The Texan Podcast - Iran Deal, Harvard Fight, Keep On Cybertrucking: SMSS Ep. 15

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

On this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron and Rob talk about the Iran-US nuclear negotiations, Alito blasting SCOTUS over Trump's deportations, the Hegseth and Signal situation, Harvard's financial fight, Cybertruck politics, and more!Listen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello and welcome back to episode 15 of Send Me Some Stuff. My name is Cameron Abrams, reporter here at The Texan, and I'm here with Rob Lauschis, assistant editor at The Texan. Rob, how are you? Cameron, it's been an interesting couple of weeks. It's been very busy, a lot of late nights in the office and more late nights and more late nights. Has anything interesting happened

in the past couple of weeks though? I'm so sleep deprived, I can't remember any of it. You haven't caught up on your sleep? I've been trying to. Yeah, it was a late night. When we had Easter weekend, of course, right in the middle of everything happening. Smack dab in the middle of the legislative session.

So obviously lots of stuff going on. Yeah, it was a late night for me and for all of us on school choice night last week. It didn't help that I tried to keep my normal routine the day of, up at four 15 in the morning. I don't understand why you did that, but. Well, cause I didn't, I didn't know, like I had thought they, uh, they might've been able to rap a little earlier in the day. Uh, they were going to get to school choice and they kind of, you know, lots of tabled amendments and it ran until 2.30 in the morning.

And yeah, it was a late night. They didn't even get through all of the amendments. You know, according to Brad's Twitter posts, there were, I think, a maximum of 68 amendments filed. And I think they got through, well, they got through a majority. I think it was around 40. They got through over 40 of the nearly 70 amendments

So, you know, maybe two-thirds of the way through but if they'd gotten through all of them and they would have definitely filed more You know, it wouldn't have gone and probably would have gone to like six in the morning Which would probably be the latest I think anybody at the Texan has had to pull an all-nighter for something like this. So yeah. Well there's been lots of news happening in Texas, lots of news happening nationally, lots of news happening geopolitically. We're gonna touch on everything here on the podcast. A little bit of everything. That's why you would send me some stuff. A little bit of everything. A little bit of everything. But one fun, I don't know if it's fun, but it's an interesting story that came across my timeline this week was a story that was in the New York

Times about Trump wanting to encourage more children being born in the United States. Obviously, there's issues with birth rates around the world, but especially here in the U.S. And so women, according to the New York Times, women could be paid baby bonuses up to $5,000 as part of these. $5,000 per baby or per mother? It seems like it's per baby. For having more children. And so this is a proposal that includes a national medal of motherhood for mothers with six or more children giving every American mother five thousand dollars after delivery.

Also discussed was funding for programs to educate women on their menstrual cycles. Uh, so I don't know. Uh, have you looked into the birth rate issues? Yeah. I mean, you know, birth rates have been falling in the United States basically since the 1920s, right? They peaked in the late 19th century when, um, you know, birth rates have been falling in the United States basically since the 1920s, right? They peaked in the late 19th century when, you know, I took a, in my early America class in college, you know, the professor made note of the fact that during the pioneer times, you know, the average woman had 13 children in the United States.

I believe that was the number was, I believe that was the average. I don't think that was the upper limit. I think that was around the average, which is crazy, right? I mean, and now of course, unfortunately back in those days, not all the children survived, but during the late 19th century, I mean, that was looking around, you know, that's how many, that's how big these families were,

especially because not all the children survived. You know, childhood mortality was a lot higher back in those days. Nowadays, of course, you know, we expect basically most if not all children to live to adulthood. So, yeah, I mean, for about a hundred years now, fertility rates have been falling in the developed world and it's...obviously it's becoming a political...but it's interesting because it's been a political issue for a while now. I mean,

people have been raising concerns about this for the last hundred years. So well, we've seen a number of countries attempt to Institute similar policies to drive up birth rates Obviously places like Japan who has a aging population places like Hungary Not South Korea South Korea. I believe it's what a replacement rate of 0.68. Yeah. Children per family needs to be 2.2. Yeah. Um, and not being very successful at that.

And so, uh, it'll be interesting to see, uh, what happens here with the Trump administration. I don't know if you have any hypotheses for, uh, what causes these declining birth rates? Well, you see a lot of people, I think, say stuff like, oh, people have been priced out of it. It's too expensive to have kids anymore. And the problem, I think, with that argument is people were having children in the Great Depression.

People in horrible economic situations were having children. I think the difference here is that our culture has shifted away from this idea of like child rearing as the expectation of an adult, right? I think a lot of- What has shifted the culture? What has shifted the culture? I guess, I don't know, people play more video games now that, no, I'm kidding.

