Pod Save the World - Biden confronts the war in Afghanistan

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk through Biden’s options in Afghanistan, updates on the coup in Myanmar, censorship in China, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel, government transparency in Mexico, LGBTQ+ rights in the UK, crackdowns on activists in India and Egypt, and royal baby updates. Then Ben interviews Congresswoman Ilhan Omar about the dangers of reflexively tightening domestic terrorism laws.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail].

Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, how about that thrilling second impeachment? Did you like it better than the original? I was going to say, like, you know, rarely is the sequel better than the first. Godfather, too, of impeachments. But, I mean, like the same ending. So, you know. Yeah, predictable ending. Yeah, exactly. That's my critique, predictable ending. I wasn't sure if I need to apologize to the world those for feeling hopeful on those days when like Mitch McConnell's statements were coming out in real time. But, you know, I think most of them just to be angry at the Republican Party. I think by the, so what was so weird about it is by the time it happened, I actually didn't

really watch much because I was already preemptively angry at how I knew it was going to end. You know what I mean? So it was like I didn't want to watch and kind of go through the emotional ringer of that just to end with Mitch McConnell caving like he always does and nothing changing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, what are you going to do? We got a lot of great news for you guys this week.

So we are going to talk about a bunch of stuff. First, there is a fast approaching decision that President Biden is going to have to make about Afghanistan and some new pressure on him to maybe change course. We'll dig into that. Do an update on the coup in Myanmar. Censorship in Hong Kong. Freedom of information in Mexico. Some good news about vaccines. Some incremental progress for LGBT rights in the UK.

It attacks on activists in India and Egypt. and then we have our number one royal correspondent here for a critical update. Ben, then you did the interview this week. You talked to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. What did you guys get into? Well, we talked about what we've addressed on the show a bit, which is how to get the balance right between taking domestic extremism seriously as a threat without overreacting. And she obviously has a really unique perspective on that because she's been a target, obviously, of a lot of threats, but she's also a voice of caution against overreach, and that's informed in part by coming out of a community that has been a focus of U.S. government kind of countering violent extremism policies for a decade. And then we talked

about some for work on the Foreign Affairs Committee, including an effort to review and potentially reform the use of or overuse of sanctions. So it's a good, and there's a spoiler. There's a little bit of puppy news at the end of the interview. So that's the upside. I am so jealous that you got to do this interview. I'm obsessed with this domestic terror legal framework question. And then I just want to know how Teddy the puppy is doing. Teddy the puppy's good. Committee assignments, if you like in Congress. Does he hang out with AOC's dog? Do you think there's like a cool dog club like there is like the squad? I think so. I mean, spoiler, Teddy's doing well. And but mainly we learned that the principal lobbying source wasn't a member of the squad. It was Elon Omar's kids. Oh, well, that.

very similar to my household where I'm currently being lobbied very aggressively. Do you think like random, like Steny Hoyer shows up and tries to like bring his dog to hang out with the squad's dogs? I think so. I think so. Yeah. Like press conferences. Yeah.

All right. Well, I'm very excited to listen to that. It'll be great interview. Two quick things. One, everyone is trying to figure out what the hell these new COVID variants mean, what the deal is with the latest vaccine news, where we go from here. check out America Dissected with Abdul Al-Said. This week he talks to virologist, Dr. Angela Razmussen, about all those issues.

It's a great podcast. It's a timely episode to check out America Dissected. And then also check out Cricket Media's YouTube channel because Alyssa Mastromonico, I think you know her. Ben, she is a great new series. Let's break it down. And this week, she's talking with John Favro about how the state of the union gets written. So I bet you have some thoughts on how that goes down to the agatee. the ecstasy, no, just agony?

Very little ecstasy. It's just pure agony for about a month of every policy advisor in the entire government telling you that the five sentences they want in the State of the Union are the most important thing in the history of the world. And that if we don't say those five sentences, we will hurt the feelings of every person in the world. So it's a fun process. So the first two years in the White House, you and John Favreau basically like shared an office

section, right? It was like this cave in the basement. You walked through Nancy Nde Pardal's office to get to Johns, and then yours was off on the side. And we would all just hang out there all the time because there were couches and stuff. And I remember, like, the couple days before a major speech, especially the State of the Union, you'd be sitting there like talking to Favs or talking to you, and then you guys would just look over at the computer, an email would come through.

And John would be like, fuck you, OMB. And like fire off some, like, insane response about a speech at it. It was the best. Well, but the world does, should appreciate the fact, too, that, like, I always had to fight for the space for the foreign policy section, you know, which I wrote eight of those, which I think has got to be a record. I don't think anyone else. But it's kind of like a, if you watch Bulldorm, it's like a crash Davis record. It just shows that I kept doing the same thing for eight years. But, but, you know, I went back at the end and looked at all eight of them. And they're all about

the same length and I had to fight for every word. And they all have the, like, terrible transition that John and I used to always joke about, which is about two-thirds of the way through the speech, you go, you know, and just as we must defend the prosperity of the American people at home, so must we do so beyond our borders. And here's the list of things that we're focused on this year, you know. God, you guys are fighting for like an op-eds worth of space to cover the whole world. The whole world, the whole world. Yeah.

Crazy. Well, here's a transition for you, Ben. Here's an issue that came up in many, if not all, of Barack Obama, the state of the unions, which was Afghanistan. So a tough decision that the Biden national security team is about to confront. So a bipartisan panel called the Afghanistan Study Group, released a report last week calling on the Biden administration to slow down the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and change our policy there from getting all the troops out on May 1st to a conditions-based withdrawal process. In other words, an indefinite withdrawal date. To the study group argues that the

Taliban haven't lived up to their commitments under the peace agreement that was brokered by the Trump administration, that the intra-Afghan peace talks have broken down and that the security situation is worsening. Now, all of that is unequivocally true. The deal that Trump team cut said, basically, U.S. troops will get out by May 1st, 2021 if the Taliban renounces international terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and they refrain from attacking U.S. forces. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are still close and communicating often. And while the Taliban has stopped attacking U.S. forces, they've escalated attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians. So the security situation is very, very bad.

So, Ben, I mean, here we are again, right? You have a lot of the exact same people like Joe Dunford, former chairman of the joint chiefs was, I think, led this effort arguing that we need more troops and more time in Afghanistan like 20 years in. There are currently 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, about 8,000 NATO forces. The study group recommends increasing the U.S. troop level back up to 4,500. So I'm trying to be fair-minded here, Ben. Like I think listeners to the show kind of know where we stand on this, but there are real concerns about the security situation, right?

There's reports this week that the Taliban has surrounded major population centers. The central government doesn't really control that much territory as it is. There's concern that when Western forces leave, the situation will get even worse. They'll have less control. It could break down into basically like, you know, factional militia-based civil war, essentially. So I guess the question becomes, what does Biden do, right? Do you stick with the timeline? Do you try to renegotiate a longer time horizon with the Taliban? Not that I think that's really possible. Do you just tear up the agreement? I mean, do you have a

recommendation or a prediction for like how this might play out? Yeah. And first of all, you know, I think that even if you agreed with the instinct of the Trump administration to try to end the war, try to remove our troops, this was done in a completely haphazard and ineffective way in the sense that they did all this diplomacy with the Taliban, kind of cut out the war, the Afghan government throughout most of that process. And then rapidly accelerated the troop withdrawals in the transition, you know, handing off to Biden a peace deal that is not at all being followed by the Taliban. You know, they're supposed to reduce violence in the country, not just cease attacks on the U.S. forces. And they've not. They've escalated those attacks.

