It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #5

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

The gang talks about Germany's election, USAID, the new podcast driven FBI, and how gay the Navy may or may not be. Sources: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reins-in-independent-agencies-to-restore-a-government-that-answers-to-the-american-people/ https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/02/trump-signs-order-declaring-only-president-and-ag-can-interpret-us-law-for-executive-branch/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reevaluating-and-realigning-united-states-foreign-aid/  https://pages.devex.com/rs/685-KBL-765/images/109160-memo.pdf?version=0  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277336/gov.uscourts.dcd.277336.21.0_7.pdf https://www.one.org/us/what-we-do/the-issues/foreign-assistance-pause-faq/  https://mutualaidsudan.org/ https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-foreign-assistance-pause/ https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/USAID%20OIG%20-%20Oversight%20of%20USAID-Funded%20Humanitarian%20Assistance%20Programming%20021025.pdf https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x87ev5jyo https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/about-the-eb-5-visa-classification https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5306990/dan-bongino-fbi-deputy-director https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/new-fbi-director-kash-patel-plans-relocate-1500-119064886  https://www.dailyuw.com/news/washington-state-congressional-candidate-set-to-lead-counterterrorism-center/article_251db152-f32f-11ef-b56b-d7ae1ea3885f.html https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/fbi-kash-patel-antifa-blm-terror-groups https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/24/neo-nazi-trump-fbi-chief See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast Are You a Charlotte? The incredible Cynthia Nixon joins me this week for a conversation filled with memories and stories I didn't even know. Cynthia could have been Carrie? When I first read the script, they asked me to read for Carrie, as I think they asked you to read for Carrie. Did you? I did.

And they were like, yeah, not so much. You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Calling all nine-niners, now streaming. It's the More Better podcast with two episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine Fun.

Hosts Stephanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero welcome former castmates Chelsea Peretti and Joe Lattrullo for one episode each to laugh and swap stories. Like Andre would always be like, trying something and they're like, do less. But then some of the biggest things were the biggest hits like Vindication, remember? Listen to more better with Stephanie and Melissa on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show, and in your ears with The Daily Show

Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment, to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. What's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

Listen to the hookup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Call Zone Media podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, yes, the crumbling world and what it means for for me and you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Yes. This week we're covering the week

of February 19 to February 26. And boy, if you thought we had ED before, do we have ED now? We still haven't got that him sponsorship, but we'll be crying. We're gonna keep working at it. I'm also looking to get us a penis pump sponsorship. Speaking of penis pumps, let's talk about the Germans.

So Germany had its election very recently after their most recent coalition collapsed. The way their government works is that periodically, governments can't continue being governments. And so they have to have a very sudden election. I'm not going to explain it much more than that but the the actual results of the election were pretty interesting right. The primary winner was off day AFD alternative for Germany would be kind of the closest English translation of the name of the party. This is a far right party.

It is primarily popular in East Germany now, but it has surged massively after years and years of being decidedly on the political fringe. One of the reasons it has always been on the political fringe is that German parties, both centrists, conservatives, and the left have had a tacit agreement since the end of World War II called the Cordon Sanitaire. It's not just Germany.

This is a thing that used to be present in all of Europe. And basically the gist of the Cordon Sanitaire is you don't form a coalition because these are parliamentary democracies, right? So usually no one party has 50% or more of the vote. So, you know, party with 20 and a party with 15 and a party with eight, and they form a coalition government. And the norm for up until now, and thankfully is still the normal, we'll talk about that, is that you don't coalition with AFD, which is a part of why

that and kind of lingering stigma about the Nazis kept them from being a major force in German politics until, you know, over the last eight or so years, they have grown substantially to the point where in this recent election, they doubled their support from around 10% to a little over 20%. Yeah. This makes them, they're not the largest single block in the German, in the Reichstag.

They're number two though, right? They are number two, I believe. Which sucks. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, the CDU is still significantly larger. Yeah. Although not like overwhelmingly larger, to be clear. So basically right now the CDU, which is the centrist party, and it's kind of like center, right?

A little center right has 208 seats in the Reichstag. AFD has 152. The social Democrats have 120. The greens have 85. The left party has 64. 20, the Greens have 85, and the left party has 64. So AFD is a minority in the government compared to all of the people who didn't vote for AFD, but the rate at which they're increasing is a serious problem, especially since most Germans list immigration as their primary voting concern right now.

