The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3598 - Iran War at Oops Stage; Fighting ICE; The Loss of CFPB w/ Hagerstown Rapid Response, Joel Jacobs

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

It's Hump Day on the Majority Report   On today's program:   The Trump administration clearly had no idea what it was getting into with Iran. Trump is passing the buck onto his cabinet as Hegseth admits he never anticipated Iran would fight back, and Witkoff confesses he has no idea how the war ends.   Patrick Dattilio, Claire Connor, and Ethan Wechtaluk of the Hagerstown Rapid Response network join Sam to discuss their organizing against an ICE detention center in Washington County, Maryland.   Joel Jacobs, data reporter at ProPublica joins the show to discuss his piece Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers' Reports Under Trump's CFPB   In the Fun Half:   Senator Richard Blumenthal leaves a briefing on the war feeling like we are headed towards a path of a ground invasion in Iran.   An Iranian military official breaks down how unprepared the American top brass were for this war.   Senator John Husted (R-OH) says that people living in poverty have no experience navigating the real world.   Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) gets his deep-fried behind slapped by David J. Bier in a hearing over DHS and ICE in a glorious exchange.   Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) believes there is a lot of energy to impose Sharia Law onto America.   As the Texas republican Senate primary runoff nears, we take a look at incumbent John Cornyn's faith advisor deliver a sermon alongside and AI Charlie Kirk.45   all that and more   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SELECT QUOTE: Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50% on term life insurance at SelectQuote.com/MAJORITY ROCKET MONEY: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster: RocketMoney.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE:  Head on over to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Wednesday, March 11, 2020. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America. downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, members of the Hagerstown Rapid Response Network

fighting against a detention facility in Maryland. Also on the program today, Joel Jacobs, data reporter at ProPublica, on to discuss his piece on the chaos, Trump created by dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Also on the program, White House all but conceding they had no idea what they were doing when they started this war. This, after Iran begins mining the strait of the Hormuz. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency calls for the largest release of international oil reserves in history with hopes of avoiding an international

session. Back in the state's Thune, Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, thwarting Trump's call to dispense with the filibuster to pass the Save Act. Whistleblower

report, ex-Doge stole Social Security data tried to give it to its private employer. And they were like, I don't think we should have that. White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations.

And RFK pulls back on investing COVID, investigating COVID vaccines as the Republicans start to see electoral catastrophe come into focus. That white nationalist, Jeremy Carl, nominated for his State Department position, he has dropped out. Democrats flip a New Hampshire statehouse seat in their 10th straight special election. flip win, I guess. And Democrat Sean Harris heads to a runoff against Republican Clay Fuller to fill Marjorie Taylor Green's seat in deep, deep red Georgia.

All this and much, much more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. Emma Viglin out today. she'll be back tomorrow as well NASA County spokesperson says curious why do you think Thune is stopping the Save Act

to filibuster reform because I think they are very clear that there is a less than zero chance that Democrats are going to take back the Senate in the fall

and the thing that nobody wants, and I would include into this, even a lot of Democratic senators, they don't want there to be enough of a precedent to get rid of the filibuster. Now, what we have memory hold is that Republicans got rid of the filibuster like four or five times at the beginning of last year to pass different things. And I'm not talking about the reconciliation bill. There was what, The first one was they did a carve out for the filibuster on cafe standards to keep California from raising pollution standards. So it can be done.

Nobody wants to talk about it because in both parties, there are, and I would say there's more in the Republicans than there are in the Democrats. But in both parties, there's significant numbers of lawmakers who don't want to have to address. the fact that they don't hold, they don't hold positions that a lot of their voters would want. So what the filibuster does, it gives them the opportunity to vote for something that they know is not going to pass for all intents and purposes. That's a little bit of a simplistic version, but not too simplistic. That's more or less what it is. All right, let's get to this. We spoke with Professor Juan Cole yesterday on the program, and if you may, you may, you know, missed that for any reason, I would recommend highly that you go back and listen to that interview

because the professor made it clear. And while it was, the professor made it clear that Iran is going to dictate the pace and duration of this war going forward. It was clear on Friday of last week that the White House was starting to set up a situation where Trump could announce victory and go home regardless of what the situation was. But what has happened over the course of the weekend is that it has become clear that Iran has taken out a lot of the U.S. radar facilities throughout the region to the point where we have had to pull some of these, this equipment from South Korea.

They will get into that. But the short, the long and short of it is in 2017, the Trump administration insisted on putting in our latest version of essentially like missile tracking devices into South Korea. It was, it came at a great cost for South Korea because China had some, um, instituted some, embargoed some products. and it costs South Korea. And we're now airlifting those things out because we don't have any in the Middle East. And rather than Iran running out of its ability to fire missiles, it seems that Iran was withholding a lot of their missiles and suicide drones until after, which makes a total sense.