But it's just, there's more to, I've seen the argument saying, well, there's more to do nowadays. You don't have, you know, in an, in a pre-industrial environment where you don't have as much to simply do with your time, you know, having more children is just going to be more of a natural thing. Whereas nowadays a lot of adults who, and that's the other thing of course, is that there's a lot of, you know,

upper middle class young adults in the U S who aren't having as many children either. So it goes to show it's not just a price thing. It's a lot of, you know, upper middle class young adults in the US who aren't having as many children either. So it goes to show it's not just a price thing, it's a culture thing. Yeah. Just a general shift and obviously I think everybody's gonna have their own perspective on why the culture has shifted or what the exact cause of it is. But I think it gets at an interesting divide between the kind of new ideas that the Trump right is introducing into the GOP and the kind of new ideas that the Trump right is introducing into the GOP and the kind of older ideas that, of course, I think a lot of Republicans 20 years ago wouldn't have found the concept. I think a lot of Republicans 20 years ago would have said,

you want to pay people to have children, that's called welfare, right? Where single mothers can get benefits from the government. They blame this on people having kids that they can't afford just for welfare benefits, whereas the Trump right is more interested in this, you know, more natalist argument. You know, we wanna boost birth production. Birth production sounds a bit artificial,

but you know, it's kind of how they're thinking about it. So it's an interesting, I think, showing into that new divide, which I think also Becomes more present if you look at our first story of the day and what is our first story? Our first story was gonna be talking about Iran indeed. Well, I think it does though. I think it does get into the the divide between the different Political factions within the current GOP.

Okay, that's a good lead in there. Is it a good segue, I kinda softballed that? Yeah, well, I tend to agree with your assessment there on the declining birth rates issue, but on the Iran talks here, I think this is interesting because I'm looking at an article here from the Washington Post that was published on April 22nd.

And it leads off here, quote, "'A battle within President Donald Trump's inner circle "'over what to do about Iran has been resolved "'for the moment by Trump's decision "'to pursue diplomacy with Tehran. And the article goes into how Trump and his foreign policy envoy is meeting with Iran this week in Rome to discuss furthering a Iran nuclear deal. This comes as both Iran and Israel have increasing differences on the geopolitical stage. This is just a bit. This is prescient

because as we saw a few weeks ago, there was the signal chat discussion, which we'll talk about a bit later, but there was some differences of opinion regarding what to do regarding Iran. It was really JD Vance. There was Tulsi Gabbard. There was Pete Hegseth who were pushing back against the more hawkish approach on Iran but with this nuclear deal I think it's interesting to take into account that Trump has been using Steve Witkoff as this chief negotiator who was working both in the Israel-Gaza conflict, trying to negotiate peace deals there. He's been, Wyckoff has been in Russia negotiating peace deals there.

Now he, again, is working on trying to establish diplomacy agreements and a nuclear deal with Iran. So, I don't know, what are your thoughts about this divide between people in the Trump administration on how to approach the Iran nuclear deal or just Iran more generally? So I think, Cameron, that what I'm getting is a little bit of deja vu,

because I remember back when I was in high school not to make myself sound too young, but when I was in high school one of the big issues people were talking about politically was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal that President Barack Obama had struck with the Islamic Republic. And this is one of the things that was a big point of criticism back in the day against Obama by Republicans because the idea of this plan was essentially to allow Iran to develop its nuclear capacity for the purposes of nuclear energy with international oversight over Iran's nuclear facilities with the idea that they would not be using this to, say, build a nuclear weapon because, oh, we're going to have international oversight.

The uranium is not enriched enough to produce a nuclear weapon, which I'll actually get into in a second because I think uranium enrichment is a very interesting issue here at play. But the interesting thing is a lot of Republicans criticize this saying you know this is a terrible idea, this is only going to allow Iran to get closer to building a nuclear weapon, you know, we should not be we should not be giving them this kind of leeway. And this was a thing that President Trump was a big critic of and he scrapped the deal in 2018. And now it's interesting to see six years later Trump is kind of coming back to this

kind of mentality. I don't know, would you say he's coming back to it or are there big differences between Obama's plan and the current kind of negotiations Trump is trying to strike? I can't speak to the specific differences between the two deals but they do seem rather similar like you just mentioned allowing for nuclear energy research to be conducted but only through private businesses and with strict oversight by nuclear regulatory agencies. And so talk about this depleted uranium.

Yeah, so how do you make a nuclear weapon, right? What you do is you get enriched uranium, which you have one atom splits, and the energy from that causes another atom to split, another atom, and another atom, and another atom, until boom, you have an enormous explosion, right? How do you make nuclear power? You have uranium that is much less enriched where you are still causing that chain reaction

and you're still getting heat released, right? And then that heat turns a turbine, sorry, the heat turns water into steam, steam turns a turbine, sorry, the heat turns water into steam, steam turns a turbine. This is how basically all thermal generation works. You turn water into steam, steam turns a turbine, makes electricity, put it in a battery and you're good to go. So most uranium in the world is a combination of uranium-235, which is the isotope that you use to make nuclear bombs, nuclear generators, that sort of thing, and uranium-238, which cannot be used. So the difference between these,

uranium-235 has 235 neutrons, uranium-238 has 238 neutrons, and uranium-235 is much more fizzle. So this is what's used in fission reaction or in a bomb. And so in order to, I'm not familiar. I don't remember the exact process of enrichment. I'm pretty sure my college chemistry teacher would be disappointed if he was watching this, but the thing is to make a nuclear generator,

you need fuel that is around like 3% enriched. To make a nuclear bomb, you need fuel that's like 90% enriched. And this is why nuclear reactors do not become nuclear bombs, because that's not the amount of enriched uranium, right? Chernobyl was a normal explosion, right? That was the result of simply heat building up and boom going off, right? That wasn't a nuclear bomb going off. Right. So in order- Well, that's part of these

Negotiations that are occurring in Rome is the amount of except acceptable levels of uranium enrichment Indeed indeed a lot of Republicans back in the day criticizing Obama's plan We're saying well if we're allowing them to enrich uranium How do we know that they're not going to be enriching uranium in the background to make weapons grade uranium? This is of course where the term weapons grade comes from is how do we know that that's not going to be enriching uranium in the background to make weapons grade uranium. This is of course where the term weapons grade comes from is how do we know that that's not going to happen? Well, and I think you before the podcast started, we were talking about different topics and you had mentioned should we talk about the Pope dying? And what's interesting about that is Trump has said he's going to be going to the I don't know the specific term for the burial

or the funeral service for the Pope, but He'll be attending that this week. Well at the same time these Negotiations are going to be occurring in Rome in Rome. And so could this, could Trump being over for this funeral proceedings, could he find himself physically present for these negotiations with Witkoff, with the Iranians? It'll be interesting to see what comes out of those because right now it's kind of just up in the air.

