It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #8

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

The gang discuss the rendition of Venezuelan migrants, attacks on trans people in the military, more arrests of graduate students, and the bird flu. Sources: https://www.laprensagrafica.com/internacional/Venezuela-dice-que-no-descansara-hasta-rescatar-a-migrantes-secuestrados-en-El-Salvador-20250317-0046.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/politics/deportation-flights-judge-timeline/index.html https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/doj-alien-enemies-act-deportation-flights-rcna196907 https://x.com/PressSec/status/1901584664906682833 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114183576937425149 https://www.foxnews.com/media/tom-homan-calls-out-federal-judge-defying-logic-ruling-stall-trump-deportations https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1902394620748657019 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.38.0_1.pdf https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbia-university-signals-will-comply-trump-administrations-demands-rcna197110 https://archive.ph/SjG4h https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.41845/gov.uscourts.cadc.41845.01208721711.0.pdf https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/columbia-is-nearing-agreement-to-give-trump-what-he-wants-14315bb3 https://insideevs.com/news/753730/tesla-insurance-vandalism-elon-musk/ https://archive.ph/TwgRG https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/18/donald-trump-tariffs-recession-trade-war-updates/82495189007/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/us/politics/trump-tariffs.html https://archive.ph/3erM8 https://www.lbc.co.uk/world-news/diplomatic-row-french-trumpr-researcher-expelled-from-terrorism-us/ https://thehoya.com/news/developing-gu-researcher-detained-by-immigration-agents/ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-deportation-georgetown-graduate-student-00239754 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live/trump-tariffs-live-updates-no-steel-aluminum-tariff-exemptions-coming-trump-says-191201285.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Set Up. The Set Up follows a lonely museum curator. But when the perfect man walks into his life. Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true. This is a con.

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I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Yes, and as James Stout just noted, the coming has begun, so we're going to also begin. This episode we are covering the week of March 12 to March 19. Obviously the most important piece of news right now is that Minnesota Republican State Senator Justin Eichlorn, who just last week sponsored or co-sponsored a bill that legally recognizes Trump derangement syndrome as a mental illness, which disqualifies you from possessing firearms, was literally that same day arrested in a sting operation for trying to meet up with and have sex with

a minor. Like literally, he was like had to have been texting this. He thought what he thought was a kid, but what was really a federal agent while he was finalizing the language. It's it's it's truly phenomenal. Pedocon theory never fails. Anyway, let's move on to the actual important news, which is mostly bad. This has been a pretty rough week. Yeah, it's been a pretty rough week.

It sucked. Yes. So I guess I'll turn to James Stout. Me. Hi everyone. Hi James. Well, the day you're listening, it's, it's New Rose. So New Rose, Pierrot's Bay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Turkish listeners. Ah, she. So I want to talk today about rendition. This has been reported as deportation. Like, I guess it technically falls within deportation, but what's happening here is

that the Trump administration has begun renditioning people who it accuses of being members of Tren de Agua, which is a Venezuelan gang, and La Mara Salva Truchel, the MS-13, as they're known here, right? It has done this based on something called the Alien Enemies Act. The way it's able to use the Alien Enemies Act is that it has designated these gangs as foreign terrorist organizations rather than as like international crime organizations. And it's used the Alien Enemies Act to expedite their removal. We spoke about the Alien Enemies Act in a podcast that I made last November with Robin Sophy about parts of the law that Trump administration

might use for its mass deportation agenda. They're now using this one. Very briefly, it's a 226-year-old piece of legislation that hasn't been used since World War II when it was used to justify internment camps, which were a bad thing. These people aren't being deported back to Venezuela, right? The US doesn't have relations with the Maduro regime, although it has deported people back to Venezuela on an airline that was previously sanctioned, which can now land in the US for the express purpose of deportations, which is great. Instead, they're being sent to El Salvador.

They're being sent there with no trial or hearing or seemingly right to appeal. When they get to El Salvador, they've been paraded in front of video cameras, very degrading treatment right? Their hair is being shaved, sort of being walked with their heads forced down. They're being filmed on their knees while all their hair and facial hair is removed. And then they're being sent to Secult. If you're not familiar with this, it was the subject of State Department Human Rights Report very recently and now we are sending people there.