I imagine to people in the military, they could have predicted this. But it makes total sense to me as a layperson. That you withhold a lot of your weaponry for when you know its hit rate, its yield is going to be higher because there's no missiles to make Israel or other possible targets aware that these things are coming. and Iran has intensified its attacks on Tel Aviv, and they have begun to mine the Straits of Hormuz, and the world is in sort of coming to the awareness that the U.S. and Israel are not in control of this war. They are not dictating the length of this war,

and that Iran has every incentive in the world to make the entire world pay a massive price, like literally, economically, because they want to make sure that next time nobody attacks them. They don't have a nuclear weapon, so they don't have that deterrent. But they do have something pretty close in terms of impact, and that being operative, control or at least the ability to stop the flow of 20% of the world's oil supply. And I don't know what percentage, but a significant one of the world's fertilizer.

But fear not, the Trump administration's on it. I mean, this is honestly like, this would be like a good episode of the office if it wasn't so horrific. If we're not talking about thousands of Iranians dead, potentially millions poisoned, at least a half a dozen U.S. servicemen dead, hundreds injured. We don't have as much reports out of Israel because they essentially censor, but presumably dead civilians in Israel as well. and there's very likely a recession in this country, perhaps an international, we don't know what the end is, but now they're all trying to cover their asses and blame other people.

And here is where the buck stops, says Donald Trump. And more or less, he says, not with me. The situation was very quickly approaching. The point of no return in the United States found it intolerable. in my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco, so involved, that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would, if we didn't do this at the time we did it, I think they had in mind to attack us.

So there it is. I mean, we know now we have the list of guys who are responsible for telling the president, what can I do? I just got to listen to my advisors. That was two days ago. yesterday, here's Pete Hegsith at the Pentagon, and I want you to think for a moment, all the things that might surprise you if you are Secretary of Defense when you engage in a war. Think of all the things that might surprise you. We're now, what, a week in to the war, right? Think of all the

things after a week that would surprise you about the enemy. Has been the Iranian regime attacking countries that are not attacking them. I'm curious if that surprised you as well. And general, I'm curious if you were open to the possibility of escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and if you could describe some of the challenges of doing so. Big mistake by the Iranian regime to start targeting its neighbors right away. Exposing who they are and what they're all about, indiscriminate targeting, flailing recklessly at the beginning. I can't say that we anticipated necessarily that's exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility.

And I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of that that regime then and that regime now that they... The idea that now the Iranians have exposed themselves to people that they have lived... with for their and you know for their entire existence like i'm sure the people in uh jubai are now like oh now we really know who the iranians are after three thousand years we finally figured out those persians and the idea that iran would attack u.s bases uh and um inflict uh some type of like economic costs on these countries that have been clearly sort of supporting U.S. military in one fashion or another. Is that really surprising?

They're indiscriminately attacking all these countries that we use as aircraft carriers. They're flailing around. Meanwhile, it seems like they're flailing is having the exact impact that they wanted it to. Is the other country in the region that's bombing five, seven countries flailing recklessly as well? Yeah, it's unclear. We're really surprised that Israel decided to bomb Lebanon when we were bombing Iran. Well, at the very least, at least the guy in charge of, and there, incidentally, there's other reporting now that suggests that Whitkoff and Kushner had absolutely no idea what they were negotiating with Iran.

That they had no idea what the Iranians were saying to them. You'll recall about a week ago we played a clip. I think he was on a week from Sunday. The foreign minister of Oman was saying, the Iranians made an offer that went further than any offer they've ever made before. They said they would not stockpile enriched uranium. They would enrich uranium, but they would use it. They wanted the ability,

and this makes total sense for any country. They wanted the ability to control their own energy supply. Because the United States was like, we'll give you free energy. And anybody who had a father growing up knows that, you know, when they're pulling the strings, like, oh, I guess I'm not getting allowance this week because my attitude was bad. that they want control of their own energy. And you can enrich uranium and then deplete that uranium by using it in nuclear facilities for civilian energy uses. But if you don't stockpile it, you can't build a weapon. And it appears that Wittkoff and Jared Kushner had no understanding of that whatsoever.

Or they didn't want to understand that. But don't worry, Whitkoff has got this handled. Here he is yesterday. So how do you see this ending, this war? I don't know, Sarah. I know this, that President Trump is the wrong guy to go up against. That's what I know. He...

Loud with the voice of the lonely go to laud lay or loo. As far as I can tell, President Trump is still in the White House, he's not out there beating up Iran. I'm the wrong guy to go against. I am the wrong guy to go against. According to Axios today, Trump has said, we bombed everything. There's the bomb. We ran out of targets.

I'm bored now. So I guess we'll wrap it up. Anybody? Unconditionally, they surrendered. I mean, if losing basically an extra million people because of our response to COVID, was not enough of a hint. But it seems that like you actually need a functioning president to at least help guide a country.

