The Young Turks - Dumpster Fire

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Russia’s Central Bank limited withdrawals of foreign currency, hoping to shore up the plunging ruble as Western economic penalties take a serious toll. In Ukraine, efforts to evacuate civilians from battered cities resumed, but many remain trapped in the areas of heaviest fighting. The Department of Defense rejected an offer from Poland, a fellow NATO member, to send fighter jets to a U.S. air base to then send to Ukraine for use against Russian forces. A Missouri lawmaker is seeking to stop residents from obtaining abortions out of state. After leaks at a Navy fuel storage facility culminated in a water contamination crisis impacting thousands of military families, The Department of Defense said that it will permanently shut down the World War II-era facility in Hawaii. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and the show is jam-packed with news today, including updates on what is taking place in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, some pretty devastating and heartbreaking updates on that front, but it's important to keep up with that story. Later in the show, we're going to talk about other issues, including why it's taking so long to build affordable housing in California, despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly supported tax increases to pay for affordable housing. We're going to debunk the lies that local officials are telling people. And while you might be wondering why would I care, I don't live in California, this is a story that really does have an impact all across the country. And it's something that I hope voters in other states are privy to and paying close attention to to avoid real estate developers and their corruption into local politics, you know, basically leading to the situation we're experiencing here in California. It's an important story. We'll get to that a little later. We'll also talk about what one Missouri lawmaker is doing to ensure that women are never able to get an abortion, whether it's in state or out of state. It is one of the most infuriating stories, and I'm very likely to lose it while talking about it and give you guys the details.

But don't worry, we're going to lighten things up a little bit in the second hour. There will be an appearance by Prince John, who is that? American people want to know, Lauren Bobert, you know, did a little tease, like wanted to let everyone know that maybe this country is being run by Prince John. We'll show you who Prince John might actually be. And later we'll also talk about the Republican lawmaker who has decided not to seek re-election after he was discovered to have had an affair with someone dubbed the ISIS widow.

She's sharing all the deets in interviews. And maybe it's inappropriate to talk about that story, but I don't care. It's fun. We'll talk about what she has to say. But before we get to any of that, as always, just want to encourage you to like and share the stream. Send me your super chat, send me your member comments, send me your Twitch comments. I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of you and just hearing what you have to say about the show and the topics we're discussing. Without further ado, let's get to our first story.

A maternity ward, maternity hospital was bombed in Maripole, Ukraine. President Valemir Zelensky says that women and children have been buried under the rubble following this Russian airstrike, although there are conflicting reports in regard to the death toll and those who have been injured. I want to be very clear that as of now, those details are unclear, very likely to change. So take the information that we know in terms of the death toll with a grain of salt. But here is what we know as of today, as of this morning, again, these facts are subject to change. Initial information indicates that 17 people, mostly staff members, were injured and no children were hurt in the attack

on the facility according to a telegram video by the head of the Donetsk regional and military administration. So this is actually Ukrainian official making that statement. it's not some propagandistic, you know, media outlet making that claim. Now, the reported attack occurred as the World Health Organization said earlier that it has so far verified 18, again, 18 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine. So when Vladimir Putin claims that this so-called military operation isn't in any way targeting civilians, I really don't know how much more evidence we need to provide showing that he's lying about that. Not only have hospitals and schools been hit with

shelling and airstrikes, we also know that there are these so-called safety corridors, the corridors in which civilians were supposed to utilize to evacuate major cities across Ukraine. They've been targeted by the Russians as well. We've shown you evidence of that. So the propaganda coming from Vladimir Putin and state-sponsored media from Russia is gonna tell you exactly what you think they would tell you, that this is some sort of friendly military operation meant to liberate the people of Ukraine when reality, the brutality which is shown to us in video after video,

story after story says otherwise. I wanna show you one photo that really caught my attention, a terrifying photo from Maripol, Ukraine, a pregnant woman is being evacuated after a Russian airstrike at a maternity hospital. And even Fox News, which has a history of being pretty friendly in its coverage toward Vladimir Putin, was pretty shocked at the video of the aftermath of this attack. So I wanted to give you a little bit of their coverage here because I think they actually did a pretty good job with the video footage and their take in response to the video footage.

But with that said, let's take a quick look. A pregnant woman being let out by first responders out of that. maternity ward. You see her being let out by stretchers. This is tough. These are women that were in labor at the time that several Russian bombs fell at this maternity ward in children's hospital, according to Ukrainian officials. You can see that this woman is injured around her hip. You can see the devastation in and around that hospital. It is completely charred in terms of the windows being blown out. And you can see this woman who was essentially just about to bring new life into this world.