And then this timetable of May 1st to get all these troops out. And so I think that the right thing to do here is, look, slow down. I mean, some of these groups like the Afghan study group, you know, it was designed to kind of create maximum flexibility for Biden to kind of have a group of graybeards come out and say, you should stop what you're doing and you should add these troops back in. I wouldn't go as far as this group recommends and kind of re-escalating back to a status quo of a couple years ago. I do think saying, look, we need to take a hard look at what's going on here. We need to evaluate whether or not this peace agreement is being followed by the Taliban. We need to determine what NATO's opinion is about this, because as you mentioned,

there are actually more NATO troops in Afghanistan now than U.S. troops, which is a new dynamic. And then I think the most likely scenario, and I think probably the best approach to take right now, is to not kind of resurge back to where you were and kind of keep that as steady state, but to try to negotiate some delay in this withdrawal to create space for more diplomacy for the Taliban and the Afghan government, more alignment with NATO. The question is, of course, the Taliban may say, no, you're supposed to stick to this deal of May 1st. We're not going to agree to some more extended time period here, adding, say, six months. I think that's one of the most prominent ideas out there, you know, giving yourself six additional months. But I don't, I don't

I think the Taliban is like, you know, by the spirit or letter of this agreement, following it anyway, you know, and so I don't know that they need to necessarily give the Taliban a veto on what they choose to do here. I think they can still say troops are coming out. This is Joe Biden. This is someone who's always been scheduled about what the U.S. military can do here. But, you know, if we yank the plug here now, we could be dealing with a full-blown crisis in the spring that, you know, is unnecessary and that better to slow this thing down and to try to assemble a diplomatic play that is more effective than the current version of the deal that's in place of the Taliban. Yeah, I don't know what to think, man. I mean, look, I'm obviously,

the memory of the full Iraq withdrawal and then sending troops back in is fresh in my head, right? Their argument at the time was that keeping some sort of American residual force might have prevented the security situation in Iraq from devolving. I don't know that that's proven to be true, but, you know, that's what some of these same graybeard say, right? The concern, I guess, here is the Taliban have been refraining from attacks on U.S. military personnel. It sounds like if we broke that agreement seemed undoubtedly the case that they would resume attacking U.S. personnel. We'd see more casualties. We'd see more U.S. service members die.

And I'm just like wondering, I don't know, I wonder what the best case outcome is. Like what? You just incentivize more diplomacy between this sort of like Afghan government-led group and the Taliban? I mean, yeah, I think if we're honest, like the best case scenario in Afghanistan, at least in the near future, is kind of like a frozen status quo where, let's face it, the Taliban controls pieces of that country, but the Afghan government controls Kabul. There's a dramatic reduction in fighting. Like you want ceasefires across this country. They may not hold, but you want to reduce the level of violence and the suffering as much as you can. And then you want a really aggressive diplomatic effort to try to turn this into. some more lasting political settlement in which, you know, obviously the Taliban's going to want some things in the negotiation, but the Afghan government should be able to have like a stronger hand to play than they did last year when Trump kind of cut them out of the whole thing.

That, and even then, like, you know, that that may not depend upon a lot of U.S. troops. U.S. troops, you know, being there can perpetuate a dynamic that is not, you know, useful in terms of moving on to the next chapter of the country. But I think the key principle here, Tommy, is, like, Joe Biden should, I think he should end the war. I think we should be aiming to dismantle pieces of our post-9-11 infrastructure and lots of places, including Afghanistan. But he should do it on, like, his terms, not under like a rush set of terms that Trump signed off on literally in the transition. When, you know, if I'm cynical, what Trump wanted is, you know, either to kind of yank the troops out and say, you know, he did this thing in Afghanistan,

or knowing that all hell may break loose in the spring, which is actually the typical time when the Taliban goes on offensive. And you've got helicopters taking off from our embassy in Kabul, like Saigon 75. And then he's blaming Joe Biden for what happened. I think Biden just, you know, needs to take a look, make a decision, not a lengthy, painful review like we had and like Trump had, too. I'm not suggesting let's have six months and let you know, I'm just saying like, pause this thing and try to see what, you know, if you can give yourselves a few more months here, whether you can assemble a better looking picture than the one that is assembled right now. Because the one that is assembled right now, you know, seems to lead pretty inexorably

to the Taliban being ascendant, the Afghan people being screwed, the U.S. pulling out, there'll be calls for us to go back in. Like, you know, let's just see if it's possible. And it may not be, by the way, we may just conclude, you know, the Biden people may conclude, you know, there's not much, there's no better that we can achieve here. But it should be their policy, not something that Trump pulled a hand grenade pin out of and handed it to them, you know. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, look, it was a capricious exit by the Trump folks, but also even going back further, I mean, the deal that was negotiated. Yeah, it's a deal itself. It's less the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this May 1st deadline, like, if the Taliban are living up to their end of it, that Biden folks shouldn't feel bound by an agreement. that's not being followed by any parties, but you're right. Hopefully, hopefully they're just talking about, okay, when are we getting everybody home more than anything else?

And that's the key point. If the Taliban was following this deal and they were really reducing the level of violence across the country and, you know, doing the things that they committed to, it'd be a different story. That's the dynamic that I think you have to address. Right, right, right. Okay, well, we're going to watch this one because the Biden folks are on the record. I mean, John Kirby, our friend, Pentagon spokesman, is on the record saying that Taliban

and aren't living up to their side of the deal. So they're going to have to move pretty quickly on a decision here. Let's turn to another crisis that was, you know, landed in Joe Biden's lap, which is the situation in Myanmar. So on February 1st, the military in Myanmar staged a coup. They took control of the government. They declared a one-year state of emergency. And they put a bunch of prominent lawmakers, including Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

There have been nationwide strikes and protests ever since. And then on Sunday night, the military sent troops into cities across the country, presumably to round up government workers who have been participating in these strikes. They're also rounding up journalists and activists. It's a very scary situation. The military, I think, announced basically. They set up like a fake government. They announced that they can indefinitely detain anyone they want.