We don't really know what's going to happen. We just know that negotiations are currently ongoing, which is. It's interesting to see the kind of changes though, because I think if you would have told somebody, you know, gone back to 2015 and said in 10 years, there will be a Republican trying to make a nuclear Iran deal. I think people would have told you you were crazy. But I think that that exact same logic applies to a lot of things that Donald Trump has done because he did not come into the GOP with all of the,

you know, trappings that had been built up over the last several decades. He was like an outsider to the GOP, um, used to be a Democrat, right? But clearly I think it was the Obama administration that kind of turned him into, you know, it was during the Obama administration it seemed that he really got serious about political office. And of course he was also a big critic of the Bush administration and Bush's foreign policy. And we see here with people like JD Vance and Nikki Haley, you know, who are also big critics of this neo-conservative approach to foreign policy, wherein the US kind of

throws its weight around and really, you know, uses, flexes its muscle to get what it wants out of other countries. The Trump administration and these new people are trying to, you know, and this is something Trump's been accused of, of course, is, you know, sucking up to dictators and trying to work with these people. But his side believes that the best way to work with these people is, you know, not to exacerbate conflict, but rather to try as much cooperation and deal making as possible. Deal making through diplomacy and through economic pressures.

And I think this is best highlighted, but a week ago, there was a report that Donald Trump blocked a planned Israel strike on Iran nuclear sites in favor of Negotiating a deal well because that's the other option is people were saying why don't we just bomb their nuclear facilities? Which of course the critics of that will say well all you're gonna do is encourage them then to build a weapon So it's it's a tough thing. What do you do with with a country? You feel like you can't fully trust because Iran has out and said, we're not trying to build a weapon. But if we did, nobody would stop us. Nobody would be able to stop us, which obviously is complicated.

But the problem is, even if persons say things like, well, we will never do this, you know, policies change a lot with the people in charge. You know, it's really more dependent on the personalities of the people in government, I think, than, you know, people give it credit for, right? Things can change like that. Well, uh, let's go to the next story here, uh, which has to do with the U S Supreme court, um, and a halt on the use of the Aliens

Enemy Act to deport Venezuelans. And so I'm reading from a, I believe this was first published in Fox News, it's being carried on Yahoo here. Justice Samuel Lado wrote a fiery dissent against a recent Supreme Court move to halt President Donald Trump's deportations of Venezuelan criminals under the Aliens Enemies Act of 1798. The decision, which was issued early Saturday morning,

effectively blocks the deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the 18th century law in a decision that was also signed off on by conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The court advised the White House not to remove Venezuelans held in Texas's Blue Bonnet Detention Center until further order of this court. And in elitist dissent he wrote, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legal questionable relief without giving the lower court a chance to rule without hearing from the opposing party within eight hours of receiving the application with dubious factual support for its order and without providing any explanation for its order. So, I have lots of thoughts on this because it's very interesting.

I'm sure you do. Maybe not specifically on the SCOTUS ruling itself, though it is something we have covered here at the Texan because it does have a Texas angle to it, as I just mentioned. Our coworker, Matt Stringer, recently wrote an edition of his newsletter, The Docket, talking about the Alien Enemies Act and its interpretation called The Monster of 1798, which I would say is definitely worth a read. Right, and what I was going to mention though is there's been a interesting strategy with the Trump administration regarding the deportations where during the

campaign and for for office Trump was promising mass deportations and he immigration continues to be one of the most pressing issues most important issues to people polled across the electorate whether it be Democrats or Republicans people polled across the electorate, whether it be Democrats or Republicans. But it seems like the Trump administration and their targeted deportation efforts rather than a kind of sweeping mass deportation effort has come across some roadblocks and they found themselves in some trouble here. Because as we know, we, I think, I don't know if we discussed it on last episode,

but also on the, um, uh, on our weekly roundup, but the midnight flight, uh, deporting, uh, individuals to El Salvador, there was an order that said they needed to turn the flight around and the Trump administration didn't fulfill that order and then there's been continued issues regarding the actual individuals who have been deported like a makeup artist and there's been issues with validating certain tattoos that these people have saying, yes, the Trump administration saying certain tattoos are related to their affiliation with MS-13 and then others not so much. So do you have any thoughts on how the Trump administration

has currently been carrying out its deportation efforts? Well I think the in my opinion the most interesting thing to look at is how the Trump administration is interpreting the limits of executive authority. So you know this is a general trend of this entire administration but Trump you know, this is a general trend of this entire administration, but Trump, you know, is motivated by the belief that as the president, he basically gets to do what he wants unless he is explicitly butting up against certain limits in the Constitution, right? And that means that in his mind, if a judge doesn't like what he's doing, that's kind of just too bad, right?

