UNBIASED - Week in Review: March 24-30, 2023

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

1. Quick Two Minute Recap: Former President Trump Indicted by NY Grand Jury (0:38)2. Discussions About Gun Control Following Nashville School Shooting (6:14)3. TikTok Ban Blocked in Senate; Brief Discussion of the RESTRICT Act (16:18)4. Wall Street Journal Reporter Arrested in Russia on Espionage Charges (21:28)5. Kentucky Lawmakers Override Veto of SB150 ( Re: Transgender Minors) (23:39)6. Idaho Becomes Fifth State to Allow Executions by Firing Squad (31:15)7. Listener Request: Brazil and China Agree to Trade with Own Currencies Rather than USD; What does this mean for the USD? (37:57)Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe to Jordan's YouTube Channel. Click here for sources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is My Law podcast. This is your host Jordan and I give

you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually a lawyer. Welcome back. Happy Friday. I hope you guys had a great week. Going into the weekend with some ease. We are talking about five stories today, plus a listener request. So that makes six stories.

But before we get into today's stories, I just recorded the podcast. I turned off my podcast studio, checked my phone, and saw the breaking news that Donald Trump has been indicted. So while it's not going to be a full story in today's episode, I do definitely want to just touch on it really quickly. On top of that, the indictment is still sealed, so there's really not that much out there anyway. But let's talk about it quickly. A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former President Donald Trump, multiple people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. This makes him the first person in US history to serve as president

and then be charged with a crime. The grand jury has been hearing evidence about this hush money paid to Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she had a sexual encounter with him years earlier. Now, what he's accused of is paying $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels. Hush money in and of itself is not illegal, but it was supposedly the way it was accounted for that got the attention of the Manhattan District Attorney. With that said, as I said before,

the indictment is still sealed. So the specific allegations are not clear as of now, but Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg and his investigative team were probing whether Trump falsified business records connected to the payments in a way that could constitute a campaign finance violation because falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but it can be brought up to a felony if it was done in furtherance of another crime like a campaign finance violation. So that's what we know. We know that on Thursday when this news broke, Donald Trump was at Mar-a-Lago and it's unclear how he would be brought to court in New York to answer the charges, but security will definitely be a concern given the nature of the situation. Now, one other thing I do want to say that some people may not know,

the constitution actually doesn't prohibit anyone from running for presidency who's been charged or convicted of a crime. So while this grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump, he has not yet been convicted. But even without the conviction, even just being charged with a crime, he's still able to run for president. And even if he is convicted, there's still nothing that prohibits him from running for president. So I did just want to clear that up. And, you know, obviously, as more comes out, which I'm sure it will, I'm recording this at 7 p.m on Thursday I'm sure by the time you guys hear this at 5 a.m tomorrow even more will be available now I do say this in a second because again my episode is already recorded so you're gonna hear me say

it in a minute but I do have an Instagram and a TikTok account a lot of you guys do follow me on there as well but if you don't it's Jordan my lawyer. Because my next episode is not going to be until next Friday, I will be covering the story on TikTok and Instagram. So definitely follow me on there if you don't already. But that is the latest on former President Trump's indictment. So with that being taken care of, let's get into today's recap and what stories we are going to dive into. We're going to be having a little discussion about gun control following the Nashville school shooting.

We're going to be talking about TikTok bans. So I'm going to cover the Restrict Act briefly, not too much, but I'm going to kind of turn it into more of a discussion on why I don't think we're going to see a TikTok ban anytime soon and one bill that was just blocked in the Senate. The third story is going to be about the Wall Street Journal reporter that was arrested in Russia on espionage charges. The fourth story is the bill in Kentucky that was overridden by Kentucky lawmakers that pertains to transgender

rights or healthcare rights, if you will. Then we're going to get into Idaho becoming the fifth state to allow the firing squad for executions. And our last story, which was a listener request, is going to be in regards to that Brazil and China deal announcement in which they said that they're not going to be trading with the US dollar anymore and instead using their own currencies. So that'll be our last story. I am pretty excited for this episode. Honestly, I think there's a lot of really good stories to talk about here. So before we get into it, as always, please leave me a review on whichever platform you listen, whether that be Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, whatever it might

be. Oh, and I do have news for you. I have started putting the podcast episodes on YouTube again. So if you ever want to watch on YouTube, it's not going to be me in the video. It's just going to be kind of a static screen. But if you want to listen to them on YouTube, it's not going to be me in the video. It's just going to be kind of a static screen. But if you want to listen to them on YouTube, you can do that. My channel is Jordan is my lawyer, just like everything else. And the last thing I want to remind you guys of something you might not know is that I am both on, I'm on both Instagram and TikTok. I like Instagram more.

