It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 241

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Starting point is 00:02:40 and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's got to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show that is sometimes about surveillance, digital privacy, and all the ways

Starting point is 00:03:01 that little black rectangle you keep in your podcast. could be used against you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I am joined by Cooper Quinton, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist at the EFF or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cooper, hello. Hey, Garrison. Happy to be here again. Yes, always happy to have you on. And you will be especially useful today because we are going to be talking about geo-fencing. Because last week, the Supreme Court ruled that geo-fencing qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment. Now, before we get into what that means and why it's important. All very normal terms.

Starting point is 00:03:40 Everybody will implicitly understand. Before we do that, let's start to define some of our terms here, starting off with what is geo-fencing? Yeah. So, geo-fence warrants, which are what this case is about, are warrants to a tech company usually Google, that say, give us all of the identity account IDs that had phones in this set of geographic coordinates at this time period. So they send that to Google. Google sends back a list of all of the accounts. They know usually anonymized at first, but that were in that, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:24 geographic square from, you know, time A to time B. Which is actually not something that Google does anymore. They've recently taken step to no longer technically be able to respond to these warrants, which is a rare W for Google. But that is a GF. Friends warrant. That's what's at the heart of that. Yeah. And the goal is essentially to identify what phones and by extension,

Starting point is 00:04:45 which people were present around the time a crime was committed to narrow down, a suspect from a very large pool of just. random people in an area. Yes, exactly, exactly. So there's a couple ways you can think about this, right? If there was a protest and you wanted to know the identities of all the protesters, you could get a geo-fence warrant for the area of that protest for the time of the protest. Or if there was a bank robbery, which happens here, right?

Starting point is 00:05:13 You get a geofence warrant for two locations you think the bank robber might have been in, and then you are able to narrow it down from the, you know, which I'd identities show up in both places. Right. And that's your list of primary suspects. So the reason why we're talking about this today is because on Monday, June 29th, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court found that police getting access to location data through a geo-fence does constitute a quote-unquote search under the Fourth Amendment. And this finding could have really big impacts on digital privacy rights.

Starting point is 00:05:49 The fact that geofencing is a Fourth Amendment search means that the practice of geof-fense, fencing is subject to Fourth Amendment restrictions and protections. Now, there's also been some people, I think, maybe exaggerating certain aspects of this ruling, because the court did not rule that geo-offence warrants are themselves unreasonable, just like in general. That's right. That question is still going to be determined by the Fourth Circuit. But what the court did find here also should not be minimized.

Starting point is 00:06:18 It also is pretty significant to quote from the majority, quote, an individual has a reason expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information, even though for only a limited time and from a third-party tech company, unquote. We'll get into some of what that's referencing in terms of like third-party tech companies later. As you mentioned, this case does revolve around a bank robbery, and I want to get into some of the context of this because it also will help understand sort of the ongoing case regarding the specific geoffense warrant that was used. So in 2019, someone made off with almost $200,000 from a credit union, and this suspect was seen

Starting point is 00:07:06 on their phone prior to the robbery. So police asked Google to hand over the location data for all cell phones or the devices in a 150 meter radius around the bank within an hour of that robbery. 19 anonymous users were first identified. Police then narrowed. that down to nine users who they got more information from, from Google, they tracked their location for a longer period of time, before police then requested personally identifying information on three users, which they then used to arrest the suspect. So the suspect eventually pleaded guilty, but it was like a conditional plea because they were still challenging the evidence that was obtained through the geoffence warrant citing a Fourth Amendment violation. That's right.

Starting point is 00:07:49 arguing that the warrant authorizing the location data search was invalid. And this claim made its way through the district court to the appeals court to the Supreme Court. And we'll get into that in a bit. You already laid out some of the details of the specific like geofence warrant that was used. It has this three-step process. First, this big pool, then a smaller pool, and then personal identifying information on the smallest pool. One thing that is very interesting to me is that the process for setting up this warrant was set up with the help of Google. They worked together to make this process back when this was still like an emerging investigative avenue like five, six, seven years ago.

Starting point is 00:08:36 Yeah, that's right. And also, as you've mentioned, Google's location history feature operates differently now. The information that is being collected is stored on the user's phone. they don't have the same type of access that they had back in 2019 in which this case emerges. That's right. They are no longer able to respond to the offense warrants, which is great. This does not mean they can't respond to other types of warrants. And this doesn't mean that other companies won't respond to geo fence warrants. Yeah, I guess, do you want to discuss a few of the different ways in which location data is collected?

Starting point is 00:09:11 Yeah, certainly. So there's a couple of ways. Let's, I guess, sandbox this entirely just to cell phone location. because we don't want to go off on attention about license plate readers or other location tracking mechanisms. But one of the big ways that people have been, that's kind of been on people's minds lately, is advertising location data. So this is like the product weblock, which is owned by this company, Panlink, which I recently bought a contract with and several other enforcement law enforcement agencies that by contract with. The Citizen Lab just put out a pretty great report about them. But the way that they get their data is through a combination of advertising APIs from applications, basically. So when an application on their phone wants to show an ad, first, it sends a request to what's called a real-time bidding database.

Starting point is 00:10:07 And it sends a request with a unique ID for your phone called a mobile ad ID or made and some information about you. which can include your location. And then companies, any random company, you or I could set up a company to sit at these real-time bidding centers and just kind of gather all those data and never make any bids or that data, never spend any money, just gather all that data of pairing people's mobile advertising 80s whilst their location information. And this is exactly what Weblock does.

Starting point is 00:10:39 So what they do is they sell this information to police. Police can then buy access to the, information. And this is another thing that gets confused with geo-fencing a lot. But it's a different type of geofencing. They can sort of draw a circle around a specific area. And Weblock will show them all of the information they have about phones that have been in that area recently or during a specific time period. And that's not a geofense warrant. That is a geofenced search of a database, which is essentially the same thing Google is doing on the back end, but there's no warrant involved in this case.

Starting point is 00:11:18 But that's a very common method of tracking. The other way that they get data is just through codes that they embed in certain libraries that will get them that data sort of the same way, but without going through the real-time bidding process, but it's still data being given to them basically by ad libraries, that they pay a bit of money for to the ad company. or whatever. In a little bit, we'll discuss some of the implications of the Supreme Court's findings specifically on like the third party doctrine, but do you think that there's a possibility that

Starting point is 00:11:54 the ruling in this case might be able to be used to put up challenges towards something like advertising location collection? Yeah, again, I'm not a lawyer. Legal strategy is quite outside my general domain of expertise. But it certainly seems to me like there should be an opening here. The big loophole that law enforcement has been exploiting, locally we call it the data broker loophole, right? Yeah. Has been a problem for a while.

Starting point is 00:12:29 There was a bill called the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act. It passed the House and then died in the Senate, unfortunately. It was proposed by Senator Ron White. in 2021. That was an attempt to close this loophole. But given the wording of the opinion here, specifically around people's location data being very, very much private data, I think that there's a reasonable argument to bring a case to the Supreme Court about

Starting point is 00:12:58 the sale specifically of cellular location data. Yeah. Because they did rule that the third-party doctrine, which we can get into, does not apply to cellular location data. So that's, I mean, I think that's a pretty big point in favor of shutting down the loophole for location data. It would not shut down the loophole for other data. Yeah, it is frustrating how we have to kind of take this one step at a time.

Starting point is 00:13:24 And that is a sort of frustration that actually the Supreme Court voiced. Yeah, reformism is rough, man. This like case-by-case app-by-app approach does not actually make very much sense. Before we get into that, let's go back to the bank robber's initial challenge based on the Fourth Amendment. So a district court did agree that the search violated the Fourth Amendment, but it did not actually block the data from being permitted as evidence because the court found that the police officer's reliance on the data was not, quote, unquote, objectively unreasonable, allowing the, quote, good faith exemption to the exclusionary rule, unquote. This was basically because the technology was still new, and because there was few leads in this case, the district court found that the officer's use of this was not necessarily unreasonable. So they have this good faith exemption, which could become a problem later. Or might not, we'll see.

Starting point is 00:14:37 Now, this was appealed to the Fourth Circuit, who went back and forth a bit, initially ruling to one that the geoffence did not even qualify as a search. so warrant wasn't needed in the first place. Now, one judge dissented from this, arguing that the warrant issued was, quote, so lacking in particularity and probable cause that it was invalid, unquote. Now, this too could become important later on. The full Fourth Circuit panel reheard the case again, but were divided 7,7, half ruling the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. But most justices still found that the exclusionary rules good faith exception applied in this case.

Starting point is 00:15:15 And that then leads us back to the Supreme Court. And the ruling last Monday only actually covers the Fourth Amendment aspect of the case. They're not ruling on the good faith exemption. And the Fourth Amendment question itself is split into two issues. Did the police conduct a search under the Fourth Amendment by acquiring location data from Google? And second, did the multi-step geoffence warrant issued in this case? Did that warrant make this search unreasonable? Now, the court only answered this first question.

Starting point is 00:15:43 Did it actually qualify as a search? and handed off the second part of the question to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, who will then also rule on the good faith exemption aspect of this case. To quote the majority, quote, we leave it to the Court of Appeals. The further question, whether, given the warrant issued, the search here was reasonable, meaning that each of its steps was properly described with particularity and found to be supported by probable cause, unquote. Justice Kagan then writes out instructions for,

Starting point is 00:16:15 the Fourth Circuit, most of which relate just to the Fourth Amendment itself, saying that the Fourth Amendment protects against, quote, unquote, the unreasonable search and seizures of persons, houses, papers, and effects, and requires that warrants may only be issued upon probable cause and must particularly describe, quote, the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized, unquote. And this particularity requirement is going to be a big part of this case going forward. Because to issue a warrant, a judge must determine if there's a quote-unquote

Starting point is 00:16:45 fair probability, that the evidence of a crime would be found, and that the search is of an appropriate scope. This is quoting from the majority again, quote, that it's carefully tailored to its justifications and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches that the framers intended to prohibit, unquote. And this is the specific key issue with these geoffence warrants, the fact that they cast this large dragonette over just everyone in a certain area at a certain time. That's right. You're basically searching, you know, potentially fundraise, potentially thousands of people, right? If you imagine a geoffensive warrant in downtown Manhattan or something, right? Like, you're treating everyone as a suspect right off the bat. And that's, I mean,

Starting point is 00:17:33 that's the problem with any, any sort of mass surveillance, any sort of dryness or surveillance. But that's exactly what this is. And so, I mean, this is a, this is a good ruling by the Supreme Court, right? It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly good given this Supreme Court. Now, a lot of this ruling is based on a previous ruling, or it's built on a previous ruling from 2018, this case called Carpenter v. United States, which was also a very important ruling that affected the way police can gain access to cell phone location history through cell site towers. Yeah, so Carvinder ruled that police required a warrant to get cell site location information,

Starting point is 00:18:21 specifically historic cell site location information. CSLI is the acronym for that. CSLI is basically the police go to a phone company and say, tell us who was connected to these towers at this time, right? or tell us what towers this phone connected to. And the court ruled that that was essentially equivalent to putting a ankle monitor was their specific language. Yeah. On everybody in the U.S., right, that that was that fine-grained location data.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And so they ruled that you needed a warrant to get that location data, which was a really excellent ruling. This case was brought to the court on the basis of that carpenter versus the United States ruling. and this reaffirmed and expanded. The big difference was that the information that law enforcement had gotten from the phone companies in this case covered a larger amount of people, but the Chattree case covered a much smaller area and a much smaller amount of people, but the court decided that this ruling still applied even in a smaller case, which is great. It's, you know, really it's narrowing it down, right? Which is how the Supreme Court works, right?

Starting point is 00:19:33 You get a broad ruling, but then sort of exceptions to that rule. and the limits of that end up being tested. Which brings us back to what we were saying before, right? So like the next thing, I think the next thing to test is does this. This doesn't bring court, I think this ruling applies to purchased data. Yeah. It seems like maybe they hinted at that a little bit, but it's, you know, it won't be clear until somebody actually brings that case to the Supreme Court. One of the most promising sentences in the ruling is, quote, a new technology should not transform what individuals had.

Starting point is 00:20:07 reasonably thought they could withhold from the government. Yeah. And I mean, that sort of reasoning, and there's actually a lot of it throughout the majority's ruling, but like there's, there's a lot of sentences like that that could, that could be really, really useful going forward. Yeah. And like, you know, a carpenter was itself based on another surveillance case called United States versus Jones, which covered another method of tracking physical location

Starting point is 00:20:31 and movements. And this was through using a GPS to monitor a vehicle. Right. And that was a five-four ruling, so very close. Yeah. But in that case, the court found that GPS tracking does qualify as a Fourth Amendment search because quote unquote individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements. Right.

Starting point is 00:20:49 And essentially, because of how difficult it was to at the time, like secretly monitor and track the movements of a vehicle, including on and off public roads, so including on private roads. Yep. It was then reasonable to expect a certain level of privacy because of how difficult this was. But upon the proliferation of GPS trackers, the ease in which this type of government surveillance could be achieved, you know, changed dramatically. And that's the context in which Justice Kagan is writing this sentence, that a new technology did not transform what individuals had reasonably thought they could withhold from the government. Yeah, that's right. And I mean, I think that

Starting point is 00:21:27 that's a really important sense for a lot of things, right? That's an important sentence or the fight against license plate readers and flock and the other companies in that industry, that's an important sentence for cellular location information, right? Like, this is a great ruling, right? But it leaves open the whole issue, like I was saying, of, you know, being able to buy surveillance information, right? And like, that's what enables license pay readers. That's what enables companies that surveil social media.

Starting point is 00:21:56 That's what enables tools like Weblock that's all location information from ad tech. right and it does seem like they are they are hinting that maybe they you know that they are ready to rule on that to me it's a very it's a very self-apparent argument right that just because the goal bought something doesn't mean they should get around the war the the terrible part of this is that you know we will probably have to argue in technology in its own right unless you know we had a functioning Congress and they were able to pass very popular. Let's not get too ridiculous.

Starting point is 00:22:35 Let's not, uh, let's keep things grounded in reality here. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to hope for more realistic goals like total anarchy. No, I mean, absolutely. It would be great to see some of this stuff just be enshrined. But there is a lot to look forward to considering this ruling. And I think to that point, before we close, let's talk about the third party doctrine specifically. What is the third party doctrine? So the third party doctrine is a doctrine in the U.S. law that states that people don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information that they've given to a third party, such as a phone company or a bank or a tech company.

Starting point is 00:23:17 Essentially, this is how historically law enforcement has gotten information from phone companies or from banks, etc., or tech companies. without a warrant. And the heart of this ruling is that the justice has said that cellular location data being equivalent total surveillance to that of an ankle monitor, the third party doctrine does not apply to cellular location data. Yeah, because like the third party doctrine was set up specifically in reference to like the types of financial information that you will hand over to a bank. That's right. To do business at the bank or by dialing a phone number, the phone come that knows what the phone number is. Right.

Starting point is 00:24:00 Like those for the specific instances that established third party doctrine. And third party doctrine was not applied in Carpenter v. U.S. And so, Kagan wrote that for the very same reasons, it should not be applied to location history from tech companies. And even more specifically,

Starting point is 00:24:16 because the types of information that location history from Google had access to was even more intimate and fine-tuned than what you could get from just picking a cell tower. That's right. Because the location information from Google is based on not only your TPS, I mean, it is your TPS location,

Starting point is 00:24:33 which is fairly accurate, but also the like triangulation of your location from Wi-Fi devices and Bluetooth devices around you. Whereas the location you get from CSILI, which was what was an issue in Carpenter, is going to depend on how dense cell towers are in the area you're in because it's just mathematical equation of like,

Starting point is 00:24:57 what your signal strength is to your nearest three cell powers, and you can kind of triangulate somebody to a broader area based on that. And location history from Google at this point was tracking people's movements every two minutes and could operate on a longitude and latitudes. They could not only just figure out where you were on a map, but if you were in a building, what floor you were on that building, like a much more fine-tuned look.

Starting point is 00:25:24 Right, altitude as well. Yeah. Yeah. Part of what Carpenter found was that cell phone location information is quote-unquote quantitatively different from telephone numbers and bank records. Yes. And so because of that finding, they applied that same logic to this case. And I want to read through kind of two paragraphs that is similar to the line about how, you know, people's expectation of privacy should not be changed because of technological developments. I think there's two lines here that could become really important going forward.