And apparently they let 23,000 prisoners out of jail to make room for pro-democracy advocates. So that is scary. The government has also been shutting off the internet at night. I assume is to make it harder to organize so that they can't, you know, activists can't warn each other about military offensives and generally just scare the shit out of everyone. Ben, so the situation here seems quite dire and worsening, but these protests are extraordinarily big and brave in context, right? When you think about a military dictatorship coming back, I mean, the fact that the New York

Times quoted an analyst who estimated that three quarters of Myanmar's civil service employees have walked off their jobs in protest. That's a huge swath of the population taking a very... dangerous step. What else are you hearing about like the situation on the ground in Myanmar and the strength of this resistance movement and response? So I have a bunch of friends in Myanmar who are activists participating in these protests, watching these protests. And I think that on the one, the positive sign, as you said, is that the scale of these protests, you know, is surprised even the people participating in them. That it's so broad. And again, I've mentioned this before, but part of

this can be attributed to the fact that younger people in particular, you know, they've had this version of democracy, not a full one for 10 years. They don't want to lose it. The scariest thing that I've heard, number one, is they're basically beginning to kind of shut down the internet periodically and trying to choke off the capacity of people to communicate with each other. And I've even had people kind of what's at me and say, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to talk to you again, you know, which, you know, is this really. sad and terrifying kind of message to get. But then the other thing is this release of prisoners from the prisons. This is an old tactic that they used to use way back in the day in Burma,

where Aung San Suu Kyi was actually once almost killed by a mob of prisoners who've been released that kind of attacked the motorcade that she was in, she was driving in in the north of the country. People have seen this movie before, and what I've heard is they're not just releasing these prisoners. They're releasing them and telling them, go start to with these protesters, right? So imagine you come out to some peaceful protest and the military has just released essentially a mob of violent criminals who've been sent there to just kind of rough you up, you know? Yeah. So it's really a bad underhanded tactics. And so what can you do about it? I think the Biden team announced some initial sanctions very focused on the military leadership and trying to

freeze their money, trying to make it as hard for them to kind of exist in polite society. in the world, travel bans and things like that, which is a good place to start, because, again, I don't think you start by sanctioning this whole country. I think you start by trying to send a message to the military leadership. You continue to go down this road, and you're going to be completely cut off. And if you actually walk back from the precipice, and maybe not all of them will, but if you can make an appeal to some of the people in that military leadership, hey, don't follow this guy off a cliff. I think that's an appropriate message to send.

while at the same time you get as many countries as you can to join you in delivering that message as well. You don't want to go down this road. If you do, you're just going to be cut off. The population is going to keep protesting, so you're not necessarily going to be able to have a stable situation in this country. You're not going to be welcome in the international community. And you just kind of create as sharp a choice as you can for the military in the coming

weeks and months to try to encourage them to have some of their own internal divisions and have some people say, you know, we're not going to go along with this thing anymore. So you're isolating the kind of more hardline people in trying to create an opening to return to the democratic reforms that were taking place. I think, candidly, that's still a long shot, in part because the Chinese seem to be okay with this. And they can kind of fill in a lot of the space of, you know, economic activity that is lost under certain kinds of sanctions.

But it's worth trying because look how much these people. are sacrificing in the streets of Myanmar right now. If they can do that, then they need our, they need us to have their backs and they need as many countries as we can muster in a coalition to have their backs. Yeah. We'll obviously keep watching this one. One other China-related story the one to cover. So last week, the Chinese government announced that they are going to pull the BBC World News Service off of the radio in China and in Hong Kong. This comes after authorities in the UK with through a license for the China Global Television Network. And it comes also after a big harrowing BBC investigation into human rights violations by authorities

in Xinjiang China over the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims. So this is just, you know, the latest example of the erosion of freedoms that were supposed to be guaranteed to Hong Kong under the one country two systems system. So Ben, I can't say I'm surprised by this, but I just wanted to continually raise, you know, all these sort of incremental efforts we're seeing to crush, you know, freedoms crushed descent in Hong Kong. And also, you know, I noticed that Joe Biden said he had a two-hour call with Xi Jinping. So you have to imagine that, you know, a bunch of the issues we just talked about, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong were central in that discussion. And it was probably not a very fun one.

No, I imagine, you know, it was tense, but the Chinese are always, you know, very calm and measured in these things. So you can't read in the conversation what's necessarily antagonizing them. Look, I think on this BBC thing, the one point I'd make is it can seem like, well, what does the U.S. government do about this? What do we do? Do we kick out some Chinese media? And look, that's worth talking about. But I think the bigger thing is this isn't just for the U.S. government. The reason that China can single out the BBC for their coverage of Hong Kong or their coverage of the treatment of the U.Gers is because so many other media outlets self-censor and what they say about China. And I'm not talking about just news media. I'm talking actually more about like what kind of movies get made and distributed, what kind of just what kind of media there is available in entertainment and news. The NBA, yeah. Yeah, that is candidly just willing to be as transparent about what is going on in China as they are in the U.S.

You know, they should be critical of us. They should be critical of China. It should be critical of Russia. And so I think that the reason they can pick off a BBC here and there is, is that they've kind of cowed a lot of media and entertainment businesses from, you know, shining a light on what's going on. And so it's not just on Joe Biden. It's kind of on everybody to decide.

And I'm really going to let the Chinese Communist Party, you know, be in my head every time I greenlight a film or make a decision about whether a documentary gets made or whether or not, you know, we have a series in our newspaper. about something that's happening in Jingjiang. You're like, you know, there's strength in numbers. Because if everybody just decides that they're not going to self-censor like that, well, then China can't necessarily kick everybody out, you know. Yep, yep.

Yeah, there will not be a crooked media at Beijing Bureau anytime soon. No, we're willing to be hard hitting, but yeah, it's not a lot of money at stake for us. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's do some good news here. So some very good news has come out about efforts to stop the coronavirus. So we talked about how Israel has moved really quickly and effectively to vaccinate Israeli citizens. They left out the Palestinians, but they have vaccinated hundreds of thousands of, if not millions of people in Israel. And that has allowed them to collect a ton of data about the impact.

So there was a recent study by Israel's largest health care provider. And they reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among the 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. and that same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness. So I just raised this because, like, the data in the trial is bearing out in the real world and, like, hope is on the way, folks. If we mask up for a while, right, these vaccinations are incredibly effective. We just need more and more of them out there. The more people are getting vaccinated, the fewer people there are to get infected.

The spread will slow. So just very, very good news out of that Israeli study. Yeah, it's great news. And it's a good reminder, too, that, like, as these vaccines, programs rule out in different parts of the world, hopefully we'll also be able to learn from the experiences of other countries, just like they can learn from us so that not only you're getting vaccines to people faster, but you know, you're able to calibrate what you're focused on based on this data. But this is good news. I mean, I was really good news. I'm grabbing

for COVID, you know, good news as I begin to go insane in month 12 here. And that was a good day. Me too. The other COVID thing I saw was the South Korean intelligence service reported that North Korean hackers tried to steal information about coronavirus vaccines and treatments. There's a dispute between the South Korean Intel guys and some lawmaker who talked about this publicly about whether or not they specifically hacked Pfizer. But I just made you think like, again, there's a World Health Organization backed effort called COVAX that is designed to ensure like global and equitable distribution of vaccines. That's going to take a while to get ramped up. I have no idea of North Korea or any other country has the technical case.

capability to manufacture the Pfizer vaccine or these new MRNA vaccines. But it's still like, I read this and I think, I don't really think North Korea is the bad guy for trying to get, you know, a vaccine for its people, even if it requires stealing. Maybe that's a, maybe that's a naive or, you know, bad way to think about it. But I don't know. We need the whole world vaccinated, not just because North Korea is full of human beings. We don't want to die from the coronavirus. but if you just want to be fucking selfish about it, you don't want this virus raging through the

world and mutating again and again and again, right? We need everybody vaccinated. So I still wish there was some way to open sources information. But, you know. Yeah, I think, I totally think that when it comes to health, like all other political considerations should fade away. You know, you should want every person in whatever country they are, whatever government they're living under to be vaccinated because as a moral issue and as you said, a safety issue. And look, this is the darker side of the Israeli story. You know, I saw a headline the other day, Knesset, Israeli Knesset, debates whether to make vaccine available to Gaza. I saw that too. Like, make the vaccine available. We're really debating. We did no debate. And same thing on North Korea. And because if you

also look at the projections of the global vaccine distribution, you know, it's like it's a bit uncomfortable, right, to realize that, you know, there's the U.S. and Europe and China and, you know, South Korea in kind of a 2021 timeframe. And some of the timeframes in Africa are like into 2023 right now. It's like that just should not be the world we live in. Yeah. No, no, it should not. Okay, let's turn to Mexico for a very different story.