This is also new video coming from here. This is the aftermath. You see a woman coming out of that hospital and a man who's bloodied on his face. You can see there are children there and women who are coming out of this hospital. Authorities say that the bomb, when it hit, the ground shook for more than a mile away, that the blast crater there, you can see the child there crying. This is tough. It is in fact tough.

And we again don't know whether anyone died as a result of this attack, but we will fill you in as we get some confirmation from sources that are, you know, a little more credible than either the Russian side or the Ukrainian side. But this happened as Ukrainian and Russian officials were negotiating, another fresh round of negotiations regarding these so-called safety corridors to allow for Ukrainian civilians to evacuate certain parts of Ukraine. And it doesn't really appear as though Russia is honoring these safety corridors. In fact, there's one particular corridor that has been effective in allowing four thousands

of Ukrainians to evacuate. But with that, outside of that one exception, what we have seen is a targeting of these corridors, which I mean, just think about how unbelievably brutal and cruel that is to agree to set up these safety corridors and then intentionally target them. Here's what we know so far in regard to those corridors. Officials in Isum, one of the cities set to be evacuated, alleged Wednesday, meaning today, that efforts to get civilians out of the city were compromised by shelling from Russian forces. Other evacuations appear to be proceeding.

Local officials in the northeastern Sumi region from which 5,000 people were able to evacuate early a day earlier continues to be in use. So that's some positive news in regard to the safety corridors, but really just a tiny, tiny sliver of good news when in reality, we see other corridors being targeted by Russian forces. Ukraine is also concerned about its Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which of course has been decommissioned. However, it still has, you know, it's,

still has harmful waste there. And it's been targeted by Russians as well, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine's closed Chernobyl nuclear plant has been disconnected from the nation's power grid by Russian forces. Ukraine's state-owned grid operator said this, reported this, and said that it's potentially jeopardizing the cooling of nuclear materials still stored at the site.

So this is the Ucranegro grid operator sharing this news. Electricity is needed. This is why it's so important for it to be connected to a power source. Electricity is needed for cooling, ventilation, and fire extinguishing systems at the closed site. In a statement on its Facebook page, Ucranegro said that emergency diesel generators have been turned on, but that fuel would only last 48 hours. So it appears that this is really an imminent threat. There could be a release of radiation, which would be incredibly dangerous.

But according to other officials, this is not necessarily an imminent threat. So let's talk a little bit about those radiation leaks. So the Ukrainian energy minister said on Wednesday, and this is according to Reuters, that authorities do not know what the radiation levels even are at Chernobyl and have no control over what is happening at the largest nuclear power plant. This is a different nuclear power plant. It's the largest in Europe and it happens to be located in Ukraine. And so that is certainly concerning because the Russians have seized that. We had done a story about that earlier. The International Atomic Energy Agency is trying to ease everyone's nerves.

They said on Twitter that the power loss does violate a key safety pillar on ensuring uninterrupted power supply, but it added that in this case, IAEA sees no critical impact on safety. The agency said factors including the volume of cooling water at Chernobyl were, quote, sufficient for effective heat removal without need for electrical supply. But there were some mixed signals coming from the IAEA because they also claimed that they were having difficulty communicating with Ukrainian officials on this very issue. They kept losing communication, they kept losing contact with them.

And so I'm a little concerned that they don't have all of the facts necessary to ensure that they prevent a nuclear disaster. But for now, they're saying, listen, everyone calm down, you know, we're on it. Right now, this is not necessarily an imminent threat. But it is difficult to feel calm about something that serious. But overall, the Ukrainian forces continue to fight back aggressively. The Russian military, the Russian troops under the leadership of Vladimir Putin are very clearly increasing their aggressive attacks, not just on the military in Ukraine, but also against civilians. They're intensifying this war and this invasion, all with the backdrop of the propaganda

coming from Vladimir Putin in regard to what the real mission is in Ukraine, what they're really doing in Ukraine. This is, to be very clear, not only an illegal invasion, but a brutal one that is, in fact, targeting civilians, is in fact targeting hospitals. including maternity wards, and it's just absolutely devastating. Now for its part, the United States has offered, of course, help with military capabilities for the Ukrainian forces. Biden has asked for additional funding to be sent to Ukraine for both weaponry and also humanitarian aid.

There is likely going to be an additional $13.6 billion allocated for Ukraine in this upcoming spending bill. That is what Congress is currently working on. And while I have no problem with offering humanitarian aid and help to the Ukrainians, I do want to just make a quick note about how easy it is for members of Congress to green light funding or spending for anything that they deem to be important. In this case, we're talking about $13.6 billion on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have already been given to Ukrainians. I just wish that they were a little more, you know, I guess empathetic toward Americans who might also experience emergencies of their own, whether it be as a result of our broken healthcare system, as a result of our broken economic system.