TikTok has really been just bothering me. So Instagram is where I prefer to be, but I post all the same videos to both accounts. So you'll never miss anything. My name on both of those platforms is at Jordan is my lawyer. Very consistent across everything, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcast, you name it. So without further ado, let's get into today's stories. As we all know by now, on Monday, a 28-year-old walked into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and killed three children and three faculty. It is very hard to find the right words. It's hard to talk about this in the way that I talk about everything in an unbiased, impartial manner. Gun control and the Second Amendment are

very controversial, but I think we can all agree that no one should have died that day in the way that they did. Um, so I'm going to have a discussion about gun control, about what's been talked about since the shooting, but I'm going to do so in a very, I guess, I guess I'm going to remain the same. I'm going to be impartial, but I don't want anyone to wonder how I can talk about something of this nature in such a way, like how I can have no emotion towards it. That's just, I mean, it's my job and that's, that's what I do. I'm not going to talk about the timeline of events that took place. I don't want to give the shooter any sort of recognition at all. So instead, like I said, I'm just going to talk about the timeline of events that took place. I don't want to give the shooter any sort of recognition at all. So instead, like I said, I'm just going to turn this into a story

about executive action and gun control. And as always, it'll be unbiased, just the facts. Following Monday's shooting, President Biden told cameras in part, quote, I have gone to the full extent of my executive authority to do on my own anything about guns. The Congress has to act, end quote. What did he mean by that? Well, coincidentally, about two weeks ago on March 14th, he issued an executive order and it was titled Executive Order on Reducing Gun Violence and Making Our Communities Safer. And it briefly discusses the bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was signed into law last year. And he just reiterated, you know, he continues to call on Congress to take additional action to reduce, quote, gun violence, including by banning

assault weapons and high capacity magazines, requiring background checks for all gun sales, requiring safe storage of firearms, funding the Safer America Plan, and expanding community violence intervention and prevention strategies, end quote. So after that little call on Congress section, section two requires the Attorney General, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Education, and Secretary of Homeland Security to each submit a report to the president within 60 days of the date of the order. And what their report is to do is describe the actions that the respective agencies have taken to implement this bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was signed into law last year. They also need to

provide data and analysis regarding the use and early effects of the act, and they also need to report on the additional steps that their agencies will take to maximize the benefits of the act. Then this executive order goes into section three, which essentially assigns each agency additional tasks. One of the examples of this is it says, quote, the secretary of defense in consultation with the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security shall develop and implement principles to further firearm and public safety practices through the Department of Defense's acquisition of firearms, end quote. So each agency has various

tasks that they are to do per this executive order. Now, what is an executive order? Executive orders are issued by the president. They direct a federal agency or official to either do something or refrain from doing something. And the order has to be within the president's constitutional authority and it's subject to review. So it's not like a president signs these executive orders and they automatically take effect. Most of them take effect, but like anything else, checks and balances are at play. So Congress can overturn an executive order by passing legislation that kind of invalidates it, in which case it's similar to any legislation. The president can veto the legislation

turning over the executive order, and then it can go back to Congress where Congress can actually override the veto with two-thirds vote. Another way Congress could hypothetically prevent an executive order from having any effect is to deny any funding that the executive order calls for. So Congress obviously is in charge of funding, and that is a way which they can kind of indirectly halt an executive order in its tracks. The courts also have a say. So a court could stay in enforcement or even overturn an executive order, but that's only if the executive order goes beyond the president's constitutional authority. Why am I telling you this? It's not because the executive order that I just talked to you about is at risk of being overturned. But I want to tell you this

because as you can see, the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch all work together. So the president can't just call for gun control and it's done. As you know, we all know that, right? But that's why he said, I've done what I can do as far as my executive powers, and now it's up to Congress. So there's a video circulating of a contentious exchange between two congressmen that fairly accurately portrays the, you know, separate views of the Republicans and Democrats. So the two congressmen that were in this, you know, heated exchange, it was Jamal Bowman, who's a Democratic representative from New York, and Thomas Massey, who's a Republican representative from Kentucky. And Bowman was initially telling reporters, look, Republicans