This most recent election had unusually high voter turnout. 2021 election, 76% of the country or so voted, more than 82% of the country voted in this most recent election. So the fact that like you have record high turnout and AFD doubling its support is deeply chilling. Now, it's not 100% bad news because one of the other stories here is the new left party, well not super new, but the left party, which is kind of came out of East Germany's communist party massively increased their support too.

And they actually, for the first time, like very significantly increased their share of the vote, which had been under this kind of 5% threshold before, and is now at about 8.8%. So they, they went up by a, an amount to actually is not like as much as AFD went up, but like in terms of a percentage of their prior vote, it's a similar increase. So there's another party that had significant gains in this, and it's kind of a newer party called the BSW, which is, you could say they do a little bit of like a red-brown alliance kind of thing, where there's some like left-wing messaging in what they're saying,

but they're also like super anti-immigrant, and they're not, you know, it's not kind of like to the extent that the AFD is, but when they came onto the scene they were expected by some people to pull votes away from the AFD this election and that's really not what happened and in fact a lot of the votes they pulled were from social Democrats and the left parties. So that was one of the, you know, it's because of the way the parliamentary system works, which is more rational than our system.

This didn't like hand the whole election to off day. Again, this is the benefit of a system like the Germans had, which is pretty explicitly set up to make it a lot harder for a right-wing dictator to get in again. But it is interesting to me that that kind of messaging, I mean, it's further kind of evidence of what's been happening everywhere, which is when your party positions itself

to try to win over far right votes, by kind of mixing in, well, okay, what if we did some sort of liberal lefty policies, but we also got really racist? Yeah. Yeah. You don't take votes from the far right, but you do wind up pulling the worst people from the left.

Yeah. And, yeah, I guess that's kind of like the broad strokes. Now, like, this is bad, although it's also not comprehensively a nightmare. One of the things that's kind of hot, I don't know, positive may not be the right bit, but interesting to me is if you look at the 2021 election maps of the strongest party by constituency in the 2021 election, then I found a good article, German election results explained in graphics on dw.com. If you just Google that, you'll find it in 2021 off day.

Obviously like the whole Northeast was, you know, their territory, but they also had strong inroads into the Northwest parts of the country. Right. You know, primarily like rural areas and the like, but like, there was a, there was a lot of red on that map in the Northwest portion of Germany. In the new election, that's all black, which is the CDU, right? Which means while Ofte's representation of the Reichstag

and like number of voters increased substantially, their geographical reach has been kind of cauterized would be a fair way of saying it, which is interesting to me. Hard to say too much, like, does that mean, I think some of what has happened here, because it's important both to note that this is bad, it's bad that the Nazis doubled their share of the vote,

but also it was expected to be a little worse than it was. You know, there's some evidence that after JD Vance made his speech introducing AFD, their polling started to like freeze a little bit. And it may be the fact because a lot of older voters came in and they they seem to have primarily gone with the CDU with this sort of center right party. So it's one story here is you could maybe look at it as a lot of older, more conservative Germans who are also old enough to really not like the idea of the AFD came out and voted for, you know, the center-right party in order to kind of cut off their power. The other thing though that's kind of a lot less optimistic is that

AFD is most popular among people under 30 who widely don't view it as an extremist party, which is deeply, deeply concerning. And AFD won the majority of like working class, unemployed and male votes. Yes, yes. Pretty substantially. Yes, they did extremely well with young men and unemployed young men in particular. And that's that's all deeply concerning. So you know, there's a few things going on here, all of which are very interesting to me.

But the power off day continues to have with younger, really young Germans is frightening. That said, there's also some evidence here that the situation in the United States has galvanized a chunk of the German voting populace to attempt to stop. The off day and kind of one of the positive things that came out as prior to this election, there was a lot of talk about whether or not the CDU would choose to coalition with the AFP and that's in the cordon sanitaire. And to make a long story short, they're not going to do that. They're looking to coalition with the social Democrats, which is a good thing.