My point is where there's a will, there's a way. When members of Congress want to find the money to fund certain things that they care about, they find the money to do so. But in the case of Americans who are struggling from a broken economic system, they love to nickel and dime, they love to do all sorts of means testing, they love to leave us behind and neglect the real issues that we're dealing with here. Again, this is not to say that I'm against helping Ukrainians, I just think we should also be a little considerate of Americans who are also struggling here in the United States,

especially with what we're seeing at the gas pump. You know, right wingers love to blame it on Biden, even though there's really very little he can do considering our privatized fossil fuel industry. However, there are things that Biden could do in terms of ensuring that Americans have an easier time being able to afford basic necessities to move forward with their lives. And unfortunately, I feel like that's kind of taken the back burner as this war has captured everyone's attention. Rightfully so, I mean, this is a devastating story.

But this is where we are, this is the update on Ukraine, you know, it's just what What more can you say other than point to the devastation, point to the brutality and how at the end of the day, the people who suffer the most are innocent civilians, both in Russia and Ukraine. In Russia, you have protesters who have been brutalized, who have been put behind bars as a result of their protests against this invasion.

You have ordinary Russians who are suffering the economic consequences that come along with the sanctions that have been implemented. And in Ukraine, of course, I mean, It goes without saying. You see all of these innocent civilians being forced out of their country. We now have more than 2 million refugees who have fled to neighboring countries. And you have people who are innocent civilians who are dying. More than 500 innocent civilians have died now according to UN estimates.

So we'll stay on this story as we have been and we'll give you updates as we learn them. But that's what's happening as of today. I wanted to move on to one other story that you might have seen in the news in regarding Poland and its offer to provide fighter jets to Ukraine. This story was reported on in the way you would expect corporate media to report on it. Lots of holes in the story, lots of questions. I did some digging and hopefully I can answer some of those questions for you all. So the Pentagon has now rejected Poland's offer to supply Ukraine with M or M or M.

fighter jets. Okay, these are fighter jets that Ukraine desperately needs in order to ward off or fight back against Russian forces that have invaded the country. The concern is that if the United States allows for the transfer of these fighter jets, it could lead to an escalation of war between not just Russia and Ukraine, but Russia and NATO allies. Now that is what the claim is, I'm actually going to push back against that a little bit. But before I do, let's take a look at this video that explains exactly how Poland proposed to transfer these fighter jets to Ukraine. And what Poland offered was to fly all of its migs from Poland here to a U.S. Airbase Ramstein, U.S. NATO airbase in Germany, and then have them flown somehow into Ukraine.

The Pentagon calls that offer untenable. So they say it's untenable, which I found curious, right? Like put your feelings aside regarding whether or not they should get those fighter jets. Right, just put that aside. I just want to focus on the reasoning or the excuses that we're hearing from the Pentagon. Because it didn't really make much sense to me. Okay, so what are they saying? Let's go to the Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, who says this.

The prospect of fighter jets at the disposal of the government of the United States of America departing from a U.S. NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine, raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance. Now, he doesn't really go into many details about what those concerns are. all you can really do is speculate that he's referring to an escalation of this war and essentially pulling the United States and NATO allies into a direct war with Russia. I think that is a legitimate argument to make in regard to establishing a no-fly zone. We've explained why that's a bad idea. We've explained how that would absolutely be a serious escalation of war. But in this case,

you have to keep in mind that the United States has armed the Ukrainian forces and has given them all sorts of weaponry, including anti-tank missiles. And I'll give you the rundown of what the United States has supplied to Ukraine in just a moment. But to give you the rest of the thread from John Kirby, he says, it is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it. We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about the issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents. But we do not believe Poland's proposal is a tenable Now, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to meet with officials in Poland about this very issue to try to find another way to get the fighter jets to Ukraine.

And one of the ideas, initial ideas was, well, maybe what we can do is we can have Ukrainian pilots go to Poland and fly the fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine. I don't know why that idea has been scrapped, but apparently that was one of the. the initial proposals and I don't know where that went. But with that said, there's other issues here that I wanted to explore. For instance, Vladimir Zelensky, who clearly wants us to establish a no-fly zone, which isn't gonna happen, is furious with the United States because he believes that US officials have given Ukraine mixed messages on this very issue.

He says this, Russia uses missiles, aircraft, helicopters against us, against civilians, against our cities, against our infrastructure. This is the world's humanitarian duty to respond, but there's no decision. So when will the decision be made? He continues to say, listen, we have a war. We do not have time for all these signals. This is not ping pong.