control the House. The American people need to know that the Republicans don't have the courage to do anything to save the lives of the children. And eventually that led to these two congressmen yelling at each other. And really, Bowman was yelling at Massey and Massey was telling him to calm down. But Massey was trying to say his solution is arming the teachers because the students need someone to protect them. Bowman was saying, no, more guns lead to more deaths. Look at the data. Bowman was, you know, in the camera saying, I was a principal, I was a teacher, I was a school counselor. Arming the teachers won't do anything. And then Massey was counteracting that by saying there's never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry. And he said, we have guns here in

Congress to protect us. And Bowman doesn't believe that the kids should have someone to protect them. So that I mean, I have it linked on my website. If you guys want to watch it, Jordan is my lawyer dot com. Just scroll down to the bottom. But it all boils down to the fact that most Republicans don't think guns are the problem. Most Democrats do think guns are the problem and they want tighter restrictions. So I found a 2021 Pew research study that I found pretty interesting. And it outlined where Republicans and Democrats stand on certain gun control policies. And it puts it in a graph so you can see. Okay, so let me explain it to you. And again, if you want to see this yourself,

it is on my website. So the policy that stands for preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns actually has the most bipartisan support. So 85% of Republicans or those that lean Republican are in favor of this. And 90% of Democrats or those who lean Democratic are also in favor of this. Then you have making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks. 70% of Republicans support this. 92% of Democrats support this. The third policy is creating a federal government database to track all gun sales and this one 43 percent of republicans support it and 86 percent of democrats support it so you can see we're getting further and further apart then you have banning high capacity ammunition magazines that

hold more than 10 rounds 41 percent of republic Republicans support that. 83% of Democrats support that. Then you have banning assault style weapons. 37% of Republicans support that. 83% of Democrats support that. You have allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places. 20% of Democrats support that. 72% of Republicans support that. Allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools. 24% of Democrats support that. 66% of Republicans support that. So more Democrats support allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools than allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places. Whereas less Republicans support allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in schools

versus allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places, allowing people to carry concealed guns without a permit. 8% of Democrats support that 35 of Republican, 35% of Democrats support that. Thirty five of Republican thirty five percent of Republicans support that. So as you can see, you know, the two real takeaways here are that there's two policies that really have bipartisan support, that those being preventing those with mental illness from buying guns and then also subjecting private gun sales and gun show sales to background checks. On the flip side of that, both parties oppose allowing people to carry a gun without a permit. So that's a little bit about gun control, a little bit about what the conversations have been since the Nashville school shooting. And, you know, there's still a very divided view on this. So and this might be interesting. I've been posting some more polls on my Instagram.

So whenever I share a news article, I'll ask my followers what they think about it, or if they agree or disagree, and maybe I'll do a little poll on where my followers stand with gun control. So with that, let's move on to story number two, which is the TikTok ban. All right, really, I should say TikTok bans plural, because there's a few of them circulating right now. And there's a lot of people on TikTok that have been talking about this Restrict Act. So it's also known as Senate Bill 686, or known as Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, aka the Restrict Act. No one's going to say that many words

to talk about a law or a bill, not a law, just a bill. So this was introduced in the Senate on March 7th, and it authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between people in the U.S. and foreign adversaries. And the reason that people are talking about it, I saw this TikTok video that had like 11 million views or something like that. The reason that people are talking about it is because the Restrict Act doesn't just cover TikTok. So it lists potential banned software and hardware as wireless networks, modems, routers, home cameras, VPNs, and that covers any of those things plus more if any of them are used to communicate with foreign adversaries. So if it connects to the internet, the federal government has the power to monitor it. That's basically what it is in a nutshell. However, this is just

a bill. It's not a law. And I understand that there's a lot to it and people are worried before I kind of talk about why I don't think this is going to go anywhere. Just a note is that it actually makes it a criminal act to use a VPN to access banned content. So for example, if TikTok were to be banned and you were to use a VPN to access TikTok, you could go to jail and pay a pretty big fine. But why do I say we don't really have to worry about this right now? That's because lawmakers really are not ready to ban TikTok. They just don't know what they want to do with it. They don't know the extent of what they want to do with it. So there was another bill called No TikTok on United States Devices Act, and it was just introduced in the Senate, but they tried to force a vote on it. So Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri

is the one that tried to force this vote on it, and he thought, look, it has bipartisan support, why not? Let's just push it through. It was blocked. So the move to force a vote is usually reserved for non-controversial bills. And it just allows the bills to pass through the Senate quickly, so long as no member objects to it. But if just one member objects, like in this case, then it doesn't work. So Josh Hawley of Missouri thought that this was a no-brainer. He tried to force a vote on this, and it was blocked. He actually used this method of forcing a vote last year with the bill to ban TikTok on government devices, and that actually passed.

So he thought that this one, I don't know, maybe had a shot too. But it didn't. So Senator Rand Paul objected, So he thought that this one, I don't know, maybe had a shot too, but it didn't. So Senator Rand Paul objected and he said that banning TikTok would be censoring Americans and that there were two clear reasons that he didn't support the bill. One was that it would limit the speech of Americans and two was that it would run afoul of rules that prevent a piece of legislation that declares a company guilty of a crime. Now, what's interesting is that one of Rand Paul's campaign donors is actually the largest U.S. investor in TikTok. So begs the question, like, did that have an influence? I don't know. It's not really for me to say, but an interesting fact

nonetheless. So there's a lot of, you know, questions of is TikTok going to be banned? What is a ban going to look like? A lot of fear that something like this is going to pass. This is not like something like the restrict act that allows the federal government to monitor anything with internet access is honestly unrelated to TikTok. Like that's just taking it 20 steps further than it needs to go. And what the issue is right now is TikTok. And yeah, it is, you know, US user data and protecting US user data.

But the core of the issue right now is TikTok. So if we do see a ban, my feeling is that it's going to be a TikTok ban. This restrict act, it doesn't even mention TikTok. So that's the story on that. I still stand by the fact that we don't even know if we'll see a TikTok ban. There's a lot that goes into it. A lot of the lawmakers, while they think TikTok is a danger, they also think there needs to be a lot more thought put into a ban before it's actually implemented. So I understand the concern behind this restrict act, but I just wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't focus too much on it right now. Like I said, that was just going to be a

quick recap of what's going on at the TikTok ban let's move on to the third story which is that a Washington Washington Wall Street Journal reporter was captured in Russia so Russia has arrested yet another American this time it is a Wall Street Journal journalist and he was arrested on suspicion of espionage. The first time that an American journalist has been, I cannot talk, the first time an American journalist has been detained on accusations by Moscow of spying since the Cold War. According to Evan Gerskovich's profile, Evan Gerskovich is the journalist that was arrested. He covers Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union, and he was previously a reporter for a French publication,

the Moscow Times, and a news assistant at the New York Times. He is accredited in Russia, so he's, I mean, he's based there. Russia says that he had been trying to obtain state secrets relating to the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex. This is a claim that the Wall Street Journal categorically denies. They've asked for Russia to please send him back home, but Russia is not doing that. A Russian district court in Moscow said that Gershkovich will be detained until May 29th. That's pretty much all we know at this point because Russia keeps a lot under wraps. The U.S. government might also have an interest in keeping things under wraps as well. Trials like this in Russia can take months to unfold, so who really knows when we'll have an update, but

it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out given the recent Brittany Griner-Paul Whelan situation. If you remember, the president swapped Victor Brout for Brittany Griner and didn't include Whelan, who happens to be detained or sitting in jail in Russia on espionage charges as well. So now that you have two

Americans in Russian jail, both charged with espionage, what do you do? How do you choose? How does that work? We will see what time, but that's all we know as of now. Story number four. On Wednesday, Kentucky lawmakers overrode a veto from the governor of a bill prohibiting certain gender-affirming health measures for minors. So this was Senate Bill 150, and it passed Congress, passed both the House and the Senate, went to the governor, governor vetoed it. It went back to