There also appears to be a wide margin of error for this country. But we're going to start to see its diminishment, you know, over time. Later in the program, we're going to be talking about pro public as Joel Jacobs. about just one of the implications of what Trump has done with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before we get there, we're going to be talking to Patrick Detailio, Claire Connor, and Ethan Wecheluk of the Hagerstown Rapid Response. They've been fighting a detention center in Maryland. We'll be talking to them in a moment, just first a couple of words from our sponsors.

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Joining us now, Patrick Detillo. He is the founder of the Hagerstown Rapid Response, which is a real-time alert network for ice sightings and community emergencies. Claire Connor, an organizer with Hagerstown Rapid Response. Ethan, Wedgillock, also an organizer for the Hagerstown Rapid response and running for Congress in Maryland's 6th District. Guys, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us.

Patrick, let's start with you. When did you set up the Hagerstown Rapid Response? What was happening with ICE at that time? Yeah, it was really as a result of what we were seeing in Minnesota. It was the end of January there. and it was really built to protect our neighbor from state terror like what we were seeing in Minnesota. Yeah, we started as a signal-based alert system for ice sightings, but we've evolved into a full-scale organizing front. We have like 500 members now in a signal chat.

So, yeah, that's sort of where it was born out of, and it has been growing. like crazy ever since. And Claire, so at what point did this detention center sort of come on to the scene? You guys organized in prep for ice coming. Was there, I guess I asked first, was there an ice surge? I mean, you know, even in New York, we have sporadic ice sightings, but nothing like, you know, what Minnesota saw or L.A. saw or Chicago saw. Was there anything like that? And then just tell me about the pivot to the detention center.

Sure. Well, I think that there wasn't necessarily a search locally here in the community, but it was the news of the acquisition of a mega warehouse and the proposed retrofitting of that location into a detention center that was startling for all of us. It happened very abruptly. And it happened. Yeah. just overnight almost.

And the lack of answers along the way to the questions and concerns that we've voiced has further encouraged us to keep pressing and asking and trying to find out the truth. So, Ethan, I mean, what do you know about that facility at this point? Like, who owns it? Who owns it? where in the process of the sale is it how far down the road have they gone yes unfortunately we are too far down the road for this it is owned by dhs right now um had they own this how long of dhs own it do you know january since january january 9th i believe yeah yeah january 9th yeah and for people who who are sitting there wondering okay well

why would the federal government purchase this? Why not have a third party and lease it? The federal government purchases and own things. They can get away with trying to circumvent certain rules and requirements. That's the supremacy clause. I'll nerd out on the Constitution here. But it allows them to avoid zoning regulations, perhaps some building codes and permitting processes and things like that.

So what you've seen is ICE has gone across the country and bought these facilities. So then the local jurisdictions can't come in and say, no, you can't do this. So that's represented a real challenge and fighting back and pushing back because you're not just pushing back against some, you know, company. You're pushing it back against the whole, you know, entirety of the federal government. So Patrick, I mean, what are, and like having been aware of fights to stop, let's say, a cold fire power plant in a certain area or something like that where you can say, okay, we need these, we need to use a department of, the environmental you know act to see if the permitting has been

done right and this and that that the feds by the facility make it easier for them to bypass it so what do you do as an organizer to push back on that? Great question. We dove into a lot of research around what, who owns

what? Specifically the biggest points that we were hammering was who owned the water and who owned the sewer. Because a warehouse with an estimated like 150 staff is going to need significantly more water and sewer capabilities than a 1,500 person detention facility. So we took a look and the county owns the sewer.

So we've been pushing them and trying to contact them to find out more about our capacity, whether we can just outright stop them from accessing the sewer. And then the same sort of thing with the water, which we determined was owned by the city of Hagerstown, which is a little more on our side in this fight. And so the idea is that we're just, necessarily inhibit them from they've already purchased the facility right but we can essentially

deny them infrastructure by going through entities that are still under local control so Claire how do you put pressure on those local entities and I'm also curious I mean just to go backwards a little bit you've got 500 people on a signal how does that happen um so we In order to put pressure on the different entities that are involved directly or possibly even indirectly, we have been having protests. That's one way to get people to rally together around this issue to discuss their concerns. In particular, Hagerstown Rapid Response has been partnering with our local indivisible chapter to protest each week in front of the Board of County Commissioners office building. They are a group that we have a little bit of tension with at the moment, given that very shortly after they, quote unquote,

found out that the warehouse was going to happen. They endorsed its arrival with open arms and said that they were effectively complicit with whatever DHS wanted to do with it. This is the board. Our county commissioners, correct. Okay, okay. So continuing to hold these protests to try to get their attention, they've also barred us from being able to speak in a public forum at their meetings.