This is about human lives. We ask once again, solve it faster. Do not shift the responsibility, send us planes. What's become clear to me is that the United States isn't necessarily against getting fighter jets to Ukraine. And these particular fighter jets are the ones that the Ukrainian forces have experience with. They would be able to use. So that's an important part of this as well.

And so Jen Saki, the White House press secretary, was asked about this. And I think the question is very clear here. But I feel that Saki evaded the question and went off on some weird deflection. Maybe my interpretation is different from yours. I want you to take a look at the video. Judge for yourselves. Does the US want the Ukraine to get jets? How urgent a priority is that?

So let me give you an update on the status. As of now, the Secretary Austin, Chairman Millie, and members of our defense department are in touch with Ukrainian counterparts, NATO counterparts, discussing what are clearly logistical challenges here. And I would note, Josh, that in the statement put out by my My colleague at the Pentagon yesterday, he made clear that obviously the proposal from yesterday that fighter jets manned by Americans departing a NATO base to fly into airspace contested with Russia raises serious concerns for the United States and NATO.

So the logistical questions here, just to put a little fine point on it, are things like how do you get planes into Ukraine in a way that is not escalatory? So does the United States want to get fighter jets to Ukraine? Answer yes or no, and then explain what you mean by logistical problems. Like they're worried, they claim that they're worried about escalating the war, but we've given Ukraine all sorts of military weaponry to attack Russia. It's not like Putin doesn't know about that. And there is mixed messaging coming from the Pentagon and from the White House to be clear.

In fact, why don't we go to an earlier statement that was made by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. He was asked about possibly transferring fighter jets over to Ukraine, and he was pretty clear about where he stood on this issue. What more can the United States do here if, for instance, the Polish government, a NATO member wants to send fighter jets? Does that get a green light from the US, or are you afraid that that will escalate tension? No, that that gets a green light. In fact, we're talking with our Polish friends right now

about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs if, in fact, they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians. What can we do? How can we help to make sure that they get something to backfill the planes that they're handing over to the Ukrainians? We're in very active discussions with them about that. So what's really going on? Why did the United States reject Poland's offer? And so I had to dig because nothing coming from the White House was really making much sense. I noticed this headline from Reuters, it really caught my attention. U.S. rejects Poland's offer to give it Russian-made fighter jets for Ukraine.

Listen, regardless of what you think about this war, and I think I've been pretty clear about, you know, how it's important to support Ukrainians, especially since they made a deal with the West to give up the entirety of their nuclear arsenal with security guarantees from the United States. Okay, that deal was made between Ukraine, the United States, Russia, and the UK. And that was back in the 1990s. So I think that the lessons that could be learned by the United States abandoning Ukraine are terrible lessons. The lesson is don't trust the United States when you give up your nuclear arsenal.

They'll rip up nuclear deals that they've made with you. In the case of Iran, that was certainly the case. Something kind of similar happened in Libya, and now you have the situation in Ukraine. So I understand, aside from the morality that you might attach to it, there was a deal made. And I do think it's important to follow through on that deal and offer security to Ukraine in a way that will not escalate war. I think that's also important, which is why I don't support the no-fly zone. But remember, disaster capitalism is real. And so I read that headline and I'm like, is this because they're talking about sending over Russian made fighter jets when maybe U.S. defense contractors are like, no, this is an opportunity for us to exploit.

What do you guys doing? That's a possibility. I don't know for sure. That's just something that I'm speculating about due to concerns I have about the disaster capitalism that's usually tied into all of these conflict. that the United States gets involved in. But there's something else that caught my attention, which I'll get to in just a second. But again, for anyone who claims that no,

the United States doesn't want to send fighter jets because we're just worried it'll really upset Russia. We have armed Ukrainians with a lot of weaponry. In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including javelin missiles over the borders of Poland and Romania, Which are NATO allies, by the way, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kiev. Ukrainian soldiers armed with shoulder fired javelin anti-tank missiles have several times in the past week attacked a miles long convoy of Russian armor and supply trucks,

helping stall the Russian ground advance as it bears down on Kiev, Pentagon officials said. Again, we have no problem arming Ukrainians, clearly. So as I kept looking into this, digging and digging and digging, what is happening? What is the real reason why the US turned this offer down from Poland? Let's go to the last graphic here, this was buried in a New York Times article. While Biden was in Wilmington, Delaware, his national security council staff spent much of the day trying to find a way for Poland to transfer to Ukraine, a fleet of well used, Soviet-made Mi-29 fighter jets that Ukrainian pilots know how to fly. This is the important part.