Kentucky lawmakers, and they overrode the veto. So let's talk about this SB 150 really quick. First, it discusses parental rights when it comes to health records at school. You know, parents have the right to know what their child's up to at school as far as health goes. And then it discusses pronouns. So let's talk about the pronoun section. So what it says is that the Kentucky Board of Education or the Kentucky Department of Education shall not require or recommend policies or procedures for the use of pronouns that do not conform to a student's biological sex as indicated on the student's original unedited birth certificate issued at the time of birth. It also says a local school district shall not

require school personnel or students to use pronouns for students that do not conform to that particular student's biological sex. So what does that mean? That means that teachers and students do not have to use the pronouns that a student prefers. The next section talks about what is taught at what ages. So it says there shall be a policy that respects parental rights by ensuring that children level, enrolled in the district does not receive any instruction or presentation that has a goal or purpose of students studying or exploring gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. Then it discusses the use of bathrooms, and what it says is a student who asserts to school officials that his or her gender is different from his or her biological sex and whose parent or legal guardian provides written consent to school officials shall be provided with the best available accommodation. use of school restrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms designated for use by students of the opposite biological sex while students of the opposite biological sex are present or could be

present. Acceptable accommodations may include but are not limited to access to single-stall restrooms or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms. And then the last section, section four, talks about physicians and healthcare. And it says that a healthcare provider shall not, for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of or to validate a minor's perception of the minor's sex if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor sex. And that section basically says that a healthcare provider shall not prescribe or administer any drugs to delay or stop normal puberty. You know, they can't prescribe or administer testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. They can't perform any sterilizing surgery. They can't perform any surgery that artificially constructs tissue,

having the appearance of genitalia differing from the minor's sex, that being biological sex. And then it says that the following things though are not prohibited. So if a minor is born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, then they may be able to get certain drugs or medications to help with that and then if a minor is diagnosed with a disorder of sexual development same thing they can potentially get medication or testosterone or estrogen or whatever it might be to help with their development and then a minor needing treatment for any complications caused by any of the things that are prohibited can get treatment so So like I said, the governor

overrode this bill and then it went back to the lawmakers and it passed with two-thirds vote. In the Senate, it was a 29 to 8 vote. In the House, it was a 76 to 23 vote. People of Kentucky protested this bill from the House gallery and they ended up getting arrested for chanting in the chamber. In total, 19 people were arrested and charged with third degree criminal trespassing. In the chamber, supporters of the bill were arguing that this law protects trans children from undertaking gender affirming treatments that they might regret later. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that this will cause even more mental health issues for transgender minors and that some of them may even die because of this law. Kentucky, though, is not alone. They are joining 11 other states that have restricted or banned gender-affirming care for minors.

And those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota, and West Virginia. And I put a poll up on my Instagram and I think, yeah, so that poll went up on Monday when the Idaho Senate passed a bill on gender affirming care for minors. So you'll notice I didn't mention Idaho in that list of states that do have restrictions on gender affirming care for minors. And that's because the bill in Idaho just passed the Senate. So now obviously it has to continue on. It's not yet a law, but when the bill passed the Idaho Senate, I shared it to my story and I asked, do you think physicians should legally be allowed to provide puberty blockers, hormone treatment, or gender-affirming

surgeries to minors, meaning under the age of 18. And 89% of people said no, and 11% of people said yes. So I don't know if that's indicative of the whole world's viewpoint, but I just wanted to share those results with you. I also found a survey which was done by Reuters and Komodo Health, and they basically compiled the numbers behind adolescents that seek gender-affirming care. And they defined gender dysphoria as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person's gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth. And what the study or the survey found was that in 2021, 42,000 children and teens across the U.S. received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which is triple the number in 2017. And between the years of 2017 and 2021,

121,882 children between the ages of 6 and 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria. So I'm sure those numbers will continue to trend upwards, but it seems like more and more states are implementing these restrictions on gender affirming care. So I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on it. I know, like I said, I put that poll on my Instagram, but I would like to poll you guys as well. Maybe Spotify just introduced a poll feature. So maybe that can be my question for the poll this week. But check on that question and definitely answer it.