So our listeners have probably heard us talk about the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. We nerds call it FOIA. It's a law that allows the public to request records from any federal agency. It's not a perfect law or perfect process. Some information is exempt. The process can be slow and cumbersome. But FOIA's helped journalists and activists get all kinds of information, report out corruption, etc. Mexico is a similar law in process.

It's called the National Institute for Access to Information, or INAI. And in some ways, it's better than FOIA. Mexican authorities are required to respond faster. They have to get back to you within 30 days. And the institute itself can overrule the Mexican government if it tries to block the release of information. So, like, it's been pretty effective. When the INAI was created in 2002, it was seen as this big statement. step forward to fight corruption over the last few decades. It has helped reveal like huge government

corruption stories. It's helped get, you know, citizens access to basic information, like homicide figures that weren't released. But here's the rub then. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Amlo for short, wants to get rid of this process. He's complaining that it's too expensive, that it's failed to end corruption. And so transparency advocates and Amlo critics say, like, this is just a sign of his authoritarian instincts sort of flaring up again. I wondered how much this one worried you, like him seemingly trying to shut down what has become a really important way to get information, even if, you know, the Mexican judicial system hasn't always proved to be, you know, fully set up to, you know, prosecute some of the high-profile individuals after this, you know,

these stories are revealed. I think it's really troubling. And look, I think this issue around transparency and any corruption is right in the zeitgeist of what is needed in the world today. You know, we've talked a lot about corruption, but the positive side is when countries adapt kind of transparency measures and open government measures like this. It builds trust with citizens in their government. It frankly creates a deterrent against corruption because people are aware, like, well, maybe my stuff could be made public. And it kind of, it enforces accountability for better governance. So in some countries, particularly corrupt countries at the local level, you know, mayors and city councils have embraced transparency measures like this where they'll

make documents public. They'll show you how budgets are made. And government is better when the people can look over the shoulders of those in power. So across the board, I think a law like this is critically important. It's not just kind of like a side thing. And is it a pain in the ass? Yeah. I've got, you know, the right-wing group judicial watch has been foyering my every word that they could get their hands on. I'm still getting notices like about them foyering stuff from 10 years ago or however long ago related to, you know, Benghazi or God knows what. But you know what? Like that's worth it to live in a transparent society. And so I, I, there's no way to read Amlo's move. I mean, you know, every time someone says it's too expensive to carry this out. Well, you know what's expensive? The

corruption in your government if you don't have people looking over your shoulder, you know. So I think this does bear watching is, are there a range of moves, you know, that this is a part of that feel designed to kind of begin to roll back Mexican democracy. And there's enough reason to worry that there might be. Not that Amla is going to make himself, you know, dictator for life, but just, you know, as we've learned in this country, you know, you start to take apart democratic norms and practices, and you get worse outcomes. Yeah, the Washington Post had a good write-up of this whole issue. And it noted that, you know, Aml has been doing these like two-hour press conferences

on Friday. And it seemed to suggest that he thought that that was the better way to release information. And like, you know, God help us if, right, the hours-long rambling Trump press conferences were seen as a replacement of FOIA or any other sort of disclosure mechanism. I mean, that's just not credible. Or COVID? Like, you know, all we get the information we got on COVID was Trump. I mean, people should check out, like the open government partnership is a good organization

that does a lot of work on how different nations can learn from each other about transparency. Obviously, transparency international. This is important stuff that is not just a niche issue because it connects to basically the health of democracy itself. Yeah, agreed. Okay, here's a story out of the UK that made me happy. So British men and women who were expelled from the British military for being gay will be able to have their service medals restored.

Now, that obviously doesn't fully write the wrong of being thrown out of the military for who you love, right? Some of these individuals lost their pensions. Some even got jail time. But activists welcome this announcement as an important first step as a longer effort to write that wrong. So until 2000, gays and lesbians were prevented from serving in the British military. About 200 to 250 men and women were thrown out each year because of their sexuality. And in some cases, the medals they had received were 50. physically ripped off their uniforms after a court martial.

Imagine the humiliation of like serving your country and that happening. This article, I read about this in The Guardian, it also detailed just the absolute outrageous and absurd links that the British military police went to to spy on and expose the sexuality of British service members. Like one guy had a magazine in his room that was found and they spent two years like bugging his room and paying informants to get information on him. So it was good to see, you know, the British defense members. ministry begin to address this historical injustice. It's also kind of awful to think that we're

talking about like late 90s history, right? This is very recent history that we're talking about when people are just treated in horrendous ways for their sexuality. Yeah, no, it's a great step. And I think it's important that, you know, the past is a part of changing these things. There's trauma involved for these individuals, like you mentioned. But like, you know, you need to set the historical record straight about where you went wrong, about the contributions that people made that were forgotten or attacked in other cases. But also, like, we feel like things have changed show fast, right? I mean, you know, you mentioned the British change in 2000. We had Don't S. Don't Tell. It was only in 2010 a decade ago that the United States permitted people who

were openly LGBT to be in the military. Like, that's where we are in this country. And by the way, We're way ahead of a whole lot of other countries. And so it's also important to set an example for the countries that haven't had this kind of tipping point yet. And the military is often a good barometer for the society. In this country, you saw Don't Estonell pass in 2010, and it was a few years later that gay marriage is something to log the land. I think those things were connected, you know.

So I think it's important, you know, to set an example to other countries about how to do this and how to make the effort to support gay rights in the military. connected to broader movements as well. Yeah, yeah, great story. I highly recommend reading more about it. Let's turn to India because we've talked a few times recently about Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and the disconcerting anti-democratic trends that he is leading in the country. Here's another example.

Police in India jailed a 21-year-old activist named Disha Ravi for sending Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old climate activist, a Google Doc with information about how to support the farmers protest in India. We talked in great detail about the farmers protest last week, but the quick version is that millions of Indian farmers have been protesting Modi's efforts to deregulate the agricultural industry because they're worried it's going to impoverish them, leave them in further debt and let them, you know, throw them to the wolves, basically the mercy of this big agro business. So the police accused Dish Ravi of trying to, quote, spread disaffection against the Indian state and are holding her in prison under a sedition law.