But the deal is contingent on giving Poland in return far more capable American-made F-16s, an operation made more complicated by the fact that many of those fighters are promised to Taiwan, where the United States has greater strategic interests. Why is that buried in a New York Times article? Like, the fact that reporters are asking Jen Saki for clarity on this means that reporters don't know what's going on. That what I just read you is something that you literally have to like spend hours digging for, searching for to find. See, when we're making promises for military capabilities and weaponry and fighter jets all over the world, like that's relevant. That's an important part of the story. It should be front and center when covering why the U.S.

has decided to turn Poland down. But understand, U.S. officials seem pretty open to this deal. The only thing standing in the way was that we don't have enough fighter jets to give to Taiwan and to Ukraine. But the reason why they were open to this deal to begin with is because there's a place there for U.S. defense contractors to make a little bit of money. So who knows how this is going to play out? Again, I don't blame Zelensky for being frustrated at the contradictory messages coming from the White House. You know, you have Anthony Blinken saying we're gonna green light this, then you have John Kirby saying this is untenable. It's a mess, it really is. But the fact of the matter is this situation on the ground is absolutely devastating to Ukrainian civilians.

I feel awful for them. I feel awful for the people who are also suffering consequences of Putin's invasion in Russia as a result of these economic sanctions. But, you know, the only thing that's certain is that as long as this war continues, more and more innocent people are going to die. And the contradictory messaging and the honestly questionable reporting on issues that are as important as whether or not we transfer fighter jets to Ukraine is, is really disappointing, for lack of a better word. I'd use other words that I can't use on the show. But that's where we're

at right now. That's what's really going on with this decision to turn Poland down. We've got to take a quick break when we come back. We've got more news for you, including how corruption in the housing industry is allowing for the homeless population to explode. And we'll also talk about how right wingers absolutely love big government. Come right back. Ice cream. Welcome back to the show. I wanted to read a few comments from our super chat section. And, you know, history speaks. We had some disagreements in the very beginning of this whole Russia-Ukraine story. But this is prior to Russia invading. And I'm really happy to read from you and hear from you again. So the comments are, Anna, was pleased to hear

your shrewd call for skepticism of Ukrainian governmental sources. Putin is an imperialist monster, but mainstream media continues to uncritically repeat misinformation about this war from the Ukrainian government. Yes. So I want to be clear about something. We should all be skeptical of any claims that are made by either the Russian side or the Ukrainian side, right? Look, Vladimir Zelensky desperately wants to have us implement a no-fly zone. And to keep morale up, they might actually do propaganda to make it seem like very few Ukrainian forces have died as a result of this war. There are all sorts of incentives to misinform people because they have an agenda, right?

There's a real agenda there for both sides. So my point here is try to find independent sources, try to find. sources that don't necessarily have a bias in one direction or the other, it's really hard to ensure that you have accurate information because of the fact that we're in the middle of this, it's a fog of war situation. But I think a good way to kind of avoid spreading misinformation or buying into misinformation is to just practice heavy or healthy skepticism if you're getting your sources from either Russia or Ukraine.

And British 32 says, hey Anna, great start to the show tonight from UK. Update on my friends helping in Ukraine at the border to evacuate civilians across. They are paying for a team of white helmets from Syria to help find people in bombed areas. Man, anyone who is helping, you know, volunteering, who's putting themselves in danger to help civilians evacuate. I mean, you just have to give them a tremendous amount of credit. And by the way, one other thing I want to note, to the war report, reporters who were there on the ground. You know, we have a lot of criticism usually for legacy media outlets that tend to provide,

you know, the perspective of corporate interest. That's usually very frustrating. However, there's no question for the war reporters that are on the ground, they're putting their lives in danger to give us information about what's happening on the ground. And it does take a tremendous amount of courage, especially when you see Russia just indiscriminately targeting and bombing. and bombing certain civilian areas. So just wanted to give them some props because we wouldn't have any information

that's credible if it weren't for people on the ground doing the reporting. All right, well, let's move on to a completely unrelated story. I want to talk about the constant culture war that has very real consequences for people here in the United States. This time, it has to do with reproductive rights. With red states making it increasingly difficult for women to practice their reproductive

rights, we're seeing a trend of people going out of state in order to get an abortion and get the reproductive health needs that they have taken care of. Now unfortunately, there are some rabid, draconian right wingers who have caught on to this, and they want to model legislation after what's going down in Texas. in order to prevent women from being able to travel out of state for an abortion. So in other words, they want to legislate outside of their own jurisdiction just to ensure that they're controlling the lives and bodies of women. Now in this case, we have a female lawmaker, a state representative in Missouri, who is introducing a provision that you should know about. There she is. I'm sure she'd have you believe that she cares about unborn babies.

She cares about human lives was very much against expanding Medicaid in her state, which would also save lives. But hey, you know, Republican hypocrisy is honestly the most common thing in this country at this point. But let me give you the details about what she's trying to do. An unusual new provision introduced by state representative Mary Elizabeth Coleman would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion. out of state using the novel legal strategy behind the restrictive law in Texas that since September has banned abortions in that state after six weeks of pregnancy.

