a street. Yeah, I remember that Molotov. And I'm like, I remember that Molotov getting thrown. Half a decade ago. It only hit another protester whose feet got very badly burned. And that's the type of footage circulating that makes it look like, you know,

once again, Portland's burning down. Portland's always burning down using like one or two select clips from, yeah, half a decade ago. And again, no buildings actually burnt down. Yeah, they've created a reality around what happened in Portland in 2020 that you will never change with facts or evidence, right?

Like, to people who watch Fox News, Portland was burned to the ground in 2020. And again, even on the worst nights in Portland, we could go three blocks and get food from a food cart. We got a lot of great Chinese food that summer. We got great Chinese food, Schwarma, you know. Yep, in L.A., when the city was whatever, under siege, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings and pretty, pretty normal Buffalo Wild Wings at 2am on a Wednesday scene.

That's a war zone. That's a war zone. I had my plague carrier on. I was ready to go. Here's some ads. We'll be back to talk about Chicago. But enjoy these possibly Buffalo Wild Wing sponsored ads. I doubt it. No vegan food.

Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole. whole nine yards. So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of, of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica

Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck

and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people and small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty,

and I'm the host of the on-purpose podcast. Recently, I had a conversation with the one and only, Madonna. When I was broke and I had no friends, nowhere to live, I was held up at gunpoint, I was robbed. All these horrendous things happened to me. I had such an unhappy childhood that whatever happened to me in New York is better than what my life was, so I'm not going back. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Power struggles, shady money, drugs. violence, and broken promises.

It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book.

Make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed. Until this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back. the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty.

Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. Sweet, and it's good to be back. I want to talk very briefly about Pete Hegss, Sec War, as he is calling himself now, right? And the little speech he gave. Pete Peggsseth.

He's working on his physical fitness, for sure, his bod there. He put a big emphasis on physical fitness in his speech, along with grooming standards and other shit. Male standards. Yes, everybody has to attain the male. standard for the various role of their combat roles, if they want to do that, right? So that would mean, you know, the Army Physical Fitness Test, right? Whatever the male standard, quote unquote, was would be everyone standard. I don't want to go deep into Heggseth career.

That would be another episode, possibly of another show. But I do want to talk about the stuff. Did you notice he said no more, he lifted a number of generals, but one of them was Millie, right? He said no more Millie's Chiarelli and I forget who the other one was. But I thought that was interesting, given what we saw Trump say about QRF, right? Millie had a long career in a military, right? He saw plenty of combat and all that stuff. But I think he's most well known to most people for his cooling effect on the use of the U.S. military against protesters in 2020, I'll say.

I think that is what that was referring to, right, that Hegss was talking about removing that kind of person from command. And Millie also said no to Trump. when he wanted to deploy for, and he was also working behind the scenes. He's admitted now with Pelosi being like, we need to have a plan if he tries to use the nukes after the election. Yeah. Milly was doing everything he could to mitigate what he saw as a massive danger of

of Trump responding in a completely disproportionate way. A legitimate national security danger, yeah. Yes. Yeah, like, yeah, someone whose job is protecting the United States, like that's a reasonable concern, was a reasonable concern at that time. Obviously, the Trump administration does not want people like that in command anymore. And that was something that Hegsa spoke about at length. The rest of his speech focused on shit like fitness standards, shit like grooming,

visible tattoos, a bunch of stuff that you would expect from a mid-career infantry officer who hasn't had a particularly distinguished career, right? Like, that's the shit that mid-care infantry officers do. I think you mean war fighters, James, which is Hegson. That's preferred term for soldiers. Yes. Fuck me. Yeah.

Well, because it's gender neutral. He didn't start that. They've been doing that for a while, but... Yeah, it's on the MREs. It's been on the MREs for a while. But, yes, Hengseth does like the phrase. Warfighters. Yeah, his stuff was, like I said,

not something you would expect from someone who, I think he was an 04 in the national card, right? I don't think any of that is particularly new. He issued a number of directives. One thing I... did want to talk about was this change in grooming standards. So the War Department has issued a new directive on shaving profiles. What this does in practice, as we can see from their announcement, which features prominently a black soldier shaving, is it takes away long-term shaving

profiles for soldiers with medical conditions such as pseudopholiculitis or eczema or other soldiers who experienced skin irritation by shaving, right? Previously, those soldiers may have had a, like a waiver, which they could show to their officers, to their officers said, hey, soldier, why haven't you shaved, soldier, sailor, airman, space force, guardian, whatever, right? Why haven't you shaved? They could say, well, I'm on the shaving profile