I keep forgetting to remind you guys that I do these polls every week that associate to that episode. And I really love seeing your responses. So with the little talk of Idaho that we had and their bill that recently passed the Senate, I want to talk about Idaho some more because our next story is that Idaho became the fifth state to authorize the firing squad as a method of execution. Idaho joins Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah as states that allow the firing squad when other methods of execution are unavailable. What does this mean? Well, in Mississippi and Oklahoma, as an example, the firing squad can

be used if all of their other methods of execution are unavailable, that being nitrogen hypoxia, lethal injection, and the electric chair. So the firing squad in those two states is a last resort. South Carolina uses the electric chair as its primary method, and the firing squad comes into play when that is unavailable. And actually, South Carolina just heard arguments in January about whether the electric chair and the firing squad constitute cruel and unusual punishment. So we should have an answer on that in the next couple of months. But I digress. Back to Idaho. House Bill 186 was signed into law by Governor Brad Little on March 24th, and it takes effect on July 1st. Per the law, the director of the Idaho Department of Corrections has five days

from the date of the death warrant to determine if the lethal injection is available. If the lethal injection is unavailable, the execution will go forward with the firing squad. Why would the lethal injection be unavailable, you ask? Well, I would love to give you an answer because this was one of my favorite lessons in law school, and I did a little refresher for you guys so I could give you some accurate information. So to answer this question, we have to go back to the early 2000s when the last of the European Union countries had banned the death penalty.

So the UK, they were still part of the EU then. And I believe Bulgaria, if I'm not mistaken, were the last two countries. So that was in 2001. Then in 2011, the UK banned the export of three lethal injection drugs to the United States. And these lethal injection drugs that they banned were pretty popular. They still are. They're still used in a lot of executions. That being pentobarbital,

pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. So then following the UK banning the export of these three lethal injection drugs, other companies started to follow suit. And then that same year, so later on in 2011, the EU set forth these strict export controls on drugs used in lethal injections. They wanted to ensure that these drugs couldn't be supplied to the United States for purposes of the death penalty. So that definitely made it a lot harder to acquire these drugs. Then in 2016, so like five years later, Pfizer announced that it was going to block the sale of its drugs to the United States for executions. And before this, Pfizer was the last federally approved manufacturer to supply these drugs. So after that, the facilities were like, okay, we got to find these drugs somewhere.

So they started looking towards these, what they call compounding pharmacies. And it's a specific type of pharmacy that makes medications for people who have certain needs. And they make custom medications kind of for people who need medication that may not be commercially available or may not be mass produced. But these compounding pharmacies are not FDA approved. And there's a risk of improper manufacturing or contamination. So as an example of this, in 2018, there were 11 prisoners in Texas that were executed. Five of those 11 were yelling as they were being executed about a burning sensation. So if you've listened to my prior

podcast episodes and I've covered any executions in Texas, you know that their drug for executions is pentobarbital. It's just a lethal dose of one drug, pentobarbital. And it's supposed to be painless, but if it's improperly compounded or like sometimes in the testing procedures, it may leave these really tiny particles that are undetectable to the naked eye in the pentobarbital solution or sometimes larger particles. But if it's an untrained eye, like someone who wouldn't know what to look for, you can't really tell that anything's wrong with it. And those particles, when it's injected, can irritate the vein and cause excruciating pain. So this is what happened to five of the inmates

in Texas that were executed in 2018. And they did a look into the pharmacy that supplied this pentobarbital and it was called Green Park Compounding Pharmacy. It was based in Houston. And between the years of 2010 and 2018, this pharmacy was cited for 48 violations, and it even had its license put on hold in 2016 after it gave three children a Xanax-like antidepressant rather than the medication that they actually had a prescription for, which was to treat high levels of stomach acid. Then after that incident, a pharmacy tech was found to have forged quality control documents relating to that incident so it was just a mess long story short because of issues like this states are very secretive about how how they get their drugs so much so that 13 states actually have laws that

keep their suppliers anonymous so you can't even figure out who's supplying them the drugs. All of this to say that the United States is slowly running out of options, which is why some states like Idaho are seeking alternate routes because they say, look, if it, you know, if these lethal injection drugs are one day unavailable. We, we have to have a way. So that is Idaho's, that's the most recent news out of Idaho that they are now the fifth state to approve the firing squad. But there are, um, I mean, as with anything, you have the supporters and the opponents, the supporters are supporters for obvious reasons. They believe in the death penalty and they, you know, want these inmates gone one way or the other. The opponents, though, are annoyed because this is just going to cost the state money because it's going to be challenged. I mean, look at South Carolina. They're challenging the firing squad

and the electric chair. So the firing squad is going to be challenged as a cruel and unusual method of execution. Some inmate is going to challenge it and it's going to cost the state money. So lawmakers are like, why are we doing this? We're just asking for trouble. But then the other lawmakers are like, well, what do you want us to do? We got to figure out an alternate route. So that's the story with that. Taking us into our last story, which was a listener request. And I just want to take this as an opportunity to remind you, if you have a question about anything you've heard in the news or any piece of legislation, whether it's state level or federal level, you can always write into me on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. I have the

contact form there for a reason. So feel free to use it. So Brooke wrote into me and she said, I noticed you recently covered financial issues. So I was wondering if you planned on talking about China and Brazil discontinuing the use of the U.S. dollar as an intermediary currency and opting to trade in their own currency. Some people are claiming that this is a signal of the end of the U.S. dollar, end quote. So what Brooke is referring to is this announcement that was made by China and Brazil on Wednesday in which they said they're going to carry out trade and financial transactions directly using the yuan and the real. Rather than converting their own currencies to the US dollar, they're just going to use

their own currencies. And this announcement was made by the president of the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency. It was made at the Brazil-China Business Seminar in Beijing. And basically, the rationale behind it was he said that this is going to reduce costs and it's going to promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment. So let's quickly talk about where China stands as a trading partner in Brazil. According to the UN Comtrade Database, which provides global trade data, China is Brazil's number one export customer and number one import supplier. China accounts for 31.3% of Brazil's

exports and 22.8 percent of Brazil's imports. This is compared to the U.S., which only accounts for eleven point two percent of Brazil's exports and seventeen point seven percent of Brazil's imports. So China actually overtook the U.S. as Brazil's top trading partner in 2009. So it's been a bit. But since then, they've still traded using the U.S. dollar until now. This comes after an announcement was already made in February that the central banks of China and Brazil signed a memo of understanding for the yuan to clear in Brazil. And before that, about three months ago, actually, the Chinese president met with Saudi Arabian

leaders and told them that he wants to start trading oil with the yuan rather than the US dollar. So China's been trying to boost their currency globally since 2009. It's nothing, it's really nothing new. They want to reduce reliance on the US dollar. But given, you know, recent circumstances and situations such as the war going on between Russia and Ukraine and the United States implementing sanctions on Russia, countries are wanting to diversify. So I'm going to get into it. But first, I want to tell you what Rushir Sharma said. He's the head of Rockefeller International.

He's also an investor, a fund manager, author, and a columnist for the financial times and this is what he said he said quote everyone thinks of the dollar as a safe haven but with everything going on lately in our financial market people are seeing the dollar can't rally like they thought it would what's been unfolding over the last few years including the sanctions against russia a lot of countries are trying to diversify and get off the dollar standard like China and India. They understand that the world is too dependent on the U.S. dollar, moving very slowly to a post dollar world. But he says there is no alternative for the U.S. dollar. But what you're seeing is diversification. So the dollar became very expensive. America has been taking it for

granted, he says. And so he thinks that over the next few years, we'll see a much weaker dollar than what we have today. And you can watch his interview. His interview was with CNBC. It's on my website. So take a look if you have some time. But I think he's on the right track with what this is boiling down to. And that's just that countries are wanting to diversify. This doesn't mean that this is the end of the U.S. dollar coming. The U.S. dollar is still the most stable, most reliable, most powerful currency in the world. I mean, Rushir Sharma called it a superpower. And it is such a superpower so that when countries have sanctions placed on them, they have no other options, really. So you see these countries

wanting to diversify and not rely so much on the U.S. dollar. So this particular move with China and Brazil is just another move by China to reduce its reliance and really the world's reliance on the dollar. But that is why China and Brazil decided to discontinue using the U.S. dollar. And obviously, given our current relationship with China, things aren't, you know, things aren't great between us. So I think that's why, you know, you're seeing more of this moving away from the dollar, at least when China's involved. So that is that. That ends this episode. Please don't forget to leave me a review i really really appreciate you guys reviews are so so so key in the world of podcasting so i really appreciate that in advance take advantage of my website that's where i have all the sources that's where i have a comment section for you

guys to let me know your thoughts on stories or engage with each other whatever you want my website is a really useful space so with that i hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy it. And I will talk to you on Friday.