It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #7

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Unhinged Tariff news! Deportation and detention updates! The gang discusses this and much more and also has a musical guest. Sources: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-tariffs-steel-aluminum-levies-imports-europe-china-uk-japan-rcna195810 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/business/china-tariffs-us.html https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-beijing-trump-npc-xi-trade-growth-defense-nato-communist-tariffs-rcna195271 https://fortune.com/2025/03/11/goldman-sachs-chief-economist-downgrades-entire-us-economy-trump-tariffs-markets/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trade-tensions-china-canada-retaliate-us-tariffs-rcna194645 https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/1067709/us-stocks-downgraded-by-investment-banks-amid-pause-on-us-exceptionalism-1067709.html https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-tariffs-stock-musk-business-8a5f28d9bb16e0b8a924d99ead0907fa https://apnews.com/article/trump-eu-tariffs-countermeasures-806a3b9bcc9cd4e45817e672d95f0070 https://fortune.com/asia/2025/03/11/citi-downgrades-us-upgrades-china-trump-recession/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/us/politics/trump-tariffs-house-gop-vote.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow. Goes lower?

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or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind,

and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. -♪ CAUZO MEDIA. -♪ This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of the world,

and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode, recovering the week of March 5 to March 12. Trump films a Tesla commercial, RFK Jr. eats beef tallow french fries at Steak and Shake, and Sam Seder commits a mass casualty event on YouTube. How's everyone doing today? Very happy to join you for ED this week.

Huge fan of ED. Just like, just big, big ED guy. So, you know, psyched to be here. I feel like we should mention up top there's also a bunch of unhinged terror reviews and the most, like, electing fucking Caligula's horse to the Senate thing I've seen in a long time. So stay tuned for that. Lots of good stuff. Yes, we will get to it. First, I would like to give a little bit of an update

on a story that we talked about a few days ago, the detention and the revocation of a green card for a Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. As of Wednesday, his lawyers have still been unable to even contact their client. There was a large rally outside the first court conference in New York this Wednesday. So we talked about this a few days ago for some background, an episode with James, Robert, and myself. Robert, do you want to briefly summarize the situation and then I'll play a clip from one of his lawyers?

The situation is that this guy got taken into custody. My understanding is it was at an apartment that he lived in with his wife. He was a U.S. citizen. He became aware, it looks like at least about 24 hours before, probably became aware that he was being, it's a little clear if he was just like being surveilled or there was something else that tipped them off, but he contacted the school asking for help, convinced that ICE was coming for him about a day before they did. When they entered the house, my understanding is based on the claims being

made by his wife that they didn't produce a warrant or anything. He's still not charged with any crime. No, he's not been charged with any crime. They just took him and turned off the phone when they were on the phone to their lawyers If I'm if I'm remembering correctly, correct So it's like none of this is the way this should have gone like if this was an arrest No, he was just like black-bagged from campus Yeah, but it's not an arrest again and they've been very clear about this that like they have specifically stated

We're not accusing him of like breaking the law, right. Like that's that's not what's going on here. Correct. And we will get to some of that later. I'm going to play a clip from a press conference outside court that happened on Wednesday, March 12th. This is one of his lawyers. Mr. Khalil's detention has nothing to do with security. It is only about repression. it is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain, and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally protected activism. In

this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The government takes the position that because the Secretary of State finds his dissent unacceptable or contrary to U.S. foreign foreign policy he can be Deported as Ramsey suggested. It's largely unprecedented save for ugly historical precedents including the Red Scare and McCarthyism that's what we're talking about We're also talking about a period of repression that the Center for constitutional rights knows well

following 9-eleven when we were in the courts trying to get people out of secret detention. One thing that's different now is the legal infrastructure is so much stronger and everyone out here on the streets knows that we cannot hide in the face of this amount of repression. We will be fighting in the courts and fighting in the streets to bring Mahmoud home and prevent this level of repression from spreading to many others as the administration has threatened to do. So that was on Wednesday. For now, Khalil will be remaining in ICE detention in Louisiana. And ICE Director Tom Homan said Wednesday that, quote, free speech has its limitations, unquote.

Yeah. I have found some stuff today of people on the right attacking the judge who put out a, I guess, called a stay on this, in part because the judge is Jewish. So it's nice to see the anti-Semitism being used in that way as well in this instance. Just fascinating. We're really breaking new ground in all of this. Soterios Johnson A White House official did tell friend of the pod, the Free Press, not necessarily our favorite publication, but they do have an exclusive quote here, that the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations against other students.

Saying Khalil is, quote, a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States, unquote, said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest, saying, quote, the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law. So we have this official like open openly saying like he's not charged with a crime. We're just wanting to see if we can do this. Can we deport a legal permanent resident for saying something that we don't like? Yeah. And I think that there's been a lot of comparisons to this to direct McCarthyism. I think that's accurate to some extent. I think the most direct comparison to this is not McCarthyism. It's the Palmer raids.

Yep. Which I think people tend to be way less familiar with. That was the first Red Scare, which was largely targeted at the industrial workers of the world for their opposition to World War I. And they did basically the same shit. A lot of people would give anti-war speeches and then a whole bunch of IWW organizers and other sort of like leftists would get fucking deported for it. So yeah, that was a absolutely terrifying period of repression.

If the line is not drawn here, and it should have been drawn like 200 miles back from here, but if it isn't drawn here, this is going to continue, this is going to continue to get worse. And I mean all this is all this is in relation to Trump's executive order, you know, about quote-unquote anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, today in the Oval Office, he said something incredibly anti-Semitic and also anti-Arab somehow in like in the same statement, saying quote, Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian, unquote. Which is just an unbelievably anti-Semitic and anti-Arab statement all at once, like removing someone's Jewishness because of how

they act or things they've said or things they believe in. Yeah. And it's one of those things, again, like it's worth covering this as it develops. There's not much to say other than like this is incredibly illegal and has to be opposed immediately and vigorously. Like, yeah, yeah. No, it's really bad and of course you're not going to have the ADL coming out against Trump here. The ACLU did, which I should note because I heard some people saying they did not expect the ACLU to. They have, but yeah, the ADL is fully in the camp of lock anyone up who's ever protested Israel. And they're not going to call Trump anti-Semitic for making a statement like this.

Because their interests are fairly aligned at this point, Rie, what's happening in Gaza. So I think now we're going to play a special report from James, who can't be on the recording here today, but he does have a report on deportations in Panama. So James, take it away. So something that we've seen in the last week is that the people who the US government has deported to Panama, who it can't deport to their home countries, have in some cases been released by the Panamanian government and given a 30 day visa or 30 days to essentially exit Panama. And they're not really being given any support.

So they're in some cases just sleeping on the streets in Panama City, just wandering around, trying to work out how to get home and trying to work out what they should do next. Obviously, these people who have fled places like Afghanistan, Iran, places where they can't go back to, they would face persecution just for the act of having tried to leave, even if they weren't already facing persecution before, which many of them were, that that's why they fled. So they've just kind of kicked it down the road a little bit, and we'll see where this leads.

But it's another piece of evidence that this wasn't hugely well planned, that the Trump administration just wanted to get these deportation numbers up at almost any cost. All right, we're going to go on a break and come back to talk about the Department of Education and Tariff Talk with Mia Wong. Hey, it's Amartines. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and

boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen Up First from NPR on the iHeart Radio app 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. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative

hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. ["I Heart Radio"] Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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. Careful, babe. There's someone crossing the street. Sorry, I didn't see him there. If you feel different, you drive different. Don't drive high. It's dangerous and illegal everywhere.

A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. Our iHeartRadio Music Awards are coming back Monday, March 17th on Fox. Starring Bad Bunny. Glorilla. Kenny Chesney. Money Long. Nelly. Your host. i, I Heart Radio, LL Cool J, are you guys ready to have some fun tonight?

Plus I Heart Innovator Award recipient, Lady Gaga, I Heart Icon Award recipient, Mariah Carey, and I Heart Breakthrough Award recipient, Gracie Abrams. Watch live on Fox, Monday, March 17th at 8, 7 Central. Wow. Well, we are back and, you know, it's everyone's favorite time of the podcast, Talking About Tariffs. And before we get to Mia, I want to bring on a musical guest to set this section of

the program up. ["Therese Don't Like It"] Rockin' the Casbah, rockin' the Casbah. Therese don't like it. Rockin' the Casbah, rockin' the Casbah. Oh yeah, oh my gosh. That was worth the rest of our year's budget. Now, everyone will be getting paid for the rest of the year in Denny's coupons. That's all we have left after paying

for this, but I think we can all agree, worth it. Do you want to explain what that is? Because I still don't really have a clue what exactly that opening theme song is for Tariff Talk. Well there was a great band called The Clash once and they wrote one song that wasn't very good and in it somebody says something that didn't sound very much like the word tariff but if you mispronounce the word tariff it fit in and that's where $42,000 of our operating budget this year went. Anyway, Mia, let's talk about tariffs. Yeah, now that I've gotten one of the two things I've ever wanted in life play on music. So

Since last week This has been an entire rollercoaster because right after we finished recording in like the next two days Everyone went. Oh the tariffs aren't gonna be that bad because a lot of the tariffs that were hit with Trump sort of general 25% Canada Mexico tariff got waived after Trump agreed not to apply them to goods covered by the USMCA free trade agreements. But then everyone remembered that the 25% steel and aluminum tariff was still going into effect. And so that went into effect this week. Now there was also a brief incredible moment of panic where Trump was talking about

doubling them to 50%. He backs off of this in exchange for Ontario's Doug Ford stopping a like 25% increase in electricity prices. However, comma, the trade war is 100% still on Canada is doing a whole like sort of slate of reciprocal tariffs specifically on steel and also tariffs and taxes on a whole suite of other US goods. I'm just going to read this from the Associated Press because this is no longer the trade war here is no longer limited to the US, Canada, China, and to some extent Mexico. So Mexico's really hasn't been responding in the same way as basically every other country who's come under these tariffs or these the sort of main focuses of these tariffs

But this week the EU officially joined the fray So here's from the AP quote across the Atlantic the European Union will raise tariffs on American beef poultry bourbon and motorcycles bourbon again Yeah, yeah bourbon twice. Yeah It's twice as important as the other things. Yes, peanut butter and jeans. Actually, you say this, there was a whole, like part of the whole speech. That was not a joke, Mia. People in the EU, this was part of the thing, was yeah, we're hoping to restore the profitability of the American spirits markets when the US backs down. It was also the only American product that Trudeau could name during his big speech.

Very funny. Let's be honest, outside of music, this nation has produced one thing of value to the world and it's bourbon. It's also very funny that it was like, bourbon was like our, what attempt number was it at making whiskey before we finally got one that was like, exportable? Terrible, yeah, it took generations. Look, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day and bourbon is the Rome of liquors produced in Kentucky. Yeah, well, and speaking of it being produced in Kentucky, this is actually deliberately... Okay, well, all right, so the EU in theory, the line that they're saying is that these

are deliberately designed to like target things that are made in red states. They also did do soybean tariffs too though, which is, you know, like, you're dropping a nuke on Illinois here. Okay, so the EU has imposed reciprocal tariffs on $28 billion of US goods. Also on Tuesday, China's tariffs went into effect, which means the agricultural tariffs that we talked about last week,

and notably I keep coming back to soybeans because soybeans are such a critical part of the system of American agriculture as the crop that you rotate out with corn to sort of like preserve soil integrity. The Chinese tariffs are now in effect. It's mostly on agricultural goods. Yeah, and this has, I think in ways that are pretty predictable, at least to me, this has caused a lot of panic in the markets. There's been some sort of rallying as like more information comes in. But there's stuff that I did not predict, which is so okay, Goldman Sachs has downgraded its projection

for US GDP growth. Their chief economist is talking about how he thinks we're going to get stagflation again, which is sort of wild. Stagflation was the thing in the 70s that was, you know, like you have inflation and unemployment growth at the same time. This is basically the economic condition that liquidated the welfare state and allowed direct take power in the first place. That's funny because when I Google stagflation, I get very different results. That could just be my own. No, that's that stagflationellation garrison two very different things. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think I think I'm Things I have to deal with on this job It's true, it's true. It's true. This is this this makes up for a lot if you ever get to fight the undertaker You have a song to go on to it's true

So okay now sort of sort of more surprisingly and this is something i have literally never seen before with the u.s both city bank well city which is the over the city bank like changes named city or something but city bank and and ubs the giant swiss bank downgraded the status of all u equities. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life They are also boosting the status of Chinese and EU equity So this is basically like this doesn't have like a technical official effect But this is like this is basically their their evaluation of what? Countries like stocks basically you should purchase right and this is also sort of applies to bonds. So is that bad?

This is Like I assumed that the u.s. Would get its actual credit rating Devalued before this happened I've never this is this is unreal like the argument that they are making here is that it is because of the instability in the u.s Like because because of the tariffs and because of everything that's going on That like you should just fucking pull your money out of the out of the US and American companies and put it somewhere else. And they're specifically boosting the status of Chinese and EU equities, which is astonishing

because again, one of one of the countries, again, whose whose equity status that they are boosting is China. China's economy is a fucking disaster right now. They're dealing with like their fucking housing bubble going under. They've been trying to do this pivot to a consumer based economy for years and years and years and years And it doesn't work because they don't pay people enough to actually like fuel an economy consumer spending like They're you know, they're about to take giant damage from the trade war and also that like, you know Like it was only like three years ago the CCP faced their first like Nationwide mass protests like since Tianananmen right and these guys like it again these are these are the financial

analysts of Citibank and UBS have looked at that and went you are better off putting your money there than you are putting it in the US I mean at this point I think Trump's tariffs have wiped out I'm reading four trillion from the US stock market just in this past month now now trillion is that Okay, so for example, I have thirty two dollars right now in in my pocket. Is it more than that? I think it's a little bit more. Okay. Okay. Okay, so it is enough to buy two different servings of Pizza, okay. This is I'm trying to put this into terms I can understand. Thank you. It is, imagine one burger, right?

And a burger in Portland does cost $32, so yes. Yes. Now. Now imagine- I thought you were gonna say, a burger in Portland does cost $4 trillion. I mean, probably tomorrow, right? Like, who knows? I don't know. Eggs, man. If the fucking plagues that we're doing- We're adding lev levity because this is Legitimately kind of frightening no like this is I have never seen the financial press like yes

like the only times I've ever seen the financial press react to something like this is like They were kind of acting like this about the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn like taking power in the UK Like they're like I watched a guy on CNBC right this is not like like this is this is not MSNBC this is not even like CNN this is CNBC literally go on air and call what Trump is doing quote insane and start talking about how this is something this is I think what these people are worried about is there you know the thing that they're seeing that's starting right now and it's starting with these sort of these downgrades of US equities is capital flight, which is straight up a but like international capital taking their money from the US and fucking literally moving out of the country and moving it somewhere else because the US is so unstable. This is like I don't know if anyone knows what mass capital flight from the US would do because I've never seen anything like this.

So part of what's going on right, but part of the reason the markets have kind of recovered in the last few days after the tanking they did Monday is that, like the inflation data came out, and it wasn't that bad. But the thing is, all of the inflation data we're getting right now, and all of the economic indicators we're getting right now, it's going to take a little bit of time for the actual effects of these tariffs to set in. Right? Like these are things that, like, you know, it's going to take, it's going to take like six months, maybe a year before we fully see the impact of that. And, but when we do, it is going to fucking blow a smoking crater into the economy. And the worst part about this is this isn't even the most unhinged part of this. The most unhinged part of this is how the Republicans have been reacting to all of this in Congress.

The most unhinged part of this is how the Republicans have been reacting to all of this in Congress. So one of the few things the Democrats have been trying to do, and I say one of the few because like the response has been downright collaborationist, but they've been trying to force Republicans to take a vote on the tariffs because the tariffs are unbelievably unpopular, and they're particularly unbelievably unpopular among like the capital owning class who you know actually matter so what they've been trying to do is that Trump did these tariffs by declaring a state of emergency and the Democrats wanted to use the National Emergencies Act to force He voted the tariffs. I'm just gonna read this in the New York Times The national emergency law lays out a fast-track process for Congress to consider a resolution ending a presidential emergency

requiring committee consideration within 15 calendar days after one is introduced and a floor vote within three days after that. But the language the House Republicans inserted into their measure on Tuesday declared that quote, each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for the purposes of the emergency that Trump declared on February 1st? So the point we are at right now is is in order to preserve a bunch of tariffs Which are effectively about to fucking obliterate the entire world economy. Congress has declared that days don't pass This is fucking this is completely unhinged

This is fucking like Caligula's horse in the Senate shit like they again They are literally did they have literally declared that calendar days passing are not actually calendar days So that Trump could just keep doing tariff shit and rule by fiat Like the Israelites they have stopped time in order to win the battle It's it's genuinely astonishing and and the extent to which this has kind of just been swept under the rug, the Republicans have been doing this kind of quietly, right? And the fact that Democrats are not literally on TV every single second of every day going that the Republicans are voting to stop time so that Trump can destroy the economy is astonishing.

It's this real sort of admission by the Republican Congress that like they're ceding authority over policy like to Trump completely right? Like the government now is Trump ruling by sort of fiat and people attempting to sort of like run circles around him in courts which is not you know working enormously well. Yeah we'll see. And you know and this is starting to have effects on like investor confidence, like in the US as a political entity and the US as an economic entity, which is unprecedented.

The other thing I think it's worth noting is that these people, like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, the people around them, have been saying for a long time that the plan is to cause a recession and that after the recession, things are going to get better. And the financial pressures hasn't believed them. And this right now is the period in which they're starting to realize that they were serious about this. And I don't know what the political ramifications of that are going to be because these are people who actually matter in the political system.

And I think we'll we'll see the ramifications of this play out in the sort of coming weeks and months. But this is a fucking cliff that we've hit and we're now like wily coyote like running off the side and trying not to look down but on the upside We have a great new song for everybody. So who's to say if any of this has been bad Hey, it's Amartines. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in.

Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app 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. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived, investigative hookups. Mama always used to say,

God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Sticky Melody. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Careful, babe. There's someone crossing the street. Sorry, I didn't see him there. If you feel different, you drive different. Don't drive high. It's dangerous and illegal everywhere.

A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. Our iHeart Radio Music Awards are coming back Monday March 17th on Fox. Starring Bad Bunny, Glowrilla, Kenny Chesney, Money Long, Nelly, your host, iHeart Radio, LL Cool J. Are you guys ready to have some fun tonight? Plus iHeart Innovator Award recipient Lady Gaga. iHeart Icon Award recipient Moriah Carey. And i Heart Breakthrough Award recipient, Gracie Abrams. Watch live on Fox, Monday, March 17th. At 8, 7 Central. All right, we are back. Speaking of running circles around the courts, we do have a small update re-USAID.

USAID. U-S-A-ID. Ehh. Last week in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court denied an appeal from the Trump administration in a case regarding Trump's attempted federal funds freeze and the shuttering of USAID. This was a case filed by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. The White House is now required to pay foreign aid contractors for work that has already been completed, and further details will be worked out back in the District Court. And it's still unclear, you know, if the Trump administration is going to abide by the court's ruling and resume all required payments. But this is the first move from the Supreme Court regarding Trump's actions the past few months. This has also not stopped Trump from trying to slowly close other entire government agencies. This very week, the Education Department laid off nearly half of its workforce, over 1,300 employees.

Late Tuesday night, Education Secretary Linda McMahon went on to Fox News to say that this reduction forces only the first step towards abolishing the entire education department, saying, quote, this was the president's mandate. His directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we'll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is a bureaucratic bloat unquote Yeah, and I mean like you know we've talked about on this show for a long time how eliminating Department of Education Eventually destroying public education has been a long-running goal. Oh, yeah of the most absolutely unhinged of these people who are the people now in charge and

Yeah, they've decided to just like Individually fuck every child in the US. It's incredible. Well, and so far, the way that they're trying to close up the Department of Education is kind of in a more selective manner because they're still keeping certain parts of the department active. Yeah. On March 10th, the Education Department announced that they were launching investigations into

60 universities for, quote, Title VI violations relating to anti-semitic harassment and discrimination unquote. And this is in relation to anti-genocide protests on campus. And this comes after Trump announced the immediate cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia university. The education department is threatening that these other 59 universities may lose their funding if they do not, quote, enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race,

color, and national origin. National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry, unquote. I don't know what to say here. You get to see all the threads of this admin coming together, right? Which is that, you know, these people are also attempting to effectively destroy the secondary education system in this country too. For reasons that are sort of unclear to me, I don't know. But what we're seeing here, right, is the ways that the Democrats sort of like falling into lockstep with the Republicans on backing the genocide in Israel has sort of led to this thing where the Republicans are

using this to just straight up obliterate like all of the US's like political economic and social institutions. Well and specifically with this like investigation they are they're trying to get all these universities to cooperate in efforts to selectively remove students who have protested against the genocide in Gaza, right? This is the same attack on free speech and free expression that they're doing against Khalil. This is the same exact purpose. And now they're trying to get more and more universities to be complicit in the selective

removal of people in this country who choose to express their First Amendment rights, regardless of whether they're a citizen, a green card holder or on a student visa. So this is all deeply, deeply worrying. Robert, you have a small segment you want to discuss before we start to close out. Yeah, just a little bit at the end here. So in the subreddit for the 50501 protest campaign, which is an attempt to do protests in all 50 states simultaneously, right? I think their next day of action is coming up in April.

I'm not giving an opinion on the overall thing, but in the subreddit, somebody posted claiming to be a National Guard soldier, giving kind of his thoughts on how the National Guard would respond to orders to carry out violence against US citizens. And I just wanted to chat about this book because it's something we talk about on the show pretty regularly. My opinion is that one of the likely ways things come to a head, probably as early as this summer, is that there is mass protests in DC and the Insurrection Act gets used and, you know, the guard at least are brought in to attempt to crack down. I mean, obviously Trump has done a version of this before and Trump and his state attorney have both discussed using the Insurrection Act to crack down on protests.

I think they see DC as the Insurrection Act to crack down on protests. I think they see D.C. as the place they want to do that. So it's interesting to me to see a post like this. This is not a thing where like I've been able to verify this guy yet. There's a couple of points that make me think he probably is a National Guardsman. For one thing, there's a lot of them, right? Like this is not like a National Guardsman. Where'd you find one?

There's a ton of fucking dudes in the National Guard. For the other thing, everything he says is consistent with things that I have seen and talked to other people who are in and were in the Guard about. There's one little bit where he advises people on like, stop the bleed gear, and he gives good advice. He says on the buy from NAR, North American rescue, it's the same advice we would have given.

He cites DOD directive 134410, which is why he believes he's well within his rights to make a post like this. In essence, what he's saying is that it is his belief that most of the military chain of command from NCOs up to officers would not be down with following illegal orders to fire on US citizens. But the vast majority of enlisted troops, if fired upon, would get over whatever issues they have with that very quickly. That's the gist of it, is that I think within the officer class and the NCO class, there

are a lot of resistance to the idea of the military being used for domestic policing. That is less clear with the enlisted class who are, a significant chunk of them are very much down for Trump. But whatever sort of divisions exist with an enlisted soldiers would fall apart pretty quickly if soldiers were fired upon. And I think this is probably like, assuming this is accurate, and I don't really see a reason to doubt it. There's nothing he's saying here. That's crazy I think this is kind of an interesting thing to keep in mind that like when you're looking at the military

It's not the police like if I have to have agents of armed agents of the state cracking down on a protest I I'm less worried about people being killed if it's the National Guard in general but that situation can change very, very rapidly if the situation becomes an active firefight. I do think that's a thing we have to consider right now is the possibility that we have US soldiers, whether the National Guard or active duty, engaged openly in shooting at American protesters. That's in the cards as early as this summer.

And it's not a fun thing to think about, but I'm seeing more and more, not just posts like this, but I'm having more and more conversations with people who are in the military or who are in the National Guard about their concerns, about what they might be called upon to do. Some of this has to do with the border, but like it is becoming increasingly common for people in the military to worry about how they are going to be used in the immediate future.

We're not talking about years, we're talking about this summer, right? Is when there's a very good chance a lot of stuff comes to a head. So these are things you should be thinking about if you're listening and you are in the military. These are things that you should be thinking about because the people who are in charge of our government right now have made a lot of statements about how they want to use the military to deal with protests. And the idea that that's going to happen very soon is not not fringe or crazy. And although these people might have slightly more discipline when it comes to actual firearms, there is also incidents like in 2020

where the Kentucky Army National Guard killed someone via the misuse of crowd control. Absolutely. Munitions, I think that this is also worth stating, even if, you know, like a Kent state situation maybe is not as likely in like the modern day, there's certainly other other ways to cause grievous harm. Yes. In these sorts of like protest environments. And when we've

seen I mean, even in Portland, when we have seen a which you witnessed personally, unfortunately, garrison, the worst injuries to crowd control devices are usually people in our case, it was federal agents, but who are utilizing crowd control weapons and have not trained on them because they're not there certain ways you're supposed to and not supposed to use them and these guys are just hey you know to use a gun you must know how to use the leads to much more possible lethal consequences or life changing consequences. Which police are more familiar with the regular use of crowd control munitions than necessarily like BORTAC or state national guards. Something that's also worth keeping in mind. Let's close by my least favorite segment, Stinky Musk, which still has a really bad name. On Monday, a

federal judge ruled that Musk's doge should be subject to comply with FOIA requests and public disclosures of information required of government agencies, with the judge ordering the release of email correspondence between Musk's team and the Office of Management and Budget, and was ordered to quote, begin producing documents on a rolling basis as soon as practicable, unquote. Now despite Musk's claims of quote unquote maximum transparency, last month the Trump administration tried to shield Doge from public records requests by labeling the agency's documents as quote unquote presidential records, which carries special protections.

This specific case is super interesting. The judge, a federal judge by the name of Cooper, also critiqued the way that the Trump admin tried to litigate this case, quoting from Politico, quote, the lawyers offered virtually nothing in the way of evidence about Doge's operations or management. Indeed, the court wonders whether this decision was strategic, Cooper said, noting that the Trump administration lawyers had taken competing positions including that Doge qualifies as an agency under some sections of law, but not others when it suits it. Thus, Doge becomes, on the defendant's view, a Goldilocks entity, Cooper wrote.

Not an agency when it's burdensome, but an agency when it's convenient. And I do like Cooper's analysis here of how Doge is very selectively an agency only when it causes benefit to Trump or Musk. And finally, we have one other Musk story to close out this episode. Amidst Tesla's plummeting stock price, protests outside Tesla dealerships, and reports of vandalism of dealerships across the country, Trump has essentially started doing ads for Tesla on the White House driveway. Upon climbing in a red car that he's not allowed to operate, Trump remarked, wow, everything is computer.

So this was a very odd and kind of embarrassing show of favoritism where Musk brought out a number of different Tesla models and Trump got to quote unquote, you know, pick the one that he wanted to buy as he just like sat in on this like televised advertisement for Tesla as his company is losing a shocking amount of money in the stock market. Yeah. company is losing a shocking amount of money in the stock market. Yeah, and there's literally a picture of him with the notes that he has, in really, really giant large... Like a Tesla sales note, bullet point of how much certain models are, what their different features are, which ones have self-driving features included,

which ones you have to pay extra for. Yeah, no, he's literally carrying a Tesla sales pitch as he does this televised appearance boosting his new best friends and co-presidents company. Trump said on True Social, the radical left lunatics are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the world's greatest automakers and Elon's baby in order to attack and do harm to Elon and everything he stands for." So now not only has Trump called the Tesla boycott illegal, which is its own form of unhinged, but on Tuesday Trump announced that vandalism of Teslas

will be labeled as domestic terrorism, promising that perpetrators will quote unquote, go through hell. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, quote, ongoing and heinous acts of violence against Teslas by radical leftist activists are nothing short of domestic terror, unquote. So that will be fun to see how that plays out. I feel like we genuinely are not that far off from just like Trump trying to hand down legal mandate saying you must buy a Tesla. Like this is the kind of shit that we're in now.

This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. If Biden or any Democratic president did anything similar to this, you would have thralls of people screaming for his impeachment. Similar to the Eric Adams thing. It's one of the most blatant open displays of corruption I've ever seen where a president is using his office to boost the personal financial interests of one of his top advisors, who's also running government agencies essentially and doing massive massive cuts to prohibit their ability to investigate his own businesses while also taking massive amounts of government money to keep businesses like Tesla and SpaceX operable.

So this has been a pretty silly thing to watch unfold the past few days and now Tesla shares have risen 4% after Trump's support for Musk and Tesla. Great. Well, I think that's going to do it here at us with the ED. To play us out, we're going to refer back to our friend, the Narcissist Cookbook, who put together our lovely new tariff theme song that you're going to hear every week until tariffs aren't a thing anymore. We reported the news.

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