They also accused Greta Thunberg of being part of an international conspiracy against India for tweeting a link to this document. So, Ben, I think this case has gotten a lot of attention because it is just so absurd, right? Like this isn't some subversive anti-government activists, this young woman whose activism to date has been about cleaning up lakes and parks and educating young people about climate change. So I guess here's my question for you. do you think this is an example of Indian authorities overreaching and screwing up? Or does this seem like they're trying to pick an international fight to send a message that's basically like, don't fuck with us, don't get involved with the farmers' protests, like this is about sovereignty?

I think it's very much part of a kind of comprehensive strategy, like not a fuck up from their perspective. This is what they're doing. You know, one of the things that we didn't spend as much time on last week is the threat. to activists. And what you've seen is it's multifaceted. Some people have been targeted with violence, literally. Some people have been detained. Some people have been censored. Some people have been the target of like ferocious kind of Twitter mobs and online disinformation campaigns. So this isn't just like one case of one person, you know, being picked up for this thing. This is a part of like a clear

campaign of harassment, intimidation and sometimes violence against activists. And I, And I have to say, like, it doesn't seem to be working, you know, I mean, if anything, like the sense of injustice in the government's response is only shining a brighter spotlight on the farmer's core demands to begin with. So I think we, you know, should pay tribute and, you know, really send our support out to people who are taking enormous risks. But I think they can also take some degree of encouragement from the fact that, you know, while the government has been escalating their response to this, the spotlight's just been getting brighter and brighter and brighter inside of India and beyond it. And, you know, Modi seems only have one play, which is to get harder and tougher and more aggressive. Again, they really need to pull back from this brink here and find a way to channel this into some discussion with the

farmers, some different process. I'm not saying that's, you know, likely, but that may end up being the only way out, because this doesn't seem to be abating in any way. No, no, it does not. I want to talk about a similar story out of Egypt. So Egyptian security services raided the homes of six relatives of a guy named Muhammad Sultan, who's a friend of yours, who's an Egyptian American human rights activist who now lives in Virginia. This is part of a pattern by Egyptian authorities of harassment against the families of

government critics who live abroad. And in this case, from 2013 to 2015, Muhammad Sultan was held as a political prisoner in Egypt. He was brutally tortured. And he is now has a court case in the U.S. against some of the people who oversaw his torture. But, you know, Ben, we haven't talked about Egypt as much as say like Saudi Arabia or the UAE when it comes to these bilateral relationships that are likely to be very different under Biden than they were under Trump, right? like Trump famously referred to President Sisi of Egypt as his favorite dictator, infamously, I should have said. And he basically gave him a pass on all human rights questions.

Do you see momentum in the Biden administration or among members of Congress to rethink the U.S. Egypt relationship in the way we've seen a lot of conversation about the U.S. Saudi relationship, for example, or like the amount of assistance we provide or like or just, you know, more pressure around these human rights cases? there should be. I mean, I think there's some, but probably not enough, and we should be talking about it more. Mohamed Sultan's case, and he is a friend of mine, but it's a good example. This is a guy who was detained, I think unjustly, very unjustly, after the coup in 2013, tortured, right, went on a hunger strike. I mean, if you want to hear the story, it's in Missing America,

episode six, which is still out there. This is an American citizen who didn't do anything wrong. And then after he becomes obviously a vocal critic of the Egyptian government and human rights practices, they go after his family because he's exercising his right to free speech in the United States. And by the way, it's not just Muhammad Seltan. There are tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt. This is a government that is the second largest recipient of American foreign assistance in the world after Israel. That's wrong. That should not be the case. we should not be giving over a billion dollars a year in military assistance to a military

that is doing that. And if you want to know the pressures, part of the pressures are a lot of the assistance to Egypt is actually payments to like American defense contractors to make stuff and then give it to the Egyptians. Well, you know what? Like this should all be under review. And I would really like to see. And I argued for this in the Obama administration and usually lost the argument.

But like we should not be writing blank checks. to someone who's literally harassing the families of Americans after torturing them. Like, if you continue to enable that type of behavior, why wouldn't C.C. stop? So I really hope that, in addition of, like, looking at the Saudi relationship, they are looking at this Egyptian relationship because we've, this has been a human rights unmitigated disaster, not just for Muhammad, but again, for like tens of thousands of political prisoners in the country. Yeah. It's also notable, I guess, that Biden does not call called LCC yet.

He is way down on the list. Now, I think he's talked to sort of 30-some-od heads of state. The Jensaki had to come out today and say that Bibi Net Yahoo will be the first Middle Eastern head of state that Biden will call because the sort of concern trolling in the media about when Biden was going to call him sort of reached a fevered pitch over the weekend. But, yeah, I mean, like, you know, this is unacceptable. I don't know how you can possibly support a government with this bunch of religious assistants when they're just targeting families of American citizens.

That's insane. Like if that was happening to a country that was an adversary of the United States, like if that was happening in Iran, right? Like people would be like, what are you doing to stop that? These are people that were giving over a billion dollars to who are doing this to an American, harassing his family because he speaks out against what they do. Like that, it's just outrageous. I saw Jen's comment, you know, that,

when you have to put out statements like that, like it's the kind of, in like, posit, Jen Saki is like the greatest human in the world. But it's like the kind of statement that's not going to make anybody happy because it's not going to make, it's not going to make those who are upset that Bibi hasn't been called happy yet, but it's going to make some people unhappy that you still felt like you had to give them, you know, this is stupid psychodrama, though, you know, and we used to go through this. I remember, do you remember Tommy, you were there when there was like a meeting that Obama had with Bibi that wasn't scheduled.

It was scheduled late because BB was in town. So it wasn't like a big formal plan bilateral visit. And there wasn't like a photographer in the meeting. And for like the next five years we would get like, why didn't you have photography? There's a lot of focus on these kind of protocol issues that I honestly don't think are that important. They haven't called BB yet. Like BB was like a giant asshole to the Obama Biden administration.

Big surprise he hasn't been called yet. But you know what? He will be called. He's the prime minister of a very important country that Americans care a lot about. It'll happen. Like, let's just not get too focused on the small stuff here, the bigger issues, like what we're talking about with Egypt, ultimately matter more. Yeah, there are these weird self-owns in some of these relationships.

Like, the Churchill bust is another great example. It's like the British press manufacturer is a controversy about the Churchill bust, which leads to a bunch of hand-wringing about whether the U.S.-UK. relationship is as strong as it once was, which becomes this like self-perpetuating cycle of bullshit, which makes everyone then question it. Like, same thing is happening here with this, this Biden-NetNehaw call. Like, they talked after the election. They will talk it at some point soon. The U.S. Israel relationship is rock solid. There's probably better, closer ties among U.S. officials and Israeli officials than literally every single other country, like people that go

back decades and decades, right? And yet, like, these issues get manufactured in the press of where you are in the pecking order of the head of state called. It's just such a waste of time. Yeah. And even as someone who's like obviously huge critic of BB, and we've talked a lot about, you know, Iran and the Palestinian issue on this show as well as some developments in Israel, I care more about what Biden says to BB when they talk than about like whether he calls him next week or the week after. You know, maybe it's an election coming up. There's a lot of factors here. Yeah. It's stupid. Okay. Last issue before we get to your conversation. with Ilhan Omar, which is, Ben, you are our official British royal correspondent.