It's a mega prison in El Salvador. It roughly translates to terrorism confinement or terrorism detention center, I guess. It's been very recently built by Bukele, who's the president of El Salvador and is part of his supermano-turo, like iron fist, super iron, iron fist would be the way you would translate it, I guess. It is routinely criticized by human rights organizations for the disgusting conditions that people are kept in, right? The United States government intended to send 300 people there and in return, it paid $6

million to El Salvador for the cost of their detention. At the time that I wrote this, 238 people who were accused of being part of Tren de Aragua were sent there and then 23 who were accused of being part of MS-13. They were removed on flights. The Trump administration is claiming they were removed before a district court judge in DC blocked the removals. But there are a series of timelines that you can see online, some of which will be linked in the sources of this episode, which suggests that they were in the air when he blocked their removals. Nonetheless, the judge very explicitly said,

I'm quoting here, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately. This did not happen. The planes continued traveling to El Salvador, it stopped in Honduras, and then these people were paraded before the cameras, right? And they're now presumably being detained in this prison, which doesn't meet basic standards of human rights. The government has given various reasons for ignoring this ruling from the judge. Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt claimed that there was, quote, no lawful basis for it. Obviously the process here is if you don't believe the judicial ruling is correct, you stop doing the thing and appeal it.

You don't just keep doing the thing and say, look, oh, well, I don't believe you. It's not true. Obviously, this only matters insofar as the judge can enforce his decision. They also claimed in court that a verbal order that the judge gave is not the same as a written one. And they claimed that because the flights were over international waters, this was a foreign policy matter and that the judge couldn't intervene in a foreign policy matter. That's a power that's reserved to the executive. I mean, like, all of these justifications are really like freaky in terms of

constitutional power and stuff. Yeah, this is there are fringes on the flag. So Admiralty Court applies kind of stuff. Yeah. But specifically that last one being like, it doesn't count because we're over international waters is like, yeah, super frightening in terms of like human rights abuses. That's not the way anything works, especially since it was like a US airline. Yeah. Yeah.

And in terms of, yeah, you basically don't have human rights because really, look, it's, they're forcing a loophole that doesn't exist in the same way that George W. Bush did in the early 2000s with Guantanamo Bay. He was never stopped from doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I honestly, I think the thing that this is closer to is the other things.

So I think Guantanamo Bay is the one that gets remembered, but the other part of the CIA torture program was the U.S. would just ship people off to places like Syria. Yeah, to Syria. Syria, yeah. Yeah, Syria, Egypt. Yeah, Egypt. Syria and Egypt were the two biggest ones. Yeah, we did Tunisia maybe?

Yeah, yeah, we did Tunisia too. Syria's torture program had largely been cobbled together by a former SS guy. It's very good history. Yeah, I also want to read a line from the legal argument that Trump's lawyers made before this judge because it is fucking horrifying. Quote, enemy aliens are not entitled to seek any relief or protection in the country that is designated them enemies absent dispensation by the President see citizens protection league and then the

in parentheses noting common law ruling that alien enemies have no rights no privileges unless by the King's special favor so every single part of that is horrifying also horrifying is the fact that if you actually look up the common rules citation the next words after King's special favor is in a time of war. Yeah. So. Yeah, that's the idea here, right?

That we're at war with these foreign terrorist organizations and these people are like, essentially like spies or. Yeah, and this is this thing where like, well, no, obviously we're not. Like we don't have, there's no state of war. Like no state of wars have ever been declared. But because of the way the war on terror sort of functioned, they're trying to claim these things.

And then again, like the fact that they're saying that anyone they declare an alien has literally no protections at all in the country. There's no rights at all. Anything can be done to them. Unless specifically the president decides that they have rights is unbelievably hideous. It is pure state of exception, total fascism shit. It's fucking horrifying. Yeah. And it's entirely unconstitutional, right? You have to be a radically left person

to believe that humans have rights. I want to really briefly, like one of the criteria that was used here, so ICE criteria, so they have to have two identifying signs to be classified as a gang member. One of the criteria that was used here, so ICE criteria, so they have to have two identifying signs to be classified as a gang member. One of them that has been used very heavily here is tattoos. We know from court findings that one man, Herceres Barrios, he has a football tattoo, right? Like a tattoo of a football with a crown on it and it says Dios, like God underneath. It was supposed to be, I guess, similar, like a play on the logo of Real Madrid. But they've used this to claim that it's evidence he's a member of a gang. Gangs like Tren de Aragua don't have like gang sign tattoos, right?

Yeah. They're smarter than that. Like they've seen what's happened to gangs like MS-13 because they, who do, like Maras, Central American gangs have had these things like as part of their tradition for a while and they've been used heavily by law enforcement. I remember Christmas Eve, 2023, I was in the desert with my friends and a large number of my joints across that day. I remember meeting a Venezuelan man who was covered in tattoos, head to toe, very heavily

tattooed. That dude spent the entire day building a shelter for someone else's sick kid and then slept by himself in the freezing cold outside. I've been thinking about that guy a lot because under this ruling, just his appearance of having tattoos would have him classified as a terrorist. When thousands of Americans living within an hour of that place did nothing and that little girl who was sick had nowhere to sleep. Like this guy took it upon himself to help even when he himself was in a difficult place. And, uh, I, it just really makes me kind of sick to think that

this is where we're at now. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's, it's a damning indictment of the character of people who are the voter base in this country. And it's a damning indictment of like what particularly liberals in the left failed to stop because this was a, this was a train that we could see coming for a while. Like the propaganda campaign against these folks. Yeah. And unnecessary ingredient and the Republicans getting their way on this was. and the Republicans getting their way on this was Democratic politicians and, you know, to be entirely fair, quite a few prominent thought leaders on the left absolutely folding

and not just failing to like counterpoint this stuff, but like diving in on it because they either had prejudice of their own or they saw it as like an opportunity. But like, you know, the whole nativist deal is, is just disgusting. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I can't just like keep yelling about it. Yeah. I think it's not all a slippery slope.