This has been ongoing for a while, but it's become an increasingly tense situation as this situation develops. And how did you get the 500 people that you have access to on Signal? I imagine there's others. too who have, you know, that at least are rallying around this specific issue. How did you first, like, how did you build that list? Sure. I mean, there have been opportunities at the rallies to talk to other people and get an idea

that they're like-minded and gauge whether they'd be interested in helping out because there are many ways to help out Hickers Town Rapid Response beyond being boots on the ground or researcher. We do things like mutual aid and also just, yeah, general social. events to try to lighten the mood. So word of mouth, we, with our petitions that we've been launching, have been gauging interest in the community that way and also reaching out to our neighboring communities maybe in Frederick County and Montgomery County, Howard County, Allegheny going to the West, just to try to build that support around us here.

And even, are there like legal avenues? litigation or I imagine like there's public hearings maybe that you guys are attending when it comes to stuff like the infrastructure. What you know, so we have on one hand just sort of like public pressure in the sense that all these people are politicians and they may not want to have such a fervent group of people who might put up a different, I mean, you're running against a, uh, an incumbent a congressperson whose record on a whole host of things, frankly, has been rather garbage. We've spoken just the other day to Alexis Goldstein, who's also running for that in that primary.

So, like, what are the different avenues that you guys are pursuing, aside from, like, public pressure, are there legal ones? Are there filings? Yeah. You know, it starts with having a spine. Sam, and it sounds like one of those basic things. But to put this in context, Representative April McLean, Delaney, on January 22nd, when they voted on the Lake and Riley Act of 2025, 48 hours after Trump came into office, she voted to enact the Lake and Riley Act, which expanded mandatory detention.

So that really set the groundwork for this. And this is the environment now that Western Maryland has inherited, right? That we have a representative, we have political leadership, not just Republicans, but Democrats who are saying, well, maybe there's elements of this that are a good thing. So when it comes to fighting back, you know, as Patrick and Claire have mentioned, it's looking at everything. Can we attack the water? Can we attack the sewer? Can we attack the electricity? Can we attack their telecommunications, right? Is there a way to, you know, delay the being able to get internet access to set up security cameras, right? And one of the biggest avenues and thanks to the great work of the Attorney General here in the state of Maryland, Anthony Brown,

has been to go after and look at an environmental review. So there's the NEPA, which sets environmental reviews for projects. And that part of Hagerstown and Williamsport, and it's worth mentioning, that is a historic area. Williamsport, where the warehouse is located, is an extraordinarily beautiful historic town, houses that go back into the, you know, 1700s. And so there's a lot of, you know, things to consider.

There's also a stream that runs right by the warehouse that drains into the Potomac. major watershed. So a lot of those historic and environmental reviews were, you know, short-circuited, right? The government tried to speed through them and sit there, oh, we don't, we don't need to gloss over this. No one's going to really pay attention. Correction, Maryland is paying attention. We pay attention to these things. Maryland is an immensely proud of our history. Maryland is immensely proud of our environment. And we don't take lightly when someone else comes to, you know, tries to come in and tell us, no, we don't have to focus on that. No, we do have to focus on that. And so, You know, the Attorney General had filed, you know, a lawsuit based on the environmental and historic reviews.

And then he's just requested because they started construction. Construction contracts were awarded just in this past week. And they've already, I was out at the warehouse on Monday looking around. They're already bringing contractors on round to survey the site. They're bringing in trailer trucks for bathrooms for the construction workers, right? and they're just plowing ahead as if they're just going to get away with it. So the Attorney General have filed another lawsuit to put a pause on that and say you guys have to wait until the court can rule on the other case.

So we're optimistic that that's going to work and it's going to slow it down because ICE has to realize in DHS as a whole, people just don't want this. They just don't want these facilities in their backyard. They don't want these facilities in their communities. they don't want these facilities in their states. We just don't want the period. But especially when it's in our community and destroying the very fabric of what makes us who we are.

I imagine there's also a sense that this time next year, Congress, at least a house at the least, will have a little bit more ability to start to tighten the sort of the purse strings for these type of things. In the meantime, Patrick, is there an attempt in the community to sort of also you're looking at infrastructure, but there's, I would imagine,

the people do in the building of this outfit, they're from the community. I imagine that they do other commercial projects or residential projects. And like, is there an effort to also say, like, you know, I remember back in the day, if you were hiring scab workers, there'd be a big fat, massive rat that people would bring out in front of the job site.

I don't know if that, you know, something like that, but is there an effort to also say like, hey, you're, you guys are working on, you know, one of the most sort of like despised projects in the country right now? Yeah, I think we are looking at it from all angles. Every worker, every subcontractor is definitely on our radar. We're actively looking for the likely subcontracts that are going to come out from the general contractor in Gettysburg. So, yeah, they're not going to go unnoticed. We're actively pursuing all avenues of resistance. Yeah. Claire, how can people get involved outside? Like, I mean, if we want to help in your efforts, or if people locally, like, I mean, how far, you know, what's the range of people you have that, in terms of distance, that are on your, your, your signal or are just showing up for rallies?