Because he, you know, one of the big differences in the way you interpret the Constitution is do you believe that the legislature, executive, and judiciary are three co-equal branches that do not, that should not infringe on each other but deal with fundamentally different responsibilities? Or do you believe that certain branches are superior to others? For example, you know, the president must answer to the judiciary, the president must answer to the legislature, and it seems that Trump does not believe that, you know, coming from a position of leadership within business, right? I think he is more

motivated by the belief that he, it's his job to use his power to do what he believes is right. And I think this is an issue he butted up against a lot in his first term where he was, you know, always seemingly stepping on toes and receiving accusations of using his power unilaterally or unlawfully and he's gonna have the same exact things happen again this administration, except it seems this time he doesn't care as much about stepping on people's toes you know after after the last time now he's like I'm in it to win it well I I've been seeing lots of discussion regarding this equal but

separate question because there is concerns regarding how these lower court judges, whether it be district courts, appellate court judges, are individuals or a panel of judges, they can issue a ruling that have national effects. Whereas if you have a case that goes up to the Supreme Court, at least there's the entire panel of judges there. And it's the highest level of the judiciary, where it could be just one individual in one district court that could issue a ruling stopping Trump from issuing these mass deportations or targeted deportation efforts. And it's at which level of the judiciary should the power reside?

And how widespread should that power be? So it's an old issue. As compared to the executive branch, how much power should they have? I mean, this is a very old issue going back to the 18 know, the 1830s with the whole, you know, John Marshall, with President Andrew Jackson, right? Very strong believer in executive authority, right? Essentially the founder of the Democratic Party.

Like, I have been elected, I am in charge, and there was a famous Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in a way Jackson didn't like, and this famous apocryphal quote, we don't have absolute proof that it existed, but it sounds like something Jackson would have said where he said, John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. Because what does the judiciary have to enforce its rulings? Because the executive is supposed to enforce the law. So what happens if the president decides,

I'm not going to cooperate with the judiciary? You know, is the president then violating the Constitution or is he preserving the independence of the executive branch? Well, and we've seen a number of Democrat elected officials in the federal government actually traveling to El Salvador to try and bring a greater media focus to what's been going on with the deportation efforts. Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic Senator from Maryland, for example. Yeah, and this, in one case of Kilmar, Abrego Garcia has really taken up a lot of the media airspace here. And again, it's difficult for that just the average person to try and decipher

what's been going on here because we see, like we just mentioned, Democrat representatives saying, oh, this is just a Maryland man where the Trump administration, attorney general, Pam Bondi, putting out information, oh, this guy has been arrested. He has MS-13 affiliation, Trump himself holding up a picture of tattoos on this guy's hand. And so lots of conflicting information. Well, you have people saying, oh, well, he's never been convicted so, lots of conflicting information.

Well, you have people saying, oh, well, he's never been convicted of a charge in the US. Oh, well, but he has been arrested, he just wasn't charged, you know, and then it's a lot. And of course, there was that order from a, was it, it was an immigration judge, right, who ruled, I believe, in 2019, that he should not be removed to El Salvador

because he faced fears on his life from a gang in El Salvador. Yeah. So, of course, when you saw people in the headlines saying, oh, he was deported in error, right? If I recall correctly, that's the error they were referring to, was that this judge had ruled he could not be returned to El Salvador, which is the country that he originally came from.

Yeah. to El Salvador, which is the country that he originally came from. Yeah, so it's it's just interesting because, you know, how many millions of illegal immigrants are in the country right now. There is no hard-and-fast number on that. So when Trump was on the campaign trail saying we're going to use mass deportations to get these people out, well, when it comes to brass tacks saying we're going to use mass deportations to get these people out Well when it comes to brass tacks here trying to get individuals out you would think okay, let's say of the let's say 10 million illegal immigrants there's got to be

2,000 or so that are like the most hardened like Gang affiliated gang cartel members that might be in the country. But even when they're doing attempting to do these targeted deportations, you fall into this gray area about due process and mistakes being made and things of that nature. So it's a complicated situation. And it's just something, yeah, I was just going to say something when you got to us just observing this from the outside, just kind of, kind of wait and see what's going to happen.

Well, something that makes it all the more complicated, of course, is that the president of El Salvador, President Bukele, has come out and said, we're not returning Abrego Garcia, he's not coming back. So what does the US do now if he was deported in error because he technically wasn't supposed to be sent to El Salvador, and then the president of El Salvador says, hey, he's in our custody now, you know, what does he, because this man, if I recall correctly,

he was an illegal alien, he did not have legal status in the United States when he was deported. So it's a tough question. I feel like we say that a lot on our show. It's a very tough question. But what do you do now when the president of El Salvador himself says, we're not sending the guy back? I can't remember.

Did he have any criminal convictions in El Salvador? I'm not sure on that question. Yeah, I was curious to see if he had any criminal record, which I don't believe he did. Although I can't remember if people are saying he doesn't have a criminal record in the United States or not. So it's, I do not have direct access to El Salvadoran, or not El Salvadoran, I think it's just Salvadoran. I do not have direct access to Salvadoran court records or criminal records or anything like that. Yeah. Well, before I move on to the next story, we're going to take a short map break.

on to the next story we're going to take a short nap break. The Bear Alliance of Texas is proud to support its members who help deliver an annual economic impact of 35 billion dollars and provide over 200,000 jobs to hard-working Texans. From local tax revenue to direct economic investment to charitable contributions their members are heavily invested in the success of our communities and our state. The Beer Alliance is dedicated to ensuring the safe distribution of alcohol throughout Texas. For more information, visit BeerAlliance.com. And we're back.

And so, the next thing I think we're talking about is Pete Hegseth and the continued turmoil in the DOD because people remember there was the Jeffrey Goldberg Atlantic article about signal chats and how this journalist was accidentally added and there was discussions of quote war plans. Hegsett said oh there was no war plans. They were attack plans. They were attack plans. The chats got put out. There was a big dust up about that. Then it sort of died down a little bit. Yeah, no, the news cycle kind of turned over a little bit. Exactly. But then more information started to come out. There was an investigation announced. Hegseth said some senior staffers are going to be going on leave. Three senior Pentagon

officials have been fired. There was another New York Times report about Hexeth's signal use that there is another chat with his wife where similar discussions were involved. And then Hexeth has since in the last few days given a number of interviews, he has talked about the media stirring up fake news around the Signal Chat story. A fairly classic, I think, Trump administration trope. Yeah, so it's been an ongoing issue here with how communications, private communications, attack plans versus war plans,

and now there's been some senior officials that have just been let go, terminated from their role at the DOD. And what's interesting is one of these individuals, I forget his name, but he went on Tucker Carlson recently and denied being the person who was leaking the information and saying that he was unsure that it was

Dan Caldwell. Dan Caldwell, who has worked with Pete and even prior to being at the DOD, and was saying, oh, I'm not sure. He wasn't clear that there was any investigation going on. There wasn't anything communicated to him. And he was just terminated one day. And so it's, I don't know if you have any thoughts on what's going on, why this internal turmoil

is occurring within the DOD because even prior to Hexeth's confirmation there was people who were pushing back against him being nominated for this position like going back to our very first story. There is a split between those in the Pentagon about how to handle many of our foreign adversaries, those being much more hawkish and those being much more dovish, let's say. So I'm reminded of John Bolton making a comment. I can't remember where he said it, but it was, I think it was during the Biden administration or late in the Trump administration where John Bolton said about Iran He said we could crack that regime like an eggshell

and I think that that gets at the mentality that separates these people because for a lot of the you know people more like Bolton they say well, why don't we just go in there and Take the Islamic Republic down. They've done enough damage in the world as it is Let's just knock them out and then you have the other people, like for example, Gabbard or Vance, who are saying, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow your roll, right? The last thing we need is to get involved in a huge war throughout the Middle East, especially since over the last few years,

Iran has become increasingly close to Saudi Arabia. Now, these two countries had been at enmity for a very long time, Iran being fundamentalist Shia Muslims and Saudi Arabia having a lot of these fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. And so there was a big conflict there, but they've recently patched things up. They've started to patch things up more and more, which, you know, given that the US has been allied with Saudi Arabia and is obviously against Iran, that could pose some challenges for the United States

in the long run, but not to get too off track on the Iran stuff. Well, but I think it has to do exactly with what we're talking about, because what is at issue is the approach to foreign policy. One being much more focused on a hemispheric defense, Western Hemisphere defense versus more of a globalist outlook. And so whether it be people more aligned with you could say a MAGA or America First vision versus those

who are much more internationalists in this process of geopolitical negotiations. Because I was listening to a conversation on this as well about the amount of oil trade that occurs between Iran and China, in that there could be economic defenses that could be taken rather than hard power defenses. Where negotiations or even blockades of, because right now what's going on with the Houthis is there is issues concerning trade going through different straits within the Middle East and America is essentially trying to defend these trade trade lanes. Right. And so if America can use those strategic blockades to put increased economic pressures on Iran, that could help fulfill the diplomatic efforts without going a step further and using hard

power to try and reach some sort of conclusion. What is interesting to see something how like the Iraq war has the Iraq and Afghanistan wars I think have both for a lot of people you know kind of kind of poisoned the idea of military intervention right obviously for liberal Democrats you know who were who were very much against the war back in the day It's you know, it was a continued belief but to see the Republic I mean it was crazy in 2016 2015 really if we're counting with the debates to see Trump coming out and being like This war was a terrible idea, right? You know credit you remember when everybody thought Jeb Bush was gonna be the nominee because he was a bush and it was you know

He's saying this, you know, your brother's term sucked. It was terrible. And the Iraq war was a mistake and all this, which was on within the GOP itself, especially within the GOP's leadership was considered, it was a relatively fringe idea. Whereas it seems now within the GOP, this actually become a more mainstream belief. I mean, you've even seen a bit of a swap you could argue with, for example, Dick Cheney coming out and endorsing Kamala Harris for president, which I think if you would have told a lot of Democrats back in 2004 that Dick Cheney would be endorsing the Democrat and Democrats would be proud of that, I think they would have told you you were crazy. But

that's the crazy world we live in. Yeah. It's, in Hegseth is also the other big thing is that he doesn't have experience actually in government, which is, I think, a virtue for the Trump administration in the sense that they believe that it's a good thing to have people who are not connected to the foreign policy establishment, which is part of this conceived idea of a deep state, right? That is actively working against President Trump to maintain these ongoing policies and maintain this international order, which obviously the Trump administration

no longer really believes is serving American interests. So I wish I knew more about the Hegseth stuff. You're definitely more of the expert on that for the purposes of this podcast. No, it's I think what is happening with Hegseth and the shakeups at the DOD is Emblematic really of how the So the Trump administration and Trump himself seems to have good instincts in terms of what the electorate wants. They in this sort of America first, not intervening in foreign conflicts that are going to not be to the benefit of America. He has good instincts on that sense, but it's the implementation of that.