Starting point is 00:25:57 terms of how we understand, like, even just the notion of digital privacy. Quote, cell phone location information is not truly shared as one normally understands the term, because cell phones and the services they provide are such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life, indispensable to participation in modern society, that a person could hardly help but generate a trail of location data. In no meaningful sense, the court thought, does that mean the person voluntarily exposes to any third party a comprehensive, of dossier of his physical movements. So that's Justice Kagan, kind of combining the analysis for this specific case with the analysis

Starting point is 00:26:34 for Carpenter. And then she goes on to write, quote, the government's app by app feature by feature method of granting Fourth Amendment protections misapprehends the very nature of modern cell phone use. Pretty much everything a person does on a smartphone requires some kind of opt-in. The point of carrying cell phones is to use what's on them, as Carpenter said, to use the apps and the services they provide. that is what has become a pervasive and insistent,

Starting point is 00:27:00 even indispensable part of daily life. And so that is what Carpenter insulated from the third-party doctrine. Yeah, my short-term memory is terrible, so I've forgotten the exact wording. But the part where she's addressing how piecemeal it is, right? And how, like, this applies to all apps. This applies to all uses of this location data.

Starting point is 00:27:19 Never shall this be subject to the third-party doctrine. Right. I think that that is pretty damning for, companies that are currently selling this data to Long Bors. It should be pretty damning anyway. Yeah, and like the idea that through simply using these devices, which are now necessary for modern life, using these does not mean that we're voluntarily giving this data over to companies and by extension the government. They don't just have free access to it because

Starting point is 00:27:48 we are using the things that are necessary for daily life. If they want access to it, they have to go through the proper channels, which are laid out in the Fourth Amendment. Yes. You have to get a more. at least. Yes. And so to close, let's talk about kind of what this could mean going forward, right? Because the question of whether the particular geoffence warrant used in this bank robbery case, if that was reasonable or unreasonable, now goes to the Fourth Circuit, who will determine if probable cause was established to support the scope of the search, and if the warrant satisfied the particularity requirements, considering the fact that it cast a broad dragnet over a whole area,

Starting point is 00:28:21 rather than being, you know, fine-tuned to a specific suspect or even a group of suspects. Kagan wrote of the warrant, quote, how the officers would make their choices at the second and third steps, how they would pick the users subject to more intense scrutiny, the warrant said very little, unquote. This is kind of part of like the instructions in which they are writing to the Fourth Circuit. Now, the suspect, the bank robber suspect, compared the geoffence warrant to a quote-unquote unconstitutional general warrant,

Starting point is 00:28:55 lacking in probable cause, with steps two and three of the warrant leaving, quote, too much authority to police officers and too little to the magistrate, unquote. So what that's saying is that in this like three-step warrant, when the police are able to determine who in the broad pool of people caught in the dragnet, who to investigate further, that choice was just up to police officers. That question was not laid out in front of a judge. A judge did not authorize that aspect of the search. That was just up to the discretion of officers.

Starting point is 00:29:24 that is part of his argument that this was a constitutional violation. Now, of course, that's not the government's tick. Right. The government claims that the information was, quote-unquote, particularized information from Google's database based on probable cause to believe that Google had the information that would help solve a crime. They also argue that the discretion given to officers

Starting point is 00:29:44 in the execution of steps two and three of the warrant fell within the bounds of reasonable lists. So going forward, when the Fourth Circuit rules on the reasonableness or unreasonableness of this warrant, they will also consider what the district court and the Fourth Circuit themselves have previously ruled on. They will reconsider the, quote-unquote,

Starting point is 00:30:03 good faith exemption. Yeah, the good faith exception is a doctrine in the U.S. law that allows, generally, evidence obtained without a warrant is inadmissible in court. The good faith exception allows for evidence

Starting point is 00:30:19 which was obtained with a faulty warrant where the law enforcement agents had reasonable cause to believe that it was a valid warrant. And they thought they were obtaining a lot of evidence, quote-unquote, in good faith with a valid warrant, that evidence can still be admissible in court, even if the warrant is found to be invalid. So that's what they're, that's what they'll be evaluating in this case. And that's what they've already decided on and we'll have to decide on again. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Even if this warrant is invalid or even if this data is invalid, because the second and third step didn't have a warrant associated with them. And they still be admissible in his case under good base exception. And the Supreme Court does have like instructions for how they want the Fourth Circuit to reevaluate that question, knowing that they've already ruled on it before. But they are instructing them based on, you know, the legal opinion that is outlined in the majority, that they do have to re-approach this question with these new insights from the Supreme Court. There is, you know, evidence that rulings like this have impacted the way police operate surveillance,

Starting point is 00:31:37 specifically by collecting information from like cell towers. You are kind of the expert in cell site simulators. And there's, I think, reason to believe that the carpenter ruling also affected the way that cell site simulators were used, despite it not being the particular focus of that ruling. If you want to kind of, as a very ending note, kind of discuss the Ray Hunter project and, you know, how some previous rulings have, like, impacted the way that that type of surveillance has kind of fallen out of fashion. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 00:32:05 So, double-plice simulator is also known as stingrays or MC Catchers. These are fake cell towers that police set up to locate a specific person's cell phone, or I should say a specific cell phone, which is often associated with a specific person, with a very fine, granular level of detail. At EFF, I and some of my colleagues have created a product called Ray. Hunter to get an idea of how often cell site simulators were being used in the U.S. Specifically, what we were concerned about was that law enforcement could use a cell site simulator to spy on and identify the people present at First Amendment protected activities.

Starting point is 00:32:53 So find out who is at a protest. Find out who is going to an abortion clinic. find out who is showing up at a mosque, right? So that was the big concern we had, was that they were being used for that instead of what police said they were using them for, which is man-punts, basically, or identifying that somebody is in a specific location

Starting point is 00:33:17 before SWAT team does raid on that house. So for the last year or so, we've had hundreds of people all over the country bringing these devices around with them to protests and just, you know, as they go about their daily lives to find out sort of what the lay of the land is and how often these are being used. And the reasoning for this is that we were getting the impression that a lot of activists seem to have the impression that self-size competitors were being used at every protest

Starting point is 00:33:51 and that police were driving around with one of these in every car, right? and there was a lot of, I think, fear and uncertainty and doubt and sort of folk wisdom and misinformation going around. So we wanted to be able to get some real facts on the ground to clear it up. And so over the last year, what we've seen is we have seen evidence of cell site simulators occasionally. What we have not seen is a preponderance of them. From what we're seeing, they're not being used constantly all the time. everywhere, right? They're being used much more rarely than most people think, and we haven't seen really hardly any evidence of them being used at protests. Well, we've seen as them being used

Starting point is 00:34:42 kind of sometimes around major cities, we've seen them being used outside the U.S. a bit, but inside the U.S., we have not seen them being used for sort of the mass surveillance reason that we feared. That has been backed up by looking at the warrants for cell size simulators that we've been able to get access to, been backed up by talking to people who are close with law enforcement and who, you know, who understand kind of how law enforcement is actually using these. What we're hearing and what we're seeing sort of evidence of is that cell size simulators are being used with warrants now because law enforcement. enforcement by and large thinks that the carpenter ruling does apply to self-site

Starting point is 00:35:35 simulators because that is cell site location information. It's the same type of data. It is the same exact type of data, right? And so it makes sense that a warrant should apply to that as well. Before, when they figured a warrant didn't apply to this, right? Because I don't know what the mental gymnastics were there. I think it's possible that these were used a lot more. But now it seems like most law-inferred agencies have come to the conclusion that the federal government has come to the conclusion that this technology does require a warrant and that it's more useful or locating a specific person than identifying people in a specific area.

Starting point is 00:36:16 I think in addition to the warrants, it makes technical sense because if you want to find the people who are in a specific area, Cell site simulator is a expensive, cumbersome, complicated tool for doing that when the alternatives are sending a geo-fence warrant to Google. Asking Google just to tell me, yeah. Asking Google to tell you. Or apping the phone company or a tower dump. Getting a warrant for a tower dump, which is where you ask them to tell you everybody that was connected to a specific tower at a specific period of time. That is something that is not addressed by any of these. Tower dumps are still a thing you can get with a warrant, right?

Starting point is 00:37:02 So that's an option. And then, of course, all of the other methods of non-cell phone-based surveillance, right? Face recognition is an option. License player readers are an option, right? So there are so many easier ways to get the identities of everybody in a specific area. It doesn't make sense to use those simulators for that, and that's what we're seeing. It seems like what we're being used for, or is a vast, majority of things is identifying that a specific person is in a specific house before a no-knock

Starting point is 00:37:32 raid is executed. And no-knock raids are highly problematic. I am not a fan of the SWAT teams. There's a lot of issues there. But if they're going to happen, like, I guess, yeah, like, let's make sure we're raiding their right house so they can be sure of which dogs they're killing before they... I mean, yeah, I mean, swatting has become a huge, like, harassment, like, tool for people just to deploy against someone that they don't like or an influencer that they find annoying. And that is a real issue as well. Cell flight simulators are not the biggest issue there, right?

Starting point is 00:38:05 The existence of SWAT teams and how liberally they're used is the much bigger issue, I think. So based on how Carpenter seemingly affected the police's reticence to use cell site simulators, I think like we've discussed, there's hope that this new ruling might also be able to be applied to some other surveillance methods. but that will only really become clear over time. There's one particular that I'm also interested in is like keyword warrants where police will just ask a tech company to like get information on all users who typed a specific thing into a search bar, right?

Starting point is 00:38:40 Right. And so there's aspects of this recent ruling that could possibly apply to something like that as well. But, you know, despite Kagan's annoyance at the, you know, app by app way in which Fourth Amendment protections are granted, organizations like legal rights organizations, including like the EFF, you know, might still have to kind of approach this from an F-by-a-ab basis to get like confirmation that these things are subject to the Fourth Amendment. So it's something that we will see over time. Until and unless we can get comprehensive federal privacy law, which again, it's not,

Starting point is 00:39:10 I'm not holding out hope for Congress to pass any privacy bills anytime soon. On the immediate future. But we can hope one day, right? And that is a real thing. Same thing with like data centers. This is a thing that I think, people should try to build a mass movement around. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:39:27 It is happening to some degrees at the state level, right? California has a pretty good privacy law. It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than the non-existent federal one. Montana became the first state to close the loophole allowing law enforcement to buy data from third parties. Right? So there is hope that at least at the state level we can try to start closing these loopholes, you know, as a band-aid until the federal government maybe steps up in four to eight to 20 years. You know, we'll take that. You know, it is very rare to have a Nicodapen here episode that ends with, there is some hope in general.

Starting point is 00:40:14 It's very rare to have a conversation with me and that ends with anybody should have openly at all. True. No, I'm sure, but yeah, I'm sure we can have you on to talk about Pegasus to bum us out again at some point. Absolutely. I have many ways to bum you out. But where can people find your work online if they want to hear more about Ray Hunter and all the research you do at EFF? Yeah, you can find me at Blue Sky. I'm at Cooper Q.com on Blue Sky or Mastodon, if you're that flavor of Linux nerd. You can find me at Cooper Q at Mastow. Hackers.com, on Mastodon, or you can find me at EFF.org, of course, where I publish all of my writings. And that we highly recommend checking out our surveillance self-defense guides at sSD.EFF.org.

Starting point is 00:41:04 We have the pretty much the longest, the longest continuously updated technical self-defense guides that have ever existed. And they're really, really excellent resource. I think they're my favorite resource that we put out. So you go check those out as well. Thank you. Thank you. Turn off your phone. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the honest talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different

Starting point is 00:41:53 stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect. then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast and I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J.

Starting point is 00:42:07 And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is just like, what's up with that? the snacks. Like, what are we, what are we eating?

Starting point is 00:42:28 The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that.

Starting point is 00:42:48 Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone. Watches Women's Sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them.

Starting point is 00:43:08 Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, The Chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most like iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made?

Starting point is 00:43:36 Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought he was going to write.

Starting point is 00:43:58 I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My first guest is Paris Hocon, Shakira, Luke and Yerrin, Samira, and Gracie. I'm so excited for you. On the bouncy bed. You have surprises?

Starting point is 00:44:25 Many surprises. Welcome to Sweet 305, where the group chat comes to life. What a fuck. It's like a way to say like, oh my friend, hello, my friend, oh, my brother. What a . Look, I've never had to be

Starting point is 00:44:37 I've evered with nobody. Except with my my children, my children, yes. C, my amante. Uff. That's incredible, yeah, the telenovela. You're the only person I know

Starting point is 00:44:50 that loves a Yellow Starburst. It's lemoned. And no, no, I'm not there's like you'd like to collaborate with this person. This is Sweet Free Ophive. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of my Coutura Podcast Network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone and welcome to Good Happen here. My name is Dan Al-Kurd and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics.

Starting point is 00:45:22 Today I want to talk about football, soccer, whatever. And I'll just start by saying, obviously, FIFA is a terrible, terrible organization. And while there are many heartwarming events in this World Cup, the World Cup gets me, gets a lot of us, despite everything. There have also been egregious incidents against players and referees and fans from the global south. Take for example what happened to the Somali referee who wasn't allowed to come into the U.S. to do his job. He was kept hours and hours in the airport before being unceremoniously returned to Somalia. Similarly, the head of the Palestine Football Association was denied a visa into the United States, not allowed to come to the World Cup on U.S. soil. This is in spite of the fact that FIFA invited

Starting point is 00:46:05 association heads from around the world to attend, and he did attend the opening game in Mexico City. Or one of the worst incidents, if you can call it that, the way that the Iranian team has been treated. They weren't allowed to stay in the U.S. despite the games they were playing in this country, were constantly made to fly back to Mexico after every game. Clearly, they were put at a severe disadvantage because they weren't allowed to rest and recuperate like the other teams. And listen, I'm not going to say it is a conspiracy, but having not one but three goals discounted by VAR, eventually leading to their elimination from the tournament,

Starting point is 00:46:39 just adds insult to injury. But like I said, of course, there are many heartwarming stories. For me, as a Palestinian, it's been great to see how much Palestine keeps popping up. Despite the fact that the environment in the United States is much more hostile on this issue than Qatar, the last World Cup, people are still talking about Palestine and advocating for Palestine. Thousands of Bosnian supporters, for example, turned Toronto into a sea of blue as they marched toward the stadium for the Canada match, chanting free Palestine.

Starting point is 00:47:07 And they did that in a number of places, Englewood, Seattle. They also chanted Palestine within the stadiums in multiple games. At that Canada game, activists also unfrold a kick Israel out of FIFA banner. And it makes sense, really, when you understand the experience of Bosnians with genocide themselves not too long ago. Similarly, Moroccan fans held Palestinian flags or wore Morocco jerseys with the word Palestine on it, and this showed up on TV. At the very opening match in Mexico City, pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered to form a giant human Palestinian flag, and South Korean fans brought Palestinian flags to the tournament, honoring a promise they made

Starting point is 00:47:45 during their qualifying when their fans had chanted, we'll take Palestine to the World Cup with us. In Gaza, Palestinians are watching the games too. Spain is the favorite team these days because of the government's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and because of superstar player Lamin Yamal, who has been unapologetically pro-Palestine. Obviously, the genocide that has unfolded in Gaza and the war and killing that continues in the Middle East in both occupied territories and in Lebanon are part of the reason why this issue seems to be ever-present. But it didn't start with the genocide. the story of Palestine at the World Cup is more layered than that.

Starting point is 00:48:21 And the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was a good demonstration of why Palestine keeps popping up and what Palestine represents to fans, especially Arab ones then and everyone now. I know it might seem strange to be talking about this now a few years after the fact, but I've been thinking about it a lot, especially given everything that has unfolded since. And I think the World Cup moment is one of those events that gets more interesting, not less, as time passes. Back then, as it does now, is showing us some. something important, not just about Palestine, but about the limits of what governments can actually control when it comes to what their own people believe. So let's get into it. Palestine did not qualify

Starting point is 00:48:59 for the 2022 World Cup. The Palestinian national football team was nowhere near Doha in an official capacity. And yet, Arabs from across the region and across the world began referring to Palestine then as the 33rd team, because Palestine was everywhere at the 2022 World Cup. There were Palestinian flag straped over shoulders and stadiums. Crowds erupted into the chance of Maltany, the Palestinian anthem, after Arab teams won. One Tunisian fan ran onto the pitch mid-match for the Palestinian flag, and when Morocco pulled off their historic upset against Spain, so it's the first African and Arab team to ever reach the semifinals of a World Cup, Moroccan players ran to the crowd and held up the Palestinian flag.

Starting point is 00:49:39 This was significant. Morocco had just signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, only two years prior to this game. And their players didn't seem to care. Israeli journalists who traveled to Qatar to cover the tournament reported being coldly received, followed, and in some cases physically shut out of interviews by crowds of Arab fans. Some of these reporters were caught on camera claiming to be from other countries like France or Switzerland in order to get people to talk to them. Some of them masked their logos from their stations. Israeli media at the time expressed something between confusion and outrage. One reporter remarked, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he basically said that the hostility wasn't just coming from governments, as they had assumed, it was coming from

Starting point is 00:50:20 ordinary people, and this surprised them, but it shouldn't have. Now, none of this was purely spontaneous. That's the part of the story I find most interesting and the part that gets maybe the least attention. Months before the World Cup began, a Qatar activist group called Qatar Youth Opposed to Normalization, Q-A-Y-O-N, started planning. They were founded in. in 2011, and by 2022, led predominantly by Qatari women, they had been working for over a decade to push back against Qatar's slow drift towards normalizing ties with Israel, which is something the Qatari government had been entertaining, largely under pressure from the United States and from its Gulf's neighbors. And in a country where over 80% of people opposed normalization

Starting point is 00:50:59 with Israel, this organization, Qatar youth, had a base. But they had to work carefully because you can't have unsanctioned civil society organizations. There's all sorts of restrictions. on independent activism, extremely severe in Lutlan. But they saw the World Cup as a window, an opportunity to turn what already existed, which was deep, widespread, popular solidarity with Palestine, into something visible, coordinated, and impossible to ignore. So they got to work.

Starting point is 00:51:27 They persuaded Qatar's national team captain to wear a kaffia patterned armband before the opening match. And then there was this hashtag, the captain's armband is Palestinian, which started trending on Arabic Twitter. They reached out to Qatari influencers, from prominent journalists who amplified the campaign across social media, and they called on local businesses to display signs

Starting point is 00:51:46 that they were compliant with the boycott divestment sanctions movement. They also ran a kind of counterintelligence operation against Israeli media, because they were the ones that began identifying Israeli journalists and their logos on social media, flagging them so that Arab fans at the tournament knew who to avoid. And this is how those videos of Israeli broadcasters being turned away kept appearing online.

Starting point is 00:52:07 They also organized fans to chant for Palestine at the 48th minute of every match. That's not random. That's a reference to 1948 and to the Nakhba, where close to a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes with the founding of the Israeli state. Key members of Qatar youth said the goal was to turn Arab fans from sympathizers into participants. And they were honest about something else, too.

Starting point is 00:52:28 This only worked because the ground was already ready. As they put it, the campaign would not have succeeded had it not been for people's own proactive support of the Palestinian cause. And that's worth sitting with for a moment. the organizing mattered, the strategy mattered, but the reason it spread so quickly so far is that there was already a fire there. Qatar Youth just lit the match. Now, to understand why people were so upset, you have to understand the Abraham Accords. I've talked about it on this podcast before.

Starting point is 00:53:03 The normalization agreements brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 between Israel and the UAE, the United Air of Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco. These deals were sold as historic breakthroughs as a new era of peace. And in terms of official diplomatic relations, they were breakthroughs. They were historic, but there was a problem. Nobody asked the people, and these accords didn't solve anything. Now, Arab public opinion surveys have consistently shown that the vast majority of Arabs opposed normalization with Israel, absent a resolution to the question of Palestinian statehood and the ongoing occupation. And in the most recent polling before the accords, it was something like 88% of Arabs across 13 countries

Starting point is 00:53:43 that rejected normalization with Israel. And nearly two-thirds of those cited the occupation of Palestinian land as their reason. Only 7% cited something like religious objections. The fear had always been that if you normalize relations with Israel without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel would not have any reason to try and resolve the conflict or address the grievances of Palestinians, that Israel perhaps would become more aggressive if the guardrails were off. So what the Abraham Accords actually did from the perspective of ordinary Arabs was deep in the sense that their governments wouldn't listen to them, were willing to sell them out, sell out the Palestinians for economic and security arrangements that disproportionately benefited ruling classes anyway and the U.S. Israeli security

Starting point is 00:54:28 architecture. I've written about this academically and what I found is a kind of paradox at the heart of these so-called peace deals. Peace initiatives that don't address the root causes of conflict don't actually create peace. They create a different kind of violence, a structural violence, because they maintain the root causes of conflict, and they enable authoritarian practices by governments. So Israel shares a lot of tools, surveillance technology, propaganda frameworks, security cooperation, both material and discursive tools, and these have a way of turning up in the hands of governments repressing their own citizens. Now, I'm not saying the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain needed encouragement to repress their own citizens, but it's just another added layer, another way

Starting point is 00:55:08 that the red lines shift and new ways that these governments can attack their own citizens and their own activists. For example, Emirati activists involved in anti-normalization activities after the accords became targets of surveillance operations, and people who spoke out about the deals faced travel bans. In Bahrain, civil society organizations were newly restricted. The quote-unquote peace came with a repressive apparatus baked in, which is exactly why when thousands of Arabs gathered and Doha's public squares to watch the World Cup, the energy around Palestine wasn't some just like emotional sentiment. And it wasn't a relic.

Starting point is 00:55:43 It was fresh. It was the anger of people who had just watched their governments make deals they never asked for. And deals that were used to oppress them and not solve the Palestinian issue. There is a concept that academics and activists have used called sports normalization. The idea is that sports, because they're presented as a political or maybe as entertainment as a space above politics, they can be used as a soft avenue for normalizing relationships that would be otherwise politically controversial. Israel has long pursued this strategy. The logic is if Israel and Arab athletes compete together, then this image of coexistence replaces the political reality of occupation.

Starting point is 00:56:22 You don't need any kind of solution or diplomatic agreement. You just need enough footage of an Israeli and Moroccan shaking hands on the pitch to make people feel like things are moving in a good direction. Qatar youth were very explicit about targeting this. They hosted panels on on sports normalization, they released a statement pointing out that Western political boycotts of Russia extended to sporting events after the invasion of Ukraine, and nobody then complained that sports were being mixed up with politics. And to them, the inconsistency was glaring, that mixing sports with politics was apparently fine when it was about sanctioning Russia, you know, admittedly, very appropriately, but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights. And this double

Starting point is 00:57:00 standard, I've encountered it constantly in my work. The insistence that the Palestinian cause is uniquely problematic, uniquely in need of being kept out of polite conversation or unreasonable. This insistence falls apart the moment you compare it to any other conflict where the West has chosen a side. Now, the World Cup made that visible in real time. When the Palestinian flag showed up in a stadium in Doha, it wasn't just a symbol of solidarity. It was an argument. It said, this issue is not resolved. We have not moved on. It doesn't matter what the Abraham Accords said or how much. photo ops. It's going to make any of this go away. Now, I want to dwell for a minute on Morocco. Full disclosure, that's the team I support. I hope they go as far as possible. But Morocco is an

Starting point is 00:57:41 interesting case, and I think it illuminates something about the limits of top-down normalization. Like I said, the Moroccan government signed the Abraham Accords, and the deal actually included U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Morocco has long occupied. It's self-a-case of a people's right to self-determination being traded away in this diplomatic. agreement situation. So it was a completely cynical arrangement all around. And yet, when Morocco beat Spain and reached the semifinals, their players held up the Palestinian flag. When Morocco beat Portugal, and the streets of Rabat and Casablanca erupted, the Palestinian flag was there too. And fans in Doha, who had traveled from across North Africa and the Middle East were wearing Palestinian kifias,

Starting point is 00:58:21 chanting for Palestine. Now, the Moroccan governments deal with Israel did not transfer to the Moroccan people. And this is the key insight from the World Cup, the one that I keep coming back to, that governments can sign papers, but they can't really sign on behalf of public sentiment. And these countries are not democratic. So any kind of push to do something like this seems like a betrayal to their own citizens. And they can't normalize what has not been normalized in the hearts and minds of their own citizens. There is a kind of arrogance in the Abraham Accords framework. The assumption is that if you get the right signatures, if you get the right photo up on the White House law and that the conflict can be ignored, that the Palestinian cause can recede. But the World Cup was a

Starting point is 00:58:59 refutation of that assumption. Now, I've been thinking about all of this in the context of everything that has happened since, the genocide in Gaza, the daily images, the death tolls, the wholesale destruction of Gaza's society, and the ongoing question of what normalization means now, and whether any of those Abraham Accords frameworks can survive what the world has watched happen. Now, I do think it will survive. These governments do not care about what happened in Gaza. But what it shows is that the fears around the Abraham Accords were completely founded. ignoring the Israeli-Palestadian conflict would lead to an escalation in the violence. I think the World Cup moment was a preview back in 2022.

Starting point is 00:59:37 It told us something about where popular Arab opinion actually was, not where governments claimed it was, and not where Western media assumed it was, but where it actually was. And it showed us that organized strategic activism can channel that sentiment that something visible and politically costly for the forces of normalization. Now, Qatar youth opposed to normalization was a small group, and they were operating under real restrictions in a country that, doesn't allow independent civil society. And they still manage to turn a global sporting event

Starting point is 01:00:05 into one of the most visible expressions of Palestinian solidarity in years. And that matters. Not because a football tournament, a soccer tournament is going to solve anything. It doesn't. Palestinian families don't get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear into a manufactured consensus that was never real to begin with. And today, in 2026, this is not specific to Arab publics. Even Western publics have seen their governments ignore genocide, have seen their rights recede as their government's ally

Starting point is 01:00:39 to protect genocide in a variety of ways. Now, I'll end with something a little more personal. When I watched those World Cup crowds back in 2022, when I saw all these different Arabs, Moroccans and Tunisians and Saudis, people from countries that have varying and complicated relationships with this issue, all waving the Palestinian flag, I felt a kind of hope, and it's not naive. It's not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says, Palestinians are not alone, and the cause is not forgotten. And the silence that has been imposed on this question, attempted silence top down, for so long, is not the consent it pretends to be. Governments can sign accords, but they can't erase what people know, and they cannot sign away what people feel when they watch a team lose and a flag goes up in a stadium and thousands of people start changing. chanting. Palestine keeps showing up, uninvited, at every table that tries to exclude it. And I think

Starting point is 01:01:34 it will keep doing that. Thank you so much for listening to It Could Happen Here. I'm Dan Alcurt. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Hello. My gosh. Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHard radio app. Get the blood going up. Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like the Tom Green Farmcast and park the bus. Now with full video. We're building a ramp. Tony Hawk.

Starting point is 01:02:06 It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Cheers. Open the free IHard Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers.

Starting point is 01:02:20 Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and IHart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female, solo rower to go from California to Hawaii?

Starting point is 01:02:39 My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women sports. Naomi Osaka, showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi.

Starting point is 01:03:00 You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Starting point is 01:03:19 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit a. episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the

Starting point is 01:03:41 backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody.

Starting point is 01:04:11 I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My first guest is Harris Holtin, Shakira, Luke and Yerrin, Samira and Gracie. I'm so excited. On the bouncy bed.

Starting point is 01:04:38 You have surprises? And many surprises. Welcome to Sweet 305 where the group chat comes to life. What up! It's like a way to say like, oh, my God, hello, my friend, hello, her mother. Look, I never have ever had to have

Starting point is 01:04:52 been with anybody. Except with my kids, my kids, my son-oomante. Uff! That's incredible, yeah, the telenovela. You're the only person I know that loves a yellow starburst. It's really, man,

Starting point is 01:05:08 there's no, there's anyone that you Like you say, I'd like to collaborate with this person. This is Sweet 305. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of my Cultura podcast network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:05:29 Welcome to Akadapin here, a podcast about firing your boss and keeping them fired and then making their not be bosses. That was an extremely long and slightly cumbersome intro from your host, Mia Wong. But with me today to talk, about how to do such a thing is Raeisa Freyheight, Tabby, and Daniel

Starting point is 01:05:50 from the IWW who are part of a tour talking about just that. So all three of you, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yeah. I'm so excited. Me as well. I mean, I'm excited for every time I do something like this because I'm very much an attention whore.

Starting point is 01:06:12 I feel as an actress, I kind of have to be. I mean, yeah, that is kind of, you know, you do, you are I guess like, yeah, trying to I don't know. Oh my God, how do I do a better transition? I don't know. You'd have to ask

Starting point is 01:06:28 my doctor. Okay, never mind. We're leaving it the part about how to do a better transition and we're leaving it, you'd have to ask my doctor. I like this. This is great. Speaking of a union that has a unbelievable number of trans people in it these days. Yeah, so we have on the show talked a little bit about the industrial workers of the world.

Starting point is 01:06:53 We have had some IWW unions on the show. But yeah, today we're also going to be talking about sort of the history of the union and something cool that the union is doing. So I guess to start off, can you three give a kind of brief introduction to like, you know, like the one sentence like what is this thing? and then what is the tour that you're doing? Yeah, so this tour is a decentralized tour. There's not like a small number of like experts, so to speak, we're touring the country and giving a speech or talking about things. It's more like each individual IWW branch that is participating

Starting point is 01:07:31 is planning and organizing its own event, but we're coordinating on a national level and trying to promote this very broadly to the public because the IWW hasn't done a very like public, event, especially a national one like this in quite some time. And so we feel like the moment is calling for something like this. Yeah. And so I guess we can now ask, okay, like what actually is the IWW? And how do we explain to people that it is in fact called the industrial workers of the world, not the international workers of the world, and also that it is not just a union of people who

Starting point is 01:08:07 work in heavy industry? Well, we're the industrial workers of the world because we organize industrially. We want to organize all the workers in each industry and not by their trade. Yeah. Exactly. So an example I always use, you know, since I'm in so much student debt, what happens when you're getting your master's and your doctorate, is say there's a school, a university, instead of what traditional unions do, which is, you know, you have the teachers union and then like the janitor's union and, you know, the TAs union. And, you know, the TAs union. and all these separate unions like a cafeteria worker union, et cetera. You just have one big union.

Starting point is 01:08:50 That's one of the things the IWW is called. You just have one union across all of these things. So everyone from the teachers to the TAs to the janitors to everyone in between is in the same union and the same bargaining unit. And we don't just stop at one industry. The goal of the IWWW is to. organize all industries industrially. Capital is organized this way, and workers really ought to do the same. Exactly. We have everyone from sex workers to actresses, to carpenters, to especially back in the

Starting point is 01:09:29 day, a lot of minors. You know, everyone you can think of, as long as you don't have hiring or firing power and aren't a copper, active duty military, you can join the IWW. Yeah, and that's something that I think we've gotten to on this show a little bit, which is that like, I mean, obviously it depends a lot on where you are, but like a lot of the organizing IWW does is with service workers and service workers in shops that every other union looks at and goes, well, you're not worth organizing because we can't get enough money your members out of it. And that's something I don't know. I think is really valuable in this moment where, yeah, like, unbelievable numbers of people are doing service work. That's like what the economy is built on. If you're committed from the start to organizing all sectors and all workers and all industries, you don't end up in a place where you just write off, you know, like entire sectors of the economy

Starting point is 01:10:24 that are a lot of times the people who most desperately need to organize. Yeah. And that's like exactly why the IWW was born in the first place was because the trade unions back in the 1900s were ignoring all of the unskilled workers. so to speak, like the miners and like the dock workers. But the IW all the way back 1905 was saying, what is still saying today is that all workers need a union. And I'm a bartender. I'm a server. I've been one since I was 16 years old, my whole working life. And my experience as just a working class person has drawn me to the IW. It's philosophy. Yeah, because no other union really cares

Starting point is 01:11:04 about us, but the IW is there. And like you said, like that's what most workers in this or not most, but a large chunk of workers in this country are service workers. It makes up like a third of the economy. Yeah. And moreover, the industrial workers of the world teach us the tools to make change in our workplace, right? Other unions are something of a service model, right? They themselves become a service for their clients, who are the workers. But what the IWW teaches is that it's on us, right?

Starting point is 01:11:35 We need to make the change in our workplace. We have to analyze the conditions really, understand the imbalance of power that the bosses have over us as wage workers and change them. And that means talking to our colleagues, learning, analyzing, and then taking action, direct action, to make the changes that we want. Because only us, we're the ones who know what's best for our workplace, what's best for our industry, right? And we're in a position to make that change when we organize horizontally in that way. Yeah. The thing that I really love about the IWWW.

Starting point is 01:12:10 is that it's a very good teacher in many ways. You know, so many people, you know, aren't fortunate to have the incredible amount of education that I have in, you know, really being able to study the material conditions of capitalism, of really kind of getting at the center of, you know, how change is made. And I find that with the IWW and the way we organize, no classroom in the world can teach you as well as your own experience that the way to revolution is not electing some politician.