Sure. It is actually a broader population than you might expect. In terms of Hagerstown Rapid Response, we serve the entire Washington County vicinity. We do. also partner, again, with Frederick County, with Franklin County in Pennsylvania and neighboring communities in West Virginia, because the activity in those locations is relevant here, too, and they have concerns too. But in terms of, yeah, active sightings, we're working within the scope of our county. If people are interested in joining us, we do have a website that has launched, and it's just Hagerstown, Rapid Response.com. I will note that our latest petition is up on the homepage of the website if you scroll down a little bit. And this particular petition is putting pressure on job recruitment sites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, so on and so forth,

to stop listing jobs for Department of Homeland Security and ICE in order to employ people for these detention centers in light of these job postings for the Williamsport. warehouse having gone up this past weekend, I believe, on Saturday. I imagine also people, I don't know if you have to join those sites to go and apply for jobs. It's a very good question. I imagine that would be like really problematic if a lot of people who weren't, if there was a lot of people. sincere about taking the job. I know when I've posted stuff and a lot of people go in there,

it takes so much time and resources. Anyways. Patrick, Claire, Ethan, thanks so much for coming on. We will put a link to the Hagerstown Rapid Response site. And, you know, I guess if folks wanted to find, like, where those job postings are, you know, it wouldn't be hard to search. Like, where, I mean, if I, just because, I don't know how this is going to work out for me. In the event that I'm looking for a job because I understand Maryland has like crabs and like water around there. There's a whole bunch of stuff.

Right? If I ever want to move to that area and I was looking for the jobs like where would I search for those jobs? Yeah, I think we have a lot of really good answers to all of those questions right on Hagerstown Rapid Response.com and our signal chat, which you can join. from the website itself. I really appreciate that because, you know, just in case. You're welcome here anytime, Sam. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Anytime. I appreciate it.

All right, guys, thanks so much. Really appreciate the work you're doing. Good luck. I really, you guys are doing great work and really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be talking to Joel Jacobs,

data reporter ProPublica to discuss a, you know, I mean, consumer financial protection bureau gets 86th, and it's hard to assess like the absence of something. So, I mean, this is a tiny facet of it, but it's an important one.

And he'll tell us about that in a moment. We'll be right back. We are back. Sam Cedar on the majority report. Emma Viglin is out today. Just recalling our last segment, USAjobs.com, also a place, if you're looking or just even thinking about like, practice applying.

What would it be like? Yes, it's a great, it's always good to apply for a job when you don't need one. And so if you head over there and fill up people's inboxes looking for jobs and then I can tell you, it can be really confusing for people, reading through those things. Anyways, I want to welcome to the program, Joel Jacobs. He's a data reporter at ProPublica. He has written a piece about sort of like one relatively, I mean, in terms of the

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's portfolio, you know, a sliver of it, but it impacts so many people and so dramatically. And it's just one example of what we've lost when we lost the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Joel Jacobs, welcome to the program. First off, broadly speaking, tell us like what's happening at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Yeah, well, thank you for having me. Yeah, I mean, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you know, technically still exists. That's partially because of a lawsuit that has stopped some of the most dramatic cuts and kind of dismantling. But it really has been, I mean, defanged, pick your, pick your sort of description. but it is not, it's sort of a shell of a regulator at this point.

You know, basically the acting director, Russ Vote, who's also Trump's budget director, basically took control of the agency in early February last year, basically almost immediately told all staff to stop most of their work. And then they tried to fire about 90% of the staff. Now, some of these cuts have been, you know, paused by a lawsuit. but basically they've been rolling back enforcement actions and people have been leaving on their own on their own volition

and so people are you know basically that this agency is really not doing a lot of the work that it used to do to oversee the financial sector. There's two things that I think people should know about this. One, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unlike the vast majority of agencies, is self-funding. And it had its funding mechanism from fees that it would collect from banks and this was a way that was set up to inhibit Congress's ability to sort of choke it off. They have done this largely, as far as I know, through, what is it, RF, RIFD, through reduction in force,

claiming that they can do their job without this many employees. But, Joel, just briefly, before we get into the specifics of your story, the implications of Russ vote, the guy who really oversaw the writing of Project 2025, the Trump's first term office of management and budget director, and now the second one, the idea that he becomes acting head, that seems to me to be indicative of just how important it was to the Republicans' plans to destroy the consumer financial. Protection Bureau. I mean, it is interesting. I mean, certainly he has made his kind of views on the agency. I mean, he has a view on the whole kind of federal bureaucracy in terms of, you know, his sort of distaste for it.