It's all in the execution, isn't it? Every idea sounds good on paper. Well, because with Hexeth at the DOD and what's happening with the leaked chats, the issues with individuals now being let go, it's showing there's internal struggles, and the idea that Trump was gonna come in, appoint all these people and implement his policy,

it just doesn't seem to be coming to fruition. And this is also mirrored in the immigration discussion we just had is again, very good instincts about what people wanted and representing that in these sorts of things that he was planning to do but it's the implementation of those policies that again the administration has run into roadblocks with so and it seems like they're gonna continue running into Robe and it's crazy to think that at the time we record this I think we're still within

the first 100 days isn't that right we're gonna do this 15 more times yeah it's gonna be wild but speaking of let's actually that leads us into another topic that we wanted to discuss today Harvard University is having its own spat with the Trump administration like it seems every major institution is having in the United States right now so tell us a little bit about this spat is having its own spat with the Trump administration, like it seems every major institution is having in the United States right now. So tell us a little bit about this spat between America's most famous and wealthiest

institution of higher education and the Trump administration. What is going on there? Well, apparently there was a letter that was accidentally sent to Harvard that, to Harvard. To Harvard. Yeah, that there was issues regarding some of their viewpoint diversity and

they were going to repeal their tax exempt status. And now Harvard is pushing back against that. And so here in the New York Times here, the Trump administration has frozen more than 2.2 billion in grants and contracts that were intended for Harvard, which is also America's oldest institution of higher education. As Harvard and President Trump face off

over the government's intrusive demands and universities' riches have emerged as a flashpoint. And so, I don't know, how much have you looked into this back and forth here? Well, I don't know much about this specific back and forth, but obviously, you know, I'm familiar with the Trump administration's general concern about institutions of higher education that promote, you know, the argument by and again, it's once again gets at that same old political divide between the kind of old GOP and the new GOP under Trump, which is that the new GOP is much more willing to, I think, try radical solutions to fix America's problems. Whereas I think a lot of people in the older GOP

were a bit more skeptical of a kind of hands-on interventionist mentality, saying, oh, I bet this is probably gonna produce more unintended consequences. It's not gonna work in the long run. Whereas the Trump administration is saying, hey, the bet this is probably going to produce more unintended consequences. It's not going to work in the long run. Whereas the Trump administration is saying, hey, the universities made wokeness. Wokeness is bad. Let's just cut their funding and let's see if they play ball.

This is the general Trump administration's mentality is to walk in and say, here's what we're going to do unless you stop doing what you're going to do. You're going to meet us halfway? I mean, this is, you remember you remember when they were talking about, when Trump was meeting, I think we talked about this on our last podcast, but when Trump was talking with Netanyahu, and he said, regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict,

he said, maybe the US should just come in there and take over Gaza. Maybe we should take it over and keep it safe. And Netanyahu was like, what? Because this is how he, I think this is part of his negotiation tactic, is it's a maximalist position, right? He says, here's what we're willing to do if all else fails, so you got to meet us halfway.

Well, and what's interesting is Harvard is essentially a hedge fund at this point and not a real university. Not a real university. Well they come they have a lot of money. They have billions of dollars. Yeah. And they have this tax system status and but they're suing the Trump administration to try to get a temporary restraining order on these procedural grounds. And so, yeah, I think it's interesting. It kind of, again, highlights a lot of what we've been talking about today because with this letter being sent, an error and not really having a process for how to implement some of these plans. It's just interesting to see like Trump administration

is just sort of on the back foot on so many of these things. Reacting instead of being active. And so. Well, I think you can make the argument they're actually being relatively proactive here. I mean, because one of the things that inspired this kind of pushback against the universities was the protests over the Israel-Palestine War,

that there are a lot of students on these universities, like for example, with Columbia, that are very pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, and the Trump administration has made combating anti-Semitism one of its like main things we're gonna do right so it's like if you if you are on a student visa and you are protesting against the state of Israel you know you're calling for I mean obviously most of these people would themselves I think disagree

with the notion that they are calling to kill Israelis but obviously a lot of other people would say that they are calling for that and the Trump administration's like, you lose your student visa then, you're not Marco Rubio, Secretary of State came out and said, you know, you are not going to come to our country on a student visa and protest in favor of killing Israelis. That's not why you're here, you're here to learn, right? And this I think gets back at it because this is part of the issue that the administration views as coming out of the universities. And of course the fact that they're receiving federal grants to do so, and

once again it gets back at that issue of, you know, this concern about a deep state, right? There's a lot of people in the administration saying, why is our government funding things that we don't like? Should the government operate in a kind of impersonal way that produces things that maybe the administration doesn't like? Or is the administration popularly elected, empowered to stop it from doing so? That is a deep philosophical question that gets at the root of a lot of issues with this administration, but that's

that's really where the divide comes from. And I think you'll find the real truth is the party in power will always say, well obviously the president should have the right to put his thumb on the scale. Whereas of course the party out of power will always say, whoa whoa what about impartiality? Well, just like, uh, again, with all these issues, um, we're seeing a lot of media outrage at the Trump administration for doing these deportations or even the tariff plan, this, uh, Harvard tax exempt status, lots of op-eds and podcasts condemning the Trump administration for this. But where was the reaction for when the Biden administration was letting these

individuals into the country? Where was the reaction for when Biden was attempting to use the Department of Education to forgive all these student loans? Yeah. And Biden was certainly pushing the boundaries of what he could do legally, and the Supreme Court kind of smacked him down for it. Yeah, well, remember, there were a lot of a lot of Democrats were saying, Hey, whoa, Supreme Court should not be restricting the president's authority like that.

Right. So, so there's always going to be equal and opposite reactions for whatever party is in power. You've seen the other political compass, right? The political compass used to say you have the authoritarian right, the libertarian right, the authoritarian left, and the libertarian left. And these are supposedly the four quadrants into which every political person or idea can fall into. There's a good meme I've seen where it says, you know, when Republicans are in power, it says authoritarian right, libertarian left, that these are the only two that exist.

When Democrats are in power, authoritarian left, libertarian right, those are the only two that exist. Yeah. Everybody is, it's like there was a French conservative after the French Revolution in the 19th century, who was, who wrote something to the, I'm paraphrasing here, but he essentially said, you know, when the liberals are in power, I will ask you for free speech because that is your policy. When I am in power, I will deny you free speech because that is my policy. Right. Of course, conservative here, not meaning like an American conservative, meaning like a Monarchist. Right. But I just think it's one of those things that even though of course it's, it's kind of a universal truth, right? Yeah. Well, let's move on to

our last story here. You actually pointed this out. It's a Texas Monthly article that has to do with a Cybertruck meetup. Absolutely. The Cybertruck rodeo. Yeah, tell us about it. Alrighty. Well, you see, I think it's cool to have these kind of cultural themed articles here, like we had the brutalist article the article on brutalist architecture and You know the Trump administration's directive to produce more classical architecture for federal buildings from the New York Times I thought that was a cool article and I think this kind of falls into a similar vein getting at how the intersection of politics and Culture like art, you know if you want to call vehicle manufacturing an art, which arguably it is.

This article from Texas Monthly is titled Cybertruck Drivers Don't Understand the Hate. It's all about the second annual Cybertruck rodeo in which one of the organizers, the person who wrote this article for Texas Monthly, met up with John Cronin, one of the organizers of the event. And they talked a little bit about the event. They talked about, you know, they talked about the political divide that exists over the Cybertruck. Because if you've

been on social media, you know that conservatives love the Cybertruck and liberals hate the Cybertruck, right? Because a lot of people say oh it looks so cool it looks so futuristic other people are saying it looks terrible it's ugly and you kind of get the impression at least I got the impression that this divide kind of falls over the over the politics of it all right of course fan of Elon Musk yes you probably think it looks good no probably think it looks bad which is also really interesting because electric vehicles used to be a solidly Like liberal democratic talking point in the u.s. Right most conservatives are saying electric vehicles Whatever, but they shouldn't be getting subsidies. They're not going to replace gas-powered cars

You know, this is this is unrealistic and you know Maybe of course some of them even thought it was kind of snooty, kind of pretentious, right? You know, the latte drinking hybrid driving liberal is a common stereotype, right? Whereas of course, as you've actually, as we talked about on our last podcast, the kind of more health conscious, there is a rising health conscious, environmental conscious kind of conservative, right? And that's emerging, the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Just once again, the Trump administration has opened the floodgates to just made, you know, if you're not a traditional institutional person, you have a home in the new Trump right. But I think it's been Just very interesting to see how you know, because they were expecting like protesters at this rodeo. They were expecting violence I mean you've seen the videos and people Like there's attacking to attacking drug attacking cyber trucks Yeah, attacking Tesla dealerships setting them on fire keying cars, you know, which is bad You shouldn't be attacking people's vehicles over, you know, somebody's car over something like that.

I mean, are we going to. Yeah, it's, it's now of course, Tesla has had a lot of Tesla has had issues with getting production up on the car, like the cyber truck, it points out here in this article, the cyber truck missed the volume goal by 84%. I remember back in high school, my econ teacher was talking about how Tesla is a bad company. They don't produce the cars they say they're gonna produce, oh, they're overinflated with stocks, da, da, da, da, da.

And it's, I am not an expert on vehicle manufacturing. I'm also not an expert on the stock market. But I just think it's just once again, just one of these emblematic things that you have an electric, what actually what Musk really did, I think, for the electric vehicle industry is in making the Tesla, he made it kind of cool, right?

Because before Tesla, what did it mean to drive an electric car? Drive some dinky little, yeah. Like it's not a cool, it wasn't like cool, yeah, Priuses aren't cool, right? Once again, it falls into that stereotype of like a pretentious liberal elitist driving their dorky little Prius, whereas the Tesla actually turned it into like a cool car, like a luxury car, and you see the same thing with the Cybertruck.