So let's do a little bit of a rewind here, because I want to make sure that everyone's on the same page. You might have missed that Texas story. Texas had banned abortion past six weeks, meaning that most women would not be able to get an abortion because most women don't even know they're pregnant at six weeks. But putting that aside, the way that they have decided to enforce that new law is by allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers, sue Uber drivers, sue anyone that is helping to allow that woman to carry out the abortion, right?

Any woman who is doing this illegally or suspected of doing this illegally, this law would not be enforced by the lawmakers. That's how they're trying to kind of bypass the fact that this is insanely unconstitutional. They're saying, look, it's private citizens that are enforcing this law. Not us, not us lawmakers. It's not the government enforcing the law. It's just private citizens. And the private citizens, by the way, get a bounty, $10,000 for doing it. And so you have all these right wingers who have nothing to offer you to honestly improve your lives. Like, all they do is sit around and think about ways to encroach on your personal freedoms, your personal liberties, and your own body. That's all they do all day long, okay? They want to

go after transgender athletes and students. They want to go after women who are desperate and are seeking abortions. And in this case, this woman is like, oh, you want to go out of state? No, no, no, no, no. We got to hound you. We got to follow you. We gotta go after you and ensure that you're so intimidated and people around you are so intimidated by us that they would not in any way allow for you or help you to get an abortion out of state, outside of Missouri's jurisdiction. Let me give you more. Her amendment would also make it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess, or distribute abortion pills in Missouri. And that's one way that some women in these red states have been able to get an abortion when it's incredibly difficult to do it by going to a clinic. They'll find a way to get the abortion pill, and there's been a war on that as well.

Now, this measure, if it passes, would target anyone even tangentially involved in an abortion performed on a Missouri resident, okay? And that includes, let's say, hotline staffers who make the appointments on behalf of the woman seeking the abortion, the marketing representatives who might advertise out-of-state abortion clinics, and the Illinois and Kansas-based doctors who actually handled the procedure. So anyone associated with helping the woman out could face consequences for doing so if this measure passes in Missouri. Coleman says that she's been trying to figure out how to crack down on out of state abortions since Planned Parenthood opened an abortion clinic on the Illinois Missouri border in 2019. Since Planned Parenthood opened its clinic on the Missouri, Illinois border in October of 2019, 10,644 Missouri residents have received abortion care at the clinic.

And that's according to Planned Parenthood. So this is what we're seeing in response to these restrictive abortion laws in red states as a way of mitigating the damage that's being done to women who are being told that they don't get to make decisions about their own bodies. They're opening up these clinics like on the border of these states. And in this case, we're talking about Illinois opening up an abortion clinic on the border with Missouri. Now abortion rights activists are saying, look, this measure is unconstitutional because it would have effectively allow states to enact laws beyond their jurisdictions. But the key word there is unconstitutional. And the argument that we keep hearing from right

wingers, both in Texas, and in this case, it would be Missouri, is that since it's not government officials or politicians enforcing these laws, it can't be deemed unconstitutional. It's private citizens enforcing these laws. Now, we'll see how this plays out when the Supreme Court rules on this devastating anti-reproductive rights abortion law in Texas. But considering how right wing our Supreme Court is, it's scary to leave it up to them. It's scary to consider the fact that they refused to put a stop to this Texas law until the case is heard. They said, no, I mean, that Texas law can be implemented and we'll see what happens after we hear the challenges to it. But, you know, in the meantime, they can move forward with making it impossible for women in the state of Texas to get an abortion.

She also attached this amendment or this measure as an amendment to another bill that's making its way through the state legislature. Abortion rights activists, as I said, think it's unconstitutional, say it's unconstitutional, but we'll see how that plays out in the Supreme Court. Like the Texas law, the proposal itself could have a chilling effect. So even if it is later deemed unconstitutional, it does have a chilling effect where doctors and surrounding states stop performing abortions before courts have an opportunity to intervene, worry that they may face a flurry of lawsuits if they violate the law. The American Taliban is real, okay? I mean, it is amazing to me where when we're talking about a contagious virus, when we're talking about a contagious virus, when we're talking about a contagious. disease. When we're talking about doing something super simple, like putting on a mask, all of a sudden the right wing understands the importance of making decisions about your own body.

Now when we're talking about something that's contagious, it ain't about you. It's about the community, right? When we're talking about COVID, if it only affected you to not wear a mask or to not get vaccinated, awesome. I don't really care. I think people should be able to make decisions about their own bodies. You wanna drink bleach, drink bleach, I don't care. Just keeping it real with you.