But I think the CFPB, you know, has is a really, really stands out as something that he, you know, that he's called out. And I think it's also, it is a little notable also that, you know, we did have a first Trump administration. There was some, a little turmoil at the CFPB, but eventually they did nominate a director, Kathy Kpaninger, who sort of operated, the agency as somewhat of a regulator. I mean, maybe, you know, a little more hands off, but it was not this 90% cut, try to take down the agency. I mean, this is, you know, a totally different scale in terms of what we're seeing in terms of just really trying to dismantle it and, you know, this argument that, you know, it can arguably do its legally mandated job with very few people. What is the in a, when the agency is operating the way it should, I think the Biden administration,

it was actually sort of like maybe at its peak in terms of efficacy. It's a relatively new agency that was developed during the Biden year, excuse me, the Obama years, headed first by Elizabeth Warren before she was involved in politics back, you know, when she was leaving academia and had been writing about bankruptcies and malfeasance by banks. and she didn't end up being the head. It was sort of an acolyte of hers, I guess maybe you could say. But what during the Biden administration, more or less did the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau do? Yeah. I mean, they were a pretty assertive regulator in terms of their position trying to protect consumers.

And I think that, you know, what I was looking at with credit reporting, this was one of their real focuses, right? They were trying to pressure the credit bureaus to be more responsive to consumer concerns. I mean, I think one thing notable about credit bureaus is we don't choose credit bureaus, right? I mean, if you have a bank and a bank, you're frustrated with your bank, potentially you can move to another bank. It might be a hassle, but credit bureaus, we really don't have a choice with that. And so I think they really saw that. And that's why we have laws that give us the right to, you know, if we found an issue on our credit port, contest it. And so I think that what the Biden administration was doing, which was, you know, supervision, which is kind of,

of regular examination through these kind of reports pressuring the and and what my story focused on the complaint system telling the consumer bureaus to be more responsive to complaints and then also eventually enforcement actions where they did take action against some of these credit bureaus to sort of try to push them to be more responsive and do these the investigations that the law says that they're supposed to do so that was kind of that's kind of the different fronts that they were working in this in this realm with let's let's just step back for a second and just give us a brief description of what credit bureaus are. There's Equifax, there's Experian, there's TransUnion, those are the big ones,

but I know there's like one or two other ones now. And for folks who are like in their early 20s or younger than that, maybe even through their 30s, I don't know, like I don't know when I became aware of them. But these are, like you say, we don't choose them. They oversee us essentially. I mean, I don't know how else to express it. And they essentially determine our eligibility for loans, our eligibility to rent an apartment, our eligibility to buy something on layaway.

I mean, a whole host of things. What else? What do they do? And who are they and what's involved with it? Yeah. So the big three credit bureaus are Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. And like you said, you know, they really do kind of in some, ways control our financial lives without maybe us knowing a little bit. So, you know, they collect

information about, you know, whatever debts and kind of obligations you might have. And they put it together in this credit report. And this credit report is offered to, you know, if you want to take out a mortgage or something like that, right, they're going to check your credit report. You know, we have a credit score that is often used to kind of measure creditworthiness. You know, that's, that's generated from, from these companies based on the information they collect. So, you know, it really does have serious consequences. And so, you know, you don't pick what's on your credit report. And so, you know, you might not realize that you have an issue with your, you know,

that there is a mistake, potentially even until you try to apply for something. And then, you know, it comes up and they say, you know, we're turning you down for whatever reason. And it can be really difficult to try to get those issues fixed. So that's what kind of my story focused on. And people should also understand, too. like if you have a bad credit rating, the credit card that you may get, you may only be eligible for a credit card that like you have to put money up front in first or you're going to, you know, because you're deemed a higher risk, your interest rate might be double what it is

another credit card. It may inhibit you if you're trying to buy a house, et cetera, et cetera. So this is, these are really important things. And with all of the data leaks that we have, which is constant. I would say I don't go more than two weeks without getting a letter from my insurance company or, you know, whatever, some utility provider. A year and a half ago, we had a massive data leak. And sorry about that, but we'll offer you one free year of credit protection from like Experian or something like this.

But meanwhile, maybe my identity has gotten stolen. Maybe somebody stole my credit card. Maybe they just made a mistake. And so it is absolutely crucial that people have the ability to contact these entities, which are like sort of behind this sort of like incredibly veiled wall and say, hey, wait a second, you've got to change this because this isn't a reflection of my actual credit, right? And what has happened since the Republicans have destroyed the consumer financial Protection Bureau to that ability.

Right. So basically what's happened and kind of what we looked at was data from the CFPB complaint. So, you know, a person can dispute directly with the Credit Bureau, but they also, a lot of people, especially when they might be frustrated with what happened from that, you know, they went directly to the Credit Bureau. It didn't fix their issue. Then they go to the CFPB. And the CFPB, one of its legal mandates is actually to operate a complaint system. And basically, what happens with that complaint system is, you know, a consumer goes, to the CFPB on the website, they type in their complaint, it's forwarded over to a company and that company then has to respond. And so is there a certain amount of days in which they have to respond

to by? So they get 60 days is the maximum amount. And, you know, they can provide different responses that they can close it sort of with an explanation or they can also potentially provide relief. Now, monetary relief or kind of what they call non-monetary relief. And that's what the credit bureaus in theory can provide is, you know, changing something on your credit report that may fix your issue. And really what we looked at is the, the CFPB post data about, you know, how many complaints come in every month. And again, I mean, this system has been growing. It's been more popular. But the credit bureaus are far and away the most complained about entities. There were more than four million credit bureau complaints last year. And basically... That's incredible. It's a lot of complaints.

I mean, how many adults do we have in this country, right? Like, we have 330 million people or so. And I don't know. What is it? Like half of those people are above the age of 20, more, slightly more. But that's a high percentage of problems for something that's so crucial. Right. And it could be people, you know, people may submit multiple complaints because their things don't get fixed, right?

I mean, I will say the credit bureau is what they say is there's a lot of spam complaints. And we can get into that, that it's the third party credit repair and they're flooding it. I mean, which, you know, some of their claims are maybe a bit overblown there. But, you know, it's all like complaints. And certainly a lot of people do have issues with their credit ports and they get a lot of disputes. And basically what we saw, though, is that the relief, you know, how often these companies, two of them in particular, TransUnion and Experian, had declined significantly over the past year

or so. Experian was in 2024 was giving relief to about 20% of complaints that went to actually under 1% last year. And then TransUnion, which has actually been quite high around 80 to 90%, where they were making some kind of change. You know, maybe didn't exactly make sure you, but they were doing some, in theory, some kind of change to your credit report. That went dropped by about half over the summer. And so basically it just shows, it seems to show that, you know, before, and this kind of reverses a trend where during the Biden administration, they were really pressuring the credit bureaus to give more substantive responses, right?

to not just give a can response to look into this stuff maybe a little closer. And those relief rates had gone up. And now we see a little bit of a reversal here. We don't have a sense of how many of we have an inset. We have a, do we have a sense of like what's inputted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? And then do we have a sense of how many of those get forwarded? Or do we just know that the first number and the last number, which is how many of those get resolved? Yeah, so I mean, they, they don't, so some of these complaints have narratives that are published, so you can see what people might be saying. Somebody has to opt into that. There are attachments and documentation people send that aren't included, obviously, because that's more sensitive. So, you know, and the companies do have to give some response. They just may give kind of a more canned response. Or they, if they don't make a change, they'll just kind of, they close the complaint and they say, here's why we did, didn't. And I will say, you know, just kind of the M.O of the credit bureaus in general,

is sort of they go, you complain to them, you say, you know, there's this debt that's not mine, right? And then they go and they turn around to whoever furnished, it's called a furnisher, whoever sent them that information. And they basically say, is this different than your records? And the credit and the company basically says, yes, usually, which I or no, you know, our records are accurate, even if the, even if the customer sent documentation that's the contrary. And then, you know, they come back to the customer and say, you know, we verified, we verified, we verified, you're that debt is yours or we verified that's correct. And, you know, I've spoken with, you know, several folks, there's one, a couple people in my story where they send a bunch of documentation

and really just got, you know, these sort of canned responses of we verified this, um, despite, you know, pretty clear evidence to the contrary. Okay, wait a second. So, so, um, uh, I go to, I go to Experian and I see like, hey, wait a second, my credit rating is a 200. Why is that? That's bad. Uh, and it says, oh, because you didn't pay your rent for three months. And I'm like, I did pay my rent. But Experian contacts, the landlord and the landlord says, you didn't pay his rent.

I don't have records for it. And then he just moved away. And I'm like, well, I moved away, but I had paid everything. And so, but experiences, we can't do anything about it. So then I go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I say, here's all my documentation. Here's my new lease. Here's my old lease.

you know, here's my canceled checks, whatever. Where is the breakdown? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau passes that on and gets no response. And where do you, as a data reporter, see at what points along that trajectory do you see that information? Right. So the CFPB passes it along, and they kind of monitor it. I mean, not every single complaint might have, you know, someone at the CFPB following up on it,

right? Obviously, there's so many complaints that come in. But kind of where I see the data. right is when you went to Experian, we don't see that. You know, and that's something that's pretty notable, right? We don't see how many people, you know, send a dispute directly to the Credit Bureau, what they say in return, that kind of thing. But what we can see in the data from the CFPB is how many people send a complaint,

you know, some general information, you know, what state it came from, you know, what the general topic was, potentially, you know, what you wrote if you agreed to include that. And then, you know, we see basically what kind of several categories of responses the big one being either you kind of closed it with an explanation, which, you know, you didn't do anything or Experian didn't do anything, or you close it with sort of a, with some kind of non-monetary relief, which we can't see exactly what that is, but, you know, that's intended to mean, you know, they have updated something on your credit report in response to, in response to your complaint. And so all of those rates are down dramatically, according to your piece.