And the Cybertruck is, what do you think about the design? Let's, let's be real here. Do you think it's a cool design or do you think it's a lame design? Well, I put you on the spot. No, I like the design because it's attempting to do something different. It doesn't look like every other blob car. Every car looks like a blob now. Well, it's, it's intentional. Well, yeah, cause it's safer and nicely. Oh, I'm sorry You're talking about the Cybertruck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's meant to look like it's from the future

it's not supposed to look like your average pickup and so I think What you're mentioning about how this is an interesting intersection between culture and politics, I think with most things, everything has ultimately become political and where people who are making vehicle purchases are thinking about, does this company support my values and does, is the owner someone that aligns with my worldview which is something we see from our music to our movies entertainment and now to what's parked in front of your home and what I think is going to be interesting moving forward is with the, again, I think this comes

back to a policy discussion even with how tariffs are being used against the Chinese EV market because that is very much exploding. There's been huge developments in the Chinese EV space and with the tariffs, America and China in these in the battle over EVs, they're not going to be able to compete on even ground now. And again, what's interesting with Elon Musk is he has deep ties in China with the EV market there and with manufacturing and production as well. So it's a very convoluted discussion. It's not just do you like the car or not. It's like is purchasing the Cybertruck or purchasing a Tesla something you're doing because you like the car or

Because it's something that you See as almost a political statement and then also Elon's involvement with the Trump administration and the tariff conversation is that going to Increase the pressure Trump is going to be putting on China. There's been reports that he's going to be potentially rolling back some of these Chinese tariffs because of the market pressures. Will that happen if Elon Musk is still in his position at Doge?

That tenure is coming to a close here soon. Isn't he actually going to be stepping down from that? He has to. Tesla's unfortunately their share prices fall. They haven't sold a lot of those cyber trucks. Well so if Elon steps away from that Doge position will that have a market correction with the cyber truck in Tesla's because obviously you just mentioned the Tesla stock has been going down so it's a Unfortunately a lot of overlapping issues here. Yeah, they're they're Their stock value has been going down and their stock of Cybertrucks isn't going down Which is kind of the opposite of what you want. I'm no I'm no business major

But it seems to me like that's kind of the opposite of what you want you want want to...so it's just as you pointed out, everything's political, right? There are...in a social media environment where anybody can talk to anyone about anything at any time in any place, everything kind of becomes a valid battlefield, I think, for the political war. Somebody points out here in this article, Matt Holm, the Austin-based real estate agent who serves as the president of the Tesla Owners Club of Austin, which is also funny, because living in Austin,

obviously, we see cyber trucks all the time. They are everywhere, because the gigafactory is, the Tesla factory is I believe just outside the city limits right it's pretty close yeah but he points out here have you ever heard of a car company called Volkswagen this is a car company commissioned by Hitler and designed to be the people's car of Germany people's car in German is Volkswagen right it's and which is always so funny reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George's mother says,

Oh, I'm not writing in a German car. You know, it's, but, um, it's, it's just interesting to see how, how, and he says, of course, most people do not nowadays consider Volkswagen to be a Nazi car. Right. There is, you can separate, um, you can separate essentially a company, you know, something like what the kind of cars a company produces from the political opinions of the founder, right? I mean, if we're going to get into car companies and odious views, right? Everybody driving a Ford would have to start asking themselves difficult questions.

But of course, you know, it depends. Do you believe that Elon Musk, you know, really did a Nazi salute because he really is a neo-Nazi from South Africa who wants to implement racial apartheid in the United States. Or do you believe he is a guy who got in a bit over his head and sometimes tries to act a little cooler than he is for positive attention, which is a view that I find myself kind of sympathetic towards, given he does seem like he really likes getting that kind of positive attention and now that he's been getting a lot of criticism that might be

contributing to his desire to step away from politics a little bit because he's no longer you know it's it kind of ceases to be fun when you're getting endlessly roasted by people for for the things you did so well we're getting endlessly roasted by people for the things you did. So well, we're getting to the end here. I'll just give one last shout out if people are interested in what we're talking about here. I wrote a lot in this week's redacted about this political partisan split over issues of health. I think that is really a lot of what we're talking

about how things as simple as taking certain medications can become political. No, it's true. And so if people are interested in that, you can go check it out and redact it, get it in your newsletters. Rob, remind people, precedent and times last week, or your last issue, what was last issue about? The last month's issue of precedent and times, I am speaking slowly to stall for time. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was.

Oh yeah, it was about the first legislative session in the state of Texas, once the Republic had been annexed into the United States because I was I was pouring through the House and Senate journals because I was thinking well this would be a really interesting topic you know in the middle of our 89th session what was going on in the first session and I discovered reading the House Journal that the first-ever lieutenant governor was sworn in like two months late because there was a whole dispute over not getting all of the

like they had sworn in or they had they had certified the election of the lieutenant governor before all the votes had come in. So they get these new votes and all of a sudden there was this huge legal question of lawmakers asking themselves, do we have the authority to decertify an election? Because we are empowered by the Constitution to certify one at this time based on the results we have. Do we have the authority to undo that? Right? And you know it's always interesting when you have bodies like this, these legislative bodies, they have to experiment and figure out what their limits are. So I found that to be a very, I think it's my

longest precedent of times ever. So that was quite a bit of work, but it was a lot of fun to write. Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for listening and joining us here at Send Me Some Stuff. If you want to send us some stuff, you can send it to, where can people send if they want to send stuff? They can send it at editor at thetexan. dot news. And if you enjoy reading us at the Texan, you can go to the Texan dot news where we have articles, podcasts, newsletters. Thank you so much for joining us. Music