And I'm not saying that they're both as bad as each other because what's happening now is much worse than anything that happened previously. But like, yes, when we could detain people, including little children outside, and we could leave them there in the snow, and like little babies could be shivering, and I could be giving away my own coat almost every day I was out there because I was worried someone's baby was going to die of hypothermia, we kind of conceded that these people didn't have rights. And the Democratic Party let that happen, and people on the left let that happen, and that is a stepping stone on the pathway to where we're at now.

Yep. And just as like with all the shit that's, that's happening right now, like in terms of like the disappearing of political opponents and whatnot, like you can draw a line from that, from like the Patriot act, you know, from Obama targeting the U S citizen in, I think, Afghanistan, like there's all of these are like, obviously things were not nearly as bad as they are right now in those administrations, but like they're not unrelated, you know, this kind of unitary executive theory is a through

line through the last several administrations. And if anyone had pushed back prior to this point, Trump wouldn't be able to do a lot of what he's doing. Yep. Now what we are doing is pivoting to ads. Yeah. Right now. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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as much as he loves this job. Chulito, That painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're talking crane. Ukraine. I'm sorry that I shouldn't have framed're talking crane. Ukraine. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have framed it that way.

Ukraine if you want to. Yeah, I don't know why I did. Anyway, so if you've been kind of paying attention over the last month or so, we've had a little odyssey in terms of US, Russia, Ukraine relations. And the gist of it is that everybody claims to want an end to the fighting, you know at least off and on Putin has kind of like made some motions to that has Absolutely not acted as if this is something he particularly cares about Trump clearly does want a ceasefire because he wants to be able to take credit for it and

Zelensky also clearly wants a ceasefire credit for it. And Zelensky also clearly wants a ceasefire, but there's been some kind of some pretty significant like holdups. One of them has been around Ukrainian minerals. And in February, you had the administration talking a lot about how the US was going to gain control of Ukraine's minerals in order to pay us back for our support of their war effort. And Zelensky drew a very firm line, as he often does, saying like, no, I'm not going to, you're not just going to get all of this, all of our country's minerals. And I should note here that like, this is a fairly significant issue in global terms. It's estimated that Ukraine has about 5% of the planet's critical raw materials,

It's estimated that Ukraine has about 5% of the planet's critical raw materials, including massive reserves of graphite. They're somewhere in like the top five countries, uh, in terms of proven graphite reserves, which among other things is a critical ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles, they supply about 7% of Europe's titanium, they're home to a third of European lithium deposits. This is not an exhaustive list. That's just kind of, you know, to start things off. And initially when there was this kind of pushback from Zelensky saying like, no, you're

not just going to get all that. Putin came in and was like, well, hey, you know, we've occupied a bunch of Ukrainian land that has raw minerals on it. We'll give those to you. Right. And so this went back and forth and eventually Zelensky and Trump's people put together like a deal that they were supposed to sign earlier this month that was like an actual like bilateral agreement on the

use of Ukrainian minerals. And essentially what it would have done is the deal did call for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to repay the United States to the tune of about half a trillion dollars, but not in a manner like where they were just handing us their minerals. Essentially, Ukraine would contribute 50% of revenues earned from the future monetization of government-owned mineral resources and other natural resources. But these were critically revenues earned from those resources like future monetization, right? So new mines, new oil and gas plants, not included in this were like current reserves, like actively being exploited for profit.

So kind of the key to this is that like mining is not something that you can turn around on a dime. Generally, once you have actually proven, you know, that you have sort of the reserves in an area, it takes about 20 years to actually get like mines up and running. And, you know, this is an extremely expensive process. So one of the reasons why Ukraine considered this a good deal for them is that we're essentially putting a lot of those revenues in the hands of the US, but it was revenues from minerals that Ukraine was not currently exploiting and that the US would help and provide funding to exploit. So it was not just paying back the US, it was something that would allow the rebuilding of the Ukrainian economy post-war. There were some

issues with this, including the fact that mining is an extremely energy intensive task and Ukraine is in the middle of an energy crisis at the minute. But among other things, it would have brought the US in and given them a financial stake and continued peace in the region, which was seen as positive. That all blew up at a White House meeting a couple of weeks ago, where if you remember JD Vance and Trump basically had a little WWE smackdown with Zelensky. It was a pretty ugly meeting.