So there's some news when it comes to Harry and Megan Markle. But now that they're former royals, are you still comfortable and qualified to break this story for us? How does this work now? I mean, look, you know, the risk of a bad cliche, like despite Harry and Megan's understandable efforts. Being a British world's a bit like the Hotel California,

you can check out, but you can never leave. And I'll be honest, too, like, the reality is, like, they're doing a lot of stuff, right? They got an Oprah special coming out. The news, by the way, we should say, is that they've announced their second child, right? Which is very exciting.

Very exciting. A rural baby of people who are kind of semi-royals now. But the reality is they have a giant platform in part because they're former royals, you know, and they're going to be doing this big show with Oprah and they've got a Netflix deal. So the fact that, you know, people are interested in the fact that there's another royal baby coming just shows that the, you know, the ties are always going to be there. I saw them getting some shit, though. I'm going to back them up on this little bit.

I saw some people like trying to dunk on them being like, well, you said you didn't want to be harassed and to provide. personal news and now you announced your personal news as if, you know, you're a celebrity. And well, yeah, the question is, do they get to live on their own terms? And I think whether or not you agree with everything Harry and Megan done, like, people should be allowed to live on their own terms, especially if they're saying that they're not going to be taking money anymore from the royals and, you know, they're moving on here. But look, they're always going to be like in scene that way. And that may not be everything they want and that may not be everything that people were mad at them when it is what it is and very exciting that they have a new addition to the family.

Yeah. And also, you know, Megan Markle also wrote very publicly about a miscarriage. She had some of the struggles they've had to have a second kid. So obviously everyone should be nothing but excited for them about this news. They also live in a world where they know that there are an infinite number of news outlets desperate for any information about them still and willing to sell it to the highest bidder. So of course they're going to announce. stuff like this on their own terms. There's no hiding whether you're not you're having a kid. That's crazy. And here to get Harry's back, like, this is a guy whose mom was literally hounded to her death by paparazzi in the press. You know, like, they have every right to have

an extra desire to control their own story and the way they interact with the press. Like that, that just is what it is. And there's like a human component to that. I don't know why it's not obvious to everybody. Of course, that's what they want, you know. And so they announced they're having a kid, like, be happy for him. Just say it's good. You don't have to like turn it into like some big indictment of them, you know, how they release this news. Like, let them just do it the way they want to do it. I got this email from a super nice correspondent at a British outlet who was asking about apparently there's a meeting between Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Meg and Markle and Harry. And there was some speculation that she might want to run for Senate. So the guy was like,

you know, you're someone who is sort of dialing. it to California politics. Do you know anything about this? And I was like, I don't know shit about California politics. California politics is a world in and of itself. I wish I could help you, but I know nothing. But, you know, it shows you how quickly, like, everything gets spun up. Like a meeting with Gavin Newsom that was probably about the foundation, suddenly there were some rumors out there that it was about a Senate seat. Yeah, it's funny. Like just when, because, you know, look, I can see that, okay, some people might be annoyed. Like Harry and Megan, they decamped, to the U.S.

or setting up a shop in California, the Netflix thing. But then like these critics consistently kind of prove their point for them. You know, like if Harry and Megan's point was like, you guys are all on our ass, you're negative,

you don't respect Harry's lived experience with the press, you seem to be holding Megan Markle to some higher standard. You know, she's the first obviously kind of a black royal in that position. And, you know, like the critics, you know, they can't even have a meeting with Gavin Newsom without being about some, like, you know, ambition that you know, they probably just want to meet the guy. They live in California now.

Yeah, I was listening to Keep It. And I think I can't remember who made the point on the show, but they talked about how, you know, a lot of people haven't been watching the Britney Spears documentary. And then because of that doc, interviews of, you know, prominent female actresses in early 2000s of surface like Lindsay Lohan on Letterman. You rewatch these interviews from like, you know, the late 90s or early 2000s. And it is horrific. It is unbelievable that David Letterman is mocking someone about going into rehab in the year 2003. And it just feels like a thousand years ago. But that kind of coverage and that kind of tone was like what was written about Megan Markle two years ago, three years ago, which is absolutely brutal coverage. Yeah.

And the diana stuff is a trip to go back and look at. I mean, like, because you're going to obviously see it in like the crown and stuff. But like, if you go back and you look at just the degree of aggression from the paparazzi for that woman, like they, you know, it was just, it's uncomfortable to go back and look at that. And yeah, in this kind of dehumanizing way and gendered way. So, you know what? Like, let's cut the, let's cut Harry and Megan some slack here, even if, you know, even if they've been a bit clumsy in some of the steps they've taken.

Yeah. Oh, and Jordan corrects me, the Lindsay Lohan. interview was 2013, which is even more. That thing blew my mind. I couldn't believe he did that. I could. I like, you know what? Like, and let's turn this into a positive, you know, because I, and it's funny when I taught at USC and UCLA and it was dark, it was, you know, peak Trump and, and one of the things I said to the kids, and I sound like an old guy, right? One of the things I said to the kids is, like, there's a lot of negativity. There's a lot of stuff to be upset about. But culturally, when I think about 20 years ago when I was sitting in a college

classroom, like the way that the cultural norms have shifted, first of all, like most of the people were white when I was sitting in the classroom. And just, yeah, the way in which people spoke normally in the culture, like this is a more progressive country today than it was 20 years ago in so many ways. Our politics can kind of conceal that. But man, you look at that David Letterman thing. And he's treating this like young woman. and like she's not a person. Like she, you know, making fun of her for going to rehab. Like, and like play in the audience yucking it up.

Like, it's an applause line. It's uncomfortable. It also makes me think about the birther story narrative, which, you know, look, Barack Obama, politically he didn't, you know, like to, he didn't always talk about race. He chose his moments when he wanted to talk about racial issues. But the birther thing was so self-evidently racist. And it should. shouldn't have taken him to point that out. Like, the press court should have known, like,

hey, this is fucked up. It's racist. Stop inviting him on, like, the Today Show, Donald Trump I'm talking about. So I'm invited Donald Trump on the Today Show to lay out these bertha rumors in 2011. No, and like Obama, like, this is a hobby horse of mine. We can come back and talk about this. And we can talk about it actually around my book, because it's in my book a bunch. Like, there was a ton of racism that is going to age in a really strange way in the Obama years. And one of the reasons why he didn't go around talking about race all the time is precisely because of, like he writes in his memoir, when he said it was stupid to arrest Henry Lewis Gates, a prominent Harvard professor in his home. Like his polling dropped

precipitously and then the media had like a two-week debate over whether he made some big mistake that was going to derail his agenda. Obama plays the race car. Yeah, when he was just kind of and so think of how it's going to look in like 20 years that when we had our first black president, there was like a multi-year conspiracy theory that he wasn't born in the U.S. He was born in Africa, led by Donald Trump, that a majority of Republican voters believed throughout the whole Obama presidency. That's going to look as weird as like colored water fountains look to us now. I mean, that's what it's going to look like, you know?