You know, it doesn't mean no one will do that in the future. And unfortunately, a majority of German voters suspect AFD will be in a coalition by 2030. But it hasn't happened yet. And that's as good as things get right now. And that's what I got to say about Germany. Yeah, I mean, and people frame these results as like slightly better than expected. Slightly. Previous polling showed AFD being being slightly better in results and that dipped for Vance and Musk started

started really trying to push AFD both in person and digitally. So you saw a slight dip there. Yes. And this is the other thing that's kind of worth noting that kind of like red brown party in addition to being kind of pro-social programs, anti-immigration. They're also very anti-United States. Okay. So, uh, that may explain some of that too. Yeah, it does seem like things are changing a lot. And one of the things that we've seen, like we spoke about before, like not

just in Germany, but in Canada was that like, people hate Musk and Trump so much in the rest of the world that like their endorsement could be something of a kiss of death electorally. Yeah, yeah, like the Conservative Party in Canada has been growing pretty exponentially in terms of like popular support the past few years as the liberals have like tanked and now those trends actually started to reverse the Canadian like liberal polling is up 10 points, the conservative polling is down, conservatives might not even be able to control Parliament in the next election as they were expected to. And it'll be interesting to see if this anti-far-right United States trend

continues to more countries beyond like Germany and Canada. But I'm still eagerly eagerly waiting for the next Canadian election. And this is part of the story that is really interesting right now where we've talked a lot about the transnational fascist coalition You know the fact that Trump and his people have had the quasi dictator of Hungary You know over at Mar-a-Lago and have repeatedly cited him as an inspiration for how to take and centralize power You know how close Bolsonaro was in the last Trump administration, like, you know, obviously the Republican parties increasing closeness and embrace of Putin's Russia. But what also is happening right now is people like countries that had been

heading in a very, in a more authoritarian right-wing direction, turning around in part due to the war in Ukraine and turning away from the international right-wing movement, Poland being the best example, where Polish politics have changed substantially in the last several years. A big part of that is the war in Ukraine. And there are a lot of Poles who I think otherwise would have been more on board for a lot of the socially conservative shit who are like, well, but all these fuckers are pro Russia and we're Poland.

Like, no. All right, let's go on a break and return to talk more about the crumbling world. And you, Saeed. Yeah. Hey, y'all, it's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me.

Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom.

Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me, not only with women, but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough, because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year, and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill, Season 4, as part of the My Kultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there?

We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous, that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones.

Or are they? We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses.

But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karyn, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast,

The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains or often somewhere in between. Listen to The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. I'm going to throw to James to do a segment on USAID. Yeah, we are back.

And before I talk about USAID, I do want to talk about something else that has been advertised along with whatever products and services support this show. That is the gold card. So the gold card, if you're not familiar, is something that Trump floated this week to replace the EB-5 investor visa. Trump suggested that the gold card, it would require a $5 million investment. Well, investment, I think that is just a charge, right? You're just giving the money to the United States government and in return you will receive

a green card plus privileges. And it will be not a green, but a gold card. So that's great. That is the EB-5 visa, if you're not familiar, required you since 2022, it's been $1,050,000 investment and the creation of 10 jobs. So it had some kind of like, it trickled down economics is not a real thing. It's a lie that they tell you. But it had some idea that these rich people would create jobs in the US for people who are less wealthy. The gold card seems to not have that.

You just have to be rich, right? So that's an interesting change to the immigration system. The other thing I want to talk about today is the United States Agency for International Development, better known as USAID. It's been a target of like the anti-woke right for some time because they fundamentally don't understand what Joseph Nye would have called soft power, right? That their power to persuade, the power to influence outcomes around the world with things other than tanks and bombs.

Oh, and again, if your power is soft right now, you might consider trying HIMS or one of our other sponsors. HIMS is not a sponsor. Sorry, James, we needed to do that. I have been diverted, but I'm returning to my topic. The agency has been massively impacted by Doge and Trump administration cuts. The Trump administration suspended all foreign aid in January via executive order on the 20th of January in order to assess if it was, quote, serving US interests.

The State Department then issued guidance that seemed to go beyond the executive order and cut nearly basically all USAID expenses. On the 13th of this month, that's February if you're listening later, a judge issued a temporary restraining order. This TRO didn't really stop them from doing what they were doing

because it told them to continue with existing contracts and what the State Department claims that it's doing is implementing clauses that are already in the contracts. So the contracts will have some kind of kill clause, right? And that they claim that they're implementing that. So they think they've found a fun workaround. Rather than talking extensively about court battles, I want to talk about what this means. These are cuts made by the richest man in the world that have had a direct, tangible,

and devastating impact on the poorest people on the planet. In Sudan, 80% of emergency kitchens have been closed. That means that close to 2 million people will go without food. Local groups who organize the kitchens are running out of money. The way this works is that even when Rubio issued a communication talking about continuing food aid, it's unclear exactly what that means, because in this case and in other cases, USAID is sending them money in order to provision themselves locally, as opposed to sending them food as an in-kind donation. Right? Whatever he communicated, these people are not getting food.