because of this condition I have. Now you will only have a year, and then you will have to somehow rectify that condition. they talk about treatments a little bit and so now it's a much you can read if you want I'm not going to read them out for you but this will very clearly target black service people the most

and I don't think that's a coincidence and as we see from the picture of the black soldiers shaving in the release that they sent out there this is happening at the same time as the rest of this stuff right and at the same time as we've seen trans folks removed from the military as Hague Fest seems

to be going pretty hard on removing women from combat roles he's previously been more outright in that this time he's in his speech he was talking about how women if they could meet the same standards as men would be welcoming combat roles but they wouldn't quote unquote lower the standards and the whole thing was pretty remarkable to see heggsith lecturing you know people who have spent collectively maybe hundreds of years in combat really people who spent decades losing wars yeah yeah decades of cumulative time Yeah, yeah. I mean, centuries between them, right? But explaining how warfare works to people who have vastly more experience in it than him. Yes. And basically telling them, it's not a myth that we haven't seen from fascist states before, right? The soldiers were fine, but they were betrayed by the politicians and the generals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is nothing new. Yeah. But it was still kind of remarkable to see Hegther's delivering it to the generals. And specifically, both Hegwick and Trump made

statements about if the generals and animals did not like what Trump and Hanks ever saying, they should just resign. They should just leave. I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very, don't laugh. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. You're not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future. but you just feel nice and loose, okay, because we're all on the same team.

Part of this is because Trump just wants more loyalists in the upper grass of the military. Like, that's part of this process. That's why he doesn't want millies. He doesn't want people that will deny him. He wants just a complete loyalist government and that includes the military. Yeah.

And if that means that we're going to have a whole bunch of generals and admirals resign because of Hague Seth and Trump's anti-woke ranting, then that's a desirable outcome for the administration at this point. Yeah. Speaking of war, Chicago. Yeah, I mean,

the scenes that I have seen the most frequently described as war or looking like a war this week have come out of Chicago where on Tuesday the 30th there was one of the most brutal raids that we've seen from the feds yet in any city.

This took place in South Shore, which is a 90% black neighborhood on the south side of Chicago where a whole bunch of immigrants who, I don't know if people remember when Texas and a bunch of other states in the South started busing immigrants up to cities in the north. Chicago is one of the ones

where that happened a lot. A lot of these people ended up in South Shore and there was a massive raid on an apartment complex in the South Shore agent showed up in a combination of moving vans, sort of unmarked vans, and armored vehicles. It's still unclear exactly how many people were taken.

We so don't know. Estimates at the time suggested about 40. It's very unclear. What we do know about the raid was that it was absolutely brutal. A bunch of the initial reports thought that they had been shooting, but there hadn't been shooting. What there had been was that they blew into this apartment complex with flashbang grenades.

Yeah. Pretty common for people to. a mistake those two. Yeah. Yeah. And these are just, you know, these are just regular people who suddenly at one in the morning a bunch of explosions start going off. There's a whole bunch of pictures that you can see in various articles about this of doors torn off their hinges. The agents did a, I mean, this is a classic Chicago police tactic, but, you know, they just went through and just started grabbing everyone's stuff and tearing through it and throwing it onto the ground.

there were black cop helicopters like constantly circling this just random apartment complex there was a massive FBI presence alongside Border Patrol and ICE it's also worth mentioning that independent outlet book club Chicago which is one of the very sort of prominent

independent local media outlets there obtained a picture from a neighbor who was next to the raid that show Chicago Police Department on the scene which they are expressly forbidden like by state law from assisting an immigration enforcement it is worth reading this article

in order to see this quote quote, we did not participate in or assist with any immigration enforcement spokesperson Maggie Hion said in this statement followed immediately by pictures that clearly show a CBD car on the scene of this raid. Yeah, this raid

is a really significant escalation of force in a city that has, I mean, I was already seen ice literally shoot someone. want to kill them. But, yeah, I'm going to quote this from Tribe, which is another independent news outlet in collaboration with unraveled press. Veronica Castro of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights at a press conference said, quote, this looked like hundreds of mass agents knocking down doors and dragging families out in the middle of the night, holding

babies that were unclothed, Castro added. So they're dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night holding naked babies because people haven't had time. Like, they're not giving people time to, like, even put clothes on, something you see a lot in the accounts of this. I'm going to read some more from an account from ABC. As I got to my unit to stick my key in the door, I was grabbed by an officer. And I said, what's going on? What's going on? He never actually told me. He said I was being detained, said Alicia Brooks. Neighbors like Ebony Watson say they ducked for covers. They heard several flashbangs. They was terrified. The kids was crying. people was screaming.

They looked very distraught. I was out there when I seen the little girl coming around the corner because they was bringing the kids down too. Had them zip tied to each other, Watson said. That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where is the human?

One of them literally laughed. He was standing right there. He said, fuck him, kids. So that is what these raids are looking like. Now it is again also worth noting that this is a very significant escalation of force. They are zip-tying children to each other as they dragged them from their homes at one in the morning

and saying, fucking kids. Yeah, and this also marks what seems to be a pretty large pivot away from the areas they had been targeting before, which had to be the suburbs and the outlying areas and into very, very, the majority black parts of Chicago.

And we're going to talk more about this next week with journalists who's been on the ground. Yeah, I mean, for example, a couple of hours before we recorded this episode, So there are sparse details, but there is a video that shows the feds just two hands-on neck choking a black man in East Garfield Park. It's deeply unclear why this is happening, but they are just doing this now. And what we have so far, we don't know why they were doing this, but this is also something I think is very alarming. This is also reported by Tribe.

There's a video from the scene where an agent is recorded saying just so you guys know this is not an immigration enforcement action. The agent goes on to say they were responding to a robbery in progress. All we know about is there was a car crash and they just started choking this guy.

It's unclear exactly what's going on with this. There probably will be more details by the time this episode is going out, but the feds are just doing this stuff every day in Chicago. I mean, just randomly choking black people on the street and this massive

hideous raid in South Shore are pretty significant escalations in places they haven't been targeting before and it's hard to see this ending anytime soon or there things getting any better from here especially with the sort of

you know as we're mentioning earlier there hasn't been really any sign of like an intensification of federal violence in Portland but in Chicago there absolutely has been and it's Horrible. Yeah, so talking of intensification of federal activity, I guess.

According to a notice posted in the Federal Register, DHS is going to use the cultural, environmental, and historical protection waiver that we reported about that came out this spring to force through wall construction in the San Diego sector. I am guessing that in part we will see this used to waive One of the acts it is waived the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And I'm guessing in part that this will be used to waive that, right?

Because Kumiye ancestors are in these areas. And at the end, the tail end of the previous Trump administration, I reported on this for Sierra, which is a magazine of the Sierra Club. Kumiye people were using ceremony. So they were participating in ceremony every day at construction sites in order to slow down the clock and they also filed a lawsuit, right? But they were trying to basically run out the clock

on the Trump administration in 2020. They successfully in some areas prevented some construction, but with the waiver of NAGPRA, it's hard to see how they will be able to do that. They also waive a bunch of other acts, the Eagle Protection Act, environmental and migratory bird treaties,

a bunch of other acts, right? This comes on the same week as Secretary of War, Pete Headthes, restored medals of honor to soldiers at Wounded Knee. If people are not familiar, this is not the episode where I do a history of things that happened at Wounded Knee Creek, but this was the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. This was just a slaughter. Yeah, hundreds of unarmed Lakota's civilians were murdered by the United States military. This wasn't a battle. This was just a massacre.

There were significant casualties for the U.S. military. Most of them were caused by the U.S. military, i.e. friendly fire and a completely disorganized slaughter of civilians. There was a standoff at Woundedly later in the 1970s in which two indigenous people died, one went missing. You can read Mary Bravebird's book about that. If you want a first-hand account that, it's a very good book. But yeah, Hegseth is doing this, I think, because Lloyd Austin had previously ordered a review of those medals. Because they weren't fighting. They were just killing people. Therefore, it makes sense, you know, to strip these medals of honor and that there was very little honor. In what they did, Hex-F have restored those. Very amusingly, he said

this is final. Like another sec-deaf couldn't just order a review like in four years and change it again. CBP has also issued a request for comments here in San Diego about its plans to build 7.6 miles of wall west of Tecate, as well as 1.3 miles of wall east of Tecate, more secondary barrier east of Otai Mesa and install or maintain 51 miles of, quote, barrier system attributes, which may include fiber optic cables, lighting poles, artificial lights, power cables, surveillance cameras, access and patrol roads, and utility shelters. What this would do, I think most people who haven't spent time at the border are not aware that there are vast gaps in the border wall, right? And this would close some of those. There are still gaps east of this

area. When a lot of people were entering in 2023, they were coming east of here in a more mountedous area, but this will close existing gaps in the wall around Takata, around Maran Valley. I imagine that after that, they will continue to move east. The areas where there are gaps, some of the areas where there are gaps for the reason aren't that hard to access. Some of them would be very hard to access with construction machinery, and therefore they'd have to spend a long time building a road before they could even begin building the wall. Reuters has conducted a review of more than 2 million court records and concluded that federal prosecution of drug cases,

especially those of high-profile traffickers, have dropped to the lowest level in decades. Fell for it again, a word. Yeah, I mean, normally you would see things like racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy charges, right? But these are down 24% compared to last year. even ongoing investigations have stalled as a federal law enforcement apparatus is focusing the vast majority of its people on deporting people who have not been accused of any crime.