It is shocking when you think about it. And thanks again, Donald Trump for that one. Thanks. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. We've gone from like Burma to, to Lindy Lois.

It's been a good show. Wide-ranging. When we come back, you will hear Ben's interview with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. So stick around for that. Well, I'm now very pleased to be joined by Minnesota Congresswoman and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ilhan Omar. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Yeah, great to be here with you. So I wanted to start with, you know, an issue that's obviously been dominating the news, which is this challenge.

of white supremacist terrorism and extremism in the United States. And what's interesting in watching your comments on this and your leadership on this is on the one hand, there are very few individuals in this country who understand better than you that this is dangerous, that there's an extremism out there, a kind of conspiracy theory-minded extremism, white supremacist extremism that could endanger people, and you live this obviously on January 6. At the same time, I've noticed you warning about the risk of overreach in shifting resources and attention to domestic extremism. You know, the danger essentially may be repeating some of the post-9-11 excesses in how we look at this. So I'm wondering, how do you unpack that? How do you

get the balance right between taking seriously a threat that could put people in danger without overreaching in a way that, you know, implicates civil liberties or kind of social order. How do you get that balance right? That's a really good question. I mean, I think for a lot of us, you know, we're forgetting to sort of examine, like, how we got here. There is a clear radicalization of so many segments of our society that has taken place. place for nearly a decade now. I mean, we have TV personalities who have radicalized domestic terrorists

who have been named in court cases of domestic terrorists who have slaughtered Muslims, immigrants, and other minorities for the last decade. And, you know, obviously this mode of radicalization isn't fully understood, analyzed, and has sort of been, I would say, normalized or minimized in so many ways, until we saw what happened on January 6th, then it arrived at the doors of the country's lawmakers. And even now we're seeing so many of them say, right,

that what we saw with our own eyes didn't really happen. Yeah, that these people who were violent and, you know, in so many ways, acting from the direction and who were incited by the president and many of our colleagues in Congress were not. And so I think that there is a problem there that we have to figure out how to deal with, understand, and analyze sort of what we have done with, you know,

other radicalizations globally that has. has taken place. But I think for me, it's really important that we don't do the easy thing that normally lawmakers do, whereas to, like, jump to institute these laws. And I've heard a lot of them talk about domestic terrorism laws to try to quail the fear that so many people are experiencing because it's important that we don't give into this fear and allow ourselves to. to be terrorized by those who seek to harm us

and get us to a point where, you know, the only answer we see is one that creates a broader security structure and a deeper police state. Yeah. Because then we are going to fall into this trap of making policies guided by the terror that we're feeling instead of treating the symptoms of the illness that is at the root of the cause.

Yeah, so it's an interesting way of looking at it, right? Because, you know, you stack up a bunch of authorities, you know, legal authorities, or kind of national security-based new resources. It sounds like from what you're saying, in addition to potential overreach into things like civil liberties, that may actually avoid looking more directly at why people are becoming radicalized. And it actually might radicalize more people. Yeah, yeah. Because as we are seeing now, right, every time we talk about accountability, we are seeing these people who are using their polypulpit to say, right, that these people are coming for your freedoms. You have to stop them.

And that in itself is going to radicalize people to take actions that are violent and harmful to the stability of our society. And I know as someone who comes from a community that has been vilified and monitored and whose civil liberties have been disregarded, that that's not what we want to do. I mean, we live in a country where people should enjoy their freedoms

and where we have people who are smart enough to understand that there are root causes, and there are actual people responsible for radicalizing, and that's who needs to be held accountable. Yeah, I guess actually one other question I'd ask, because I remember, you know, being in meetings in government, candidly, right, where you had a bunch of people in Washington, you know, talking about ways to counter violent extremism in the Somali community in Minnesota. You know, you basically had a bunch of white dudes sitting in windowless rooms talking about, you know, community outreach and countering violent extremism. And it did feel like it was an entirely securitized conversation, you know, about always assuming the worst in what could be happening in a community. I mean, what went wrong?

without kind of totally getting into the history of this, like just so people know, there was this kind of fear that there would be radicalization in the Somali-American community in Minnesota from al-Shabaab, an overseas terrorist organization. What lessons should be taken from that experience about what not to do or what to do when it comes with any kind of radicalization here in the U.S.? I mean, I think the things that were apparent to me when those conversations were taking place is that people, one, were not fully understanding the kind of disenfranchisement that needed to be addressed and who was exploiting that disenfranchisement that people were feeling. It wasn't disenfranchisement because of resources, because I remember. remember, you know, when the CVE conversations were happening, people were like, oh, these are poor communities. We have to give them resources. And, you know, if we give them resources, radicalization will go away. And to me, it was like that's, it's not that they need more jobs. Sure, people do need more jobs. But just because you don't have a job doesn't mean you're going to go and, like,

bomb something or you or shoot up a school or kill, you know, your friends and the close of people to you in your own neighborhoods. And, you know, the idea that either we forcefully throw everything in the book on these people and incarcerate them forever to, you know, spending exorbitant amounts of money in resources and in groups that are not. actually going to fully understand or address, you know, the, the ailments that exist within those that are being radicalized and what makes them vulnerable to radicalization, you don't see anything in between. And I think, you know, we have an opportunity right now

to recognize that it's not a good thing when you other. It's not a good thing when you allow fear to drive you. When you are terrorized, it's never okay to terrorize other people. And, you know, I think it's surprising because I think white America has been convinced that I hate them and like that I want, you know, people's civil liberties to be stripped. But that's, that's, that to me is the most terrifying thing that we can do right now. What we, you know, need, uh, is to have policies that are rooted in justice, policies that are, going to uplift people, create opportunities for there to be understanding, for people to be able to come forth and have a conversation without feeling like

they're outing themselves as a dangerous human being. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, there is an in-between. There are those that can be radicalized to be violent. And we have to figure out how to get to them before they. are ratified. Yeah, well, it's a powerful point, especially given that you, as you say, I've been a target of so much vitriol, I think reminding us that we need to look at the causes

of radicalization and not just people who have grievances as threats is hopefully the opportunity in front of us. I wanted to look outward about something you've been working on in the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is similarly about examining, you know, American policies and whether they're both effective and tied to justice. And that's sanctions policy. And you and I've talked about this in the past, but recently you wrote a letter or co-signed a letter to President Biden asking him to review U.S. sanctions policies, particularly

in light of COVID and the fact that it's been difficult to get medical supplies or humanitarian supplies to some of the heavily sanctioned countries. what are you hoping to see from the administration, and I'm going to get to the longer term question of sanctions themselves, but just on this narrow question of COVID relief and humanitarian exemptions, what are you hoping to see from that sanctions review if it goes forward? I mean, I think the ultimate goal of this letter that I wrote that I was so pleased to get Senator Elizabeth Warren

and Congressman Chui Garcia to lead with me was, that, you know, we would get the administration to sort of take a step back and holistically review the sanctions that we have in place to see if there are some that are counterproductive to our ultimate goals. As you and I have talked about, there are many. And to also look at if any of the sanctions we currently have in place have had humanitarian, implications and have, you know, hindered the ability for some of these countries to address the global pandemic that we are currently faced with and whether there is an opportunity for us to address the implications of harm in.

in those sanctions. Well, and if you look at the, you know, one of the powerful moments, for instance, I remember of your tenure on the committee was when you questioned Elliott Abrams over Venezuela policy. There's, again, an example where we've piled sanction after sanction on a country and not achieved our objectives at all, the stated objectives of, you know, trying to, I don't know, really impose a transition to a different government. But even if you take it as well-meaning to have a democratic government in Venezuela, but we've also harmed the people. And, you know, you can look at all these cases where we've really used sanctions, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran,

and both the problems that we're trying to solve keep getting worse and often the people themselves suffer. Do you get a sense from your colleagues? Because some of these sanctions are congressionally imposed, that there is an appetite for kind of reconsidering whether we're overusing sanctions? Is this something that you've, you mentioned Senator Warren joining your letter is a good sign? But do you think that there's potential evolution in Congress where sanctions are often the thing that people turn to do to show that they're doing something, to show how tough they are? Is this conversation kind of ripening in a way? Yeah, I mean, it's really, how do I want to say this?