And after that, talk of the bilateral mineral deal faded significantly. Now what's interesting is that just today it's come out that Zelensky and Trump have had further conversations and there's a new deal apparently on the table. Or at least the White House claimed that there was a new deal on the table. Both the White House and Zelensky's office said that it was a very positive, productive meeting. There's some evidence that Zelensky, after that big blowup, has been kind of doing the thing you've got to do with Trump, which is like massage him and say nice things to him so that he'll like you more, and that Trump has gotten kind

of frustrated with the fact that Russia clearly has not been overly motivated to move towards a ceasefire. But then in the middle of this meeting that everyone seems to agree went really well, the White House comes out and says, and we're working on an agreement where the US will control all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors. And Ukraine came out and said, no, we're not. We did not say that that was a deal. So I don't know what's actually going to happen here. Ukraine is a massive nuclear energy state. In fact, the only European country that competes with them or that is on the same level as they are.

In Europe, in terms of nuclear industry, is France. They've got four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors in total. Now obviously, the Zafirisia plant is still under Russian control, which is a significant chunk. It's like six of the 15 reactors in the country. And Ukraine is in the process of like building more. They've actively added capacity since the end of the Soviet Union. And so one of like the promises for sort of future Ukrainian economic stability is that they will be able to export nuclear energy to the rest of Europe, which is also going through an energy crisis.

So it's unclear what's going to happen. There's definitely evidence again, that Zelensky has kind of figured out how to massage Trump a little bit. There's a quote from an article in The Conversation that I found very interesting here. While Trump still leans towards Putin, his relationship with Zelensky seems to have improved. The Ukrainian president appears to have learned that Trump doesn't have a long memory and that flattery goes a long way with the US president. Trump, meanwhile, is no longer calling Zelensky a dictator, and yet there is no mention of halting US military aid or intelligence to Ukraine. There's the opposite, in fact, as the US has said it will assist in finding more patriot missile defense systems after Zelensky mentioned they were sorely needed.

By giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting the ball in Russia's court and his apparent receptiveness to Trump's idea about the US taking over Ukraine's nuclear power plants will appeal to Trump's transactional instincts in addition to offering Trump business deals. And I don't fully know what the conversation is saying here because Ukraine or Zelensky's office has stated like, we're not considering handing the U S control. I think this may be something like what happened with the energy deal

where essentially what they talked about was the U S having a financial interest in the rebuilding and expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, financial interest in the rebuilding and expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, which would be an extension of existing programs because Ukraine's nuclear power grid is already very reliant on a US nuclear energy company, Westinghouse, that provides both the raw fuel for nuclear reactors to Ukraine and also provides a lot of actual technology for different kind of systems in the reactors. So I kind of think that what's happening here is that basically it was floated like, well, we can extend and expand this deal so the US will have a financial interest in this

potentially very large Ukrainian industry. And then Trump and his people kind of took that and said to everyone else, yeah, the US is going to be in charge of Ukraine's nuclear power. That's my best guess for what happened here. It really seems like we're relearning one of the last lessons from the administration, which is if you can be the last person

in the room with Trump, you can put in what he does. Yeah, yeah. Mia, do you wanna do a tariff talk? Wait, wait, did you say tar do a tariff talk? Wait, wait. Did you say tariff scarisson? Or did you say tariff scarisson? Tariff scarisson.

Tariff scarisson. Tariff scarisson. Tariff scarisson. Ah, God. Feels good every time. Okay, Mia Mia, sorry you can talk about the actual news now. Let's do this. So the news we have today is that effectively every single thing I have talked about on tariff talk before this is just the fucking prelude. You know, and those have been very very extreme tariffs, but these are effectively going to be looked back on as the opening series of skirmishes and sort of probing defenses.

On April 2nd, Trump is going to crash the entire world economy. He is calling this Liberation Day. On April 2nd, he is planning to impose reciprocal tariffs on every single country on Earth. Finally! You know what? I'm completely on board as long as we're finally sticking it to those snotty fucks in Oman, you know, then then then everything's good. It's about goddamn time. Now I'm gonna take a fucking victory lap here because I have been talking about this for a very very long

time. I talked about this last year, I talked about this beginning of last year, talked about this the end of last year, the entire media seems to have sort of forgotten about this until they all suddenly remembered this week that Trump had promised to do reciprocal tariffs So what reciprocal tariffs are in theory is if there's a tariff on something and from another country the US matches it So the way the Trump administration thinks about tariffs is deeply weird So they're including things like value-added taxes on goods in countries Wow, which is like a sales tax in the US Yeah, yeah. But also like subsidies and also, and this is the part that has gotten