And as a result, the people who run these mutual aid kitchens, it's a mutual aid coalition of Sudan, are facing the horrible decision of having to turn people away or deciding who to feed, which is pretty bad. On the border between Thailand and Myanmar, a place where Robert and I have been to report, I've heard that people are having babies right now outside a lot clinics and life support machines have been removed for people who were relying on those life support machines, obviously. And at least one person has died.

Yeah. And I'm sure many, many more people that have died. Yeah. I mean, that, that, that's just what's reported. Like it's a lot of, most of what happens there does not get out. Yeah, I will try in not too long to be there and report on that. But it's pretty devastating right now. Like, Robert and I have met the people who run some of these clinics, and they are some

of the most incredible people doing amazing work. And yeah, they relied on USAID funding, as lots of other places do, and that's not happening now. The State Department has exempted quote, life-saving humanitarian assistance programs from the cuts, but no one really knows what that means, right? The order reads quote, life-saving humanitarian assistance applies to core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance,

as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance. As I mentioned before, the Mutual Aid Sudan coalition was receiving financial assistance to help it provision itself, which is much better than the US going through all the infrastructure spending of being able to deliver that that aid itself through USAID contractors. Other contractors implementing partners of USAID are still owed money for work that they completed before January before the stop work order stopped payment to them. For work to begin again on any of these contracts, they need the contract officer to sign off on it, and it's a little unclear exactly how many of these contract officers are still employed

at USAID because of the federal employment cuts. So essentially USAID has stopped all over the world. In addition to this, in this country, $490 million worth of US-grown food, which is in the USAID pipeline to go to people who very desperately needed food is currently at risk of spoilage, according to USAID. So it's not just that people are starving, it's that we are allowing food to go bad here while people starve in other places, which is pretty bleak. I will just really briefly here plug the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition if you'd like to help.

You can direct to them directly and it's mutualaidsudan.org if you'd like to do that. It'll be in the show notes too if you're driving or whatever. And there is like ongoing legal fights over this issue on Tuesday, February 25th, another judge ordered the Trump administration to resume hundreds of million dollars of funding towards USAID. And there's no indication Trump's going to follow that order. They're already planning to appeal again, they have already appealed before. And like we've seen them continually deny court orders from judges, find loopholes, find workarounds and Musk and Trump continue to just openly float, like defying the order of the court. Representative Andy Ogles introduced articles of impeachment against a specific

quote unquote activist judge. This will go nowhere. They don't have nearly enough numbers to make anything like this happen. Yeah. It's a frontal assault on the separation of powers, is what he's proposed, right? And like, they don't have their numbers yet. Yes. Well, and they have openly floated just like defying orders because they're interpreting the actions of the judges as like themselves unlawful, but Musk has himself called to impeach judges who violate the law. And I believe his most recent pinned ex-post reads, quote, if any judge anywhere can block every presidential action everywhere, we do not have a democracy. We have a tyranny of the judiciary. So what a great legal mind.

Shit we were saying it back in 2023. So this will this will continue. I mean, I'm really, really waiting for a final showdown between Trump, Elon and, you know, maybe the Supreme Court and, you know, seeing seeing if they will actively defy a ruling from the Supreme Court if they indeed rule against Trump and Musk. But until then, I feel like we're just kind of all chugging along as the Trump administration, you know, very, very unconstitutionally defies the authority of the court. Yep. In some related news, last week, President Trump signed an executive order stating that the president can change laws.

Cool. order stating that the president can change laws. Cool. Erroneously citing Article 2, which only calls for the president to quote, faithfully execute the law. I'm going to quote from the order, the president and the attorney general, subject to the president's supervision and control, will interpret the law for the executive branch instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. The next section is titled, Reigning in Independent Agencies.

It reads, The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission have exercised enormous power over the American people without presidential oversight. These agencies issue rules and regulations without the review of the democratically elected president. They also spend American tax dollars to set priorities without consulting the president. Voters in the president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments, responsible for their decisions as the Constitution demands."

Unquote. This is absurd. This is like extremely dangerous. One of the most blatant attempts at power that we've seen since Dick Nixon. This is going to get litigated, but this is crazy. The fact that we have a president saying that he has the ability to interpret the law, something that specifically he cannot do. That's why we have three branches of government.