Starting point is 01:12:44 The way to the revolution isn't handing your power to some union bureaucrat. The way to the revolution to socialism, to communism, to industrial democracy, to the abolition of the wage system, is direct action, is doing it yourself, is shop floor organizing. And when workers realize that they have power over their own lives and destinies at work, they realize that they have power. over all of society. Once we come together and decide upon something,

Starting point is 01:13:16 there is no employer who can stop us. You know, Big Bill Haywood, who's a very, very famous old IWW member, has this line where he goes, I've never read Capital, but I have its scars on my back. Oh, many memes have been made of that. Yeah, and it's something that I, I don't know, like something I do appreciate kind of about,

Starting point is 01:13:49 my experience with the union has been that like it's a place where you know the theoretical stuff that you're doing right is stuff that's drawn from just the immediacy of like okay we have to get a bunch of people to show up to a meeting so that you know we can do this union we have to like talk to people and we have to like get people organized to be able to do direct actions we have to be able to like get people to show up in this place and like do all of the sort of like you know just the like the nitty pretty technical work of like fighting a class struggle. But it's this place where like, yeah, you actually get

Starting point is 01:14:23 theory that's drawn from action and is sort of unified with it because you just, you have to do it, right? Like, you have to get anyone to do the thing constantly. And there's no one else who can do it for you. There's just you and your fellow workers. And it's yeah, it's you and your fellow workers and you're fighting

Starting point is 01:14:39 against the boss and it rocks. And then once you feel it, you're hooked. Yeah. Right. Once you really get to experience that, that sort of camaraderie. that closeness you actually get with your coworkers when you know your comrades in struggle you're working together towards something

Starting point is 01:14:57 that's way bigger than any department or institution or anything. It's a matter of creating the world that we want for ourselves, the world that we are entitled as workers, as a creator of all this wealth and all of these great things that humans are capable of. That's what the lovelies are all about, in my humble opinion. This kind of is bringing up for me

Starting point is 01:15:20 One of the most remarkable things About the IWW historically In its heyday It had nearly a half percent Of all workers in this country within its ranks And like the wobbly philosophy Like spread like wildfire across the country And it was just spread by regular rankfile workers

Starting point is 01:15:39 Who were empowered and believed in something Yeah And you know it's sad to say that like today A lot of workers don't even know what the IWW is, what it means, like, what it's, and so, like, that is part of the reason why we're doing the fire boss stories to, like, actually become a phenomenon again and to have people recognize us and, like, know the wobbly way of organizing, you know? Yeah. I cannot tell you the amount of times, you know, I've, I've been talking with, you know,

Starting point is 01:16:08 other union organizers than they said, wait, the IWW still exists? Yeah, that's the thing happens a lot. Or even worse, they don't know about it at all. And again, as a historian of our union and a somewhat long-time member, I've been a member since 2019, it really pisses me off. Piss me off to the degree that last year for 120th anniversary, I produced and performed in a wavercery live stream. We had people from four different countries and multiple different branches

Starting point is 01:16:44 just call into the show. Shout out to caveat in New York City. They hosted us. And that kind of just really feeds into why we're doing Fire Your Boss, because I know all of us want the IWW to be like known. And, you know, not just as a union that the U.S. government killed, which, by the way, they failed to do. But as a vibrant force that is an alternative to not only, you know,

Starting point is 01:17:11 wage slavery, but unions and unions. as a service. And, you know, not unions as you and your coworkers and your comrades. Yeah, and that's something I think comes up a lot in organizing, which is like a lot of the history of what the union is and not just sort of the history of like, I guess what you would call like the heyday in the 1900s and like, you know, through this like the 1920s. But like the modern history of the union has just been suppressed. or disappeared. I think people now are kind of getting an understanding that, like, there was a Starbucks

Starting point is 01:17:52 union before the current Starbucks union that, like, AWW organized. I think people tend to think of it as, like, it was like some shops in New York. And it's like, no, no, it wasn't. It was all over the country. There was a whole bunch of shit that they did. There were enormous numbers of workers involved. And it's a thing that, like, it's both from a historical perspective, but also from the perspective of like just generationally we tend to lose like movement knowledge as as each

Starting point is 01:18:18 generation comes down because a lot of the stuff just isn't passed on. No one knows the international anymore. Lame. No one knows the international anymore. Yeah, but it's not even just that. It's like there's stuff that like happened in our lifetime that like people you probably have met were involved with that like is just gone. Like the example I always talk about on this show and I'm going to keep talking about until every single person in the left knows about it was the Wohaca uprising. We're like, yeah, like, also like Woblies, like,

Starting point is 01:18:50 went to this and were in it, but it's like, yeah, like people in Mexico, like, took a major North American city and held it longer than the Paris commune did, and this was in 2006. Like, I guess maybe there are some of you now, horrifyingly, who weren't alive for that, but, like, nice way to make me feel old.

Starting point is 01:19:08 I know, it's a nightmare. The history and possibility of struggle, I think just gets lost in ways where people suddenly don't realize that like, yeah, no, like in your lifetimes, people formed giant assemblies and took control of like a major North American city and held it for months.

Starting point is 01:19:25 Like, that's a thing that we all live through. It's a long memory, right? I mean, it's a powerful weapon that we have when we actually remember these things when we really learned from them. And we realize that's ourselves. That is our history. That is a people's history.

Starting point is 01:19:41 Right? we are learning somebody else's history. We're living right in the world of the ruling class, right? And we just need to realize that we're in the position to change it. We're the ones who do it, who make the history and really create the world we want in the shell, and all of this like, you know, buckery that's going on around the world. It's on us. While I'm talking about Mexico, to talk about a very different part of Mexico,

Starting point is 01:20:06 I do want to mention, like, maybe my, I don't know if it's my favorite, Like one of the pieces of wobbly, like, history that I really like that I think never gets talked about is the fact that in a similar way that, like, what happens today, there's a lot of connections between workers in, like, workers in California, workers in Mexico. And there's a bunch of people moving back and forth across the border. There's workers moving around. And there was a whole bunch of Mexican wobblies of various kinds. And a whole bunch of wobblies, like, went over and fought in the Mexican Revolution because it was, it was the thing to do. Yeah, the collaboration was to the point that multiple locals in various states in Mexico and also California and Arizona, they were literally like merged. So it was literally like the same local across, you know, national borders.

Starting point is 01:20:56 Yeah. And if I'm remembering correctly, like the IWW like took a few Mexican cities like in the north because they were the people who were just doing the uprising there. Yep, them and their allies in the Partido Liberal Mexicano, which do not be confused by the name, was an anarchist group. That is the whole history in and of itself. One of the all-time funniest things we've ever seen of just, yeah, we named ourselves the Liberal Party of Mexico, but we're anarchists. Just incredible stuff going on in the 1900s. It was a very different time. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:21:32 Speaking of very different times, yeah, do you want to be a very different times? Yeah, do you want to talk more about sort of what is going to be involved in this tour and I guess also like how people can get involved with it and learn and hopefully like start organizing and fighting in their workplaces? Yeah, so the rough curriculum or agenda for the tour has like four or five primary like sections. But like I said at the beginning of this conversation, like it's a decentralized tour. So each branch is going to do it a little bit different. but roughly it's going to be first like people we're going to try to like talk with people who attend like see what people's current conception of a union is just like kind of talk about unions broadly and how people perceive them and then transition into talking about the IWW's way to do unions and solidarity unionism which doesn't necessarily rely on recognition from the state or capital like we recognize ourselves as a union you know we take

Starting point is 01:22:34 direct action. We're very democratic, very caring, you know, talking about, yeah, the IWW's way to do unionism and industrial. Like, how do you do industrial unions? And then moving into how unions can be a revolutionary force and how, like, we're facing all these things. We're up against, like, these FBI rates and multiple, like, cities and states across the country. Isis, like, literally murdering people in the streets. We've, like, got genocides going on all over the place. and by taking back control of our labor and shutting shit down, we can be a revolutionary force. And I feel like a lot of people have kind of forgotten about the movement and so to speak, because of how shitty these trainings can be sometimes and how bureaucratic.

Starting point is 01:23:20 And so, you know, we should remember that these are really powerful, like, things to be doing. And then we'll wrap it up with just talking about like next steps and things. Hopefully get people out to organize your trainings, just get people connect. to their local branches, make connections with people who are, like, thinking about the same things about building militant, ranking file unions and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about the organizer trainings? Because I think that's a really, really cool thing that the IDW does that people don't really know about it all. Yeah, I really love the IWW's organizer training. We have an OT 101, organizer training 101 called Building the Committee. And it's a

Starting point is 01:24:02 two-day training, kind of like a big crash course into how to build a union from scratch, like within your workplace. Yeah. How to start gathering contacts. How to start having like those initial conversations with your fellow workers and how to develop your coworkers into organizers and how to build power in the workplace and shift that balance of power from the boss to the workers. and it's very different than like other union organizer trainings

Starting point is 01:24:34 because a lot of other trainings are basically training you how to do card check campaigns like how to talk to your coworker, get them to sign a card, and then you never talk to them again kind of thing. But we're not interested in that. We're interested in like building real relationships and like building real power with our coworkers. And that's what the training is all about. I think it's fun both on two levels. One, I've been to one of these and it's very, very good.

Starting point is 01:24:58 And the second thing I think is very funny is like, the other unions that like suck less in the U.S., like part of what has happened is they've adopted a bunch of the trading. Sounds like from that IW. The amount of times I've seen some union doing something and being like, they learned it from us. It's very fucking obvious. They learned it from us.

Starting point is 01:25:19 I will listen to people being like, they're giving a definition of the union. I'm like, that's the IWW one. And I know your leadership doesn't believe this because that's like not how your union works. But yeah, you can you can you can get the original one from the source that doesn't have in the same way that like a bunch of the modern trade unions cut out a couple of verses of solidarity forever because they were too radical. They mutilated our fucking baby. It sucks. It sucks.

Starting point is 01:25:46 It's roughing in his fucking grave. That's her canon. They stole the song and then they were like, oh my God, hold on. This like might teach workers that they don't have anything in common with their bosses. Like, we have to stop. We can't. There's seven verses altogether. Count them.

Starting point is 01:26:05 Except no substitute. Yeah, and most unions sing like five. Oh, if that. Yeah. And, you know, in the same way that you can get the original uncut version of Solidarity Forever, you too can get the organizer training that these other people are getting bad versions of. Yeah. Fun story.

Starting point is 01:26:26 So, this is unrelated to the eye. WW, but also related. A few weeks ago, I was part of the anti-Zionist Jewish contingent at the Queer Liberation March in New York City. And of course, I got on the megaphone

Starting point is 01:26:45 and led everyone in singing solidarity forever. Hell yeah, hell yeah. It's a good time. I hear there's a new little red songbook in the works. I don't know how far along the committee. committee is, but this has been a mammoth project, I could only imagine, right, producing a new little red songbook. By the way, I want to point this out to speak, speaking of other people

Starting point is 01:27:09 taking stuff. The IWW had little red books before the Maoism did. Like, they, I can't, I can't say for certain that Mao Zay Dung took that ship from us, but like, that stuff is from way fucking before Maoism existed. Like, this is not affiliated, those motherfuckers. I mean, Mao was an anarchist before he became a Marxist.

Starting point is 01:27:35 Yeah. Because the Chinese anarchist movement 100 years ago was way stronger than the Marxist movement. Like, half the original communist parties in the world were founded by former anarchists. Yeah, and this

Starting point is 01:27:50 has gone poorly for them checks notes. Filtering back to the 2020s from the 1920s. Where can people find where tours are happening and, yeah, and get more involved? Yeah, we have a website. It's industrial worker. cardco. There's two hours and card.

Starting point is 01:28:25 I don't know if we can link that in the description of the podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll link it in the description. Okay, cool. So, yeah, that website will have all of the tour. locations. Right now there's eight locations. There might be one or two more being added in the near future. But as of right now, it's like Portland, Sacramento, Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Green Mountain, which is Burlington, Vermont, New York City and Ipsilante, Michigan,

Starting point is 01:28:51 who are all having locations on this tour. And that website will have all the tales like when, where, et cetera. Hell yeah. I'm excited. I also wanted to shout out specifically. First off, I'm the proud chairwoman of the Orientation Committee of NYCIWW. Actually, former branch secretary-treasurer of Northern New Jersey before we merge with New York. But NYCIWW is having our fire your boss tour stop at Woodbine in Manhattan on August 22nd. Starting at noon, free lunch will be provided. Oh, yeah. So here in the NYC area, please stop by.

Starting point is 01:29:32 Yeah. to meet the sexy trans-woman with the transatlantic accent. I visited Woodbine when it was still in Ridgewood, Queens. I'm very much looking forward to checking out their new location and joining you all. They still have that Queens location. I think they've just expanded into Manhattan. Right on. It's been ages now.

Starting point is 01:29:55 But anyway, if you're in Northern New England, you could join us at the Public Library in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday, August 16. That is Bennington Battle Day, a state holiday unique to the state of Vermont. Do you all have anything else that you want to tell everyone before we head out? I would say that I think what the IWW does very uniquely that I haven't really seen any other union do, is that, in my opinion, at our best, we go contractless. Shout out to Stardust Workers United. They're in NYCIWW shop,

Starting point is 01:30:36 who are the singing waiters and other staff at Ellen Stardust Diner. And of course, I'm a fan since I'm an actress and singer myself. And of course, fellow worker. But they don't have a contract. What they do is they use direct action in various tactics to exert their power and negotiate with the boss's issue,

Starting point is 01:31:00 by issue. They don't use state power to enforce it at all. There's been no election. There's no contract signed. All they did is get a bunch of their fellow workers to join the IWW and exist as a bargaining unit and exert power that way. And I think that's very powerful because we aren't relying upon the state to enforce our will. We're doing it ourselves. And that's such a powerful thing when so many people just are screaming, why won't someone save us? You know, everyone's like, why won't someone do something? Why won't someone do something? Why will someone do something?

Starting point is 01:31:43 And I'm just like, you can do it yourselves. You can make your own conditions better by you and your co-workers alone. And I think that's so special about the IWW is that that, truly is a revolutionary break from the state. The thing that I would want to end this conversation with is I feel like the labor movement and the United States has been trying the same thing over and over again for decades. Like ever since the National Labor Relations Act was passed, like we've been trying this contract model, like this service model that we've been talking about.

Starting point is 01:32:20 And it's kind of why the labor movement is as weak as it is today. And like the current administration is going after, like, like these protections that we had. And it kind of just goes to show how we can't rely on these pennies that the state throws us. Like these protections, they're not really real. Like, so we need to build our own power. We need to be reliant on ourselves. And there's one quote that I have really loved.

Starting point is 01:32:48 I don't know who said it, but it says today's labor movement, which involves the absolute majority of the global population, along with its allies and marginalized groups and minorities, must mount an offensive reviving strategies and energetic dedication to radical methods. And that's what we're trying to do with the fire boss story, is like return to these radical methods that worked so well, like historically. We need to try something new. So, yeah.

Starting point is 01:33:15 Yeah. It's something very, very new and very, very old at the same time. Hmm. There are some historians that put the estimates of members of the IWW. it's kind of hard to track due to a lot of the members where migrant workers put it at possibly over a million in the 1910s. And, you know, in my opinion, it's a good start. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:33:43 You know, let's get there. I mean, the AFL-CIO is like three, four, five million. You know, I'm hoping the fire your boss tour is the start of, you know, you know, no great, amazing things for our union because hell knows millions of people, if not billions, could benefit from us. Yeah. Every worker and organizer, I hope that's a step we're taking, right? I hope everyone that joins us on this tour is to feel more like an organizer, feel more

Starting point is 01:34:14 like a leader, and really understand what's going on in their workplace and all around the world, because that's what we need as we go forward. Yeah, but that's a good note to end on. and thank you. Thank all of you for coming on the show and talking. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for having us. Happy to.

Starting point is 01:34:32 And hopefully we all get to see each other like on the front lines of the class war someday soon. And when I say you, I mean everyone, you the listeners too. Solidarity. Thank you lovely listeners also. One cannot be an attention whore

Starting point is 01:34:48 if no one is there to listen to her. I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Oncour. out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf forades, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon.

Starting point is 01:35:23 Stream encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline.

Starting point is 01:35:59 And the conversations that start during the game and somehow, keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka, showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

Starting point is 01:36:33 You know us or rather you know. them, Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, The Chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea?

Starting point is 01:37:04 We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song.

Starting point is 01:37:25 I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. My first guest is Paris Hilton, Shakira, Luke and Yerrin, Samira, and Gracie. I'm so excited on the bouncy bed. You have surprises? Many surprises.

Starting point is 01:37:52 Welcome to Sweet 305 where the group chat comes to life. What a f***. It's like a way to say like, Oh, my name, hello, my friend, oh, my brother, oh, what a . Look, I never have to have to be a lot. Except with my kids, my kids, and so, know.

Starting point is 01:38:09 Se my amant. Oof. Oof. That's incredible. Yeah, the telenovela. You're the only

Starting point is 01:38:16 person I know that loves a yellow starburst. It's lemonade. And no there's someone like to say, me would

Starting point is 01:38:22 like to collaborate with this person. This is Sweet 305. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of

Starting point is 01:38:31 my Culture Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:38:41 This is It Could Happen Here, I'm Garrison Davis. A Spector is haunting the United States. Last year, Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani beat establishment politician Andrew Cuomo in the New York mayoral election two times, both in the Democratic primary and the November general. Since then, the Democratic Socialists of America have only grown their power in New York City, state, and the halls of Congress. Claire Valdez, Bradlander, and Dary Lisa of Villa Chevalier won their convalier, won their convales. congressional primary, unseeding two Democrat incumbents and beating one incumbent-backed progressive.

Starting point is 01:39:20 That same night, seven New York City DSA candidates won their Democratic primaries for the State Assembly and State Senate, paving the way to send seven new Democratic socialists to the New York State Legislature, joining the eight socialists already in office. In total, nine out of the ten insurgent candidates on the NYC-DSA slate won their races last month. beating sitting incumbents and establishment-backed candidates. When Hakeem Jeffries appeared on TV at a DSA election night party, the crowd chanted, you're next. The next, your next, your next, your next, your next.

Starting point is 01:40:00 The next morning in the Oval Office, President Trump commented on the DSA sweep. President Trump, great night for Democratic socialist candidates last night. And the New York primaries, they swept and knocked down. up to incumbents, you're from New York. Why do you think it is that now the endorsement of Zoran Mamdani means more than the endorsement of Hakeem Jeffries? Well, they're going radical left.

Starting point is 01:40:26 They're going, really, you know, you talk about the Democrat socialists. You took really, it's really communist. That's these people, I watched that woman last night. That's not a socialist. I know socialist, that's a, that woman is a communist. Just a week prior, a DSA, candidate won the Democratic primary in the Washington, D.C. mayoral election, and a DSA member

Starting point is 01:40:49 won the primary for the Ward 1 City Council seat. Then a week after the New York City sweep, another Democratic socialist, Melot Kiroz, won the Democratic primary in Colorado's first Congressional House district, unseeding a 30-year incumbent. This sequence of wins rattled both the Democratic establishment, as well as Trump and the GOP. Here's Trump again in the Oval Office on June 29th. Mr. President, Zoro and Mbondani said in an interview this week that he was open to being the poster child for socialist candidates. Are you worried about more socialist candidates across the United States? Well, I think it's a big threat to our nation, actually.

Starting point is 01:41:29 Because it's not socialism, it's really communism. They use the word social Democrat because it sounds so nice, but it's really communism you're talking about. I think it's the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding. President Trump spent much of the July 4th weekend, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the country, attacking communism. These are clips from Trump's America-250 address on July 4th and other speeches and press conferences from that same week.

Starting point is 01:42:01 Communism is a loser, and it always will be. The communist system is the opposite of the American system, and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not. fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen. Because it's like a cancer that spreads, and you better stop it fast. We will never let the United States become a communist country. You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. Communism's a disaster. It's been

Starting point is 01:42:39 been proven to be for thousands of years under different names, but same thing. There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11. As the DSA has won seats across the country, the organization has attracted new members.

Starting point is 01:43:17 After the 2024 presidential election, DSA had about 50,000 members nationally. This month, DSA reached over 120,000 members, a record high. Just the New York City chapter alone has over 15,000 members. Late last year, DSA allocated funding to open 20 new offices across the country. Around the June primary, the Zionist extremist group Canary Mission

Starting point is 01:43:45 started specifically targeting NYCDSA, with write-ups on all 10 of the insurgent candidates. Canary Mission's anti-NYC-DSA article from before the election was titled A Thousand Zorons, Don't Threaten with a Good Time. The article not only attacked the NYC-DSA candidates, but also highlighted how the organizational structure of NYCDSA

Starting point is 01:44:09 has established a template for success by running candidates as a whole block who can campaign together and then support each other once in office. Quote, NYC DSA elected officials meet weekly to align votes and coordinate strategy.

Starting point is 01:44:26 The machine doesn't stop in all caps. In a post on X the Everything app after the June primary, Canary Mission wrote, quote, New York City DSA is not just growing. It is building the machinery to turn radical ideology into political power.

Starting point is 01:44:45 The numbers show the scale. The largest DSA chapter in America, roughly 90,000 volunteers, hundreds of field leads, a candidate pipeline, and coordination that continues after election day. This is how a movement stops looking like protest and starts looking like infrastructure. New York is the testing ground. The machine is already. being built, unquote. And yeah, they're right. Basically, everything in that little quote is 100% true. And that is what's making both the liberal and conservative establishment nervous.

Starting point is 01:45:21 On the eve of July 4th, Fox News ran a segment on the Kami Revolution. Boyd House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt joins this now. The Kami Revolution, Caroline, did you ever see this coming? This is not your granddaddy's Democrat Party. This is not the Grand Democrat Party of JFK. This is a full-blown communist revolution that is taking over Capitol Hill. If these commies get in, they're going to be a powerful little caucus. They're going to hear to blow things up.

Starting point is 01:45:51 They're not here to negotiate Pentagon funding. They want zero Pentagon funding. They're in here to destroy the country. How would the president negotiate with people like that? I'm not sure you can. And I think that's why the president is being so bold. and warning the American public against this communist takeover of the Democrats. And as Ronald Reagan perfectly stated, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Starting point is 01:46:15 If these communists are given a chance at power here in Washington, D.C., if they retake the majority in Washington away from the Republicans, we will be heading down a communist takeover. This concerned by Jesse Waters of Fox News was also the topic of a Axios story from a few days after the New York primary. with quotes from quote unquote centrist Democrat lawmakers threatening that there's quote unquote going to be a war if the new members of Congress try to utilize their block to win policy concessions.

Starting point is 01:46:49 With one lawmaker calling the incoming members, quote, bomb throwers, not problem solvers. The idea is that if the Democrats win a small house majority in the next election, the growing coalition of Democratic social, Socialist and left-wing populist lawmakers could leverage their needed votes to get concessions from party leadership and wield an outsized influence on the party. In this story, Axios wrote that left-wing house reps, quote, moving on block would be able

Starting point is 01:47:20 to kill party-line votes to get their demands met, much like the far-right House Freedom Caucus has done the past few years. Progressive Rep. Dela Ramirez of Illinois is quoted in the piece, saying that the Congress, Progressional Progressive Caucus has a, quote, responsibility to be the strongest voter block to take a stand, not for the establishment, but for working people who send us to fight like hell for them. Threats of war from centrist Democrats

Starting point is 01:47:50 and cries of communism from Fox News and President Trump show a real fear of the growing momentum DSA is having, both as an organization and in the ballot box. And the fear that this kind of, kind of politics won't be contained to big cities in blue states. Here is Mamdani being interviewed on ABC shortly after the June primary. And you knocked off two Democratic incumbent members of Congress. Is this like a unique moment in New York, or is this the beginning of a national movement?

Starting point is 01:48:24 I think we are seeing a hunger that is not just felt by New Yorkers, but frankly by Americans from coast to coast for a new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it. And I think for far too long, what we as a party have been able to say to New Yorkers who are struggling is simply to explain why they're struggling, not actually offer them a vision for how to make life better. And these candidates, Brad, Dari Elisa, Claire, they ran campaigns that spoke to working people and that said life in the nation's most expensive city need not be this way any longer. And I can't wait to have them as partners in D.C. in that work. We'll be right back with Mike Johnson after this ad break. Three days after the DSA suite,

Starting point is 01:49:15 in New York, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson gave the keynote address at the Faith and Freedom Conference, where he essentially did free propaganda for the DSA. The DSA, the Democrat Socialists of America, sounds so innocuous, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. Don't say that. This is their platform. Listen, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published, I think, about a day or two ago.

Starting point is 01:49:41 You can find this on the Internet. Okay, here's just a sample of what they're about. They put this on paper. They're saying the quiet things out loud. Abolish the electoral college or place the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives. Implement proportional representation and rank choice voting in all elections. Abolish, well, establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. abolish ICE and grant amnesty for all. This isn't the quiet part out loud. This is Democratic Socialist of 101,

Starting point is 01:50:21 empowering workers by increasing democratic control of our own government and the unaccountable corporations that rule over our lives. But here's more from Mike Johnson. In sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, free Palestine, quote, for a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, end all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza. Abolish the carceral state.

Starting point is 01:50:51 Quote, redirect police and prison funding to public services as steps towards abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state. Y'all, it goes on and on and on. Defund the Department of War, replace the president and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen and subordinate to Congress, which they're hoping to take over. And the last one is abolish the Senate. Now, some of you may agree with that, but just leave that one there. Okay. It's fine. I'm kidding. The fact that the sitting house speaker felt the need to address these proposals signifies a serious Overton window shift, an opening up of the conversation on ending inhumane sanctions, reforming the Supreme Court, defunding the Pentagon, and abolishing.

Starting point is 01:51:39 the uniquely undemocratic institution of the Senate. Will that last one happen anytime soon? Probably not, but Mike Johnson apparently believes this is a topic worthy of public debate. This past Tuesday, Mike Johnson announced that the Pentagon is requesting an additional $350 billion. You've heard the president talk about how he wants to effectively double the funding for national defense.

Starting point is 01:52:08 Look, we live in dangerous time for fighting communes. as on our own shores, and we're fighting evil terrorists and tyrants around the world. Meanwhile, also this past Tuesday, DSA released the full version of their new national platform, which is what Mike Johnson was quoting from. This platform is titled, Workers Deserve More. And beyond what Mike Johnson has already helpfully outlined, it also contains paid family leave for all workers, a 32-hour workweek, a living minimum wage, canceling student debt, universal health care,

Starting point is 01:52:39 building publicly owned social housing, honoring all treaties and tribal sovereignty, finishing reconstruction, ending mass incarceration and police immunity, a federal jobs guarantee, publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure, ending the US war machine of free Palestine, ending all aid to Israel, prosecuting those responsible for the Gaza genocide, D.C. statehood, getting rid of lobbyists, dark money, and citizens united, and publicly financing all elections, while expanding and protecting voter rights and ending voter suppression, and of course, abolishing ICE. You can read the full platform in more detail at program.

Starting point is 01:53:16 org.org. I'll link it below. It's not very long and quite easy to read. It starts with a preamble to contextualize the goals of the organization and the purpose of an ambitious platform in our current moment. I'll quote from a section of that preamble now. Quote, if we lived in a classless society and guys, governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty. We could build a world where no one suffers for their race, gender, or religion, and everyone is free, equal, and cared for.

Starting point is 01:53:50 Building this world is the guiding star of our movement. When we labor for our common good instead of private profit, we can all have a secure and dignified life and use our time and talents how we wish. To achieve this future, our class must organize. The Democratic Socialist of America is building a party whose goal is a democratic society of the working class. Our enemies are not just individual bosses, but the entire global system of capital. Not just this or that cop, judge, or president, but the entire anti-democratic structure of our society. We are workers fighting to transform society, to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.

Starting point is 01:54:36 DSA has written this program for ending capitalist oligarchy and creating a real democracy. Some of these demands may be won under our current system, but we know complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up. We push these demands to their furthest extent today so that we can fight for their fullest realization in a socialist future, unquote. Meanwhile, let's check in on the liberals. On CNN's state of the union, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was asked about the recent DSA electoral wins. Democratic voters in New York chose three candidates backed by Zora Mamdani, far left and Democratic Socialist candidates. What message do you take from that about where your party is?

Starting point is 01:55:24 You know, those were races in individual districts in a whole other state. I think you're seeing very different-looking congressional races and certainly different Democratic candidates here in Pennsylvania. That's an interesting point being made by Governor Shapiro, who seems to be ignoring the fact that the first congressional primary win for a Democratic socialist this year was in Pennsylvania's third district. This past May, Democratic socialist Chris Robb, beat a candidate backed by the retiring incumbent, a candidate who compared calling the genocide in Gaza a genocide to saying the N-word. But Josh Shapiro is not the only one trying to argue. that DSA's success is limited to places like New York,

Starting point is 01:56:10 pundits have been saying the same thing, ever since Momdani won the primary over a year ago. But following the slate sweep last month, some Democratic lawmakers have tried to minimize the increasing trend of socialist candidates beating both moderate and sometimes even progressive politicians. The reaction from Democrats has been something. You've had some prominent Democrats dismissive of what happened here.

Starting point is 01:56:36 I mean, you had Senator Blumenthal say the effort to nationalize New York is going to fail. What happened in New York will be really irrelevant by the time of the elections in November. Hakeem Jeffries basically said the same thing, saying that this is not indicative of what needs to happen in November. What do you make of that? You know, I think that when you ask Americans what they're feeling in this moment, amidst reports of an economy that's strengthening, of a stock market that's booming, you will hear an exorkeptial. at having to try and make ends meet every single day, every single week, every single month, and that it's getting harder and harder. And so a message of fighting for working people, we don't have to nationalize that message. That is a national message. It's a national crisis.

Starting point is 01:57:20 And for far too long, all we've had to say as a party is opposition to the current administration. What do we have to say beyond that? And what these candidates offer is a vision that extends beyond the midterms, it extends beyond 2028. It speaks to what makes so many, of us proud to be Democrats. It speaks to a vision that goes back to a new deal understanding of what working people deserve. And I'll tell you that for too long, that kind of politics, you can only find it in history books, and we need to bring it back to the present day. On CNN, Josh Shapiro addressed his disagreements with one particular candidate in New York, Chevalier, saying, quote, her district voted for her, but I have profound differences from

Starting point is 01:58:01 that particular candidate. And she's not someone who seemingly I would agree with on things or that we share similar values. She ran on the Democratic ticket. I guess she is a socialist. Her voters in that district determined that she was the one they wanted representing her. I think what is important are the people who are making a lot of noise who are engaging in these performative politics have to now figure out how to deliver results. It's one thing to speak in platitudes during a campaign. It's a whole other thing to actually deliver for people who are genuinely hurting, who genuinely need to see cost of living go down, meaning their ability to make ends meet, you know, go up, fixing a broken health care system, reining in excesses,

Starting point is 01:58:48 being able to, you know, give people the promise of liberty that we've talked about. I think we as a party need to find our way toward candidates who actually can deliver for people and make their lives better. I'm curious who Shapiro thinks such candidates may be because the 2024 election showed that voters lost faith that national Dems could deliver any of those things. Whereas in just six months, Democratic Socialist Zohar Mamdani delivered free child care, a two-year rent freeze, a new plan to make buses faster, all while balancing the budget and overcoming a $12 billion dollar deficit left by Eric Adams. We don't have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins. I won last November, and over the course of these last six months, what we've delivered

Starting point is 01:59:36 for working people are the very things we were told were impossible. We've delivered free child care for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City history. We've delivered tens of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken advantage of by bad landlords. We've delivered 165,000 potholes being paved. And we've done all of these things while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in our city's history. That's what it looks like to have democratic socialism.

Starting point is 02:00:00 And what you're seeing is that New Yorkers experienced this for six months and made the decision that they wanted to see more of it on the national stage as well. Governor Shapiro has said the Democratic Party is going through, quote, a battle over what we believe in, unquote. And I think that's true.

Starting point is 02:00:18 But moderates can never see. seem to really express what they believe in, beyond opposition to both Trump and the Democratic Socialists. Meanwhile, Mamdani is on the news, clearly articulating what he believes in and why the party should believe in it, too. I think it has to stand for working people, and I think it has to be willing to fight for working people. And I think that there are some who are offended by the prospect of a party that knows who it fights for and goes every day to work for that, because what we've seen over many years is a willingness to not only explain away the status quo, but frankly even to look to benefit from the status quo.

Starting point is 02:00:57 And that's not what working people are looking for from our party. Can a Democratic Socialist get elected president? I think a Democratic Socialist can get elected anywhere across this country for any position. What I think we need to bring is a focus on working people. And that's the direction that the party should go in in in terms of selecting a candidate for 2028. I think the direction that the party should go in is how best to find. fight for working people. I think we need to have a platform and a vision that doesn't sound as if it was cooked up by consultants, but instead one that you would say in response to someone who's asking,

Starting point is 02:01:28 why can't I afford my rent? Why can I afford my groceries? Why can I afford my child care? We need to make clear who we stand for, how we're going to stand for them, and that we're actually willing to fight for them when the going gets tough. As Red Scare style rhetoric has surged on the right, we've begun to see more establishment Dems team up with conservative media and Republican politicians in trying to take down the DSA to protect their shared class interests. This was already happening throughout the New York mayoral race last year, eventually leading to Trump endorsing Andrew Cuomo on the eve of the election. But as the DSA keeps building power and winning races across the country, so too will this bipartisan ruling class alliance continue to spread. Late last month,

Starting point is 02:02:13 Democratic advisor James Carville went on Fox News to discuss the danger of Democratic socialism and the possibility of a party schism. Since then, Fox has been airing clips of Carville's own podcast, where he attacks the DSA. Socialism surge is threatening to shake up the Democratic Party. Big wins from Mondani-backed candidates in New York this week, just the latest for the Democratic Socialists of America.

Starting point is 02:02:38 Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville says it could be time to split. I actually do think it's time for Democrats to talk the S word, schism. I really do. Everybody's always said, no, no, we're coalition, we're a big tent. And there's just some that I can't be in the same camp with. Later in that segment, Fox brought on a quote-unquote Democratic strategist who worked under

Starting point is 02:03:07 Andrew Cuomo to rail against socialists trying to hijack the party. No, listen, I've been saying this for the last several months in trying to sound the alarm on this. These people are not Democrats. They are socialists. And what they've done is they have strategically in the last 10 years since Bernie did his run in 2016 come up with a strategy in order to take over the Democratic Party. They've very organized. They've been working on the local level, but make no mistake.

Starting point is 02:03:35 These are not Democrats. They fundamentally do not believe in the same things as far as public safety, as far as the seizure of private property, as far as celebrating terrorism and stoking anti-Semitism. And so, yes, big tent, we've always been a big tent, no to hijack tent. And the reality is they should start their own party and run there, but they know that won't be successful, so they're trying to take over hours. And it is a disaster. As already mentioned, moderate Democrats in the House are threatening, quote-unquote, war. And high-level Democratic Party figures have been airing frustrations that DSA candidates are benefiting from running on the

Starting point is 02:04:14 Democratic ballot line, while seeking to fundamentally change the nature of the party itself. Former chair of the DNC, Jamie Harrison, wrote, quote, I say this with no ill will or animosity. If you hate the Democratic Party, then please don't run for our nomination. Don't use our resources. Don't rely on our volunteers. Don't use our infrastructure. Don't ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy into your campaign. focus on building the party you actually support. Political parties aren't perfect, but they're built by millions of people

Starting point is 02:04:50 who knock doors, make calls, organize meetings, and fight for the values they believe in. If you don't believe in the party, then don't ask its members to carry you across the finish line, unquote. Something that Jamie Harrison seems to not quite comprehend, which makes sense,

Starting point is 02:05:06 considering he's the former chair of the DNC under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, is that party nominees are supposed to be chosen by the voters, not party elites, and these Democratic Socialist candidates are winning primaries, despite strong opposition from state Democratic parties, entrenched political machines in city government, and national establishment forces. The DSA has to out-organize the Democratic establishment and overcome the power of corporate money just to get on the Democratic ballot line in November. Of course, if DSA candidates ran third party, then people like Jamie Harrison

Starting point is 02:05:46 would just claim that they're spoiler candidates helping the GOP win. There's no satisfying these people. They just have to be beaten. Vice chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, Mariamma James, smeared all DSA members as having a quote-unquote white supremacist mindset after she lost the primary for State Assembly District 65 in Chinatown and the Lower East Side to DSA candidate Hiapha Cyri Tupac. In this same election cycle, the ADL and Congressman Josh Gottheimer attacked Mamdani for referring to dark money super PACs like APAC as quote unquote monsters. In reference to the Gramshy quote,

Starting point is 02:06:29 The Old World is Dying and the New World struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. the ADL and Congressman Gottheimer claimed that both dark money and the word monster invoked anti-Semitic tropes. Meanwhile, senior advisor to Adriano Espayat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who was up against Chevalier, weaponized anti-Hasian animus towards the Chevalier, who is Afro-Latina, and on a Spanish-language podcast, Espiat's senior advisor, said that Mamdani wanted to change the demographics of the Washington Heights neighborhood in Upper Manhattan by making it, quote, no longer be a bastion of the

Starting point is 02:07:09 Dominican community, but instead a bastion of the Haitian Muslim community allied to him, unquote. Congressman Josh Gottheimer responded to the DSA's victory in the Democratic primary by continuing to attack the now Democratic nominees and released a centrist manifesto rebuking communism. DSA asked Mayor Maldani about the manifesto and the Democratic politicians like Gautheimer who claim that socialists can't be Democrats. Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic member of Congress, says many of us believe, as do I. If you're a socialist, you are not a Democrat.

Starting point is 02:07:48 And in fact, they put out a manifesto today. Have you seen this thing? Sounds pretty socialist to me. It's not a communist manifesto. It's a moderate manifesto. Saying, we are capitalist and not socialist. We believe in a growing fair. and competitive economy, entrepreneurship, ownership.

Starting point is 02:08:04 I mean, this is a direct response they've made it clear to what you did here on Tuesday. Well, I mean, you know, that's great, but what's a party, if not it's voters? And I'm proud to sit in front of you as the mayor of our city having received more than a million votes a little over, a little less than a year ago. And when we're talking about these incredible congressional candidates, they won their races and they won their races with the vision of what politics should be and one that actually speaks to working people. And for a lot of people who ask themselves, what does democratic socialism mean? And you can tell them the answer at a theoretical level. It's the choice to extend democracy from the ballot box the rest of their lives. But in terms of what it means over these last seven months, we've seen a city with democratic socialist principles at the heart of it within our administration.

Starting point is 02:08:48 We will return to discuss how communists and Miss Rachel are teaming up to destroy America after this ad break. Last Saturday, Fox News ran a story about the DSA's new national platform workers deserve more. Let's take a listen. Fox News has obtained documents from the Democratic Socialists of America revealing the group's updated platform, which is even more radical than before. Now, they plan to release this next week. Listen to this. The United States Senate eliminated, gone. The president and the Supreme Court replaced.

Starting point is 02:09:36 the Department of War defunded all immigrants given amnesty. That is the plan. The rest of the Fox report tried to paint DSA as being driven by anarchists, Marxists, and crazy communists who want to destroy the country. The report highlighted a few of the niche caucuses within DSA that focus on anti-imperialism, promote anti-electoralism, and... Explicitly push communism. Later on in this sense,

Starting point is 02:10:06 segment, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Trump's current top electoral advisor, James Blair, joined the program to discuss the communist menace. James, this is what you're up against in the midterms. And we keep hearing it's a New York problem, except here we go. There are DSA candidates in Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, New Hampshire. So what is your plan to defeat these radicals? Well, I think we just have to bring their issues to the American people and the American people are going to reject them. Let's talk about the views that they're actually espousing and what they want to bring to the country.

Starting point is 02:10:40 You said it, as they say in their documents, no amnesty for all illegal immigrants, no deportations at all, not even the criminals. Let me think, when was the last time an unpopular incumbent party failed to address economic issues affecting working class voters and just tried to hold on to power by fearmongering about the opposition's platform? Oh yeah, 2024, when the Democrats tried and failed spectacularly to campaign on stopping. Project 2025. But now the tables are turned. So by all means, Mr. Blair, don't try to offer an actual alternative platform that improves workers' lives. Just tell them all about the DSA's platform instead, especially when ICE is historically unpopular and can't seem to not murder someone every week.

Starting point is 02:11:25 Believe it or not, this Fox News segment actually ended by talking about the threat posed by evil far-left communist and children's educational YouTuber, Miss Rachel. Let's remind our viewers who Miss Rachel is if your kids do not watch her like mine do not. This is Miss Rachel. Hello friends. Hello friends. Hello, friends. Hello, hello, friends. Are you guys afraid to take on Miss Rachel? I would love to take on Miss Rachel. It'll be the end of her show, which would be a service to America. My kids, and I have four under the age of six, they also don't watch her. She's rachel. She's radically far left. Her show is really about indoctrinating children. And honestly, if that's the fight

Starting point is 02:12:12 we have to have, I'm happy to have it. No problem. We will beat her like a drum. Yeah, that sure sounds like a message that will resonate with voters. Data for Progress ran a survey last month asking over 2,000 likely voters. What actors are most harmful to our society and the economy? at number one was billionaires, number two, corporate landlords, three, sports gambling, four, artificial intelligence, and five, cryptocurrency. The Republican Party was found to be the seventh most harmful, and the Democratic Party was the ninth. So, despite popular opposition to things that DSA candidates are specifically trying to address, Trump seems to believe that just screaming communism will stymie the growth of

Starting point is 02:13:00 Democratic socialism, and scare voters away from voting in their class interest. Liberal became so tarnished, but now it's communist. You know, they say social Democrats. No, social Democrat is a communist, all right? Just so, you know, there's no so. If you look at the people that are running, it's crazy what they're doing. But we won't, we'll never let that happen to this country. It can't happen to the country. There's no appetite for it. If there's no appetite for it, how come Bernie, Sanders and Zoran Mamdani are the two most popular sitting politicians in the country.

Starting point is 02:13:36 How come one in ten Mamdani voters voted for Trump in 2024? That's over 100,000 voters who backed Trump and then a year later voted for Mamdani. Candidates like Zoran are not just appealing to a sizable portion of people who voted Trump, but are also pulling in new voters who might, for the first time in their lives, actually have something to vote for. In New York City, around 260,000 people registered to vote in 2025, more than double that of the last mayoral election in 2021. Almost two-thirds of those new voters were under the age of 30. A Cato poll from late June found that among millennials, 50% were favorable towards capitalism, but 40% were favorable to socialism, and 29% were favorable towards communism.

Starting point is 02:14:33 These percentages total over 100, because this was a multiple choice selection. But the numbers among Gen Z are even more striking. According to this Cato poll, 53% of Gen Z respondents were favorable towards socialism, 45% to capitalism and 38% to communism. The New York Times ran an article this past Tuesday about how support for NYC DSA candidates in the last election was not divided by race, but rather by age, with older voters tending to support establishment candidates, while younger voters backed insurgent challengers. A yugov poll from June 29th showed that the favorability of socialism was at

Starting point is 02:15:19 58% among Democrats and just 11% unfavorable. Among independence, socialism was 34% unfavorable to 30% favorable, and among Republicans, 71% unfavorable to 11% favorable. An echelon poll from early July asked Democrats, should the DSA have a larger or smaller influence on the Democratic Party than they currently do. 46% of Democrats said the DSA should have a larger influence. 21% said smaller and 33% were unsure. Following the DSA's congressional victories last month, there have been multiple think pieces in the Atlantic about how the DSA has gotten

Starting point is 02:16:06 too radical and abandoned its social democratic roots, and how, quote unquote, Democrats became great by fighting the left in the post-war period. in the post-war period when liberals fought off a communist incursion into the Democratic Party led by Henry Wallace, former vice president to FDR. An opinion piece in the Washington Post penned by the president and executive vice president of the centrist think tank third way, argued that, quote, DSA's radicalism makes it not a faction to be appeased, but a movement to be opposed.

Starting point is 02:16:42 They insist that Democratic Socialists, ideas are quote-unquote electoral poison and claim that, quote, far-left governance has also been a failure, while ignoring the biggest most recent example of far-left governance in New York City. On first glance, this piece in the Washington Post presents a contradictory problem that DSA will hand Republicans perfect attack ad fodder that will tank Democrats' electoral chances, especially in swing states. But on the other hand, they believe the biggest threat posed by DSA is that their candidates are continuing to win elections and may thus transform the makeup of the Democratic Party. Or, as the authors write, the DSA's commitment is to, quote, hollowing out the Democratic Party from within

Starting point is 02:17:34 by primarying sitting Democrats and replacing them with, quote, unquote, ideological zealots. To this point, the authors directly compare DSA's wave of success to the Republican Tea Party movement from around 2010 that reshaped the GOP and set the stage for Trump to come rolling in and slingshot the Republicans into power. They wrote that for years, the Tea Party, quote, looked like self-sabotage.

Starting point is 02:18:03 Then a charismatic outsider arrived, harnessed the energy the Tea Party fomented and took over the Republican Party. Democrats who assume a takeover can't happen have learned nothing from the death of the party of Reagan. The DSA is building a left-wing ideological movement waiting for its standard bearer, unquote. So the DSA is both electoral poison, but also risks being so popular and so successful that Democratic socialism could take over the Democratic Party. Despite all the concern trolling, the author's real fear isn't that,

Starting point is 02:18:41 DSA's radical rhetoric will sabotage Democrats' ability to win elections, but that the DSA's recent victories could very well lead to a Democratic Party with workers at the forefront. And such a party would threaten the class interests of think-take ghouls, like those at Third Way. One of the biggest results of DSA's electoral strategy beyond winning seats is reorienting American politics back to a class-based understanding of politics. Whether that's framed in red-scar terms like capitalism versus communism, more sloppelist rhetoric like regular people versus the quote-unquote Epstein class, or simply the working class against the bipartisan elites,

Starting point is 02:19:29 the DSA's momentum and this new red scare point to a return of class struggle. politics. And this is the result of Democratic Socialists, especially the New York chapter of DSA, who have been slowly building power the past decade, experimenting, winning local races, and increasing their organizational capacity. After the 2024 election, the Democratic Party was in a uniquely compromised state. Then state assembly members, Zarnam Dani, and the DSA, seized on this opportunity to redefine what democratic politics are, show that they can win and demonstrate that they can succeed at governing and advancing the interests of the working class in the biggest city in the country.

Starting point is 02:20:13 While reacting to Mayor Mamdani's Independence Day speech, Steve Bannon cautioned against dismissing the threat posed by Mamdani. This is quite serious. If you dismiss this guy and dismiss the people around him and dismiss the money in back of him, you are missing something that. that's more powerful than Obama. And it's not just this guy. It's the team around him.

Starting point is 02:20:40 Of course, Steve Bannon cannot understand that something like Mamdani isn't the result of big money, but rather regular people, individual donors, and 100,000 volunteers who actually believe in fighting for a positive political project.

Starting point is 02:20:58 The next major test of that project will be in Wisconsin, where Democratic Socialist candidate, Francesco Hong is running for governor. If she wins her upcoming primary, come November, this election will be the biggest test case to see if Democratic Socialists can organize and win statewide in a swing state.

Starting point is 02:21:18 See you on the other side. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free I-Hare radio app. Make some noise. Woo-ee! Catch every laugh and eye roll

Starting point is 02:21:41 on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas, and Las Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Open the free IHartRadio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all?

Starting point is 02:22:02 It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and IHart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating?

Starting point is 02:22:23 The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that.

Starting point is 02:22:44 Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the Iheart radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

Starting point is 02:23:02 You know us or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning,

Starting point is 02:23:20 breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people

Starting point is 02:23:36 who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write.

Starting point is 02:23:53 I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My first guest is Paris Tolkien, Shakita. Luke and Yerin, Samira and Gracie!

Starting point is 02:24:17 I'm so excited on the bouncy bed. You have surprises, many surprises. Welcome to Sweet 305, where the group chat comes to life. What a . It's like a way to say like, Oh, my God, my friend, oh, my brother. What a . Look, I never have to have to be

Starting point is 02:24:33 have to be able to know, my kids, my children. I see my amante. Oof, that's incredible, yeah, the telenovela. You're the only person I know that loves a yellow starburst. It's lemonade. No, there's someone who says, I'd like to collaborate with this person.

Starting point is 02:24:56 This is Sweet 305. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of my Culturea Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong. This episode, we are covering the week of July 8th to July 15th. A totally different war in Iran has started. And ICE has killed two people this week.

Starting point is 02:25:40 James Stout will have a segment on that later this episode. But let's start with a few small things. Mitch McConnell has entered into a pact with the demon metastophiles who extend his life in exchange for the death of another. In other news, four-term senator Lindsay Graham has died following what his office calls a quote-unquote brief and sudden illness. I want to take two seconds to speak ill of the man. So I found this out from Sophie messaging us in the group chat

Starting point is 02:26:12 and I fully read the title of the article and clicked on it. And I fully read the words Lindsey Graham, and my brain went, well, obviously, it's Mitch McConnell. Someone made a typo or something in the headline. It wasn't even like I thought there was a typo. It's like, fully my brain refused to process that it was Lindsay Graham instead of Mitch McConnell. What a bait and switch, though. Like, an incredible week in Senate politics. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:26:36 Oh, my God. Completely wild. The second thing I want to say ill of him was there's a very funny Axios thing where he's talking about how he's not going to go to the hospital and he can't die because he has to do like tariffs and then also specifically he has to do Israel Saudi Arabia normalization. He has to establish yeah Israel's Israeli-Saudy relations. And this is I think how he should go out being remembered, which is trying to broker an alliance between like the world's worst monarchy and like one of the world's worst democracies.

Starting point is 02:27:08 Two of the most evil countries in the world. Yeah, like two of the top five, which is really impressive right now. We're up there too. Yeah. On Saturday night, EMS responded to a call for quote-unquote cardiac arrest at Graham's Capitol Hill home, according to police scanner audio. And on Sunday, Graham's office announced the preliminary cause of death was a rupture of his iorda due to a hardening of his arteries. That same day, Mitch McConnell posted a photo holding today's newspaper. On Monday, Trump went on Newsmax to say that Graham's death actually wasn't related to his,

Starting point is 02:27:48 artery problems, and instead he died of heart complications. Quote, a certain part of his body literally blew up. Let's play the clip. You have any suspicions or worries? Do you think we know the whole story about his death? Well, I think we do. We've had great doctors, and they talked about, you know, a certain part of his body literally blew up. And that's a condition. I believe his father had also. His father also had the part of body blows up condition. God. Part of me hopes that there is a hell and that Lindsay Graham is looking up in hell and seeing that this is what Donald Trump, the man who he just like turned his entire career into backing the saying about him. On Tuesday, Trump addressed some whirling conspiracy theories around Graham's death, whether or not he was poisoned by the Russians or other nefarious acts. may have taken place.

Starting point is 02:28:51 And Trump just said, quote, I know there's all sorts of conspiracy theories going around, and I think the FBI is wasting their time if they are doing that, unquote. Now, that's in reference to a post made by Cash Fettel following Graham's death, which was mostly like an ordinary, like, memorial statement. But curiously, it ended with this sentence,

Starting point is 02:29:15 quote, the FBI's assisting local authorities and it's made every necessary resource available, unquote. I think this is Patel just being a kind of like a moron. Yeah, I was talking with Molly Conger about this earlier this week, and she said that Patel often makes kind of posts like this following like big national news, just because he like is still caught in like the content creator mindset. It just you have to like comment on everything and like relate it back to yourself in some way.

Starting point is 02:29:48 Now, the FBI did go through, like, Graham's home, and, like, that's pretty ordinary. But, but I think a post like this is, I don't think indicating a larger conspiracy or foul play at work and is kind of just an oversight made by Patel not really thinking about the consequences of his actions. Yeah. And, like, part of the consequences is that, like, a huge portion of the right is convinced that he was killed by some nebulous force. there's like 5,000 different unhinged theories as to who killed him or whatever, but like, no, he's just old. No, his body just literally blew up. Now, following Lindsay Graham's death, his sister, Darlene Graham Norton, was appointed

Starting point is 02:30:33 by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster to serve the remainder of Graham's term, which ends in January. I didn't know you could just do that. You can just call if... Oh, yeah. Well, I know you... Yeah. I know the governor appoints, but just calling up the dead senator's sister to be like,

Starting point is 02:30:51 hey, do you want to fill in? There was some election where Alan Ashcroft lost an election to a dead guy, and I think they put his spouse in office or something afterwards. So, like, I guess there is precedent for this extremely baffling shit. It's pretty remarkable. Lindsay Graham had actually just won the Republican nomination for his fifth term, but now South Carolina will hold a special election next month. to select a new nominee.

Starting point is 02:31:16 Nancy Mace has thrown her hat into the ring. We'll see if anything comes to that. So Week was off to a kind of an okay start, I guess. In other news, in a 308 to 117 vote, the House passed legislation to make daylight savings time permanent nationwide. The bill supported by Trump, and if passed by the Senate, it would end the twice a year clock changes. Pack it up, folks.

Starting point is 02:31:44 Hunter Biden sat down with Nick Fuentes on Andrew Callahan's Channel 5 podcast this week. Oh, God. Legitimate Nightmare Blunt rotation. Yeah. I've never been on the pro-Hunter Biden train. No. Because he is, obviously, his interests are in no way related to mine or that of, you know, regular people. But hopefully this will stop the whole Hunter Biden stand community online.

Starting point is 02:32:12 Yeah. I also just want to mention because I think people don't know who this guy is or remember it. But, yeah, there have been a series of sexual assault allegations against Andrew Callahan. And also, yeah, part of the nightmare blunt rotation. Andrew Callahan is 100% part of nightmare blunt rotation. Oh, yeah, yeah. I just want to make it clear that he is. Yes.

Starting point is 02:32:35 This is absolutely his crowd. In some better news, the Trump administration is abandoning a proposal. rule change to block Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals that provide gender affirming care to trans youth. Over 30,000 comments were submitted following the proposal last December, medical groups like the American Medical Association and the Children's Hospital Association pushed back on the proposal. The vast majority of those 30,000 comments were against this proposed rule change. This is good. This is a good thing. This was a big threat that prompted hospitals to comply in advance, they should not have done that and that is bad.

Starting point is 02:33:15 And we still don't know if those hospitals will reinstate care. Yeah, yeah. And they should still be pressured. Yep. And obviously, the administration is still going after trans youth care specifically. They're still trying to go after patient records and are targeting specific hospitals with criminal subpoenas. Not all of those subpoenas have been successful. But this is good news about this proposed rule change.

Starting point is 02:33:40 Yeah. On Friday, Fergie Chambers, self-styled, quote-unquote, anti-imperialist communist and multi-million dollar heir to the Cox family fortune, was detained in Ibiza Spain under requests from the U.S. Justice Department, who is attempting to extradite Chambers back to the states and is being charged with international money laundering, with intent to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations. likely Hamas. The past few years, Chambers has donated millions to pro-Palestinian causes and has been globetrotting the past few months. This is a political prosecution, whether or not you like Chambers or disagree with parts of his politics. This is probably a bad thing and a bad sign for pro-Palestinian politics across the

Starting point is 02:34:32 United States. Oh, yeah. Spain has like 40 days to decide if they're going to comply with the extradition request, and Chambers has a bail hearing on Thursday to see if he will remain in detention. Speaking of international far-left terrorism, on Thursday, July 16th, Marco Rubio will be holding an international meeting at the State Department focused on the threat of Antifa and the, quote, resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism. According to the Washington Post, Board, senior ministers from more than 60 countries were invited, though many will be unlikely

Starting point is 02:35:16 to attend due to the meeting's vague aims and short notice. One European diplomat told the Washington Post they were confused as to why they were invited, quote, we don't have Antifa. Another said, quote, our law enforcement authorities have not focused on left-wing terrorism because that is not considered a high priority threat in our country, unquote. Oh, Washington Post also reported that some U.S. officials will not be attending this meeting.

Starting point is 02:35:46 Out of growing fear that the increased targeting of far-left activists may backfire on conservatives once Trump is out of office. Living fear, motherfuckers. So we are recording this before this summit is going to take place. If something comes of it, we may report on it later on. Yeah. In more Mark Rubio News,

Starting point is 02:36:13 Secretary of State Mark Rubio announced on Monday that the United States is launching a campaign to dismantle the international criminal court, which Rubio says threatens American sovereignty. We're not even in it. We're not even in the ICC. What are we doing here? The ICC has attracted the IR of conservatives

Starting point is 02:36:34 ever since its inception. Yeah. But this week, Rubio announced the launch of a whole of government effort that will use, quote, all the tools at our government's disposal to take on the court. Reuters reported out options being considered include, quote, travel bans, visa restrictions, increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations, and diplomatic pressure on other nations to withdraw from the International Criminal Court,

Starting point is 02:37:02 unquote. Rubio penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, which is behind a paywall. Incredible. explaining, quote, why we're dismantling the international criminal court. And I'll quote from the piece here, quote, last year, major activist groups urged high-ranking international officials, quote, to take immediate and meaningful action against the Trump administration's deportation of violent criminals to El Salvador. Months later, a former ICC chief prosecutor declared President Trump's strikes against narco-terrorists amounted to a quote-unquote crime against humanity

Starting point is 02:37:40 and should be treated as such under international law, a line that was echoed by United Nations leaders and major leftist non-governmental organizations, Democratic Party officials and politicians. In March, the Washington-based democracy for the Arab world now urged the Iranian regime to request an ICC investigation of quote-unquote apparent war crimes committed by American personnel, unquote. War crimes and Joyer hates the people who every once in a blue moon sort of do something about war crimes guys, huh?

Starting point is 02:38:14 Yeah. So, I mean, this shows that there is at least some level of fear in the Trump administration or the State Department that strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, disappearing immigrants into an El Salvadorian prison, and strikes on civilian infrastructure and civilians in Iran could result in at least some sort of pressure being applied on the U.S. from the ICC. see, Rubio wants to get ahead of that in some way. Yeah. I don't think this will be very successful. The U.S. doesn't really hold much diplomatic power right now. This is kind of posturing. This is posturing that we've seen from Republican administrations before, especially in the 2010s.

Starting point is 02:38:53 But I think this is interesting and worth noting. Lastly, one more small news item. Jake Tapper is a sniveling, weasel, coward, and fraud. On Sunday, Jake Taffer interviewed President Trump, and let's take a look at his hard-hitting questions. Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. Is that true, Mr. President? It's open as far as we're concerned.

Starting point is 02:39:19 Don't talk about it. Talk about the reason that you ask me to speak. Okay. We appreciate your time, sir. Okay. Oh, boy. Incredible journalism on display at CNN. Tapper finished this quote-unquote interview

Starting point is 02:39:33 by sucking off the president just a little bit more. Well, I know you don't want to talk about any other issues out of respect for Lindsay Graham, but we would love to have you back sometime because I do have a lot of other questions for you, sir. Sure. We'll do that. We'll do that. Thank you for calling in. We're trying to have CNN go on a normal path, and we'll do that. Well, I'm on a normal path right here, sir, and I appreciate your time.

Starting point is 02:39:55 And thank you for calling in. Okay. Thanks so much. I'm a good little boy, Mr. President. Please, please like me. I've been good. I won't challenge you on anything. I swear. The most astonishing part of this is all of this like

Starting point is 02:40:09 all of this like sniveling like bootlicking didn't even get him an in-person interview This is a phone call Like come on I'm no fan of the man But recently he has been appealing to Trump a lot more And to me it kind of seems like he's frying out for David Ellison In case the Paramount WB deal goes through And that results in Barry Weiss or someone of that ilk

Starting point is 02:40:34 Being put in charge of CNN So I think that in part Tapper is trying to demonstrate to those people that he will play ball. Whereas Cooper, Anderson Cooper has said if that happens, he will not work for someone like Barry Weiss, as he has left 60 minutes, which has been put under Barry Weiss's control, though he remains at CNN. That's all for our first segment. We will come back with a special report from James Stout on two ice killings and the new war with Iran. Okay, we are back.

Starting point is 02:41:22 Here's our segment from James Stout. Hi, everyone. It's me, James. I am calling in from Front Range in Colorado. Apologies if I sound tired. I have slept approximately three hours in the last 24. But I am joining you today to talk about two things, which you can probably guess, if you follow the news at all. I want to start out with Iran,

Starting point is 02:41:45 and then we're going to talk about ice. hostilities between the USA and Iran have resumed in a new and of course totally different war that in no way requires congressional authorisation. The USA carried out four consecutive nights of strikes on the day of recording, which is Wednesday. They carried those out inside Iran, while Iran once again attempted to close the Strait of Hormuz firing on ships in the strait. In addition, the Iranians have struck Carter, which has been a mediator in talks between them and the United States, as well as other countries in the region and what it received to be U.S. allies and assets. At the time of recording on Wednesday night, we have gone

Starting point is 02:42:22 from sporadic strikes to the full-on beating of the drums of war again. The United States has returned to its previous blockade of Iran, according to SENTCOM. Central Command is the military command that covers that region. Sentcom also used one-way surface drones to strike Iranian port facilities. This is the first documented use of these corsair drones in this capacity. If you're thinking about how to picture this in your mind, think about a remote control boat much bigger than your average toy boat, but much smaller than a warship size with jet ski maybe. And these are laden with explosives piloted to a target and then they detonate right. That's where they're called one way. I don't prefer the term suicide drone. It's not the drone that's dying. It's people.

Starting point is 02:43:06 I don't like to try to muddy the waters with that. The CENTCOM and the United States are still insisting that the Strait of Hormuz is open and they've claimed that they've shot down Iranian drones, but in the past week, Iran has hit Saudi-flagged tankers in a Singaporean ship, hitting at least four vessels in the strait since last week. Iran has also claimed to have sunk a St. Kitzinnebis flagged vessel on Tuesday, and they have once again returned with full ferocity to their campaign of attacks against southern Kurdistan. I just heard from Prinsing southern capital. Kurdistan today, I've got dozens of messages of pictures of drones going overhead, drones being shot down, drones being intercepted, fires, etc. The United States, for its part, has also

Starting point is 02:43:52 begun firing on ships. Today, it hit the motor tanker Belma with a hellfire missile. They claimed that they warned the vessel, and it was heading in the direction of Karg Island. It didn't comply, so they disabled it by firing a missile into a smokestack. And for his part, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has returned to making threats of war crimes. Here's a clip. And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all their power plants.

Starting point is 02:44:25 All right. And now we're going to move on to another really heartbreaking story. ICE has killed three Americans this week. And I'm going to start and go most in depth with a story of a 26-year-old Maynor named Juan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. He was killed by ICE on Monday. Durang Guerrero was a Colombian citizen. He was in his car when agents seemed to have tried to stop him. A video released by the Portland Press Herald and shot on the scene

Starting point is 02:44:54 shows Durang Guerrero's car slowly circling, with agents standing on either side of the vehicle and not in its path. It appears that later, ICE agents rammed the vehicle with their SUV and then shot Durang Guerrero. Further video, which I just saw, I know I say this a lot, but you don't have to watch this to care. It's not a mark of how much you care or you don't care how much you traumatise yourself. You don't have to watch this to care with your whole heart.

Starting point is 02:45:22 But videos show some pulling his body from the vehicle, throwing it on the floor, and handcuffing him. There was not in the video what I perceived to be evidence of any immediate attempt to render aid. One witness has said she heard the agent to yell weapon, according to Banga Daily News. The Daily News reported that, quote, The witness said that one officer had walked away after the shooting and started to cry, but returned to the man and started administering CPR when the other officers said he has a pulse. Another witness related where I was saying, I tried to stop. And then the SUV hit him again and he tried him.

Starting point is 02:46:02 And then that's when he stopped. Ice agent got out, tried to open the door and had a difficult time, but eventually opened it and pulled the guy out. His face was bloody, his head was bloody. And I clearly heard the victim say, I tried to stop. Clearly heard him say that. The ice agent that shot him walked right in front of me. And, of course, I was emotional, and I just let him have it.

Starting point is 02:46:33 And he looked at me and he said, he tried to run me over or something to that effect. I don't remember his exact words. There was another ice agent with him that was trying to comfort him, and they walked away. It appears Duranguero's family witness shooting, which is heartbreaking. Reporting in the Portland Press Herald, said a woman and a young girl were holding hands and crying at the scene. She couldn't have been older than three, said witness Portland Press Herald spoke to. This person who spoke to them has a two-year-old son. I'm going to quote here from the Press Herald.

Starting point is 02:47:07 She was still in her bluey pajamas. Just minutes after a man was shot and killed, reportedly by federal immigration officials, who missed him, that's the name of their source, saw who she believes was the victim's daughter. She said the older of the two women yelled to law enforcement. You took her dad, you took her dad. Duran Guerrero's father talking to a Noticius Caracol, Colombia said,

Starting point is 02:47:30 He had much of suenios for compil. No se because they did that. He had so many dreams to chase. I don't know why they did this. The main immigrant rights commission, and presente, migrant advocacy organization, issued a statement confirming that Duranguerre was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a social security number. I want to be clear about this, and I want to be clear about why I'm being clear about this, I guess.

Starting point is 02:47:59 One status, or lack thereof, does not matter. The agents did not know Duranguerro's status, it seems. Main Senator Angus King, who is an independent senator, told the Associated Press that Durangorero was not the target of an enforcement operation, which was a revision to a statement. To the contrary, he'd made earlier that day, one status or lack of status should not determine if they can survive driving their car around, should not determine if a little girl grows up with or without a father. But if we're going to make claims about that status, as I have seen many people do on their monetized Twitter accounts, then we should try and make them correct. So let's be clear about this. He was authorized to work in the United States,

Starting point is 02:48:40 and he was issued a social security number, according to the main Immigrants Rights Commission and Pleasanti. That does not mean he was a resident of the United States necessarily. It does not mean he was a citizen. This can happen during the asylum process, right? We've spoken about the work permit clock. We've spoken about how problematic the work permit clock is. We've spoken about how hard it is for people to get work permits.

Starting point is 02:49:01 There are other processes to which you can get a work permit in the process. But I want to be clear about this because it's important that we tell the truth and all of the truth, right? But I also want to be clear that anybody making the claim that he was a resident is going about this wrong because his legal status is not what should protect him. Being a human being is what should protect him. No three-year-old girl should see her father shot in the street, much less by people who your tax is paid to shoot him. And so I want to be clear about that, and I guess I hope I've been clear about why I'm being clear about that.

