How U.S. Prisons Wrongfully Convict Millions - 5CAST (#24) ft. Maggie Freleng

Summary

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5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan: How U.S. Prisons Wrongfully Convict Millions (#24) ft. Maggie Freleng

Date: August 3, 2026
Host: Andrew Callaghan
Guest: Maggie Freleng (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, known for reporting on wrongful convictions and prison reform)

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Episode Overview

This episode of 5CAST features an in-depth conversation between journalist Andrew Callaghan and investigative reporter Maggie Freleng, centered on wrongful convictions, the failures of the U.S. prison system, the exploitative nature of private prisons, and the broader structures that perpetuate injustice and disenfranchisement. The episode intertwines Maggie’s personal experiences as a journalist facing legal retaliation, with deep dives into systemic issues — from the war on drugs and mandatory sentencing to private prison profits, parole traps, and endemic corruption. The conversation also touches on broader sociopolitical subjects such as media manipulation, psyops, and rising antisemitism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Legal Risks of Investigative Journalism

• Facing Lawsuits for Reporting the Truth
  • Maggie recounts getting sued by the Chief of Police in Alliance, Ohio after exposing misconduct, and discusses the cost and psychological toll of such lawsuits.
    • "He sued because of how embarrassed he was at the truth that we put out there." (Maggie, 02:02)
  • Andrew shares his current experience being sued for alleged wiretapping—a tactic both agree is often used by powerful figures to silence journalists.
  • Memorable moment:
    • "I spent about a half a million dollars so far fighting him. And the judge, who's 89, actually believes him." (Andrew, 01:15)

2. The Broken U.S. Prison System

• Statistics and Scope of Incarceration
  • The U.S. has 1.8 million people incarcerated, with about 40% for nonviolent offenses (drug convictions especially).
    • "A majority of them are nonviolent offenders... Most women in prison...are convicted of no crime crimes. So crimes never even took place." (Maggie, 06:42)
• Mandatory Sentencing & Juvenile Lifers
  • Freleng describes her Pulitzer-winning coverage of juveniles sentenced to life without parole, particularly during the "super predator" era of the '80s and '90s.
    • "It took that long for courts to finally say, wait a second, children should not be given mandatory life without parole." (Maggie, 05:43)

3. Parole as a Mechanism for Recidivism

• Lifetime Parole & Barriers to Reentry
  • Discussion of systemically punitive and nearly inescapable parole terms, including the financial obligations and how minor infractions (like jaywalking) can lead to reincarceration.
    • "Parole is set up so people fail usually most times... One mistake can get you sent back to prison." (Maggie, 07:59)
  • Maggie shares the story of Alicia Burns, wrongfully convicted as a trafficked teen, who lost her children permanently due to a parole violation. (11:01)
• Impact on Mental Health
  • "He said it was truly the worst...Literally going back in for a lie, psychologically. That broke him." (Maggie, 09:57)

4. Wrongful Convictions & Systemic Failures

• Innocence Movement & Public Accountability
  • Emphasis on reporting as a form of revenge/accountability; exposing the ways in which the system fails innocent people.
    • "Just the rage, the anger. I say all the time, like, I'm really just driven by revenge..." (Maggie, 11:54)

5. Private Prisons & Profits

• Profit Motive in Incarceration
  • Breakdown of how private prison corporations and prison labor are intertwined to generate profit.
    • "You get the prison contract and then use the cheap and/or slave labor..." (Maggie, 12:46)
  • Examples range from farming to assembly lines to firefighting by inmates, often paid pennies or nothing.
    • “If you think about it. That is slave labor.” (Maggie, 12:59)
• Corporate–Political Ties
  • CoreCivic and GeoGroup’s influence, their history with ICE centers, and campaign donations impacting policy.
    • "[Their] stocks soared when Trump was elected...They are incentivized to lock people up and keep them locked up to make money." (Maggie, 15:18, 15:40)
  • Discussion of government oversight failures and purposely opaque operations.

6. Media, Disinformation, & Psyops

• Manipulation of Public Consciousness
  • Examination of "slopaganda," celebrity culture (particularly Taylor Swift, who Maggie jokingly calls a "psyop" for keeping young women distracted; 22:56), and how the media distracts or placates the public.
    • "She gives this, like, faux feminist image. And so I think young women look at her and think that's feminism." (Maggie, 23:03)
  • Andrew and Maggie break down how information control, culture wars, and red herrings serve to keep people disengaged from structural issues.
• Epstein Files & QAnon
  • Extended riff about how real issues (elite criminality) are obscured/discredited by association with conspiracy theory culture, and the role of psyops in public confusion.
    • "They basically helped create this Internet slop culture to make us think none of this was real when it was real the whole time." (Maggie, 27:36)

7. Anti-Semitism, Palestine, and Power Structures

• Rising Anti-Semitism and Its Roots
  • Discussion about the conflation of Jewish identity with Israeli state policies, and how this is meant to maintain a power project.
    • "It's terrifying...we need to remind ourselves that that was the intention of Israel to make sure that they can always exist because they need a safe place for Jews to go." (Maggie, 29:46)
• Christian Zionism and Geopolitics
  • Maggie explains how Evangelical support for Israel is based on apocalyptic prophecy, not solidarity.
    • "For them to be saved, all of the Jews have to go back to Israel and then the Red Heifers need to be slaughtered to bring in the end times." (Maggie, 32:28)
• Hope in Grassroots Movements
  • Despite powerful interests, Maggie is optimistic about mass mobilization and believes public resistance is working.
    • "All their money and all of their propaganda still is not working because the people in the collective have the power." (Maggie, 36:17)

8. Environmental and Social Impacts of Tech Expansion

• AI Data Centers & Resource Depletion
  • Callaghan and Freleng connect the proliferation of AI-driven data centers to resource depletion in marginalized communities (specifically strains on water supply in Texas).
    • "Corpus Christi is about to be evacuated. It is a dead city." (Maggie, 40:53)
  • Politicians, drawn by promises of job creation (which are largely short-lived), fail to protect communities.

9. Protests, Collective Action, and Resistance

• Effectiveness of Activism
  • Protesting keeps morale and momentum high, even if outcomes seem delayed or modest.
    • "They know they're not going to stop this military base from being built. They go out every day just to slow the process down." (Maggie, 43:08)
• Advice to Young Activists
  • Burn your rage productively—“It feels so good to get out there and just burn shit down. Literally. Like, put your anger...off of the Internet and just go out there.” (Maggie, 49:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The civil court system [has been] exploited by powerful people for a long time." (Andrew Callaghan, 00:32)
• "There needs to be reform instead of punishment. Obviously [punishment] doesn't work." (Maggie, 06:45)
• "The people will always have power. It's just...we need to remember that." (Maggie, 21:43)
• "It's right there in front of our faces, you know?" (Maggie on elite control and manipulation, 29:30)
• "I think Hillary is similar to Taylor Swift ... really terrible human wrapped up in faux feminism." (Maggie, 46:37)
• "If you’re looking for a perfect partner, go to a protest.” (Andrew, 52:08)
• "The new revolution is hanging out." (Andrew, 49:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Legal Perils for Journalists: 00:00–03:19
• Overview of U.S. Incarceration & Prison Reform: 03:20–05:51
• Juvenile Lifers & Mandatory Sentencing: 05:52–06:36
• Parole and Recidivism Barriers: 07:44–10:11
• Private Prisons & Prison Labor: 12:34–14:26
• ICE Detention, Corporate Profits, and Oversight Failures: 15:18–18:29
• Border Reporting & Immigration Politics: 18:40–22:19
• Media, Psyops, and Distraction: 22:19–25:44
• Epstein Files, QAnon & Elite Corruption: 25:44–29:39
• Antisemitism and Power Structures: 29:39–32:26
• AI/Data Centers & Resource Scarcity: 39:49–41:59
• Power of Protest, Hope & Advice to Activists: 43:01–49:37
• Guns and Left-Wing Self-Defense: 48:34–49:29
• Personal Stories & Meeting Through Protests: 50:05–52:25

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Major Takeaways

• The U.S. legal and penal system systematically punishes the marginalized, with wrongful convictions and excessive parole terms contributing to a cycle of incarceration.
• Private profit, corporate lobbying, and political incentives deeply shape mass incarceration and the perpetuation of unjust conditions.
• Media manipulation, celebrity culture, and intentionally confusing "psyops" serve as strategic distractions from collective action and accountability.
• Rising antisemitism, fueled in part by the conflation of Jewish identity with the Israeli state, is alarming and intentional.
• Despite structural obstacles, grassroots activism, solidarity, and persistent protest do produce cultural change and keep hope alive.
• The environmental consequences of unchecked tech expansion disproportionately harm marginalized communities, serving as a new front in the struggle for justice.
• The importance of direct action, mutual defense, critical journalism, and community-building—both for the sake of justice and simply finding human connection.

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For listeners seeking more:

• Maggie Freleng’s work and podcast on wrongful convictions are recommended for deeper investigation.
• Watch for upcoming documentaries highlighted on Channel 5's new streaming service, C5.now.

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Final advice:
“Don’t back down. Double down. Try not to go broke. But I mean, there is a First Amendment and press protections for a reason.”
— Maggie Freleng, 50:05

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Transcript

[Andrew Callahan]

Question 1. When's the first time you have been sued or threatened to be sued as a journalist?

[Maggie Freeland]

First time I was sued, I think was 2021. I was sued by the chief of police of a small town in Ohio.

[Andrew Callahan]

What town was that?

[Maggie Freeland]

Alliance.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is that near where Afroman was raided by sheriffs?

[Maggie Freeland]

Where was that again? It's pretty close. Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Adams County.

[Maggie Freeland]

I don't remember what county this was, but it was pretty close. I did look up the town.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what made the big bad chief so mad at you?

[Maggie Freeland]

Telling the truth. I said some facts about him that he did not like. And because he has the ability to sue for defamation, anyone can he.

[Andrew Callahan]

The civil court system exploited by powerful people for a long time.

[Maggie Freeland]

A long time.

[Andrew Callahan]

How did things pan out? Did you file an anti slap motion?

[Maggie Freeland]

We won. No, we didn't file an anti slap. I was working with a company, so luckily they had insurance, an attorney. Everything went down as it usually does with journalists. He's a public figure. He was chief of police. I had two or more sources saying the information I had and he lost.

[Andrew Callahan]

How much do you think it costs on average for a journalist to fight against someone like that in court?

[Maggie Freeland]

I know that one cost half a million. Up to a million somewhere around there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I'm in a similar lawsuit right now. I'm getting sued by wiretapping by a guy I've never even.

[Maggie Freeland]

I was curious about the wiretapping because journalists can do one party consent, states Woodward and Bernstein.

[Andrew Callahan]

They wiretapped Nixon at the Watergate Hotel or something like that. And they got off on it because they did a good thing for society.

[Maggie Freeland]

Right.

[Andrew Callahan]

This guy's named Bill Joyner. Not important. 54 years old. He lied about us wiretapping him. Violation of the federal wiretap statute to get us in federal court. And I've spent about a half a million dollars so far fighting him. And the judge, who's 89 actually believes him. Well, she's an elderly lady. She's doing well. She lived her last of her days praising Jesus, drinking old English and hanging out with her people.

[Maggie Freeland]

Wow. We were actually talking a lot about this today. When the judge is in the pocket with the police, is in the pocket with, you know, you're the little guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's a closed system.

[Maggie Freeland]

It is and you will win. But it costs you a lot of money.

[Andrew Callahan]

And do you find that weaponizing the Streisand effect? The Streisand effect is a phenomenon in which an attempt to suppress or hide information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. Screaming the truth through a megaphone, so to speak, helps to increase pressure against the big bad guys.

[Maggie Freeland]

I do. I absolutely do. We had billboards in this town. I mean, he, he sued because of how embarrassed he was at the truth that we put out there.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was the particularly embarrassing nugget of truth that you distributed?

[Maggie Freeland]

So this was published in a textbook. This chief of police went to a particularly grisly, gruesome murder scene. A mother of five was almost decapitated and he was out on a joyride with what this other person reported was a date. And so he allegedly brought this date to the crime scene. I reported that it was in multiple sources. He had his own patrol officer saying he brough that was not his wife to this crime scene.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, wow. So he was married?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

So it was a matter of his family being deconstructed.

[Maggie Freeland]

That, you know, obviously you don't bring civilians to crime scenes. That's why there's police tape. So all of it was just very bad and looked really bad for him.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you can't bring a civilian to a crime scene?

[Maggie Freeland]

Not usually. You're not supposed to.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was arrested for public urination in Klamath Falls, Oregon by the chief of police there. And she was riding with her mom. While she was handcuffing me, her mom was kind of yelling like, yeah, get her. Do I have a case to fight back?

[Maggie Freeland]

I don't know. You could try.

[Andrew Callahan]

Really?

[Maggie Freeland]

I mean, this. So while it's not like, like technically illegal, it's really bad practice because someone could contaminate a very grisly murder scene where there's blood everywhere in which this police force did do so. That was what my piece was.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, thank you for the counsel and thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

[Maggie Freeland]

Thanks for having me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, of course. Ladies and gentlemen, you're watching 5cast our long form sit down program here at Channel 5. Available in video form on YouTube and audio form on all major podcast platforms. This is an interview with Maggie Freeland, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist perhaps best known for her reports on wrongful convictions in the US legal system. As some of you guys guys may know, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world with 1.8 million people currently sitting behind bars right now, 40% of which are serving time for nonviolent offenses like drug convictions from back in the 90s when third time offenders were given mandatory life without parole in states like California and Texas. In Maggie's view, highlighting wrongful conviction cases and other various mishandlings of justice is essential in understanding just how broken the system is. So if you want to learn more, definitely check out her podcast. We'll put the link in.

[Unidentified Guest]

Bio.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was it like getting the big P?

[Maggie Freeland]

We didn't know we were submitted for it and they announced it on Twitter. So it was really like anticlimactic. There's no physical awards, so it's just kind of this thing that floats in the ether.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was the piece of coverage that you think got you there?

[Maggie Freeland]

So that one I know it was. This was actually the third podcast ever to win a Pulitzer. And it was on a podcast I did about juvenile lifers, children that were sentenced to mandatory life in prison around the 80s 90s, during the super predator era. And what happens when you are expected to die in prison.

[Andrew Callahan]

So that was the Bill Clinton three strike era.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Prison gymnasiums have been turned into dormitories and even county jails are full. All this is part of the legacy of California's three strikes law, passed in 1994. When you commit a third violent crime, you will be put away and put away for good. Three strikes and you are out. Statewide recidivism rate is pretty high. It's extremely high. In fact, I think it's failed in terms of the scorecard of how effective it's been. So it shows that locking people up isn't the answer.

[Unidentified Guest]

It is not.

[Andrew Callahan]

When did they start handing out juvenile life sentences?

[Maggie Freeland]

So it was during the war on drugs. It was around then, 70s, 80s, and that was really what the piece was about. It focused on this young boy at the time, his name was Suave, from Philadelphia, and he committed murder when he was 17. And so he was sentenced to mandatory life without parole. Now the problem was it was a mandatory sentence. So back then, judges were not given discretion in how they sentenced you. They couldn't say, well, the way he grew up was really fucked up, so he should get X. Whatever it was, you had to be given life without parole. And then later in 2014, it took that long for the courts to finally say, wait a second, children should not be given mandatory life without parole. And it's kind of crazy to think that only happened in 2014.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you think anybody should get life without parole?

[Maggie Freeland]

No.

[Andrew Callahan]

What's your stance on the future of prison reform? I'm sure when you have these conversations, people like to point to the worst criminals out there. That tends to be the first thing people ask when they talk to abolitionists. Like, what about John Wayne Gacy type of people.

[Maggie Freeland]

I think there is a place for those kinds of people. I think they are very small populations, population of person. Right. And so when we're talking about prison abolition and abolish the police and things like that, it really does start with centering the community and the community approach to reform. I think we have reached a place where prisons are obsolete and we can really rely on the community building to reform people. Now, again, a John Wayne Gacy, totally different type of person. And I think that's where people start to get derailed in the conversation, is when they start really focusing on, well, what about John Wayne Gacy?

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, a good maybe statistic to throw back at is, do you know what percentage of people in prison are nonviolent offenders?

[Maggie Freeland]

A majority of them are nonviolent offenders.

[Andrew Callahan]

70 or 80%.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, it's a majority of them are nonviolent offenders. And most women in prison who eventually get out because of wrongful convictions are convicted of no crime crimes. So crimes never even took place. So that's something like shaken baby syndrome. And most women are in prison for actually murdering children when that never even happened. When you talk about the prison system, like Angela Davis said, I believe prisons are obsolete. People deserve second chances. There needs to be reform instead of punishment. Obviously doesn't work. And the reason I won the Pulitzer is because when you look at what happens when laws change, you sentence these children to die in prison, you gave them no hope, no reform, no education. Because most of the time you do not get education in states, especially lifers. And then the laws change in 2014 and 2017, and all of these people that you put in and threw away are now out in the street and now what? And that was a huge deal because some of these people did commit crimes again. And then it was like, well, look at this whole thing. Like, well, this is what happens when they get out, they'll commit crimes again. They should never get out. No, you just never gave them the tools to learn how to live in society.

[Andrew Callahan]

A recent analysis by the Council on Criminal justice says rearrest rates within five years are still high, but researchers are encouraged by the downward trend. So as far as reducing the recidivism rate, what do you think are some of the biggest barriers that offenders face in the reentry process?

[Maggie Freeland]

So one of the biggest is just parole in general. Parole is set up so people fail usually most times. I've really never heard of an instance where someone on parole does not have to pay for their parole. So you're often talking about people who went in who were in poverty and were maybe stealing toothpaste. Right. So now they're out on parole. You didn't offer them a job. They probably didn't have a job to begin with because they were destitute. So now how are they supposed to pay their parole officer and not go back to prison? So they often just go back to prison because of that. One of the things I've noticed recently, actually speaking to a lot of people is getting in relationships, not learning how to have a relationship in prison. I'm just going to say men, because a lot of who I speak to are men. They get in relationships with women and don't notice red flags. And a lot of these women know they can hold parole over their heads. They can threaten them. They can. Like Suave did. He went back to prison because of a woman, made an allegation. So I think parole truly is the biggest barrier to success.

[Andrew Callahan]

And when somebody gets out of, like, a juvenile life sentence, what's the average parole term? Is it a couple years?

[Maggie Freeland]

No. Suave is on lifetime parole.

[Andrew Callahan]

So that basically means that you spend the rest of your time not only under state supervision, but essentially one mistake can get you sent back to prison.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

To continue your life sentence.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes. Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

What, so parole violations can be misdemeanors

[Maggie Freeland]

and you can go back to prison

[Andrew Callahan]

for life and being behind on a payment to an officer.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you know that, Like, I heard that. Especially in Louisiana. I know it's different between states, but not that different. Child support's a big issue, too.

[Maggie Freeland]

It's. Again, if you're not paying your child support, it's probably a violation. Like, you have to be in compliance with every. You have to be the most upstanding citizen when you're on a parole. It's a lot like being an immigrant. No violations, nothing. You're going to ICE or getting deported. Right. It's just like that. It's really scary. And like, exactly like you said, how are you ever supposed to be free? How are you ever supposed to get a second chance when the cards are stacked against you from the beginning? And the reason you're in prison in the first place is probably because the cards were stacked against you.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you talked to Suave since he was locked back up?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah. Well, so he got out. So it was a false allegation.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. He beat it in court.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes. He went back in, actually, for a month or so, and he said it was truly the worst. That was the time he felt suicidal doing 31 years, getting out for a couple years, and then Literally going back in for a lie, psychologically. Psychologically, that broke him.

[Andrew Callahan]

The parole board could say, I see you in 10 years, I see you in 15 years. They would throw the key away. That's playing heavy on your mind when you start thinking about that. No matter if you're doing good, no matter if you got a job, no matter if you got this and you got that, it could be snatched when you're in a heartbeat and there's nothing you could do about it. I mean, especially like some of these states, it's like it's set up insidiously to get people back in jail. Like I mentioned child support. So in Louisiana, if you go to jail or prison with a kid, like on the outside, the state pays your child support for you. But then once you get out of jail, they stack it up, up and invoice you with, like, a big balance. And if you owe the state more than $1,500 in child support payments, you can't get an ID, can't apply for a job. You basically can't do anything. And so, of course, you go back to hustling, especially if you grew up in the street environment, like, you're going to sell drugs, do whatever you can to get by, with no ability to, like, be lawfully employed. And so people end up right back.

[Maggie Freeland]

That sounds correct. That sounds just like parole. And actually, one of the things you mentioned, kids. So I want to tell you a woman named Alicia Burns, she was an innocence case I covered. When she was 16. She went to prison. She was being trafficked. She was 16. I mean, no one at 16 can consent. Let's put that out there. She gets out on parole, she beats her, you know, charges, but she's on parole, and she had children at that time. She goes back in for a parole violation. I believe hers was jaywalking. And she loses her children forever for a parole violation. The state took her kids. She didn't have anyone to give her kids to. She has no more kids. They were put in foster care. This woman who was trafficked as a child was wrongfully convicted for a murder because she was trafficked, then violates parole for a conviction she never even did in the first place and loses her children for life. That is our system.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is that one of the stories that has, like you the most, throughout this process? Yeah, it's probably got to be some psychological weight, hearing all these stories. What kind of motivates you to continue doing this kind of work?

[Maggie Freeland]

Just the rage, the anger. I say all the time, like, I'm really just driven by revenge, and revenge is just getting accountability for the people that do wrong to these people. You know, again, just putting out there. I don't believe in prisons, but when you think about people that shouldn't be in prison who are wrongfully convicted, it's upwards of 10% of the prison population. That's hundreds of thousands of people that did nothing to be in these prisons. And then we're talking about, you know, I'm doing the story right now in Michigan, where the only women's prison in Michigan where there are thousands of women, is infested with molds. And these women are dying just from breathing mold in a prison. And again, there's women that shouldn't be there that are dying because of the conditions.

[Andrew Callahan]

On a deeper level, why do you think that the United States and the federal government needs so many people in prison?

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, they make money. The private prisons make money from it.

[Andrew Callahan]

What generates more money? I've always been curious. Private prison contracts or prison labor itself,

[Maggie Freeland]

I don't know which generates more money, but they're both part of the exact system that makes the money because you get the prison contract and then use the cheap and. Or slave labor to do the things that you need.

[Andrew Callahan]

When you say slave labor, you mean, like, it's totally unpaid.

[Maggie Freeland]

Often it's unpaid. Often it's cents. It was at Louisiana recently at Angola, where they were discovering that all of these men were just literally working for free. Cents on the dollar. If you think about it. That is slave labor. They have no autonomy. They're stuck in there. They have to do it.

[Andrew Callahan]

And it's some semblance of structure. They don't have to stay inside of the cell block all day. Especially in Angola. It literally looks like a plantation.

[Maggie Freeland]

Looks like a plantation. Well, it was y. I mean, it's one of the most jarring images. If you just Google Angola prison, I think we're thinking of the same one where the CEO is on the horse and you just see a bunch of black men in a field. That is our prison system today.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you been to the rodeo?

[Maggie Freeland]

No, I don't go to the rodeo.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I went there for a school assignment. It was my first story I ever did, like, at a. At a prison facility. And it was super interesting. I was, like, in the bullpen with some of the prisoners, and they were so stoked on it, you know, because

[Maggie Freeland]

they got to get out. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

And like, the objective horrors of the situation, which is like, mostly lifer trustees performing at a ticketed event for free People and running toward bul, like damaging their internal organs. But they were just so stoked. They were like, I'm the best bull rider. Like, you know, it was interesting. And I see why people might work for free as well.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, do you remember the firefighters in the LA fires?

[Andrew Callahan]

I saw some pictures of that.

[Maggie Freeland]

They were all like young guys from prison, from prisons around California, and they were just fighting these fires. Like that is free labor.

[Andrew Callahan]

What kinds of labor are most done

[Maggie Freeland]

in prisons these days? I guess I don't really know. You know, I know a lot of farming like you saw in Angola, if there's farms, a lot of clothing production, like manufacturing, stuff like that, where they can have big production assembly lines inside the prison.

[Andrew Callahan]

Most prisons private now, or is it still mostly state and federal owned?

[Maggie Freeland]

I'm going to say most are state. Federal prisons private are run by CoreCivic or GeoGroup.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's interesting. I just did a report about CoreCivic and GeoGroup. I thought they were just doing ICE detention.

[Maggie Freeland]

No, they do not. So it's funny. So back in 2018, I was reporting on ICE detention centers. I started doing a lot of border reporting, detention center reporting. We were actually investigating who oversees ICE detention centers because the DOJ actually had a long system of oversight. ICE detention centers actually do not. They oversee themselves. And that's really the scary thing about the DOJ versus dhs. When someone goes into ICE detention, they literally disappear and they vanish.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was just surprised to see that those two same companies were also heavily invested in private prisons.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes, they also own the private prison

[Andrew Callahan]

because you mostly hear about them when people are talking about ice.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, I was surprised too, when I found that out. Yeah. Because back then, when I was doing this reporting almost a decade ago, they didn't own as many prisons. Now they do.

[Andrew Callahan]

A lot of them donated to the Trump campaign and all that. Basically their. Their payback, or like their scratch on the back is now coming in terms of, like deportation numbers rising at the end of President Obama's second term. Then Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the administration would phase out private prisons. CoreCivic, NGO stocks plummeted. Two months later, President Trump was elected

[Maggie Freeland]

and the stocks soared. When they make money per prisoner, per person in detention, they get paid by the government. They are incentivized to lock people up and keep them locked up to make money.

[Unidentified Guest]

So they have a margin, just like a hotel, just like any business. So they have a bed rate rates they agree on with the government and the government pays them, let's say $150 a day per person. They now take that $150. They say, okay, $10 of that is going to go to pay for our phone bills for this facility. $5 of that is going to go to pay for the food that we have distributed. So, like, when you take that $150, it gets sliced up into all the different costs that go into running this facility. Many subcontractors, many other companies are coming in to fulfill different services. And at the end of the day, you have some portion of that is the product profit that these places make. The biggest slice of that, of that pie is almost always labor. I don't know the exact number, but it's a significant portion of that pie. Where again, you start to see some kind of messing around with this model. When the detention companies say, well, do we really need to have eight guards in this hallway? What if we could make do with four guards in this hallway? We really need to have a medical team of two doctors and six nurses. Can we really make do with one doctor and three nurses? There are some regulations. Typically the contracts will say you have to staff these with a certain number of people. But there's also been a long history of the companies failing to meet those staffing goals.

[Andrew Callahan]

Would you say that on average, the conditions of a privately owned detention facility are worse than that of one that is managed by a county, state, or federal governing body?

[Unidentified Guest]

It's hard to say. I think there have been some studies that show that, but I don't know if there's anything conclusive. How do you rank human misery? How do you rank suffering, and how do you rank conditions? I don't know anything definitive about that.

[Andrew Callahan]

So a lot of young people our age see stuff happening like mass detention. Basically, everything going on, every distraction deployed by the Trump administration. The Greenland acquisition as a distraction from the biggest story of the day, which is the Jeffrey Epstein file release. In your experience reporting, do you give any credence to that theory? They shut down the government to avoid the release of the Epstein files. And right when the second batch was about to come out, all of a sudden the operation begins in Minnesota. Somali fraud.

[Unidentified Guest]

Everything is.

[Andrew Callahan]

The extreme fear mongering begins.

[Unidentified Guest]

Well, I mean, just going back to immigration, I think I don't know what this president thinks in his own head about immigration, but I do know there's a very strong sentiment held by, by a large portion of this country, you know, if not majority, then close to a majority of this country who strongly feel like illegal immigrants need to be locked up and Sent away from this country. And this is a big reason, if not the main reason, that this president got reelected.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you ever interviewed any of the officials involved?

[Maggie Freeland]

No. Always deny request for a comment. Actually, it was interesting. I got back my ICE FOIA. I FOIA'd for some, you know, ICE sexual abuse reports in 2018. I didn't get them back until 2022. They sent me the reports.

[Andrew Callahan]

So they're purposely slow rolling it.

[Maggie Freeland]

Oh, yeah. I think that it is intentionally a black hole of a system.

[Andrew Callahan]

Same with, like, the media ownership class. It's like a black box. Who's above Time Warner? C suite. We don't know.

[Maggie Freeland]

We don't know.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you've done a lot of work at the border.

[Maggie Freeland]

I have.

[Andrew Callahan]

What's your favorite border town?

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, we're close to Brownsville, so I do like Brownsville. I think it's really cute. I love Daras, surprisingly.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, Juarez is cool.

[Maggie Freeland]

I love Daras. And we're checking out Tijuana in a couple days.

[Andrew Callahan]

Tijuana is more fun than both those spots combined.

[Maggie Freeland]

Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

Because Tijuana is like a party city.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was gonna sh. The Red Dragon bar, Dragon Rojo in Zana Norte. That spot is tight.

[Maggie Freeland]

And then we'll go. We'll go.

[Andrew Callahan]

When I always talk to the homie Josue from Mexico City, he always says to me, like, there's really four cities in Mexico. Mexico City, Guadalajara, tj, And then, like, Merida, you know, he's like, if you're in the scene here, like, those are, like, the four cultural hubs. Juarez is sick too, on, like, a cultural excitement level.

[Maggie Freeland]

Did you go to the first margarita bar?

[Andrew Callahan]

No. Where is it? In Juarez?

[Maggie Freeland]

I forget where I have it marked. I'll send it to you. But it is the first margarita bar, and then the Caesar salad bar is in Tijuana.

[Andrew Callahan]

And then nachos were invented in Piedras Negras, which is across from Eagle Pass in Texas.

[Maggie Freeland]

No freaking way.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hell, yeah.

[Maggie Freeland]

All right, we gotta hit that up.

[Andrew Callahan]

So your journey as a journalist didn't begin doing stuff like this. You were in the out Alps.

[Maggie Freeland]

I was.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was popping in the Alps back then?

[Maggie Freeland]

Nothing. Nothing was popping in the Alps. That's why I don't do that anymore. I started journalism at 18, and so I wanted to do travel reporting. That was back when, like, Promers and all those, like, travel books existed. And so I wanted to do that kind of writing. And then I went and was like, this is just for rich people. Like, who reads these things? Rich people traveling to the Alps. And very quickly I was like, this isn't me. My mom was a union organizer. We weren't doing those kinds of things. And I was like, I to want to give a voice to people. So it was not wine and cheese in the Alps.

[Andrew Callahan]

So your transition into this kind of thing began with dissatisfaction in the traditional travel journalism world?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Andrew Callahan]

And when did you jump off the porch, porch being the Alps, and decided, like, you know what? Fuck all this. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to actually write about things that I and my mom would care about.

[Maggie Freeland]

So I started doing environmental conservation writing. I loved the earth and animals, so I was doing that. I worked at Fish and Wildlife for bit. And then I guess it was when I went to Latino USA and started doing more like immigration reporting that everything changed. And I met Suave.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was the first immigration coverage story that you came across where you're like, okay, this is worth it?

[Maggie Freeland]

I did a story about a plane crash that took place decades ago of a bunch of braceros, migrant farm workers from El Centro. And they were flying through California, and the plane crashed and all these bracero migrant farm workers died. They were buried in a mass, nameless grave. And so I did this whole story trying to uncover who they were. And this kind of gave me this historical perspective of immigration and kind of where we are now.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you looked into Imperial Valley history?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, I did.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you feel like the promise of, like, the UFW and all that has held up, or do you feel like the corporate agricultural lobby has taken the power away from the braceros?

[Maggie Freeland]

I think that people are always going to have power. I think right now we're in a moment where we need to remember that. And of course, the whole, you know, sexual assault allegations against Chavez were really wild. The allegations involve, quote, inappropriate sexual behavior with women and miners during his time as president of the United Farm Workers of America. Dolores Huerta was the leader, and she should be centered, you know, and I loved people really centering her. But the people will always have power. It's just, I think we're in a moment right now where the people with money, the state, they have a lot of weapons. And I think we need to remember that we have the power.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you think their goal, the goal of the current corporate capture, is to make us feel disempowered?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

And, like, our voices don't mean anything.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, and I think also with a lot of this, like, you know, slopaganda online, just to, like, really keep Us stupid. We had a conversation about psyops. On psyops. On psyops. Like, I think there's so much out there, so many psyops to keep us just uneducated. And when you hear something that's real or, you know, you just don't think it is, again, like, we as a group, as a mass, as people have the power. We just need to recognize that and really pull our heads out of the slop.

[Andrew Callahan]

What psyop in particular grinds your gears the most in 2026?

[Maggie Freeland]

I really hate Taylor Swift, and I'm just always going to say she's a psyop.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what is she trying to do? What's she trying to do?

[Maggie Freeland]

I think Taylor Swift keeps young women stupid. I really think that she gives this, like, faux feminist image. And so I think young women look at her and think that's feminism. And I guess if that's your brand of feminism, great, but it's not.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you think that she's trying to shepherd in or re. Shepherd in the nuclear family. She's a horseman of the.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, I think so now, especially what's the name of the guy she's dating? And she's becoming kind of this, like, maga, like, kind of in a way that Sydney Sweeney has become. But like Taylor Swift more so because she has always been that, like, Americana golden girl. It's gonna be a really long time to understand her. Like, why do people like her? What is this? And the answer is she's everything that is just so basic and mediocre and so young women can look up to that. And I think that is part of the psyop. Like, just be basic. Don't really be any more than that.

[Andrew Callahan]

And celebrity culture itself, I think is meant to, like, break down collectivism, the blind idolatry of different famous people literally built to, like, create a consumer society.

[Maggie Freeland]

And that's what I mean in the simplest way of just keeping us dumb. Like, I just think it. It doesn't allow us to expand our brains beyond seeing a celebrity as like, a hero in a way.

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't espouse horseshoe theory, but there is like, a kind of right left thing happening where I'm sure, you know, you've heard the word goy slop before.

[Maggie Freeland]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you know what they're talking about. Sports celebrities. I disagree with the word choice in certain ways. However, sports and celebrity culture are for sure the opiates of the masses.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes, yes, always. And I think this, this year's super bowl happen halftime show with Bad Bunny was, like, a great example of that. When people look at that, and I'm not saying they're wrong to have that kind of representation. Like, I know all my NYCAN friends were stoked, of course. Like, really radical people, too, right? Who of course know that this isn't solving, you know, racism and everything by having Bad Bunny at the super bowl, but they were stoked at the representation. However, you can miss, you know, the fact that this is just placating us, just making us think, like, oh, okay, we have Bad Bunny in the super bowl. Now everything's solved.

[Andrew Callahan]

That whole situation produced my favorite Trump quote.

[Maggie Freeland]

What was it?

[Andrew Callahan]

Which is, no one even knows what the hell this guy's saying. The President decried the halftime show as one of the worst ever and an affront to the greatness of America, adding, nobody understands a word this guy is saying. And the dancing is disgusting. It's like he's speaking Spanish, but in Trump's mind, he's just screaming gibberish.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So good for representation. But overall, culture war distraction to distract

[Maggie Freeland]

us from the fact that the billionaires own everything. You really don't have a say in any. And they're keeping you. They're keeping you stupid so you don't collectively come together and rise up and say, we need a better world and we can. We can fix it.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you feel like maybe it's possible that the elites who control society on both the Democrat and Republican side of the aisle are actually in cahoots to keep us dumb and disengaged.

[Maggie Freeland]

If we've learned anything from the Epstein files, it is that these people all hang out together.

[Andrew Callahan]

They kick it hard. We got to keep the Epstein talk alive.

[Maggie Freeland]

We do have to keep the Epstein

[Andrew Callahan]

talk alive because it's dying hard, and there's still stuff that hasn't been released and hasn't been unredacted.

[Maggie Freeland]

War to keep us distracted. Epstein files.

[Andrew Callahan]

You think the magnitude is that severe?

[Maggie Freeland]

I would say so, yeah. I mean, you know, I hear journalists. They don't want to put it out there because obviously we don't have the evidence yet. They ask the questions, and no one can answer. Why does he feel so beholden to Israel?

[Andrew Callahan]

So you think that there's an elite blackmail ring that's trying to manufacture compliance and consent to fund and ideologically support the Greater Israel Project?

[Maggie Freeland]

No, I'm not. I'm not going to. I'm not going to say that.

[Andrew Callahan]

That sounds crazy.

[Maggie Freeland]

I think there could be something there. Leave it at that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Outside of that, what are Some other unanswered questions from the Epstein files that come to mind for you?

[Maggie Freeland]

Unanswered questions? Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

When you're like, what the hell does that mean?

[Maggie Freeland]

What was the whole thing where they're talking about eating? It was the code word for eating kids. What was it? Pizza. Yeah, the whole pizza thing in the files.

[Andrew Callahan]

I can't believe we're at the point where so much of the QAnon crowd was right about certain stuff.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, that's what I mean. Some of these other psyops where they like put these things out there to make you think that you're crazy and wrong. It's, it's like, but we weren't crazy and wrong. Like we weren't fully there.

[Andrew Callahan]

QAnon itself, I think was like a Trump Israel backed operation to create totally meaningless rabbit holes where people are like going down to investigate, to misdirect from

[Maggie Freeland]

what was actually like some of like

[Andrew Callahan]

the, the codes, like the, like the messages they would post on QAnon Pub and they would have like little riddles you could use Gematria to solve and none of it ever meant anything. And they had flat Earthers up in there and Anunnaki lizard believers.

[Maggie Freeland]

What was it? It was. Ghislaine was part of Reddit and Epstein was part of. What was the other one?

[Andrew Callahan]

4chan.

[Maggie Freeland]

4chan.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Maggie Freeland]

And they basically helped create this Internet slob culture to make us think none of this was real when it was real the whole time.

[Andrew Callahan]

And I think it really worked to associate the crazy stuff with the real stuff to like make it all look stupid. Cuz I first heard the words Epstein coming from the mouth of a guy at a White Lives matter rally in 2021 who before said Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the Clintons. They assassinated Kobe Bryant. They tried to kill Tyre woods in that car accident recently. Why? The Kobe Bryant deal is that he had dirt on the, on the Clintons. I love black people. I love everybody. Then he said Chester Bennington and Anthony Bourdain were about to make a documentary together about Frazzle drip. And then the deep state took him out and then he's like, and there's a guy named Jeffrey Epstein trafficking kids in the Caribbean. And so my word association was like, oh, that must be bullshit. And were you in that boat or were you way hip to Epstein before the files came out?

[Maggie Freeland]

Here's the thing. Because I live in this world of true crime and murder and horrible things all the time, I absolutely believed there was an elite class of pedophiles Trafficking children. Because I knew of Johnny, Gosh, back in the 80s, the milk carton kid, you know, Tara Calico. You hear of all these stories in the true crime world. I, when I saw these things, was like, yep, I was right the whole time. Like, we knew it. Like, why is it so shocking to think that there are elite people that traffic children? When you're that rich and you have everything at your hands, what's the one thing you can't have?

[Andrew Callahan]

So you think it being so forbidden makes them want to engage with that kind of thing. It's also the worst thing you can do. So you can hold that kind of thing over somebody, especially over other people, if recorded. You know, peer pressure to the maximum. I always looked at Epstein island is like, I think some of the people on there were there to, like, really sell the blackmail. Like, Eminem was there and like, Chris Rock was there. I'm willing to bet they're probably freestyle rapping and telling jokes to a bunch of people who are sitting around eating. So they're thinking, like, oh, this is chill. Slim Shady's here. How could this be a pedophile, right? They hook up with the girl they think is of age. It's being filmed. They wake up, Epstein's got the tape, and he's like, all right, you work for me now. Get other people here, or else we're going to ruin your life. Because they can leverage the media relationship too, right?

[Maggie Freeland]

Absolutely. Again, we're told that we're crazy if we believe there is an elite class of people running the media, you know, running everything. But it's right there in front of our faces, you know?

[Andrew Callahan]

Another psyop I think, is when people want to point fingers at who that elite class is. And it's happening a lot right now just with Jews as a whole. And what do you think about that?

[Maggie Freeland]

It's really wild. And. And, you know, it comes back to Israel. It comes back to the intentional conflation of Jews with the state of Israel and all of the horror that Israel is doing. Truly, as a Jewish person, I've been saying lately, I've never seen so much anti Semitism in my life. And it all is because of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli project conflating all Jews with Israel. It's terrifying. It's really scary to see right now as a Jewish person, and I don't really know what to do about that. I've seen a lot of people in the Palestine movement, too, like, really bordering on anti Semitism when it should be anti Israel. And we need to remind ourselves that that was the intention of Israel to make sure that they can always exist because they need a safe place for Jews to go. And in order for that to happen, we have to have the anti. Semitism. So it's intentional. And all of us need to be aware of that and make sure we are countering that.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you feel like as a colonial project, they hijacked the collective trauma of a bunch of people.

[Maggie Freeland]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Callahan]

I had a friend do like a modified birthright trip when we were in high school and they took him to Auschwitz first. Terrible, sad place. And then immediately after, like while he's processing and grieving, that they take him straight to Tel Aviv, pair him with like a super hot, like idf, like six foot three stallion soldier lady. And like, she takes him out for the whole night and parties with him. And in his mind he's like, fuck, we had to go through that so we can have this. Yeah. And it's this crazy false equivalency because Palestinians had nothing to do with what happened in Europe.

[Maggie Freeland]

The place that we're at today is honestly shocking to me as a Jewish New Yorker who never thought in my lifetime I would see people turn against Israel. I grew up just surrounded by Zionists. I don't know if you did, but, like, that's New York. Anti Semitism levels in New York City

[Unidentified Guest]

are off the charts.

[Andrew Callahan]

Unprecedented levels of anti Semitism, of hate,

[Unidentified Guest]

hate crimes against the Jewish community.

[Maggie Freeland]

That was just normal. I never was. My family never was, but all of my friends around me. I never did birthright. I never wanted to give Israel any kind of money. I also often wonder what would I have seen if I went? I kind of wish I went. I wish I saw this indoctrination. I didn't. I've heard about it. It's scary. It's really scary how many intelligent people I know in my life I'm not friends with anymore because they've been brainwashed into believing this supremacist ideology.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it just simplifies the power structure, especially in the U.S. like, evangelical Christians are incredibly power. They have like more money than aipac. They just redistricted all of Tennessee, basically, like eliminating Memphis as a voting bloc. So it's like an all red, mostly white voter base. It was evangelical racist conservative Christians who bankrolled that, not the Israeli lobby.

[Maggie Freeland]

Christian Zionists.

[Andrew Callahan]

They are Zionists. Yeah. Why does Mike Huckabee care so much about Israel?

[Maggie Freeland]

Oh, my God. This is a whole situation. This has to do with bringing in the apocalypse and a whole Religious thing. That is literally what it has to do.

[Andrew Callahan]

Wait, can you, can you expand on that a bit?

[Maggie Freeland]

They truly believe for them to be saved, all of the Jews have to go back to, to Israel and then the Red Heers need to be slaughtered. This year they were from Texas. There were actually five Red Heers sent to Israel from Texas to be slaughtered to bring in the end times. So all of the Christian Evangelical Zionists can be saved. That's what it is. All the Jews have to go back and either be killed or convert. And so when you think about Christian Zionism, it's actually one of the most anti Semitic things, actually. So when Mike Huckabee is over there loving Israel, he's loving Israel because he wants to sacrifice all the Jews so he can be saved.

[Unidentified Guest]

Wow.

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't think people know that south park did it. Okay, cool.

[Maggie Freeland]

There is, there is a red heifer apocalypse from South Park.

[Andrew Callahan]

You can watch some cartoons on screen. So you feel like the anti Semitism is obviously advancing, but is there certain political factions in America you think are bandwagoning on the Gaza issue to like advance their sort of racist agenda?

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, I do. I think it's the Christian evangelicals right now. I think they are really. You know, I found a lot of these people in the movement who are very pro Palestine, but in an anti Jew way.

[Andrew Callahan]

This fat Jew is anti Semitic, Dan. I mean, that, that, that's what you say, but how about. That's what I. That's what I know. I don't say it.

[Unidentified Guest]

I know.

[Maggie Freeland]

I've seen a lot of it. It's really scary. They recite scripture where, you know, the Jews are the enemy of mankind. It's a lot of Bible stuff that I truly never thought in my life I would have to interact with. And now I live in Texas. My partner is running for Congress.

[Andrew Callahan]

So my name is Greg Stoker. I am a former US Army Ranger. I did four combat deployments to Afghanistan during the ill fated and completely illegal war in AF Afghanistan during the Global War on terror. I'm now an anti imperialist activist and military analyst currently running for Congress in Congressional Texas Congressional District 31, where they're building a new AI data center superhighway coming down from Dallas through Austin and into San Antonio.

[Maggie Freeland]

There's a lot of scripture in our lives and a lot of it is very anti Jewish.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, you guys are really deep in it.

[Maggie Freeland]

We're deep in it.

[Andrew Callahan]

So growing up in New York City, would you say that you grew up in a Jewish community or just Community with. Of Jewish people.

[Maggie Freeland]

A community with a lot of Jewish people. I grew up on Long island surrounded by a lot of Jewish people. I grew up really secular. Like we just, you know, we did the Hanukkah and we didn't really go to temple or anything like that. So I think that's why it was very easy for me to kind of separate myself from this Israel homeland situation. But I always knew it was important to Jewish people. I never really understood because there were times in my life where I would ask questions. And then I told an ex who was Jewish and his whole family that like, I didn't support Israel. And then at the dinner table he goes, mom, Maggie doesn't support Israel. And it was this like fork dropp, like gasp moment. And I was like, oh, I guess that's really bad, you know. And like that was my boyfriend on Long Island. So I was surrounded by it forever and again. I just never thought we would be in a place where people are finally calling out Israel for what it is.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you think that the public pressure campaign will ultimately work against them or do you think they're so powerful that it's just going to be like buzzing of a fly?

[Maggie Freeland]

No, no, no, no. I think it's working against them and it will work against them somewhere like 80 to 90% of Democratic voters now, Israel doesn't hold the same power for them that it used to. They're not, you know, this huge APAC

[Andrew Callahan]

voting, their investment in the media and like all the things they're doing to like generate positive press around Israel. The public looks at it like, look, they control everything. Look how powerful they are. But really that's desperation. That's what people do when they're lying. They spend money to get the truth

[Maggie Freeland]

out there, suppress voices. You know, there was the articles coming out back a couple of years ago, which I forget which news outlet, but one of the big ones had to, their editorial team had to like vet things and run it by certain, you know, Israeli members or whatever. It's really wild how hand in hand our media is with Israeli propaganda. But again, going back to, you know, you asked about the farm worker and the people and I'm like, all their money and all of their propaganda still is not working because the people in the collective have the power. And again, if we just pull our heads out of the slop and recognize that we can do so much.

[Andrew Callahan]

So does that look like less screen time?

[Maggie Freeland]

I think less screen time. I love seeing that Gen Zs are like doing flip phones and like, I'M I'm like, we're ready to bring back VHS DVDs. Like, I'm so sick of all of it.

[Andrew Callahan]

And in person, gathering.

[Maggie Freeland]

In person, gathering. Just having conversations like this where you can have like, not Charlie Kirk debates, but just like literally with your friends where you can talk about psyops on psyops and be like, wait a second, are we kind of getting to something here?

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you think Charlie Kirk was taken out by Israel for blowing the whistle on everything they're doing?

[Maggie Freeland]

I think there are lots of questions that can't be answered.

[Andrew Callahan]

The Charlie Kirk rabbit hole to me is a bit boring.

[Maggie Freeland]

You think so?

[Andrew Callahan]

He's already dead.

[Maggie Freeland]

But you don't care about the guy, that there was no way he could disassemble that gun in seconds.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that there's a billion reasons why somebody would want to kill Charlie Kirk.

[Maggie Freeland]

But it wasn't that guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

It was. You be sure about that.

[Maggie Freeland]

It wasn't that guy. I'm going to say it wasn't that guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, cool.

[Maggie Freeland]

Different guy, different guy. It's someone.

[Andrew Callahan]

But we don't know.

[Maggie Freeland]

We don't know. There was no way he disassembled that gun and got out of there. Just, just listen off record, do I think Israel fucking killed Charlie Kirk? I absolutely do. Off record, on record, I think they,

[Andrew Callahan]

I think Israel killed Charlie Kirk to see what would happen when they killed Trump.

[Maggie Freeland]

Do you think Trump's. Your shooting was staged?

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But I'm saying Vance is the ultimate palantir Israel first candidate. He is like, he's the clavicular of politics.

[Maggie Freeland]

You think he's behind a lot of this?

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that all the powers that be, the actual people behind the curtain, which is the tech oligarchs that are connected to Israel, the corporate establishment, are priming Vance to be the ultimate AI Israel candidate. They think Trump's sort of like a dumb old mobster uncle with like gold toilets who just like dances around and they liked him when he had a lot of energy. But I think, you know, before Charlie Kirk died, he was an extremely polarizing figure. You had people like Nick Fuentes and other people on the further, I guess anti Zionist. Right, right, right, right. Being like Charlie Kirk. All groipers go to his events, disrupt everything. Like he's a bitch. Nobody fucked with him. Right. And then they killed him. And everyone's in tears. All of his haters, Sam Hyde is crying, Nick Fuentes is crying. You got people who were shitting on this guy for money every day crying their heart out. Talking about the left has gone too far. Look at what the left has done. It's time to get revenge. The ultimate almost powder keg of civil conflict happened after Charlie Kirk was killed. And beforehand he was polarizing. So what the doing now? I really believe this is. They're getting people polarized on Trump. They're getting everyone like Tucker Carlson following in lockstep to be like, Trump sucks now. Nothing that he promised came true. He was supposed to have no wars. And they're going to kill Trump when they know he's going to die within about a year and they're going to have a leftist kill him. A trans leftist, maybe a black.

[Maggie Freeland]

Definitely going to be trans black.

[Andrew Callahan]

We're not sure. The ultimate boogeyman that's going to become the symbol of the left. The left or the liberal establishment might try to like, turn them into like a folk hero. And they're going to be elevated and it's going to be. There's going to be a whole thing and then Vance is going to come into power, have the ultimate crackdown on anybody that's against the system. AI data centers are going to be deployed in their full capacity for surveillance. Martial law.

[Maggie Freeland]

Is Erica Kirk joining him at the helm?

[Andrew Callahan]

Eric Kirk might be the first lady.

[Maggie Freeland]

Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

But we're not sure. But I mean, Trump is approaching Charlie Kirk levels of like, reputation where he's splitting the right MAGA dinosaurs. Like the kind of people watching Fox News, they still like him, but anybody with a phone is like, he's compromised. People aren't saying that about Vance.

[Maggie Freeland]

Right.

[Andrew Callahan]

Vance is the future. Vance will be the last president.

[Maggie Freeland]

You think Vance is going to be the last president? What's happening after Vance?

[Andrew Callahan]

The American experiment will crumble. It's already crumbling. Resource scarcity will come, water wars. The country will just split. We're about to hit 250. It's already been too long. We should have been done after Vietnam.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, this is why we're trying to move out here. We're trying to just prep and make bunkers and just like get away from everybody.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, you're in the right place.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So data centers, what do you think?

[Maggie Freeland]

Bad. Really bad. I mean, the resource extraction. Right now in Texas, they're building an AI data center, highway. Always in marginalized communities, usually just to start. The complaints people have about the noise, just fundamentally, you don't want this noise. You don't want this ugly structure. But the amount of water, electricity they take to power is destroying the country and the earth and the places that they put these Data centers in, you know, Virginia right now is ground zero for the data centers. Texas is happening. I know you're doing a story on data centers down here. They're taking over. And the point of them is to power all this AI. And all of this AI is used to create the militarized police state you were just talking about. And that's what these data centers are for.

[Andrew Callahan]

Can you speak a little bit more on the environmental impacts from a water standpoint?

[Maggie Freeland]

You know, I don't know exactly how much water they use, but the amount of water that they use, I mean, places like Corpus Christi, it's not because of a data center, but it's because of a desalination plant. They are evacuating the city. The city is out of water. It's a desert.

[Andrew Callahan]

They're evacuating Corpus.

[Maggie Freeland]

Corpus Christi is about to be evacuated. It is a dead city.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's a movie major city.

[Maggie Freeland]

It's a major city. And on the water.

[Andrew Callahan]

They have a plan in place right now for full of activity.

[Maggie Freeland]

They're working on a plan. They said, what was it, 20? By next year, they will have evacuation plans to evacuate Corpus Christi. Now local officials are warning the city's reservoirs are on track to run dry by next year.

[Andrew Callahan]

The hard part about all this stuff is, like, the real estate developer lobby is going to just gaslight the public until, like, everyone has to leave. Now they're going to do whatever they can to fight to keep people in those properties paying their mortgages, because otherwise their investments.

[Maggie Freeland]

I was think exactly like, imagine having bought a house, house in Corpus Christi, and now, like, that's your retirement. That's your investment. And now they're like, oh, this is a dead city. You got to go. But that's scary. That's close to us in Texas. And, you know, when you live in a place like here, out in the desert, you do think about water and you do think about how much these data centers are using. And, you know, maybe when I was in New York, these weren't things I was thinking about as much because they didn't affect me as much. I really understand the. The term east coast elite and that bubble we live in out there, because life is so different in Texas. And I see the actual effects data centers have on people.

[Andrew Callahan]

Why do you think center developers choose marginalized communities, let's call them counties and cities with high unemployment rates as prospective locations for their centers?

[Maggie Freeland]

Because they don't have the power. They don't have the influence, the voting power. They can't do it. They need the politicians to speak for them and say no. And a lot of politicians don't do that because they're in bed with the people putting in the data centers.

[Andrew Callahan]

And also probably like the idea of job creation. If you dangle it in front of someone who's struggling or a community that's struggling, they'll be like, yeah, sure, let's do it.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah. When they need people to cool the data centers.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. What's crazy though is like, all the short term jobs are pretty fat for the constructions, but then after two years, it's like 100 or less jobs. So these things after they're built, pretty much run themselves.

[Maggie Freeland]

What do you think the future of data centers are going to be? Are they ever going to stop? Like, do you think the people are going to have enough power where we're like, no. Like, the community after community is like, not in our backyard.

[Andrew Callahan]

I keep thinking that we're like a generational watershed moment where, like, the people are going to seize the power and then things just keep happening. Their goal is to make us disheartened. You don't want to fall into that, like, cynical theory of, like, well, we can be as mad as we want. Protesting doesn't do shit. Let's just stay at home and not investigate anything because we're fucked. In the end of my life.

[Maggie Freeland]

Well, how many people said that to me during, you know, the Palestine stuff. And we would be out there all the time protesting, and people were like, what is that doing?

[Andrew Callahan]

What do you think it does?

[Maggie Freeland]

Keeps momentum, so. And I think it keeps, you know, people's spirits alive. Great documentary just came out called Earth's Greatest Enemy. One of the scenes is about this military base being built in Okinawa. From what I could tell in the visuals, a lot of older folks that lived in this Okinawa community forever that are anti this American military base and they've been building it for years. And these old people just go out every day in their kayaks. They know they're not going to stop this military base from being built. They go out every day just to slow the process down. Anything they can do to block the shipments of sand and whatever they're bringing to slow it down. And are they doing anything? Probably not. But I think it keeps their morale up. It encourages other people to do things. If no one did anything, we wouldn't have had this watershed moment right after October 7th for Palestine. Like, like I said, I never thought in my life I would see that. Back in college, my. My partner was wearing a keffiyeh. He was A white guy, but he was still wearing one in solidarity. And we were meeting a Jewish friend and I said, can you take that off before we meet her? She huge Zionist. And like, you know, in 2007, I didn't think of what that meant. And now, oh my God, I would never say that to somebody. And we're still friends. And I texted him to apologize. Just again, if people weren't out there protesting all the time, the people who were doing this long before October 7th, I don't think that we would have had such a movement after.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, every time someone's like, oh, protesting doesn't do anything, I think about 2020. Because now every cop in America knows that if they do some out of pocket shit like Derek Chauvin did, the whole city will burn and people will blame them. So I think just like public backlash, like hold weight in the conscience of authority figures because they're like, oh shit, I don't want to be the guy, I don't want to be the guy on tv. I'm just a guy making, you know, above minimum wage work in this job.

[Maggie Freeland]

I hope so. Like, you know, again, going back to working in, in the criminal legal system, working with DA's prosecutors all the time, like, I'm like, I hope that they think that. I hope they know there's people out there like me that are going to do a podcast about how shitty they were, you know, but then I'm going to still see it all the time. So I don't know. We have a Renee Good. Like, I don't know.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think ICE is like a little bit different or it's hard to explain because like all the I officers that were involved in the fatal shootings in Minnesota during metro surge were like knucklehead border patrol guys that like just got ICE uniforms and Trump sent them out there to join the ERO teams because they're like, we need numbers on the street. And these guys are used to working at the fucking US Mexico border where those people cannot hold them accountable at all. They're used to tackling people without Mirandizing them and like shooting people and working with militias, like in Somerton, Arizona where border patrol has like a walkie talkie to some like, like fried meth smoker libertarian guy with a ghillie screw at the top of a mountain who's like sh. Shooting people. So I think deploying them in the snow to tackle shopkeepers in Minnesota was probably a pretty bad call.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes, absolutely, a bad call. I think the point just being though, I think when you, you enter these jobs, like ice, certainly different, but I think you also just have a sense of. They feel like they have impunity, I think, to enter these kinds of jobs. So there is a thing called qualified immunity where prosecutors, police, law enforcement have reasonable, plausible reasons for doing what they did and they cannot be prosecuted. It's called qualified immunity. It's a real thing. I always tell people, like, yes, we're talk about a system and people being disenfranchised, but voting is still important.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Maggie Freeland]

For those people.

[Andrew Callahan]

Who are the top five most evil bad guys living right now?

[Maggie Freeland]

I don't know. I can name so many people. I mean, like I said, I think Taylor Swift is just a bad guy. Just bad. Obviously Netanyahu. I think Hillary Clinton's terrible. Hillary Clinton. Evil, evil people.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, wait, wait, let's back up real quick. What'd she do?

[Maggie Freeland]

Okay, I think Hillary is similar to Taylor Swift. This is my thing. I'm going to have a beef with these women who, like, I, I think because back in 2016, I bought so hard into the, like, maybe earlier than 2016, like the girl boss, like, break the glass ceiling. That was so Hillary Clinton. Then pink pussy hats and like, I think I'm just really pissed off at buying into this, like, first female president and ignoring, you know, all of the terrible war crimes and Benghazi and just super predator stuff. Like literally using the term super predator to describe young black and brown kids. Like I said, I think she's a really terrible human wrapped up in faux feminism.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, 4 and 5. Who's 4 and 5?

[Maggie Freeland]

There's gotta be people I look at, I'm like, I fucking hate that person.

[Andrew Callahan]

Maybe a DA that isn't so well known by the public who really just hates his constituents.

[Maggie Freeland]

I'll tell you right now, there is a woman in Kentucky, Barbara Whey. So this case that I'm working on, she wrongfully convicted five people. She's currently fighting to keep them in prison. Still, I know of another case where she wrongfully convicted somebody, that this woman's been in office for 40 years. And these are six people I know of that she's wrongfully convicted. How many other people are there? Some of these prosecutors that have been in office forever, Some of the most evil people.

[Andrew Callahan]

And I guess number five. We could just put Ben Gavir on there.

[Maggie Freeland]

We can put Ben Gavir on there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, now, five people that give you hope for the future.

[Maggie Freeland]

Oh, my gosh. I mean, Angela Davis is always at the top. I think I literally listen to her all the time.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you gotten a chance to talk to her?

[Maggie Freeland]

No.

[Andrew Callahan]

She's still alive.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, she is, which is surprising. I was like, I remember when I found that out. Amy Goodman gives me hope. Democracy now rules Democracy now. It's probably going to be a lot of women. Like, I was just talking about Abby Martin, who did Earth's Greatest Enemy. She gives me a lot of hope. I mean, her reporting in military environments is unreal. The access she gets is amazing. And my partner who is running for Congress gives me hope because, you know, he's just a guy who has a vision for a better future that is people powered and that gives me hope.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you guys are second. Second Amendment advocate.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah, we are.

[Andrew Callahan]

Should the left arm itself?

[Maggie Freeland]

The left should absolutely arm itself.

[Andrew Callahan]

How are we going to do that?

[Maggie Freeland]

Get your guns. And actually, this is what I keep saying to all my trans homies, my trans homies, gay homies, like, they're coming for your guns first. Literally, they're trying to do that. So we must arm ourselves. And if you're a trans homie in a state that you can't get a gun, we could figure it out. We got this.

[Andrew Callahan]

Or if you're a straight white homie with some crazy ideas, get yourself a big ass gun or a small one.

[Maggie Freeland]

But remember, dude, to your trans homies.

[Andrew Callahan]

Give them to them. And gun safety first for everybody out there watching.

[Maggie Freeland]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Callahan]

How important is gun safety when you're learning to use them?

[Maggie Freeland]

Super important. I mean, you know, I, I'm from New York. I didn't handle guns a lot. I didn't have a gun in my home. I didn't learn about guns until I was older. And now having a gun in my home, it definitely was scary at first. It's scary to be around handguns and open a drawer and be like, oh, my God. But yeah, practice safety. I put it in locks. I have a babysitter. I lock my gun up. Like, if you're going to be a gun owner, be smart. You have to be.

[Andrew Callahan]

Any parting words for the children of the world or maybe the disaffected teenagers out there who are just scrolling on reels all day watching dumb shit.

[Maggie Freeland]

It feels so good to get out there and just burn shit down. Literally. Like, put your anger. I know you feel it. Get it off of the Internet and just go out there. There are people like, you just go out there, it feels so good and you actually are doing something.

[Andrew Callahan]

So the new revolution is hanging out.

[Maggie Freeland]

Hanging out. I think the kids, kids know that though.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, the kids are hanging out I

[Maggie Freeland]

think the kids are hanging out.

[Andrew Callahan]

How about advice to somebody out there who's a journalist being sued by a big powerful bad guy with a big ass settlement demand.

[Maggie Freeland]

Don't back down because they want you to back down. They want to silence the media.

[Andrew Callahan]

So don't back down. Double down.

[Maggie Freeland]

Double down. Try not to go broke. But I mean, there is a First Amendment and press protections for a reason.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you been to double down saloon in Vegas before?

[Maggie Freeland]

I've been to many double down saloons with the ass juice.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. The first one was in Vegas.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But the one in New York's okay.

[Maggie Freeland]

It's okay. Vegas is better because I think Vegas has the ass juice, the original ass juice.

[Andrew Callahan]

And it's open all the time.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

And it simulates nighttime during the day, which is good for drinking during the day.

[Maggie Freeland]

It is good for drinking during the day.

[Andrew Callahan]

It doesn't make you feel like such a loser. You know, it seems like you guys have a great couple success story here. I think some people at home might be wondering how you guys met.

[Maggie Freeland]

We met at a Raytheon protest at south by Southwest. I was moving from New York, and I knew he lived in Austin. I didn't really know too many people that were into the movement. Protest. And I hit him up and was like, hey, let's protest together. And he's like, I'm going to this Raytheon one. And we met up and he never left my house. He had death threats. Active, credible death threats.

[Andrew Callahan]

From Raytheon?

[Maggie Freeland]

No, no. From strangers on the Internet. Zionist military wackadoos. So he hid out of my apartment. It's been like two and a half years now.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's amazing. So your first date was a protest?

[Maggie Freeland]

Raytheon protest? Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

And protest of the military industrial complex. We haven't even talked about defense contractors.

[Maggie Freeland]

No. And, you know, just one thing I want to mention is, like, Greg and I came from such different places, and I think this is such a millennial experience and just like a disenfranchised experience of, like, I went to college. I was told that's what you do. Like, you take out all these fucking student loans. I have over $100,000 in student loans. You go to college, you get your degree and you're successful. He's told, go to the military, you do these things, you get all this stuff. Your life is set for you. Speaking of horseshoes, like, we just came to the same place in the end of just like, what the fuck was all that for? Like, we're at the same place of Disenfranch with the entire system. We both did everything we were told to do. That's right. He's got ptsd. I have debt. He was in, you know, all sorts of war crimes overseas. It's really interesting for us to talk and think about how we wound up at the same place, coming from such different places.

[Andrew Callahan]

So that could be some good advice if you're looking for a perfect partner. Go to a protest.

[Maggie Freeland]

Tell the kids. Go out there and protest.

[Andrew Callahan]

A niche.

[Maggie Freeland]

Yes, a niche.

[Andrew Callahan]

Because at a Raytheon protest, you're probably more likely to meet someone cool than a no Kings rally.

[Maggie Freeland]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Callahan]

What are some other protests you think are going to places to meet people?

[Maggie Freeland]

Oh my God.

[Andrew Callahan]

For lonely singles in our area.

[Maggie Freeland]

One other we've gotten some data center protests.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's pretty good. It's pretty good. All right, well, thanks so much for your time. It's a great interview. Thanks for coming on.

[Maggie Freeland]

Thanks.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hell yeah. Hey, what's up guys? Andrew here. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I had fun making this video and had fun making something else too. As of Today, right now, Channel 5 has launched its own streaming service outside of the big four. Four social media platforms. Total digital algorithmic freedom, baby. And it's called C5 now. Not today, not tomorrow, but right the hell now. And it's something we established with the sole purpose of giving other documentary filmmakers the chance to have their work out there and get paid while doing it with a very fair revenue share without having to go through Hollywood and be subject to the ridiculous non scripted film mandates that have pushed aside great documentaries to prioritize more Tom Brady, Taylor Swift or Ted Bundy slop documentary content. Again, our platform is live right [e-mail] on your web browser or as an app on your smart TV and phone. We plan to publish a new film every single week from now until the rest of eternity and have currently loaded up five bangers to get things moving. The first film is called the Art of Protest by our friends over at Indecline. It's a wild ride. The second film is called Starcash by Hailey Garrigus. Another wild ride through Wall street as told by the astrologist to actually call the shots up in that bitch. The third is a profile documentary on the legendary physicist Gabor Mate by Asher Pan called Physician Heal Thyself. The fourth is called Rat Film by Theo Anthony, which is a sick ass movie about Baltimore's rat population. Then the fifth documentary up there is my Own called Finding Orson, which up until now has never been seen here's. The official trailer. My name is Andrew Callahan, and this is a documentary about a man who misses his parrot.

[Unidentified Guest]

Baby,

[Andrew Callahan]

Baby, Baby. I mean, where does he get this stuff? Baby. Baby. He's living in this area. Maybe we should go circling that area, too. My name is Rick Shore, but it's going to be changed very shortly by a judge to Raphael, which is Hebrew for God heals. Baby, Baby. Hello, baby or son. This beautiful little parrot got his feet torn off so he. He has trouble eating a little bit.

[Maggie Freeland]

That's the animal soul and my soul communicating telepathically. I can communicate with any animal. Birds, cats, dogs, horses.

[Andrew Callahan]

I need them back, man. It used to be called bird brain. Was a condescending thing to call a person because people thought that birds had small brains. The term bird brain, who started it and what's the agenda? Because obviously there's an agenda at play. Do you know what I'm talking about? I think we should roll with a bit. They're trying to keep us away from what could be the strongest bond in the animal kingdom. They? You think it's conspiratorial? I think it's conspiratorial.

[Maggie Freeland]

Animals.

[Andrew Callahan]

Deep state, cabal.

[Maggie Freeland]

Deep state.

[Andrew Callahan]

Don't go there. That's proof of dog. Of dog lovers who are connected to the ASPC and probably funded by the kennels themselves. Think about Petco. There's a dog in the logo. Who owns Petco? Blackwater. What do they do? Finance the Iraq war? Provide CS tear gas for the National Guard in Portland? You're in a roll, dude. I just care, man. I just care about the birds. You just care about the birds. Think about it. When's the first time you heard bird brain? And when's the first time you heard someone refer to a dog as is man's best friend? You think the dog came up with this? No. Think about all the films like airbud, where they promote a human canine union. You ever seen a bird star in a film? How long you been thinking about this, bro? My whole life. Just because they have a small brain doesn't mean they're not intelligent.

[Maggie Freeland]

He said the reason he reached out to me is because I'm Jewish. He's talking about apples. He discovered a new kind of apple. Unfortunately, it was not little Orson.

[Andrew Callahan]

What do you think the likelihood is that we'll find our friend's bird? Very, very unlikely. He probably is in somebody's house right now and they don't know how to get in touch with. I don't hit him. I just hold him really tight. And I say, no, no. It's the only thing I got. I got a rare disorder I've been struggling with for 40 years. My girlfriend died of Ms.

[Maggie Freeland]

He was in a lot of pain constantly.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hello, baby. To him, Orson symbolized more than just the loss of a pet. They were best friends. And Orson was the only living creature he had left. The only person who told Rick that he was loved.

[Maggie Freeland]

Orson.

[Andrew Callahan]

All right, if that seems like something that you want to see, you want to watch all those five documentaries, go check out C5 now. It's five bucks and 55 cents a month. But that collective capital goes straight back to all of us, back to the directors and into the hands of the people where it was supposed to be in the first place. The authority, Channel 5 News link advice. Channel 5 live worldwide, Hollywood and Vine. The Authority Channel 5 news channel 55. We don't with Custers and 5 is the best number.