And so what is the incentive structure here for? for the experience or the trans unions, or I should say Equifax and TransUnion, is it just like, we don't have to hire as many customer representatives because we don't, we're not getting any pressure to fix these things. So it's much easier to go like, sorry, looks good to us. Or we just, we're going to, if we can, if we can make the time in which somebody examines this down to one minute, as opposed to four minutes, we've saved 75% on that division, essentially.

Yeah, I mean, and one rare kind of peek into this, there was a House subcommittee report back a few years ago. And it kind of showed, they gave the credit bureaus gave some numbers on their employees and the number of disputes they got. And TransUnion had 171 employees in 2021, and they had 38 million line items that were disputed. And that's just direct disputes. I'm pretty sure that doesn't include complaints. So you just get a sense of like how many things these people are dealing with, and it's largely automated, you know, and so it's not, I mean, the credit bureaus will say, you know, we want everything to be accurate.

But I think that, you know, you talk to a consumer advocate, and they'll say, you know, we are the product, right? You know, we are not the customer here. And so, you know, we don't have a choice to go to somewhere else. And so there's a certain level of quote unquote accuracy that maybe is acceptable. And then, you know, they, otherwise, it's, extra money to spend on these disputes, right? It's extra people to hire, and this is not where they get their money from.

They don't get their money from, you know, you and me as much as they get their money from, you know, selling our data, basically. And so I think that's where that's where the incentive structure comes in. And that's why, you know, the CFPB was, you know, had brought enforcement actions right before the Trump administration to try to kind of pressure the credit bureaus to reform things. And in fact, we did find, though, while they brought two right before they're not having, administration. There was one more against TransUnion that they were in settlement talks for months. They'd got an approval to bring this enforcement actions. And the settlement talks had basically been

abandoned once the new administration came in. And lastly, we're not the client, right? So they don't feel like they have to provide us customer service, which is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau basically served that function. Like, we're the leverage, essentially, for all of the for all Americans because you don't serve them. But on their client side, I would imagine there is a significant incentive or incentive or disincentive, depending on which perspective you look at it.

But if I'm, I don't know, whatever, a landlord or I'm a credit card company and I'm going to Equifax or Experian or TransUnion to assess somebody's credit worthiness or their credit score, there's no, like, I'm not necessarily upset if the person has a 500 credit score. I mean, maybe, you know, maybe if I'm, you know, renting out my room in my house, I'm a little bit nervous. But beyond that, it just means that I can jack up the prices here. And I know, like, I can charge a 25% interest rate on this credit card. And I know this person is not going to be able to go anywhere else and get a significantly better rate,

because I can see their credit scores. So lower credit scores damages to people's credit report is actually in everybody's best interest except for essentially American citizens. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, you do end up just a bit trapped, right? And so I think that that's why, again, And, you know, I think that's why the CFPB, why these laws exist to try to, you know, make sure the credit bureaus are accurate, make sure there is, you know, the incentive is, should, is kind of, or the disincentive is, you know, if you're not doing this, you're going to get sued potentially, right? And there, you can do a private lawsuit, right? You can, you can sue potentially if they've ignored you and if you have an error. But nobody can really replace, you know, the federal regulator that was really, you know, pushing these companies to be more, more responsive. Joel Jacobs, data reporter, ProPublica. We will put a link to your piece. Really appreciate it. We're in an era where there's less and less reporting,

and I really appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. All right, folks. That's it for us, at least in the free show today. But for members, it's just beginning. You can become a member by going to join the Majority Report.com. And when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials,

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And they also have the majority port blend. And you save 10% with the coupon code majority. It's a win, win, win. That's what we call it in the business. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, yesterday left recognition. We add Cuba, Deep State Cuba, who appears on. This is Revolution with Jason Miles talking about how a former Pentagon analyst looks at this sort of thing

and what the view looks like from Europe and why, for instance, Spain has been breaking with American Israel on this recent war. So check that out, a very in-depth discussion yesterday at left-recogn. Patreon.com. I was left crooked. Also, I should tell you yesterday after the show, I went on and had to talk with Wajahad Ali on his substack. So check that out if you want. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. but I think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go like wow what what is that going on it's nuts

wait a second hold on for hold on for a second Emma welcome to the program hey what is up everyone no make keen you did it Fun, crap. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. On crap.

Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking.

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I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to just know what. Libertarians.

They're so stupid though. Common sense says of course. Gobbled euk. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96 I want to say.

857. 210. 35. 501. 1⁄2. 380. 911 for instance. $3,400.

$1,900. $6.5,4. $3 trillion. dollars sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making a think less. But let me say this. Poop. You're going to call it satire. Sam goes to satire.

On top of it all? My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. Folks, folks. Obviously. Yeah. Sundow guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anyway. a question. Who cares? Our chat

is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Got to jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

Outrageous. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you, bye. Love you. Bye-bye.