I mean, even just like the regular FBI investigative capacity, it's been shifted to large extends towards just immigration enforcement. So they're not, they're actually just not going after as much like actual crime. Yeah, I think some agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive, for example, I think have the majority of their agents, tasks to immigration raids right now, the FBI. One agent described what he had been tasked with

as, quote, photo op bullshit, which was taking photos of their teams on and before raids for use by the ATF and the White House in social media posts. So they do appear to have lost the support of even some federal law enforcement. Talking of federal law enforcement, we have also learned,

this week about an FBI operation during the Biden administration, during which Tom Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash. What? You didn't hear about the Tom Homan bag of cash? No. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. What a joy to be able to share this with you guys.

No, this is going to get better. Just keep it, keep simmer down. It was in a bag. Simmer down. Simmer down. Simmer down. So Tom Homan, for those who are not familiar, is Trump's border czar and a long-time border security official, dating back to the Biden administration.

Let's find out about how they got on to Tom Homan. No, no, no, no, no. You just said that there was $50,000 in cash, but for what? Just wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Another Obama-era ice staff, Julian Calderas, who agents, undercover agents had contacted as part of a separate investigation, repeatedly suggested to the agents that they may wish to bribe Homan in order to obtain government contracts. Carl Derrhus repeatedly suggested this to the undercover agents so much so that they diverted their investigation and set up this investigation.

They gave Holman the money but waited to see what he would do in office in order to see. I guess they felt they would have a stronger case if he came back to them and said, you know, I have these five federal contracts. Which one would you like? The Trump DOJ took no further steps to investigate and has closed the investigation according to NBC. The Trump administration is claiming this was a setup by the FBI, but, of course, the investigation occurred in September of 24, so before the election. Again, it was not an investigation that they started on. It brunted off because Calderas repeatedly suggested that they should try and bribe Homer.

The agents who did this operation were posing as businessmen trying to get government contracts, right? Okay. This might explain. So, Homan was a big-time Trump affiliate, right? big time Trump supporter. People were suggesting that he might be made Secretary of Homeland Security. This might be why. We'll never know for sure, right? This might explain why he's been given a slightly less formal role, which I don't believe he has to pass through Congress, which is quote unquote, borders czar. This is like the level of normalized corruption. It's so good.

Which exists in every level of this administration. It's so funny. Remember when they just could not talking about Hunter Biden. It's like every, all the time. And meanwhile, you have like, like, you know, like all of like Jared Kushner's dealings with, like, Qatar and the Saudis, Tom Homan, getting $50,000 in cash. Yeah, yeah.

Undercover agents posing as businessmen to help obtain, like, government contracts. It's like an absurd, comical, cartoon world. So it's Keystone cop shit. We don't know if he's given the cash back. Oh, he, no. That cash is long. So much cocaine.

Like, I could either confirm a deny it was spent on cocaine. Yeah, a wild incident for corruption. Oh, God. Finally, I want to talk about Venezuela. In Venezuela, it seems that Stephen Miller has been taking the lead on strikes on alleged drug smugglers.

According to a Guardian piece, the strikes had been authorized by the Homeland Security Council. That's a body that Miller leaves, which has massively grown in influence since the Trump administration. It seems like most people in the administration were pretty much kept in the dark about this until very shortly before the strikes took place. They were justified under the Article 2 powers, which give the President authority to use force and limited self-defense engagements.

But it seems like Miller is pardoned upon driving the ship on this increased violence that we're seeing against Venezuela. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist.

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people

and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

When I was broke and I had no friends, nowhere to live, I was held up at gunpoint, I was robbed, all these horrendous things happened to me. I had such an unhappy childhood that whatever happened to me in New York is better than what my life was, so I'm not going back. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animal.

There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book. My deals. Let's get models in.

Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed. Until this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-state. game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis,

this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. are back. For our final story, this episode, we're going to talk about the national security presidential memorandums number seven titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, which was signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday, September 25th. This relates

in many ways to the Antifa Domestic Terrorism Executive Order from last week. But this memo is a lot more clear in outlining actual policy changes that will affect law enforcement investigations. So let's go over the four sections of this very, very long memo. I've tried to cadence it down as much as possible, but there is some good information in here to know. Section 1 asserts that there's been an increase in political violence in recent years with assassinations and quote-unquote riots in Los Angeles in Portland, which have resulted in a more than 1,000 percent increase in attacks against ICE officers since Trump's inauguration. 2.0. The memo states that riots and violence aren't organic events or isolated incidents,

but in fact, quote, a culmination of a sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society, unquote. If we've spoken about the statistic about attacks and ICE officers before and how that's very misleading. Yeah, I mean, an ice officer is attacked when an ice officer's fist encounters the face of a child. Yeah, a Latino grandmother. Yes. Latina grandmother in that case. Well, and a lot of this talking about, you know, riots as not organized events or incident incidents, what they describe here is this like a culmination of the sophisticated campaign.

This is just describing like the process of like what protesting is, right? Trying to direct or change policy outcomes, which comes up a lot in these like domestic terrorism laws, which when over-applied to just non-violent acts of speech, just start infringing upon very standard First Amendment activity. It's one of the five fundamental freedoms of the First Amendment, right? The right to assemble, the right was several of them. Actually, the right to assemble, the right to speak, the right to petition the government. Like, these are fundamental. The right to Twitch stream at a riot as a free member of the press. Yeah, definitely. That's not a right that I choose to exercise, but I guess it is one.

one that exists. But you and I have, you were in Portland and I was in Los Angeles, like, the idea that these cities were fundamentally, like, damaged by these protests. It's just not true. Well, and they're not just talking about damage from riots. They're also talking about, you know, effects on individual citizens. This memo describes how these, you know, organized campaigns start by, quote, isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action, unquote. Claiming that this process happens across, quote, anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organize doxing with the explicit intent of encouraging others

to harass, intimidate, or violently assault targets, unquote. I mean, this is what the right has done to, like, especially migrants and trans people, right, for a very long time. Anonymous chat forums, do they mean Reddit? Reddit, Telegram, maybe. Yeah. I know that some subredits have been closed since the issuing of this memorandum, which I'm wondering if it is related. Not explicitly, but like I think this memos would be in this section, like referring to things akin to Ice Watch. Okay, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

As well as, you know, standard, like, you know, anti-fascist action against, like, legitimate neo-Nazis, which... Yeah. The right is not against a doxing as a practice, as we have... seen the past few weeks with the state-sponsored, organized doxying harassment campaigns against people for their comments about the death of Charlie Kirk. The memo goes on to list a collection of, quote, common recurrent motivations and indica, or indicators, that unite this pattern of violence and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism.

These movements portray foundational American principles, support for law enforcement, and border control as fascist to justify and encourage acts of a violent revolution. Common threats animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality, unquote. So insofar as this memo has been reported, it's mostly been on this specific section here listing the indicators that could be driving terroristic acts under the umbrella of anti-fascism, including all of these beliefs that people are allowed to hold in the United

States due to the rights granted to us and the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Yeah, I mean, the hypocrisy is the point, and it's sometimes not worth, or it's not a point, but it's not particularly, you know, it doesn't change anything I think I'm pointing out, but I will just point out that, like, the idea that border control is a foundational American principle. It's not true that it was not until the Chinese Exclusion Act that the United States began to exclude anyone from coming here. And that was in the 19th century. History understanders will have noticed that the United States began at some point before the 19th century. One thing I will say regarding like this section, some reporting around this memo is framing

things like, you know, anti-capitalism or anti-Christianity is now that is going to be used as evidence that you are a terrorist. That is not the explicit way is written about in this memo. These are indicators, which if some investigator sees on a Twitter account or a blue sky account could then cause them to investigate

further into this person or group. But it's not like just expressing these things will itself deem you a terrorist and be putting you in jail. This does rely on action. Now, the memo does go on to talk about trying to prevent crime before it happens. I think this would be more in the way

of how the FBI tries to set up like sting operations or catch people who are planning a violent act before they actually do it. As we've even seen the past few weeks, with people being arrested for planning retaliation attacks following the death of Charlie Kirk.

This has happened. Yeah. Now, the memo calls for a new national law enforcement strategy to quote, investigate all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies and disrupt networks, entities and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts, unquote.

So that is the pre-crime aspect of this order, which they could use some of these beliefs like extremism on migration or race or gender or anti-Americanism as justification to start investigating groups, which then arrests could follow prior to. imminent violent act as deemed by federal law enforcement. Yeah, I mean, in theory, the role of especially federal law enforcement has always been to investigate people who were planning violent or terroristic acts. The difference here is that this is being specifically framed around a certain group. And this probably will lead to more attempts by them, more surveillance on people within those groups, right?

No, this is very worrying in terms of like surveillance, suppressing speech. chilling speech, because what they're qualifying as violent or terroristic acts is just ordinary protest activity, first-member protest activity, non-government organizations that support progressive causes or values. That's the real, like, concern here. It's worth stating here that in Los Angeles, for example, a number of grand juries did not return indictments of people who were accused of quite serious crimes that the grand jury did not think it was reasonable to indict them for, right? This is a new, short, most federal prosecutions do result ultimately in a guilty plea, right, because they

bring very strong cases when they bring them. But it's worth noting that the, specifically, like, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles has not stuck the landing on all of its attempts to indict people for things that they did during that time of protest in June. In terms of like implementation, the memo says, quote, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society, unquote. Networks, entities, organizations, these refer to like established organizations, like actual, like formed groups that have political activity. Now, section two outlines how the national joint terrorism task force

will, quote, unquote, coordinate and supervise a new comprehensive national strategy and orders the local Joint Terrorism Task Force around the country to, quote, investigate potential federal crimes relating to acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons for the purpose of political violence, terrorism, conspiracy against rights, or the violent deprivation of any citizen's rights. Unquote. The GDTF's Joint Terrorism Task Force will also investigate institutions. and individual funders, including employees of organizations, which are, quote, responsible for sponsor or otherwise the aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct as previously described.

That's a broad net, right? There's a lot of this stuff in like the Antifa order also alluded to this. Trump's statements made in the Oval Office have alluded to this going after funders, foreign funders, whether that's the groups like the ACLU or like bail funds. they've mentioned George Soros very often, the Open Society Foundation, right? Yeah, I think the right has had a fascination with Soros for a long time, right? They've been looking for a reason

to either exclude Soros from participation in US politics and just to be like, obviously I think most people realize this, but that that fascination is rooted deeply in anti-Semitism. George Soros is a Holocaust survivor, and there has been like an attempt to find reasons to exclude Soros from U.S. political activity for some time. I think it's reasonable to see this in that trend. This sort of like big organizations, foreign organizations is also mentioned in this memo

and saying the investigation will include NGOs and American citizens with foreign ties that could be in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act or, quote, money laundering by funding, creating, or supporting entities that engage in activities that support or encourage domestic terrorism, unquote. The memo states that the Attorney General shall issue guidance, which ensures that domestic terrorism priorities include, quote, politically motivated terrorist acts, such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, damage of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder. The guide shall also include an identification of any behaviors,

fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other Indica common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity, unquote. This is a worrying list of things. that are not domestic terrorism, that they're going to try to claim our domestic terrorism. Trespass? Yeah. Like, trespassing is now domestic terrorism.

That's not a great thing for the Attorney General to be issuing guidance on. Yeah, civil disorder is a very broad and somewhat nebulous term, right? Like... Are they going to call the organized doxing campaigns that the right is doing right now, domestic terrorism? No, of course not, right? These things are just taking form for explicit, like political prosecution for the political lens of the Trump administration.

I think the goal here, like some of these, there isn't even a statute, right? Like, I'm not aware of a broad federal doxing statute, aside from, you know, certain specific instances where it might be a crime to reveal someone's address. Violent intimidation of probably, like, federal law enforcement would be one thing that they go after. Yeah, federal law enforcement, people with protective orders, that kind of thing, right? And, yeah, there are probably ways of doing that. but I think a lot of this is intended to have a chilling effect on speech and organizing. Absolutely.

The Treasury Secretary will work with the Attorney General to, quote, identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political activity and shall deploy investigative tools, examine financial flows and coordinate with partner agencies to trace illicit funding streams, unquote. Again, very obsessed with this idea that there's tons of money that is funding Antifa, which if you know anyone under the Antifa umbrella, you know that they are extremely broke. Yeah, yeah, this is a left-wing protesters are not the most financially stable bunch.

There's not this illicit funding streams. This is a huge, a huge idea that the right has, like, latched on. Ironically, this is something that the right shares with the authoritarian left, actually. The idea that people can't act independently unless there is a large, well-funded actor motivating them to act, is something that because the authoritarian right and the authoritarian left agree on some things. And one of them is that, like, people can't take the initiative to act, right? That there has to be some kind of vanguard in the case the authoritarian left or nefarious funder in the case of the authoritarian right. And so this lines up with the way that they understand the world.

I mean, yeah, and this, I was talking specifically here in terms of, like, regular people on the ground attending protests. There's, like, big, big groups, like, you know, often like, you know, communist-aligned groups that may be receiving funding, possibly from foreign sources. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for real. But I do not believe that is what this order is. At least this section is actually wanting to go after. That might be what they, in the end, actually end up targeting. They end up sweeping up. Because it's the only thing that actually has, like, you know, foreign funding.

But like, you know, capital A Antifa, teenagers with like umbrellas showing up in front of an ice building are not receiving money from like Iran, China or Russia. Yeah, as you say, it might be large at Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, Open Society Foundation, Bill Gates. Network for strong communities. Yeah, like some of these organizations might be what they're trying to drag a net over here. Or nonprofits. The next section instructs the IRS to, quote, take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities

are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism, unquote, and calls for the IRS to refer suspect organizations and their employees to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible. prosecution. It's probably worth noting the context here that there was, this is after a 20-10 congressional investigation that found out that the IRS had gone after some Tea Party groups, right? Do you remember the Tea Party, Garrison? You were at seven at that time? I remember the Tea Party, yeah. Yeah. So the feeling here, Biden, if you remember, Garrison also hired a number of new IRS agents. There was a conspiracy theory that these were to provide

some kind of armed, massive armed element to the IRS. that was going around in the Biden administration. I'm sure the IRS had an armed element, right? There is not a federal investigative agency that doesn't. Like, the Postal Service has cops and probably a SWAT team. But there was a feeling on the right that Biden mobilized the IRS against right-wing individuals. And I can see this being the old pendulum swinging back in the other direction a little bit.

One of the more interesting sections that I've highlighted of the memo, instructs investigators to quote, question and interrogate individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement, unquote, that's directing like the interrogations

of people arrested at protests to like specifically go after who's funding them to be at protest, which I'm sure some very fruitful information will come out of, referring back to our discussion of like, you know, the common motivators or Indica, including things, you know, like anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, and how those beliefs in and of themselves, I don't think, will be sufficient for declaring someone a terrorist and, like, locking them up is because later in this memo, the memo directs investigations

to, quote, prioritize crimes such as the following, assaulting federal officers or employees, conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to commit offense, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, money laundering, funding of terrorist acts, or otherwise facilitating terrorism, arson, violations of the RICO Act, and major fraud against the United States, unquote. So, could the government use these indicators to then find groups to target, to stick some of these crimes onto groups or organizations? Absolutely. That's probably what they're going to do. but these these are the things to like be aware of and they're going to try to you know slap these on people who are just arrested at protests people who work for NGOs people who work for legal

support networks maybe migrant assistance networks yeah like that's that's going to be the target for a lot of these things and we've seen some of these like conspiracy charges in san diego with their with their antifa prosecution case we've seen similar stuff in atlanta with Stop Cop City, right? There is precedent for this. We've seen the state try to, and to a degree of success and failure, actually push these charges forward.

Yeah, the panic that those two cases created, I think, and we're still pre, you know, trial in the Atlanta case, right? Trials in progress. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, pre, I guess, a conclusion of that trial. But the current indication is that most of these RICO charters are not going to stick.

Yes. And most of the conspiracy charges, did not, right? And most of those people ended up not being convicted of all the things they were accused of. I do see the major fraud against the United States, and I think that's probably going to use against NGOs. I do also wonder, they have spoken before, about the payroll protection plan and looking at PPP fraud. Yeah, I mean, financial crimes are always really scary, right? Yeah, yeah. Like a lot of non-profits, you know, like people, undoubted given the scale of the PPP, people abused it.

I think nonprofits would be a lot more buttoned up than almost anyone else in that regard, especially these big liberal non-profits, but that is an area which I'm sure that the Trump IRS will be looking at. Yeah, and they might even try to slap these on people making jokes or quote-unquote threats online, right? Solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People shouldn't be saying stupid shit on social media right now. Which is absolutely like a chilling speech, right? That is bad. Yes, it is a bad thing, but you don't want to give these people extra ammunition to use against yourself right now. Fighting words are not always, like First Amendment speech right now. I'm no expert in where that starts and where that ends. But yeah, like in terms of not doing stupid things, like this is not a time to do stupid things on your posting website of choice.

section two closes by calling for investigators and federal police to quote adopt strategies similar to those used to address violent crime and organized crime to disrupt and dismantle entire networks of criminal activity unquote so yeah especially with all this financial stuff money laundering RICO conspiracy charges they're basically using or they want to use like tactics to take down like organized crime rings just targeting their political enemies targeting political organizations targeting political organizations and people who attend protests. Like, that is, that is the real gist of this memo. Yeah. Section 3 instructs the Attorney General to designate qualifying groups or entities under investigation as domestic terrorist organizations, per the definition of domestic terrorism in 18 U.S.C. 23315, and to submit a list of such groups to the President of the United States.

And Section 4 instructs the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to designate the domestic terrorism a national priority area and provide extra funding for law enforcement to, quote, detect, prevent, and protect against threats arising from this area. That is the bulk of the National Security for Central Memorandum number seven promising to chill speech and go after political opponents and organizations, entities, and individuals and employees of organizations. Yeah. Very, very undemocratic, very, very on its face authoritarian. and you don't even need like allegations of political targeting. Like they're writing down how they want to do political targeting.

They're bragging about it. It's really what briefly want to raise the example of the flag burning, right? So Donald Trump signed an executive order ordering the Justice Department to investigate flag burning earlier this year. I can't quite remember when. Subsequently, someone called Jan Kerry of North Carolina was a, arrested after they burned a flag, an American flag, just to be clear, outside the White House. I guess the flag burning executive order doesn't apply to like your, you know, like anime flag or

whatever, specifically about the flag of the United States, something which I think Johnson v. Texas is a Supreme Court case, right, but there is a considerable amount of legal precedent that is First Amendment speech. Kerry was arrested. What is being missed in the discussion is that Kerry was charged with two misdemeanor. the crimes. One was for lighting a fire, not in a designated area in receptacle. The other was for lighting a fire in a manner that threatened to cause damage to him resulted in the burning of property, real property, and park resources. These are both offenses that you can be

incarcerated or fined for. I want people to know that, right? Like, he was not arrested because of the executive order, although the executive order may very much influence the climate, which led to his arrest and charged with these other things. But he wasn't charged with, the elective order, because that is not how it works. They can't change the law with executive orders or presidential memorandums. What they can do is direct how the law will be enforced or policy guidelines, right? And that's what this is affecting right now. All of these branches, like the DHS, Justice Department, federal police, are going to be following the policy guidelines and outlines established in this memo to then try to enforce the laws that we have.

some of which they will probably find ways to do it and sometimes they won't. Yeah, we have a very broad range of statutes criminalizing a very large range of things and someone will find some way in there to criminalize someone for something that might seem on the face of it to be not nefarious.

But that doesn't mean that we have executive legislative fusion. We don't write ourselves too much of the government and that is important to remember too. No laws have been changed criminalizing anti-American Americanism, right? Yeah.

That is an important thing to keep in mind. That does not mean that this order is not going to chill speech, suppress free speech, or be used to criminally target people. Criminal prosecutions

can ruin the lives of people for years and years regardless of the actual outcome, right, even if they get off on the charges. And we want to be clear that we're not like minimizing the effects of this,

but we do want to actually break down what like the threat model is specifically for like NGOs, those legal organizations that help protesters or migrants, LGBTQ organizations, right? These are probably going to be the first targets of a lot of like the conspiracy fraud sections of this order besides, you know, protesters that get rounded up and get put into, into this like political war game that they're playing. Yeah.

Similar to how regular protesters in Atlanta then found themselves suddenly amidst like a three year long RICO domestic terrorism case. Yeah. Despite not participating in any kind of large organization. aspect of StopCop City. They were just regular attendees. So there'll be stuff similar to that. That happens throughout the next few months to years.

And I think that is where we should keep our attention focused on mitigating the harms of government overreach. Yeah. So for the fundraiser this week, something slightly different. I wanted to read off this GoFundMe for the Emergency Circus. They are traveling south of the U.S. border. I believe they're going to migrant shelters in Tijuana to hold. circus acts, circus performances for kids. I have obviously, not obviously, but I've spent a decent

amount of my life in refugee camps and migrant shelters. And they can be pretty hard places for kids. And it's something that I think about almost every day. And so people bringing joy to those children is something that I think is wonderful and very important. People get the impression that legal funds are important and kids having a laugh is not important. But like children have a right to be children and that's taken away from them by the immigration system. And so I would like, if you supported this, the website is www.govundMe.com slash F-E-E-C-O-F-F-F-I-C-E. It will also be in the show notes.

If you would like to email us, you can do so at our encrypted email address, which is CoolZone Tips at Proton.me. Your email will only be end-to-end encrypted if you send it from an encrypted email address, Proton Mail is an example of an encrypted email address. Before we close the episode, I will tease an episode for next week. There was a shooting at a Mormon church on Sunday, which the right briefly tried to turn into like this culture war narrative on attacks on Christianity. And then once information about the shooter became more clear, they quickly dropped the

subject. So on Wednesday, I'll be doing an episode talking about this shooting and a few others and how various outlets on the right and left are only reporting on these big shootings insofar as they can turn them into political weapons against the opposition party. We reported the news.

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