I think it is really exciting that, you know, the conversations that we've ignited around sanctions for the last two and a half years have made some of our colleagues in Congress start to think about them. Because as you know, you know, sanctions usually are put in places, it's like muscle memory. I think that was a word that you used when we chatted. There, there is really no real thought that goes into what happens after the, the sanctions go into place. There, there are no clear processes of, you know, what a country has to do in order for these sanctions to be lifted. And so there are sanctions that are put on, you know, some African countries and they have been trying to get off of, you know, have these sanctions lifted.

And they come to us and they, you know, they're like, we don't, there's no clarity on how to do this. And I am pleasantly surprised and excited that there are now members leading the efforts on Foreign Affairs Committee to actually review some of the sanctions that are congressionally put on and to push the administration to do a thorough review as well of some of these centuries-old sanctions that we have on countries. Well, and given the moment that we're in, too, I mean, to broaden this out a bit, you know, you have a new president, obviously. you also have a new chairman of that committee. As you look at the Biden administration,

what would you like to see? I think there's so much focus on the domestic debates right now and the size of the relief package and the ambition appropriately on things like climate and housing. What would you like to see in terms of foreign policy to signal not just a break from Trump? And we've seen that in a lot of ways. But as you look at for the next year, where would you like to to see this administration move in a new direction, a more progressive direction in terms of American foreign policy, broadly speaking. Yeah, I mean, as you probably know, many of your former colleagues are part of this administration. And I will say they, some of them do have foreign policy viewpoints that are very much similar

to some of the foreign policy that I support and the ways that I like to see. Things, you know, play out. And the political realities from the administration that you served are very much different now. The world is different. So we have a different opportunity to not just rely on some of these muscle memory foreign policies that used to exist and to, explore really the other tools that we have in our tool box. So I've been pleasantly surprised to see the administration take a position on the Saudi-led

coalition assault on Yemen. Their willingness to engage with Iran, in a comprehensive, cohesive way that ultimately brings an end to the standstill. And, you know, their ideas of hopefully, you know, putting our values and principles in motion when it comes to some of our neighbors down south. Well, and one other issue, I mean, because part of what I think is also changed, right, and I think talking to a lot of people in the Biden administration, they get it. The connections between foreign and domestic policies are kind of out the window on a lot of things. Climate change first and foremost, and they're big ticket items like the scale of their climate ambitions in Congress and what they're going to do abroad. And then there are all the issues underlying that. And there was one I know in Minnesota around the line. pipeline, which goes from Canada through Minnesota. And there was a lot of grassroots activism calling on the Biden administration to cancel that along the lines of what they did with Keystone

in canceling it. I guess talk a little bit about why projects like that are important and why people should be aware of their kind of activism, even at the local level and something like that, connects to the bigger goal of how the world can get its arms around climate change. Yeah, I mean, I think oftentimes, you know, there, is a community that is struggling in their opposition to, you know, the construction of these pipelines. And for us in Minnesota, it's the indigenous community that really will cease to exist if, you know, this pipeline continues because it not only impacts, you know, a thousand acres of wetlands, but it will ultimately touch 211 bodies of water and it will not, it will impact

all of the Mississippi. And so not only is it going to have an impact northern Minnesota, it will touch my constituents and, you know, people all the way down, down the Mississippi in different states as well. And so the The activism around this has allowed for this conversation now to become a national conversation. I got an opportunity to visit and we've had, you know, multiple media stories around it. And there is some attention being brought to this issue and this struggle that the Native American community has had in their fight against this pipeline. Because it's not just a climate impact and a climate crisis issue, but it's also a sovereignty, indigenous sovereignty, is the treaty rights violation. And, you know, Minnesota is fastest warming state in the country.

And, you know, we can't really afford to continue to have. one of the dirtiest fossil fuel sources polluting our environment. Yeah, well, it's a good reminder that injustice issues and climate issues, you know, intersect often and the activism that is, you know, necessary at the local level is also necessary to be multiplied globally. So your reminders on that are very well heated. I'll let, I want to end on just a small note.

We have a... I will say, I mean, Al Gore was just talking about how we shouldn't allow any more permits for pipelines. Yeah. And he included line three. And so I'm hoping that his voice is being added to this will help reach the Biden administration and they will deny that permit.

No, and it's a good point that these individual fights on specific issues, a spotlight broader problems, right, that are really necessary if we're going to transform the wiring literally of the entire global economy, which is what's necessary. I did want to end on just a lighter note. We have a very canine-friendly workforce at cricket media. couldn't help alerting me to the fact that you have a new member of your staff in Washington. So if you could share how Teddy, I think a Labrador right, is doing, whether that's improved the environment in Congress at all. Great.

He is almost three, a little over three, I think. And he's great. He brings joy both to our family at home and our family of work. That's good. We could all use a dog in our life right now. We named him Teddy because he looks like a teddy bear. And, you know, my youngest daughter is having a hard time with the rapid growth that he's experiencing at the moment. Yeah, no.

We want to keep him as, you know, as cuddly and small as possible. I know my kids are after me to get, I promised him a puppy, but they've now figured this out that they want to get a puppy that says a puppy and doesn't actually grow into a full-grown dog. And I've had some very long conversations with my four-year-old about why that's not possible, but we'll try. All right. Well, thank you so much, Congressman. Are full-grown-looking dogs that are smaller? That look like a puppy. Yeah, that's probably where we'll land.

Well, look, we're rooting for you. Again, people should, you know, people obviously follow you, I think, on a lot of these national issues, but should really follow you our audience on these foreign affairs committee issues because, you know, you've been a voice challenging the status quo the last few years. And I think, you know, can help both support the new administration, but also nudge them in particular directions, too. So we'll be watching with interest. And thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks again to Congresswoman, Omar. I hope Teddy is doing well.

I would like a play date with him immediately. Yeah, and she said Teddy's named Teddy because he looks like a teddy there. So it's a cute little guy. I can confirm that. I saw some photos on Twitter. So thanks to her again. Thanks to Teddy. And thanks to the listeners and see you next week.

See you. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yelfried, Nar Malkonian and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes

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