less things, but quote-unquote currency manipulation? Now how the fuck do you calculate that for literally every single country on earth? Who knows? Business Insider has some reporting on this where they talk to some insiders and okay so literally there are not enough people working on tariffs to like calculate out individual tariff rates for every single country on earth. It looks like the plan right now, and this is also subject to change because again, this is Trump administration and who the fuck knows what they're going to be saying or doing in two weeks. But what we know right now is it looks like they're going to separate every country on earth into three tiers of tariffs so there's gonna be like a low tier a mid tier and a high

tier and it's unclear exactly what levels they're going to be these are going to be on top of all of the like additional tariffs that they've already imposed so say for example China gets put into a high tier one they put like a 50% tariff on it that means a tariff rate is going to be 70% because there's already 20% tariffs on there business insider seem to think 20% is like the low one. I I don't know about that. I Think they're gonna be pretty high We have no idea and again, so so what's happening here is Trump is declaring this liberation day because he has convinced himself I think I finally understand what's going on in his brain

Which that he has convinced himself that like if you have a trade deficit with a country, that means the country is robbing you. Right, yes. Yes. Again, Trump's firm lifelong belief is that if you are selling something, you've won, and if you're buying something, you have lost. Yeah. Now, this is not how international trade works at all for the US. The entire US empire-

Absolutely not. The entire US empire is based on outsourcing a bunch of political violence to other countries so you can buy goods at cheap rates, right? Like that's what the Empire is. Yeah, we love buying things. It's the entire basis of our civilization. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The reason Jeffrey Bezos was at the inauguration is because we like to be buying things. Yes. Yeah, and so something I mentioned, you know, back when I was talking about this in the tariff episode right after the election

Is that the thing about reciprocal tariffs right is that it means that if anyone attempts to fight a trade war with the US? So another country imposes 20% tariffs the US will also impose 20% tariffs And this just spirals out of control into a version of a trade war so unhinged like none of us have ever seen anything Like in our lifetimes. Hell yeah, brother. Yeah, that's coming. We have we now have April 2nd as the day everything explodes. I Also want to put like another note here the hope has always been from a lot of countries and a lot of the financial markets and bunch of companies that These tariffs are going to have more exemptions because there were some exemptions on stuff in the initial tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Well, and he kept going back and forth, right?

Yeah, but now we're getting into tariffs which have no exceptions. The steel and aluminum tariffs have had no exemptions at all. What we've been hearing, so one of the things I've been noting is that Canada and EU have been basically mobilizing in the trade war and imposing reciprocal tariffs in the US, China has too. Mexico has not. Apparently, Mexico still thinks that they can negotiate to be in like the lowest tier of tariffs. This won't completely destroy their economy. Fuck if I know why they think that, but

who knows? Yeah, but that's effectively the tariff news we have right now. We have again April 2nd quote-unquote, liberation day, the day that this all goes into effect. I bet they wanted to do April 1st and realized that they couldn't. No. Yeah, I didn't think that too. No, so Trump announced this during his joint congressional address, and he openly said that he originally wanted to do it on April 1st at the start of the month, but decided not to because he is too superstitious as a person.

So, yes, originally they were going to be on April 1st, and then they pushed it back to April 2nd because they didn't want it to be on April Fool's Day. That's good. That's a good way to run things. I'm glad we're... So, that's a great, great extra insight into the mind of... the US God King. Cool. Great. Cool, great.

Anyway, let's go on ad break and then come back to discuss all of the other bad things that are happening in the country. ["The Daily Show Theme"] Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper and Agatha All Along is my very first guest on my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun.

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app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. The first thing I want to kind of open to a group discussion on is that on Tuesday, March 18th, the federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump's ban on trans people serving in the military, ruling that the blanket ban likely violates the constitutional rights. Stephen Miller responded to the ruling by writing,

District Court judges have now decided that they are in command of the armed forces. Is there no end to this madness? God, fuck. So I know this is a topic that like we have we've discussed a lot as you know, we're not all big US US military defenders. No. But

it's mostly done bad stuff in my lifetime. But we still take like almost like an ontological issue with this ban because it essentially creates just a secondary class of citizen with fundamentally different rights from the rest of everyone else. And that is never a good thing. It's like so right now one of the semi positive news stories is that Trump's ATF is going to be for the first time restoring people's Second Amendment rights who had them taken away because they were involuntarily institutionalized. And I've seen a lot of liberals being like, oh, they're just going to let more crazy people

have guns. This is bad. And like, I have to disagree whether or not you like it. The second amendment is a fundamental right under the constitution. And it's bad to say that this class of people forever lose a fundamental right because they're involuntarily institutionalized. That's bad. And likewise, even if you hate the US military's role in US imperialism, which fine enough,

the right to serve in an integrated military has been a major underpinning of most of the civil rights movements, like a foundational underpinning of most civil rights movements in this country's history, including going back to the civil war, black civil rights, including LGBTQ rights, and including women's rights, right? Like it is significant.

And so the fact that the GOP is attempting to peel this back and essentially reverse integration of the military is bad for two reasons. One, it represents, as you've said, creating separate classes of people and peeling fundamental, what are considered under the law in this country, fundamental rights away from groups of people.

And it's also just dangerous for them to remake the military into an all-white organization right like all white male organization there's a reason why that's also dangerous to you so yeah I think people should care about this even if they're you know leftists yeah and like especially in this country the military represents one of the few social mobility tools that exist, right? People don't just join the military because they, contrary to what you might have seen on twitter.com, like want to go to Middle East and kill people.

Sometimes they do it because they want to get a chance to go to education. Sometimes they want to do it so they get a chance to have healthcare. Yep. And like trans people serve at a higher rate than cis people. That may not be the case for very much longer, but like that has been the case. And they have rights to use however they want. They don't just have rights to use how you or I or anyone else would like them to use them. Well, and that's also a broad truth for the US military members of marginalized groups

have always served at a higher rate than basically anyone else. This includes like Native Americans serve as at a higher proportion of like their population within the country then most other groups in part because traditionally serving in the military was a way in which to gain like acceptance and entrance into american society it's also just like another world like you can feel in some ways like insulated from like Yes, the horrors you might experience in like regular suburban life oddly enough. Yeah. Yeah, it's a way out of the I don't know isolation that so many people experience in the world And like is it extremely bad that the way that you integrate into american society is by being a part of the imperial war machine? Yes. Yes, but also The the the war machine is going to be there whether you are in it or not.

Yeah. And the actual fundamental important thing here is, again, what we've been saying is that like the fundamental basis of liberal democracy going back to the American Revolution, going back to the French Revolution, going back to like the original liberal revolutions, the fundamental principle of is that everyone is equal before the law. And the moment ceases to be true and it has not been true in this country ever But you know we're seeing increasing numbers of people who are not considered equal before the law We just spent this entire fucking like first part of this episode talking about what happens when people are considered to have no protections under The law which that the state can just fucking blackbag you and send you to a gulag. Yeah, like that is bad not that's what's that at stake here, not like whether you think the army is good.

Yeah. And imagine for those people, like when they, people could have served 19 years, right? They could have been just about to get their 20 years and get their retirement and will now not get that. Like they, they signed up expecting a thing, right? Like there was a quid pro quo there, that they would give 20 years of their life and possibly a lot of their health to the United States government and in return they would get health care and a pension for the rest of their lives. And people are now going to lose that.

Yeah, in some related news, the VA just announced that, quote, effective immediately the VA will not offer cross-sex hormone therapy to veterans who have a current diagnosis or history of or exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria unless such veterans are already receiving such care from the VA or such veterans were receiving such care from the military as a part of and upon their separation from the military service and are eligible for VA health care. So basically, they will not be admitting like new patients to receive gender

affirming health care. Well, unless they're cisgender, it seems like. Oh, yes, correct. Yes. If it's just to be clear, cis men can still receive gender affirming hormones. Sure. I mean, like, I kind of get annoyed when people do that, like comparison. It's like that's never like we're falling into like this artro trap of like, we're actually using words to mean what they mean. And like, they're not using because like that's never like, we're falling into like this artro trap of like, we're actually using words to mean what they mean, and like they're not using words like that, you know, like whenever people like laugh

about, haha, they banned pronouns at school, now you can't say the word I, and you're like, no, like come on, like that's not what they mean, like you have to understand like the dog whistles that they're using. Yeah, it's, I found it interesting though that they seemingly like you have to understand, like, the dog whistles that they're using. Yeah. I found it interesting, though, that they seemingly, like, tried to even get around, like, that, like, linguistic thing in their statement. Sure. I mean, like, it depends what you mean by gender dysphoria, right? Like, you could theoretically have gender dysphoria because you're a cis male and you want to become more masculine, right?

Like, all of these diagnoses have, like, a very fuzzy ontological underpinning, right? These are just categories that we're projecting. Yes. But this is, you know, probably not great. It's probably isn't a good thing. Like, for instance, if you already have VA healthcare, you're not in the military anymore. And now you decide that you would like to receive gender-affirming healthcare. Now you can't, at least through the VA.

Yep. So as a related thing. Let's see. I think we should kind of close with or like bookend our discussion on like the immigration stuff and the blackbaggings and deportations which have been happening. A German immigrant named Fabian Schmidt, who has lived in the States with a green card. Such a German name. Beautiful. Since 2008. So like he has lived here quite a while.

He immigrated with his mom. He was detained and tortured at the Boston Logan Airport upon returning from a visit to Europe. The man's mother says that he was quote unquote violently interrogated at the Logan Airport for hours and was stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials and pushed back into an interrogation chair. I'm gonna quote from WGBH quote

She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport With little food or water suffered sleep deprivation and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression He hardly got anything to drink and then he wasn't feeling very well and he collapsed, said a senior, which is his mom. He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn't know it at the time, but he also had the flu." Unquote. Now Schmidt has since been transferred to multiple ICE facilities.

He had a misdemeanor charge for marijuana possession in California back in 2015, but that charge was dismissed the following year due to changes in state law. But I think this incident may have flagged Schmidt on the Customs and Border Protection's database. And Hilary Beckham, CBP's Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs, gave a short statement reading, quote, when an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action." But essentially, they tortured, black-bagged this person who's had a green card for almost

two decades for a dismissed marijuana charge ten years ago. This is like a very white man, Fabian Schmidt. This is super freaky stuff. Yeah, we should say that a lot of that stuff is not particularly unusual in ice detention, lights being all the time, not being given bedding, but like being shoved into a cold shower is not something they say. That was at the airport, they say, like being interrogated at the airport. Yeah, this is a new one. And like forced to forcibly give up your green card during this interrogation session. At that very same airport, I think just maybe a day or so later,

a Lebanese doctor and professor at Brown University, Rasha Alwea, was deported this weekend after traveling to Beirut to visit family and attend the public funeral of Hassan Nasrallah. Upon returning to the United States she was detained at the Boston Airport, had her H-1B visa revoked, and was deported on a plane to France on Friday, March 14th, before she could attend her in-person hearing that following Monday. According to court documents, her deportation was prompted by deleted pictures on her phone of like Shia Muslim figures like Nasrallah and the Ayatollah. Another very,

very frightening incident in those documents. It's unclear how Customs and Border Protection was viewing deleted photos on her phone or like like like open up her phone, right? Because like if you recently deleted a photo, it is still contained in your recently deleted folder, assuming you have an iPhone or equivalent. But it's unknown how they got into her phone, if she let them look through it, or if they used one of many phone breaking devices. Like, Reiki or whatever. Yeah.

But I think it is interesting that this is at the same airport to slightly related incidents, but... Yeah, we've seen that a lot with like in similar cases, people crossing the land border to San Ysidro, but I think a Canadian and German citizen were both detained, which is San Diego County, if it's not familiar. It seems like there's some kind of policy at certain border crossings or maybe like the person in charge there is saying, do this, you know, detain people if there's anything on their record at all. Well, so there's another case of this that's similar where a French researcher who to the

best of my knowledge is unnamed so far, was randomly pulled aside for a stop at George Bush International Airport in Houston, which is sort of fitting for all of this. George Bush has got to be fucking creaming his pants thinking about all this black bagging shit. But yeah, was randomly pulled over and they found anti Trump texts on his phone and immediately deported him. This is a guy who was visiting the US like, I think they go to a conference and the border patrol is arguing that anti Trump texts are considered terrorism, which is great, or the text that they found are like could be like the anti-Trump-ness of it can be considered terroristic.

So that's bad. There was yet another case, which is a slightly different one, which is Badr Khan Suri, who is a postdoc at Georgetown who was detained and sent to an immigration facility, who's here teaching, he's a postdoc at Georgetown on a student visa, who has and sent to an immigration facility, who's here teaching, he's a postdoc at Georgetown on a student visa, who has been sent to an immigration facility based on basically a right-wing panic about his wife, his wife's father being Hamas, and because of this, he's been blackbagged in a way very similar to Mahmoud Khalil. Yeah, now Georgetown is backing him on this, but this is, you know, this is another one of these fucking blackpaggings that they're just doing now with someone who is here on a student visa who has committed no crime who Georgetown was like has committed no crime.

And again, also, even if he committed a crime, this is fucking horseshit. But yeah, all of these things are just continuing to ramp up and they're getting bolder and bolder. things are just continuing to ramp up and they're getting bolder and bolder. Robert, do you want to do want to read a select paragraph or two from from Khalil's first public statement? Yeah, so he put out a letter a couple of days before we recorded this, and you should really read the whole thing if you just Google Mahmoud Khalil letter. I mean, I think the exact title is My name is Mahmoud Khalil letter. I mean, I think the exact title is My Name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a Political Prisoner, which is the first sentence of the letter. But I want to read this little bit of him talking about his arrest.

On March 8th, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor's safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours. I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday I get And again, I really recommend reading the whole thing. It's very good. But yeah. I get so particularly upset that Trump's admin uses this vague anti-Semitism justification for some of these actions at least. Because the head of Trump's anti-Semitism task force just last week retweeted Patrick Casey, who is from the American Identity Movement, a leading alt-right figure who was at Charlottesville, to quote Shane Burley.

This tweet that was reposted by the head of this anti-Semitism task force claimed that, quote, Trump has the ability to revoke someone's Jew card. Yeah, it's absolutely fucking horrifying. Are we serious here? It's like unbelievable Unbelievable amounts of anti-semitism Spread by the person who leads the federal task force to combat anti-semitism great Yeah, and and go and going back to Colombia for a second one of the other thing that's been happening is that Trump threatened Colombia with the loss of 400 million million of government contracts unless they give in to

a bunch of Trump's demands. Trump wants them to ban masks on campuses, allow campus cops to do more violence against student protesters and expel protesters who occupy buildings. The president is supposed to get control of all discipline and can expel and suspend students and they want to crack down on student groups. groups they want and this is also a tie into the other thing they want the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and like specifically the Trump's like letter to them specifically says that classifying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and they want to put the the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies departments in academic receivership which means stripping away power from the faculty and giving it to someone outside. Columbia is about to give in to these demands.

It seems like they want to try to find another word other than academic receivership, but they're just gonna fucking do it. So, and Trump, does Trump have the legal authority to do this? No, obviously not. But, you know, does he have the moral authority to do this? No, obviously not. Like, this guy is... No, but none of those are important. He has guys with guns. That's what it always comes down to, then they forget that is is only hurting themselves Like yeah

And and so he's also doing this thing of like attempting basically to dismantle a bunch of the higher education institutions in this country unless they become just pure right-wing sort of laboratories and another example of this is as The news stories about Columbia were coming out like Columbia trying to take the deal coming We're coming out the University of Pennsylvania is about to lose $175 million of funding for allowing Leah Thomas, a trans swimmer, to swim for their college. So this is just going to be a giant sort of battering ram that Trump is going to use to just basically obliterate the education system and like impose whatever unhinged right wing thing that he wants to

impose. And we will talk more about his efforts to destroy the education system next week on our next episode of ED as he is continuing to prep an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. And there's plenty of plenty of other news including the federal judge confrontations that we will also report on next week. But before we leave today, Mia has a brief note on the bird flu, which I'm sure will be fine, frankly. I'm still eating eggs, but Mia. Yeah, so as people deal with the boyed flu.

So the thing about chickens is that they're dying from bird flu right now. This has killed an enormous number of chickens. This is part of why egg prices are so high Now this is a problem that a lot of countries have dealt with China has dealt with this by just fucking vaccinating their chickens The Biden administration refused to vaccinate chickens because it would cost money and because it might make it harder for us to export their chickens So that was bad RFK jr Literally just wants to let the bird flu rip and kill all the birds and thinks that the healthy birds will survive and those healthy birds... Hurt immunity.

Yeah, yeah, he thinks hurt immunity. Bird, bird head. So... Flock immunity. He is a herd immunity guy for COVID because he's a human eugenicist. He's also a chicken eugenicist. Now I'm specifically doing this because I read multiple virologists reading about this, writing about this.

I talked to virologists and the virologists all basically said, if you were trying to design a way to make the bird flu like move, like mutate in such a way that it moves from birds to humans, this is what you would do. Yeah, great. And again, the death rate of this thing is in a completely different category from fucking COVID.

It makes COVID look like having a mild case of allergies. Like, staggeringly lethal. And like, it cannot overstate how disastrous this would be. Yeah, and COVID killed more than a million Americans, like 15 case people have memory hold that. Yeah, right now, current rates when it has humans, is about a 50% fatality rate. They thought initially that they were missing a lot of cases and that it was much lower, but like, the current research points to, suggests that that is not the case. That it is actually somewhere in that range of lethality.

Yeah. So- I'm still eating my chicken tartar. I don't know why everyone's so worried about it. And again, we don't know that like the version that actually is able to jump from human to human after jumping from bird to human would be that lethal because that doesn't exist quite yet. Probably.

Yeah. But this is how we find out. But we really don't want to find out yeah I look if you don't want to find out we have to find a way to get our kid jr. out of that fucking office again I think if we we really need to have a lot of different farmers set up photo ops with him where he is just covered in birds we need to have that man in constant physical contact with chicken do it and the problem will eventually solve itself. We could convince him to eat raw chicken.

We could definitely do it. Sure. Yes, absolutely. Eat them, cuddle them, sleep with them at night, just kind of stand on a pile of their corpses. Alright, alright. If you are a chicken, or you know a chicken, or you have anything else you would like to share with us, you know a chicken, or you have anything else that you would like to share with us, you can do so. Well, not anything else. It should be related to the news and things that we can report on. You can send it to coolzontips at proton.me.

And it's only encrypted if you also use encryption to send the message. It's end to end. Yeah. It's a proton address. That means you have to send from encrypted to encrypted. It still. Yeah, it's a proton meta address. That means, yeah, you have to send from encrypted to encrypted. It still doesn't mean it's not, it's perfectly safe. That just means it's encrypted. So send what you think you can send over an email that is that way. We reported the news. We reported the news.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, 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. but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it 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 Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Are your ears bored?

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This is a con, I'm conning you to get the Dilama painting. We can do this together. Listen to The Set Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.