But when we're talking about something that has an impact on other living, breathing human beings, and I'm not talking about zygotes, I'm not talking about embryos, I'm talking about actual humans who are alive. When your actions have an impact on that, yeah, I'm against those actions. In this case, we're not talking about viable babies outside of the womb. We're not talking about women who have a healthy pregnancy in the third trim. We're talking about Republican lawmakers who go out of their way to pander to evangelical voters by pretending like a group of cells in a woman's body deserves more protection than she does. Because religious beliefs somehow in a country that's supposed to separate church and state takes priority over our liberties, over our rights, over our freedoms. The people who claim that they're so in favor of cutting back on government, cut down on government, cut funding for public schools, we don't want the bureaucracy, we don't want big government.

They only mean that when it comes to corporate interests, they want to deregulate so they can keep robbing us, so they can keep creating devastating working conditions for employees. But when it comes to a woman making it, honestly, a decision about the most intimate part of her body, they want to get all up in that. They want to get super involved. And they even want to legislate outside of their own damn jurisdiction, which is what this woman is trying to do. It's disgusting. By the way, 10% of people living in her district live below the poverty line. How about do something about that?

She doesn't want to expand Medicaid in her state. Oh, we can't, we just can't do it. It's too expensive. We can't expand Medicaid. So let people who can't afford health care die because look at me. I'm a pro-life person. You're not pro-life. Same type of disgusting, pandering, narcissistic Republican politician.

I've got a lot of negative things to say about Democratic lawmakers. And I've been very critical of them for other reasons. But when it comes to this issue, the right wing is so shameless, insanely shameless. While they sit back and watch hundreds of thousands of Americans die from coronavirus due to misinformation that's spread by their own damn party, they then turn around and claim that they care about babies. They care so much about these unborn babies. Second that unborn baby is born, we don't really care that much about that baby anymore. Let's cut food stamps.

You know, all these people who want government handouts. Senator Rick Scott is doubling down on his proposal to make low income earners. The people who are so like not only living paycheck to paycheck, they can't even afford basic needs, basic necessities. He wants to ensure that we tax them because he's so sick of them, you know, taking government handouts, as he would say. So while they abandon the needs, the basic needs of actual living, breathing humans, they focus all their energy on getting brownie points from evangelical voters, who of course

have no principles for themselves. I mean, they supported Donald Trump. I mean, these religious zealots aren't so religious when it comes to supporting a guy who pays, you know, sex workers, hush money payments. information about their affairs don't come out. I mean, it's just, it's so infuriating that they get taken seriously as they make these ridiculous arguments. Let me give you a slogan from her, not even a slogan, her statement about her campaigning, about who she is as a politician, this is the last graphic.

Now more than ever, we need principled conservatives in state government who will push back against the radical lefts cancel culture, yeah, because that's a real problem, and defend our religious freedom, the unborn, and of course she ends it with Second Amendment. Considering all the gun violence of this country, considering how insanely laxed gun laws, and all these loopholes associated with the background check has led to all of these innocent people dying across the country. She has no damn leg to stand on to claim that she cares about life. All of her actions make it abundantly clear that.

that she doesn't give a damn about human lives. But hey, she's gonna spend her time trying to pass legislation that hounds women who are so desperate that they'll go out of state to get an abortion. I'm sure it'll be the happiest day for this woman when the women living in her state, when constituents in her state go back to, you know, severe infections thanks to coat hanger abortions. Or back alley abortions. You know, back when Roe v. Wade had not, there wasn't a Roe v. Wade ruling by the Supreme Court that legalized abortion, women would get those back alley abortions and oftentimes

they'd be molested by the doctors performing the doctors, the people performing the abortions. A lot of women died. In fact, even today, tens of thousands of women die across the globe as a result of restrictive abortion laws, but who cares about their lives? These pro-life people care a lot about a clump of cells that is not viable outside of the womb. That's what they care about because their political careers and pandering to the worst elements of society is way more important to them than doing the right thing by actually looking

at what matters to their constituents and carrying that out instead. She's disgusting, absolutely gross. We gotta take a break, we'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. Before we get to our next story, which is actually a positive update, okay? We do have some good news and I wanted to make sure I share that with you. I did want to also get to two more comments from our members. You can become a member by going to t.yt.com slash join or if you're watching us on YouTube,

just click on that join button. Mickey Cee, the silver hair dragon says, how can they know that a woman is traveling out of of state just for an abortion? Will every home pregnancy test have to be recorded? Will they breach HIPAA laws of OBGYNs for pregnancy results? Will all women of age be stopped at every road leading to another state to be questioned why they're traveling? Next, every pregnant woman will be jailed until she gives birth just to force her to have