Starting point is 02:49:36 King also confirmed the agents were not wearing body cameras at the time of the shooting. With this, and the killing in Houston, which I'll get to it a little bit. CNN is reporting that ISIS largely stopping vehicle stops for now. The Atlantic reporting on this added, quote, the officer involved in fatal shooting in Maine was hired by ISIS year from the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, according to the senior official. The officer has worked in federal law enforcement since 2017, the official said. DHS issued the following statement.

Starting point is 02:50:06 It's using the sort of like bullshit equivocal language that I would straight up fail, somewhat in a hundred level writing course for, but I'll read it out so you can hear what they said. On July 13, 2026 at approximately 7 a.m. Eastern Time, Ice was conducting a targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal. An illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle. Ice floor enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety and officer discharged his weapon. The driver the vehicle was struck and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries. A bit of a police department, FBI responded to a scene.

Starting point is 02:50:44 D-H-S-O-I-G has been notified, and like all discharge of firearms, this will be investigated. It's a developing situation, and we will update the public when more information is available. A couple of things I want to note. They didn't say that the officer feared for his life. They did say he feared for public safety. I think we should be wary of reading too much into these statements. They're always so vague, witty-washy and equivocal, and it's just, like, cop-speakers become almost its own language, and especially in a statement, so cops make after they kill someone.

Starting point is 02:51:10 I do want to note that the Office of the Inspector General, DHS OIG that's referred to there, is one of very few DHS assets that is not getting a huge budget bump. And as the agency grows, the OIG will very much struggle to keep up, especially if ICE continues killing Americans at this rate. Indeed, the White House last month in its proposed budget proposed cutting the OIG budget. So it wouldn't hold your breath for a thorough investigation. If you want to learn more about the DHS OIG and how we came to have it and the long history that the DHS has of preventing meaningful investigations into shootings by DHS officers.

Starting point is 02:51:49 I did an episode with Jen Budd probably three years ago, and I would suggest going back and listening to that. You can buy Jen's book too. I think she covers it there. The day after this, another young man was killed by ICE. A man was 28 years old. He was killed after ICE agents attempted to detain him. He fled and he was struck by a vehicle. this week I also killed Lorenzo Salgado Arruho

Starting point is 02:52:12 a father of three who had been in the United States for 35 years one of his sons in a press conference said that he was aware that this was his dad and he saw a video on Facebook which is heartbreaking claiming in this shooting as they have falsely in almost every shooting

Starting point is 02:52:30 that he tried to weaponise his vehicle the agent shot him in Texas this week CBS reported from the Harris County Attorney that he is filing for visas for witnesses in the case, unless they'd be deported before they can give evidence in the case. I don't want to go into a great deal more depth about this, I guess. I've seen a lot of speculation in all of these, and I might do a whole episode on it soon. I just want to take some time at the moment, I guess, for Russell to

Starting point is 02:53:01 process more grief. I did a book talk yesterday in Oakland, and we just read their names out loud and had a little moment with Edis Moranty. It was Edith's a wonderful idea. Had a little moment to think about them at the start of the book talk there. And that was a nice thing to do. But I guess I just want to say, like, we are the people who get to decide if we want to keep living like this, and we don't have to.

Starting point is 02:53:23 And it's up to all of us to decide if this is the way we want to live and the way we want things to be. Yeah, I hope you can all take some time to process this and deal with it however you can. Okay, we are back. Ahead of an upcoming union election, the Department of Justice has opened a grand jury investigation into UAW president Sean Fain. Sean Fane is currently facing a challenge from UAW vice president, Rich Boyer, who years ago told the court-appointed independent monitor that Fane, quote, acted improperly to obtain financial benefits for his fiancée. unquote. Fain said in a statement, quote, let's be clear about what's going on here.

Starting point is 02:54:23 Rich Boyer has fed the monitor false allegations about me and is now trying to weaponize these bogus allegations to steal the upcoming UAW election. He knows he can't win a fair fight because he has no real platform to run on, unquote. The court-appointed monitor for UAW Neil Borowski has clashed with Fain the past few years. Ever since Fain pushed for the UAW to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which they then did way back in 2003. At the time, the OIW was the largest union to do so, and in December of 2023, Fain gave a speech in D.C., alongside Congresswoman Cory Bush and Rashida Talib, calling for a ceasefire and for aid to enter Gaza. Borovsky called Fain to express dissatisfaction with this

Starting point is 02:55:15 resolution, and Fain claims that Barowski called him an anti-Semite. Borowski also forwarded a letter to the union from the ADL, claiming that a UAW local was anti-Semitic for supporting the ceasefire. Detroit News reported that Barowski, quote, acknowledged the matter was outside the monitor's jurisdiction, but said he was forwarding it, quote, given the serious concerns raised here, unquote. To quote an article in the American prospect, quote, At the UAW executive board's February 2024 meeting,

Starting point is 02:55:52 members asked why Barowski was involving himself in the union's politics. While Barovsky protested, he was not really seeking a policy change from them. Infuriated by both Barovsky's charges and his denials, Fain said, quote, For anyone to ever fucking say him anti-Semitic, brother, I'll fight your ass in front of them. this building in a heartbeat, unquote. Within weeks of that meeting, Barowski initiated an investigation of Fain's interactions with several UAW leaders, unquote. In Sean Fain's recent statement regarding

Starting point is 02:56:27 the DOJ's investigation, he claimed, quote, Neil Barovsky has a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza. Under Sean Fain, the UAW has moved in a much more militant direction and has backed DSA candidates running on working class platforms in multiple states, going against some other union coalitions who were backing progressive or establishment Dems, like in New York with Claire Valdez, where the UAW backed Claire and a coalition of other unions backed Antonio Rinozo. Fain has been a very effective union president who has won a lot of big contract victories. And in his state, he has been a very effective union president. And in his statement addressing the investigation, he wrote, quote, we've accomplished more in the past three

Starting point is 02:57:17 years and three months than in the previous decades. This is what happens when you go against corporate America and their allies. And I'm not going to be intimidated or harassed out of serving our membership. Our election is in six weeks. Neil Barovsky will not run our union, no matter how hard he tries. And no company sellout, like Boyer, is going to dictate our elections, unquote. I think it's worth going over here sort of, if there's general dynamics of union elections, which is that for basically every major union, largely what elections come down to, this is how the UAW was run for decades. There is usually something that's called like the administrative caucus or the admin caucus,

Starting point is 02:57:56 which tends to be the long-term sort of ruling click, I guess, of the union that it usually has held power continuously. They're kind of as it felt power for decades. The teamsters were like this. The UAW was like this until Sean Fain won. Sean Fain is from, there's usually something called a reform faction. Yeah, yeah. Who are a further left faction.

Starting point is 02:58:17 And then there's also usually like a Trotskyite one that gets seven votes. But yeah. And, you know, the sort of important thing as Gare was talking about was that this is the first time that a reform caucus had put like straight up one of their guys in charge of a major union. You can look at the teamsters too, but like teamssters for a Democratic Union always kind of had a tenuous relationship-ish. with their new president, and he kind of sucks in a way that Sean Fain doesn't. Yeah, largely does not. Yeah, he has been the most militant of the major union leaders in the U.S. You know, like there was the strike a few years ago that we covered on the show.

Starting point is 02:58:55 I mean, and this is another example of DOJ weaponization. Yeah, yeah. The Trump administration is going after someone who is not only securing big wins for the union, but is also involving himself in these other elections, these other social causes, like Palestine. Yeah, it also has been a really outspoken voice in favor of immigration. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:59:16 And against the oppression of migrant workers. So, I mean, this is absolutely, in part, targeting Thane because of his opposition to a lot of the things the Trump administration is doing. And that opposition and support of the UIW has been helping working class candidates get into office to then oppose these things in Congress. I don't know how to segue.

Starting point is 02:59:40 Okay, I got this. I got this, Garrison. Don't worry, I'm a professional. Speaking, speaking of bowel movements in Michigan. Oh, God. Let's talk explosive diarrhea. Oh, yeah. The UIW is also supporting Al-S.Aid. You're right. You're right. That is a good segue. Speaking of Michigan. Oh, God. Okay. So there has been a large outbreak centered in Michigan of a parasite called Silaspora that appears to be spreading through something like fresh salad greens,

Starting point is 03:00:14 although the CDC is still not sure. Yes. And we'll get to, we'll get to more on why they're not sure. My four-year-old diet continues to reign supreme. God. So I think it's worth noting that, you know, this is something that a lot of writers have pointed out. There's always, like, small outbreaks of silosporate during the summer.

Starting point is 03:00:36 So you'll see documents of, you know, like cases in other. states that are not in the sort of group we're going to talk about in a second. And that's fairly normal. That's just that's just sort of the, you know, that's just sort of the disease cycle. However, comma, there's been over 2,000 cases in Michigan. And that is not normal at all. Now, the specific outbreak, from what we know so far from the CDC, it seems like there is an outbreak in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. And these ones seem to actually be connected to each other unlike the sort of disparate cases elsewhere in the country which are just

Starting point is 03:01:12 seem to kind of right now look like a little bit higher than the normal background noise of what you would expect in a very large country. If you're like in Michigan, it's maybe worth not buying like bag salads and if you're going to buy lettuce, buy like a head of lettuce

Starting point is 03:01:29 and like throw away the outside of it. If you're not in Michigan, like don't really worry about this. You're probably going to be okay. But the reason I want to talk about this outbreak is that specifically it's been exacerbated, at least in part, by RFK Jr.'s firing of 10,000 health and human services workers. Now, as a result of these cuts, the foodborne diseases' active surveillance network went from tracking six pathogens to only tracking two. And lo and behold,

Starting point is 03:02:00 okay, so this timing is genuinely a coincidence, but they cut the surveillance tracking on July 1st. and one of the passages they were tracking was cyclospora. So this is going great. And obviously this outbreak would have happened anyways. It's not responsible to draw a direct causal link from these cuts to, oh, there's this outbreak now. But what it has done is slow the response to it, because what was one of the world's best surveillance systems has been absolutely gutted because they fired 10,000 people. or, well, okay, it's a combination of fired and forced out and people taking, like, you know, people taking some of the packages that they've been offered. Yeah. Yeah, those deferred resignation, Doge offers.

Starting point is 03:02:46 Yeah, this is a very explosive example of this. But what's happening here is one manifestation of the slow crumbling of general state capacity, right? There are a lot of regulatory agencies and a lot of scientific agencies. whose budgets and staffs have been cut massively. And the systems that they run are well-designed enough, and the people who actually do them care about them enough that they tend not to collapse immediately, right? That's not the sort of model of state collapse that we're sort of dealing with here, right? It's not that everything just suddenly stopped working.

Starting point is 03:03:25 What happens is slowly over time, things that we used to have we simply don't have anymore, you know, along these sort of lines. One of the other, like, slow-acting symptoms of this sort of carving out of the American scientific state and its regulatory capacity is that weather predictions have gotten less accurate. And the reason they've gotten less accurate is because there is a large number of weather balloons that used to be deployed every single day to collect weather information that you can't get any other way that have been shut down because they just don't have the staff to run them.

Starting point is 03:03:58 And so this is a thing we're going to be seeing more and more of over the next. Honestly, probably the rest of our lives is that the pieces of the state that were torn apart by Doge and we're torn apart by RFK Jr. going through, there's just going to be things that we don't think about that suddenly get worse, right? And it's also worth noting, right? Like, you know, something that I think you can to some extent point to for this specific outbreak is that there's been damage done to food testing that dates back to like the first Trump administration, right? And when we're talking about something like food safety standards, right? Or we're talking about workplace safety standards.

Starting point is 03:04:42 It's important to understand that there are two kinds of regulations in this world. There are regulations that are written in the ink of lobbyists and there are regulations that are written in the blood of workers. And the ones that are being cut right now are the ones that are written in blood. And so, you know, right now we have a story that sucks, but is at least kind of silly in a bunch of explosive diarrhea. But as the state capacity continues to degrade, it's going to get more and more grim. Yeah. As, you know, basic scientific and regulatory functions that we all have just come to rely on to not eat poison every day, crumble and start the fall apart. your point about there being two different types of regulations, I think is really important,

Starting point is 03:05:26 because people often just think of regulations. It's just like just this singular kind of mechanism that the state can deploy. And no, yeah, it is, it is not. There's regulations that will protect workers that are achieved by workers, and there's regulations that only serve corporate interests or make things more difficult or cumbersome for workers to go about their daily lives and enjoy the public services and like the public goods and the infrastructure that we have. And this sort of like hacking away at state capacities you're talking about, which is like very obviously on display in Trump's second administration

Starting point is 03:06:04 through stuff like Doge, right? This is kind of the main project of conservatism since like the 70s and 80s. Yeah. Well, I think what I would also say about that, though, that there is, I think there is an important distinction between what's happening here and what's what, you know, if you look at like Reagan, for example. Yeah. Which is like a lot of what those states were doing was, you know, an attempt to transition from the state sort of having a welfare capacity to a state just being a purely military entity, right?

Starting point is 03:06:31 But those people also weren't doing this kind of stuff in the sense that they weren't just like shutting down the weather balloons because, you know, like even like George W. Bush isn't just like shutting down every weather balloon he can find because there used to be an. understanding that there was supposed to be state capacity in place or expanded that would help the ruling class stay in power, right? This is why you see like the expansion of the police through this period, this massive increase in police and military budgets. And also why you would see, in a lot of cases, you would see expansions of scientific budgets and why you wouldn't, for example, just start doing this. The Reagan administration did a lot of replacing regulations written in blood with regulations written in ink, but they didn't just gut basic scientific capacity that was useful to

Starting point is 03:07:22 capital in the way that's happening here. Look, like another part of this, right, is like it was strategically important to someone like Bush and someone like Reagan that the U.S. would maintain like a large-scale scientific advantage, right? So if you want to do that, you don't go through and just start annihilating the grant process by which all Americans science is done. Right?

Starting point is 03:07:45 Sure, sure, sure. Stuff that, like, those people didn't do because they had a better understanding of how the American Empire works. And these people are doing it because they have bought the propaganda line about what their ideology is supposed to be instead of actually executing their ideology. Like, you know, having the sort of scientific state capacity to, like, fuel the corporations that their power relies on. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:08:05 The contradictions of their project are more clearly manifest in something like this. Yeah. Whereas, you know, the sort of, like, privatization and, like, the removal of, like, social services under Reagan still allowed, you know, government funds and involvement towards things that would help, like, infuse the economy in some ways, you know, trickle down way. Yeah. Something that really did not help a lot of, a lot of workers in the moment. Well, help the economy meeting corporation make more money every year. Yes. Versus the sort of expansion of this privatization towards things like, yeah, we should not have the government be funding weather balloons that can be privatized instead.

Starting point is 03:08:40 all these things that the private sector cannot do as well as a central government body, cannot do without the backing with central government body, and scientific funding is another example of this. You know, sometimes the RFK forces or whatever will like realize that what they're doing is actually going to hurt their core driving factor, which is which is serving capital and they will like backtrack on some things. But it follows the sort of Silicon Valley mindset as like move fast and break things. Then you'll learn that maybe you broke something you shouldn't have broken. But the consequence of that is that in the meantime, you have thousands of people shooting themselves.

Starting point is 03:09:16 Yeah. Or worse. Or worse. Yeah. Amazing country that we've designed here. It's going great. No bad things are going to happen and are happening now. Before we go, there's two pieces of news that have dropped since recording.

Starting point is 03:09:33 Oh, boy. Pete Hankseth is recommending, quote-unquote, testosterone replacement therapy. Oh, God. For soldiers age 30 and older in a video titled The High T Department of War. So prepare for an onslaught of really bad, like, liberal jokes

Starting point is 03:09:52 about how the Department of War is doing gender-affirming therapy now. Jesus Christ. And about 30 minutes ago, 103 Democrats voted to eliminate aid to Israel. 96 voted again. this 10 voted present. This is a pretty big change from what a vote like this would have been a few years ago.

Starting point is 03:10:17 This is still like a performative vote ultimately. Like there's no way this is going to pass. Yeah. But those 93 Democrats who voted against this, that is a primary list. That is a list of targets to go after. Anyway, I think that's the news that we reported today. Yeah. Put a transcurl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 03:11:05 You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

Starting point is 03:11:32 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia.

Starting point is 03:11:54 A.O. Rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam, it's sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from together. We're breaking down the biggest headlines, the viral moments, and the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. From game-changing performances to culture-shifting conversations

Starting point is 03:12:18 We'll give you our takes, our debates, and a few laughs along the way. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier.

Starting point is 03:12:36 And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I'm not. I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars

Starting point is 03:13:07 and unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. Like the time Paul McCartney spent in a notorious prison or the bizarre crime Lady Gaga is accused of or that time blondeie's Debbie Harry escaped Ted Bundy. Listen to Disgraceland on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

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