Just like openly claiming that power is like very worrying. Again, like I feel like every episode on Executive Disorder, I say that, you know, I'm very worried and very concerned, but that does continue to be the case. Yeah, it is very concerning. I don't know what more to say because it's mad. Like we're watching a coup happen on the timeline while everyone just continues to go shopping and stuff. Like it's pretty weird. Speaking of shopping, I just got a fantastic Swedish M90 field jacket.

It looks great, it fits tight. I'm very happy. Incredible. Garrison's becoming a milsir. We will go on break once again to come back to talk about the Navy and the FBI. Hey, y'all, it's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad?

Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling.

I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years and the first two years of being together I find out he is cheating on me not only with women but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start?

That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill Season 4 as part of the My Kultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if

there's something else, something much more ominous, that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home? Drones, or are they? We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy.

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently cancelled

In the future we will all be cancelled for 15 minutes, but don't worry We'll take you from broke to woke or your money back cancellation islands revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karen, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance

might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I smoke weed, I get lost in the music. I like to isolate each instrument, The rhythmic bass, the harmonies on the piano, the sticky melody. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,

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All right, we are back. Let's now talk about the Navy, arguably one of the gayer branches of the military, besides the drone operators. Oh, you're really missing out on the marine As multiple marine veterans have told me the US Marine Corps is the gayest place I've ever been The Marines are like part of the Navy right come on. They are they are they are and they hate it when you say Oh, well, we're way go cry about daddy Trump. I don't care It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

So, uh, meanwhile, there is a shakeups in the Navy and the Marines as relating to Trump's anti-trans executive orders. And we have obtained an Alnave memo directed to all Navy units and Marine Corps from February 25th that outlines the department of Navy's guidance on how to implement the anti-trans executive orders. This includes ending programs and policies related to quote unquote gender ideology all across the Navy, as well as only using assigned sex at birth on official documentation. I will quote from the statement, quote, D.O.N. entities will review policies for, quote, unquote,

intimate single sex spaces and take appropriate action to ensure such spaces are designated by sex and not gender identity on installations, facilities, ships, and any other infrastructure under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy, unquote. So this will force women into bathrooms and barracks with men, it's in line with the stuff that like Trump's been talking about and the stuff that he's been signing. But we are still getting more and more of these implementation guides getting sent around to various departments. James?

Yeah, and like just to clarify that to people, most of these bases are pretty full, right? These are pretty crowded places. So this will mean women sharing rooms are pretty full, right? These are pretty crowded places. So this will mean women sharing rooms with young Marines, right? This will mean them sharing non-stalled bathrooms with young sailors and Marines, right? This will force them into very confined spaces together on board ships. Like this isn't like some kind of sort of minor inconvenience or whatever, like this, this will put these people at a demonstrable risk for assault, for bullying, which is a serious thing and an issue in lots of militaries,

including the U S one. But like, and many of these people I should add, like have had that they're like post surgery, right. And, and, and not that it matters usually, but they're people who might pass as women or men and they're now forced to live according to their gender assigned at birth. Pretty fucked up. It's not great. I'm going to wait before I do reporting on the implementation guides for visas. I know there's been a lot of articles in The Guardian

and a few trans journalists have conflicting interpretations of a few Department of State cables regarding the issuing of visas to people who are trans. Specifically, I think the main cable that we've seen allows the continued issuance of visas, but that would only match what the the case officer or like the whoever whoever is like handling the actual visa information, whatever they determined to be the assigned gender at birth to be.

Yeah, that's that's how it would get issues. But I'm going to wait to report on kind of the the rest of the nitty gritty details because there there is conflicting information from like these policy wonks, lawyers, and journalists themselves who are trying to figure out kind of what the full implications of those cables are. But we are aware of them, we've been talking about them in our chat.

Yes, they are bad, but I don't necessarily want to like overblow the scope of some of these things just to like induce panic When when really this is all kind of very in line with with Trump's earlier orders to only have male and female Documentation that matches assigned gender at birth. Yeah, I would say also like if you are Soldier sailor and man person marine whatever and and like these executive orders are affecting you. You can email us at coolzontips at proton.me. I know trans folks tend to serve at a higher rate than cisgender folks. So this is a good number of people who will be affected by this and like for whatever it's worth,

if you want to talk to us, you can reach out to us. I'm also going to note, we obtained information on the Department of Defense removing travel coverage for abortion. On January 18th, Department of Defense travel management office removed a section from their joint travel regulations that outlined travel allowances for quote, non covered reproductive health care, quote, meaning like abortion and assisted reproductive technology like IVF. Now this change was directly in compliance with Trump's executive order to enforce the Hyde Amendment, which Mia has talked about a lot before on the show. And then on February 4th, they actually reestablished coverage for assisted reproductive technology.

So probably just IVF, but abortion was not reestablished. So probably just IVF, but abortion was not reestablished. So that means that travel cover for abortion related medical care, reproductive health care is no longer there. Correct. Correct. Yeah. For our last main story, I'd like to talk a little bit about updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Trump goon, rap producer, and children's book author, Cash Patel, has been confirmed as FBI director. And Patel is joined by far right podcaster and conspiracy theorist, Dan Pogino, who has been appointed deputy director. Oh, God. And look, I gotta say, I'm just glad there's an adult in the room now, you know

This is thank God again Like I I don't want to just be talking about how how you know kooky everything is in this new administration But this is wild. Yes, this is no no no garrison. I Disagree and that's because I have professional solidarity Anything that's good for podcasters in general, you know, is good for the country. That's sad. Not great. Not great. Last week Patel told senior officials he wants to relocate upwards of 1,500 employees from DC to field offices around the country.

And in a statement on last Friday, which is February 21st, Patel said, "...anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life and our citizens, here and abroad, will face the full wrath of the DOJ and the FBI. If you seek to hide in any corner of this country or planet, we will put on the world's largest manhunt, and we will find you and we will decide your end state." Agents and government employees have warned that under Patel, the bureau will be on course to refocus efforts away from far-right street fighters and accelerationists and towards the nebulous BLM Antifa. In related news, on Tuesday, a far-right extremist named Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent is a former Special Forces and CIA operative.

He's described himself as an American first populist and has strong ties to the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. Kent has praised Joey Gibson for standing up to Antifa, and Kent himself employed a proud boy to consult on a failed congressional campaign in 2022. Kent has historically advocated that the FBI refocus their efforts to target Antifa. And this is all amidst a report from The Guardian suggesting that the Nazi accelerationist group The Base has had a decent resurgence in activity and recruitment efforts inside the United States. That's good. So not cool stuff happening.

Read the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I guess I'll close, unless we have any other thoughts on Kent or Patel or our podcaster, deputy director. What are you supposed to say? All right. I mean, I do you supposed to say? All right. I mean, I do think it's funny that because of the number of podcasters that have been hired, there have been statements by people in the administration

that like, there aren't going to be any more conservative podcasters because we're giving them all government jobs. Well, that's more hims advertising dollars for us. That's right. That's right. I feel like this is goings advertising dollars for us. That's right, that's right. I feel like this is going to be huge for us. I would like to close on three more funny news moments from the past week. Elon Musk danced around with a chainsaw at CPAC while multiple of his ex-wives and baby mamas pleaded for him on Twitter to respond to emergencies regarding

his children. Including that weird far-right journalist and Babylon Bee contributor who's had an increasing spat with Musk and I now believe has filed for complete custody of their child. Yeah, well, I mean, good luck, I guess. I guess good luck. I can't think of a worse situation to be in than Elon Musk being one of your legal parents. So like for the sake of that child, I hope that she succeeds. Tesla stock is down nearly 30% this month. There's been a real pressure on him because people in Europe are refusing to buy Teslas

in a boycott, you know, upset at him for doing the whole Nazi salute and being a Nazi thing. And finally, in some very sad news, a crypto trader killed himself live on a Twitter space in order to start a meme coin. Sorry, sorry, on an X space in order to start a meme coin. How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's a dark time for our community. They did start a meme coin. How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's a dark time for our community. They did start the meme coin.

Multiple meme coins actually were started. Well done for the people cashing in on the guy shooting himself in the head and then bleeding out for 30 minutes on stream. You are vampires. I don't know. Not the cool kind. No, yeah. Not the cool kind. No, yeah. Not the cool kind. The evil kind. Vultures. Vultures can be cool as well, I guess.

It depends. Yeah. Well, I think that's it for us. We reported the news again. We reported the news. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Calling all 9-9ers, now streaming. It's the More Better podcast with two episodes of Brooklyn 9-9 fun. Hosts Stephanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero welcome former castmates Chelsea Ferretti and Joe Lattrullio for one episode each to laugh and swap stories. Like Andre would always be like, try something, they're like, do less. Do less. Yeah. But then some of the biggest things were the biggest hits, like, Vindication, remember?

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