a baby. Don't give them ideas, Mickey C. Don't give them ideas, because honestly at this point, I would not put it past them. No, I mean, look, this is why these proposals, proposals are so dangerous because it's about pitting Americans against one another. It's about giving people reason to be suspicious of other women, right? And it's dangerous because it, look, we already live in a hyper surveilled culture where we're all surveilling each other. I mean, like, it's one thing to have the government surveil us, which was, again, problematic

enough, terrible enough. But now we're all surveilling each other. This adds something even worse to that mix. You know, to have ordinary people track each other like this. It's pretty gross. It really is. Ronan Warrior 47. Ronan Warrior 47 says right wing is taking over our private lives and destroying our ability

to have a life. Is it time for pitchforks yet? You know, the thing that I think is so interesting is, What will get people riled up like this freedom convoy or whatever when we don't really have vaccine mandates? Like let's just keep it real, right? Like this country has been so laxed with COVID, like that'll rile them up. They'll take action, they'll take to the streets, they'll block roads, whatever they're doing, right? They'll do it.

Like how much do Americans have to suffer economically, personally, socially, all of that for like us to really come together in an organized way? It's one thing to take to the streets. Honestly, I think that there are limited payoffs to that, but to like really organize and and find a way to implement or apply pressure to Congress from the outside, I think there's a way to do that. And we need to think a little more strategically. And that's something that I'm exploring myself, to be quite honest with you guys. But yeah. All right, well, let's give you the good news before John Ida roller joins us for the second hour. In rare victory, the Pentagon has agreed to permanently shut down what's referred to as the Red Hill fuel facility in Oahu, Hawaii.

This is a story we've been following pretty closely, and this is, I gotta be honest, an update that I did not expect, but it is a welcome update because of the fact that it's actually the right thing to do. This is a fuel facility, which has been around since World War II, and it has had a history of leaking fuel into the drinking water in the area and lately the leaks have gotten much worse because of the fact that this is a facility that's been around since World War II and it was starting to deteriorate and it was incredibly dangerous especially considering the placement of the facility. So let me give you the details of the update. So the decision marks a reversal from the Pentagon's previous efforts to keep the underground facility in operation. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin is committed

to defueling, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, in a briefing. So the process of defueling, meaning like shutting this down and ensuring that all that fuel is taken out of this site in a safe way, concerns me. I got to be honest. Like I hope that that's carried out in a safe way. I hope we don't have any other leaks. There's always a possibility of that process being flawed. So I want to just kind of warn about that. But But aside from that concern, overall, this is a fantastic update. This is something that really had bipartisan support.

Voters in Hawaii, of course, wanted to do something about this. It was an incredibly dangerous situation because we're talking about the drinking water supply for tens of thousands of people, right? So to give you a little more history and information about this, the Red Hill Bunk Fuel Storage Facility has 20 massive tanks. a system of pipelines and miles of tunnels that were constructed in the Halawa mountainside to protect the resource from attack and use the force of gravity to deliver the fuel to Pearl Harbor. Now the facility made of steel and porous concrete is located just 100 feet above Oahu's main drinking water aquifer and petroleum contamination has been present under the facility for years, for years.

The situation had gotten much worse in recent months. However, I do want to give you some examples of the leaks that they've dealt with in the past. For instance, in 2014, an estimated 27,000 gallons of fuel escaped from the tanks, activating concerns from community members and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. But Navy officials insisted that, that the facility was safe and didn't threaten the drinking water. But in May, a pipeline burst and an estimated 19,000 gallons of jet fuel escaped, according to the Navy. And then they attempted to do some cleanup efforts and the residents of that area,

especially the community of military families in that area, weren't buying that cleanup effort. In fact, there were videos all over social media showing that there was still contamination. There was still fuel in unsafe levels, really threatening their drinking water. And then on the week of Thanksgiving, military families started to smell and taste fuel in their water. Thousands sought medical treatment for illnesses, including some who were hospitalized. So look, throughout this battle, there was pushback from the Pentagon. They did not want to do away with this facility. They felt that it was an important facility to maintain because of the fact that it was providing fuel.

to the military, but I'm glad that they decided, okay, fine, this is not good. We're going to permanently shut it down and find other solutions for the fueling needs of the military based in Hawaii. Again, overall, positive update, and it shows you what could be done if people band together and they apply pressure toward state lawmakers, as was the case here, and also toward the Pentagon, which had complete control over. this fuel facility. I love seeing positive updates like this. We don't see them often here in the U.S. So I thought I would give you that positive bit of information to think about as we go

to break. Let's do that. When we come back, John Iderola will be joining me. We'll lighten things up. We'll have some fun. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members only bonus content and more by podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon