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- [00:00]
Ari Chambers
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
Bob Pippman
Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I also led the team that created
- [00:09]
James Stout
MTV and my co founders and I
- [00:12]
Romeo Kokriatsky
are celebrating MTV's 45th anniversary this month
- [00:15]
James Stout
on my podcast, Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. You'll hear the untold origin story from
- [00:22]
Romeo Kokriatsky
the people who built MTV from the ground up.
- [00:24]
James Stout
I want my mtv.
- [00:26]
Ari Chambers
Those are powerful words.
- [00:28]
Garrison Davis
My something for me that felt like mine and want what a powerful word.
- [00:33]
James Stout
Listen to Math and magic stories from
- [00:35]
Romeo Kokriatsky
the frontiers of Marketing on the iHeartRadio
- [00:37]
Bob Pippman
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [00:41]
Garrison Davis
Hey, Portlandia fans, Kerry Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.
- [00:44]
Romeo Kokriatsky
The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form.
- [00:47]
Garrison Davis
We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling
- [00:58]
Dana Al Kurd
back the curtain on how it all got made.
- [00:59]
Garrison Davis
And we'll also be joined by the
- [01:01]
James Stout
people who helped bring it all to life.
- [01:02]
Bob Pippman
Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin,
- [01:08]
James Stout
legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.
- [01:11]
Garrison Davis
Kyle is going for it. Here you fully improvised, not just words, but a song.
- [01:17]
James Stout
Well, I thought you were all going
- [01:18]
Bob Pippman
to write a song.
- [01:18]
Garrison Davis
I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia AO rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:28]
Ari Chambers
What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers.
- [01:31]
James Stout
Hey, what's up, y'?
- [01:31]
Garrison Davis
All?
- [01:32]
Ari Chambers
It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I heart women's sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out shout outs to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Chrisean Rock's boxing journey.
- [01:46]
James Stout
She looks good.
- [01:47]
Ari Chambers
Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [01:59]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I'm Jake Stauch, co founder and CEO of Cervel. We built Cerval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding password resets, access to applications. My laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. It desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English. And it's built no drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Cerbal, it becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run it. We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four week pilot. Go to cerbal.com tickets that's S-E-R-V-A-L.com tickets.
- [03:02]
Bob Pippman
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I
- [03:04]
Robert Evans
wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you. But you can make your own decisions.
- [03:27]
Dana Al Kurd
Hello everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al Kurd and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I'm joined by Ilya Ayyub, who is a Palestinian Lebanese writer and researcher, as well as a podcaster with the podcast the Fire of these Times and from the Periphery Media Collective. And today he's speaking to us about the recent agreement between Lebanon and ISRA related to Israel's continued occupation of the southern part of Lebanon and continued bombardment. So he's going to talk to us about what the agreement says, why there are so many problems and concerns related to this agreement and how it fits into the broader regional war against Iran. Ilya, thank you so much for joining us.
- [04:09]
Ilya Ayyub
Hi, thank you for having me again.
- [04:11]
Dana Al Kurd
So today we are going to be discussing, as I mentioned in the intro, the agreement between Lebanon and Israel, the framework which has been quite controversial. So I wanted to just give you an opportunity to give a brief explainer. What is this agreement?
- [04:27]
Ilya Ayyub
So it's technically like a trilateral framework in the sense that it includes, well, legally anyway, the U.S. israel and Lebanon, ostensibly, like what it says it does, is that it proposes some kind of future in which Lebanon and Israel, which have been in a de facto state of war for basically forever, to no longer be in that de facto state of war. The problem, which probably won't surprise, like the audience of this podcast, the problem is sort of in the details, like, what is it that Lebanon has signed? If you look on the website itself, it's on the American government's website, there are 14 points it's roughly thousand, I don't know, 300 words or so. And already you see what's absent, which is the terms like withdrawal and of occupation, any of that. There's basically no stipulation whatsoever, however, that the Israelis have to leave Lebanon and you will have people who support this deal who said, well technically that's not true because it says here in number two, the government of Israel and government of Lebanon commit to a reciprocal sequence process with clear conditions whereby the laf, which is the Lebanese Armed Forces, will restore effective sovereign authority over all of Lebanese territory. And here is the grub I'm quoting. Pending the verified disarmament of non state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure, enabling the idf, the Israel Defense Forces to progressively redeploy out of Lebanese territory. What it essentially says, and the various points we don't have to go through, all of them essentially confirmed this time and time again, is that Israel will get to define, will get to decide when an area that Israel is occupying, as in the Lebanese territory that Israel is occupying, when that area is officially disarmed, when it is no longer a quote unquote security threat. The Lebanese state has no say in the matter. There's no independent like UN type mechanism that would determine that. It's just Israel that gets to define that. And what they've currently, they're currently doing, which is what the Lebanese government has agreed to, which is part of the controversy that we'll get into, is that they are creating these two so called pilot zones which are among the, in the territory that Israel is currently occupying in Lebanon in which they will allow the laf, the Japanese Armed Forces to progressively assert its. I'm putting this in quotation, you can't see it like assert its sovereign territorial control. But and here again is the kind of the devil in the detail, the Lebanese army cannot actually enforce anything that would still be the authority of the Israeli army, which again is the one that is currently illegally occupying southern Lebanon. So yeah, we can get into more of the details, but that's sort of in a nutshell why it's so bad. But I can get into more why it's bad as well.
- [07:12]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh yeah, we'd like to talk about all the bad. So before we get into like all the bad, where does Hezbollah play into any of this?
- [07:20]
Ilya Ayyub
Well, unsurprisingly, Hezbollah opposes this. In fact, I don't think a majority of the political parties currently in the Lebanese parliament support this, if I'm not mistaken. Which is one of the reasons why I don't think this particular agreement, which is the latest of so many agreements between the Americans, the Israelis and the Lebanese, at least at the official level, I don't see this lasting very long. Hezbollah has immediately said that this is a humiliation. It's surrender, it's defeat, which is not that unusual. That's sort of how they've been talking about these negotiations for since they started, really. And it declared them, declared this agreement null and void, which, you know, they cannot get more, more straightforward than that. Their main ally in parliament, that is the Amal movement, has also come out to oppose this, which is a big deal because that's the speaker of parliament. Lebanon is ruled by this kind of troika. So he's one out of three, which is a big problem for the other two. And yeah, I kind of genuinely don't see this lasting. But I'm also worried about what can come next.
- [08:21]
Dana Al Kurd
I mean, the fact that Israel is again, the unilateral judge, jury, executioner here obviously is a very big problem. But what other issues do you foresee with this agreement?
- [08:32]
Ilya Ayyub
I worry that the Lebanese government in at first having some, I think, understandable concerns over Iran's role in Lebanon. And we can get into that has sort of either, I don't know how you would describe it, maybe overcorrected and gone a bit too anti Iran, which in and of itself I wouldn't necessarily oppose. I'm not a fan of the Islamic Republic, to put it mildly, and I've always opposed Hezbollah for as long as I can remember. But the timing of doing what they've been doing, and I can get into it now, has been, I think, very, to put it charitably, very puzzling. But I think also, like, very, very short sighted and, and frankly reckless. And this is all while Israel is bombing Lebanon. I should say if this was in a context where there was no active war, I wouldn't have as big of an issue with it. But they've declared the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon to be Persona non gata. They've taken down photos of the Ayatollah by the road to the airport and replaced it with Lubnan Awalan, which is like Lebanon first. They've deported like members of the irgc, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and done a bunch of other even rhetorical things. The president would go on Twitter and say, Iran, get out and stuff like that. The president of Lebanon, which Again, I have 1001 issues with the Iranian rule in Lebanon and including my issues with Hezbollah. But there is only one country that is Currently actually occupying Lebanon militarily and actually bombing Lebanon militarily with its military, Amin. And that country is not Iran. So the priorities of the government in wanting to distance itself from Hezbollah's actions, which I should say have been controversial from the beginning because Hezbollah took a unilateral decision to enter the war against Israel, a decision that was not made with like the rest of Lebanon's approval. So it's been like controversial from the start. And that's what I meant by like the charitable interpretation is that the Lebanese government sort of overcorrected and instead by, by attempting supposedly to distance itself from Iran. What has actually done is made us even more dependent on the United States than we used to be before.
- [10:41]
Dana Al Kurd
Right. So that's where the things you're describing under normal circumstances would be like, yeah, like why is Iran so embedded in a lot of these different countries in the region? And why does it have such an interventionist role? But you're saying it's reckless in this context where the Lebanese government is basically making itself more at the mercy of actors like the United States and Israel by proxy.
- [11:04]
Ilya Ayyub
Yeah, as of now, like, and I really tried my best to look for some leverage that Lebanon might have, but as of now, I don't actually see any leverage that Lebanon has. It's basically, we hope for the best. Like, I wish I could, I could put it differently. But it essentially is under the hope that like, the Trump administration is tired of Netanyahu, that it might force the Israelis to, to either withdraw from Lebanon or to at the very least stop the bombing or whatnot, which I've seen no evidence of. And as of now, every time a so called ceasefire has been signed that even Hezbollah agreed to, the only thing that it's done is that Hezbollah would not respond to Israeli bombings. So the Israeli bombings have been a constant throughout this entire thing, ceasefire or no ceasefire. Since the agreement was signed, they've continued, they haven't stopped. As of time of recording, over 4,200 Lebanese have been killed since the beginning of this latest war. So not even since the beginning, since 2023, but since in 2026 alone, because Israel does not discriminate in how they bomb. So to give you the example of those two so called pilot zones, are they even inhabitable as of now? I don't know. Because of the 54 towns and villages, Lebanese towns and villages that the Israelis militarily Occupy, at least 46 of them that we know of are either partially or entirely demolished. So what are those security zones? What does that even mean, you know, but again, the entire problem now is that they get to decide all of that. And again, with all of my issues with Iran, the agreement that the Lebanese have signed with the Israelis, I think is objectively worse than the Memorandum of Understanding that the Iranians signed with the Americans. That actually also included Lebanon, because at least in that MOU and that moment of understanding, it included the sentence territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon, as well as a call for ceasefire, which was a nightmare for Netanyahu.
- [12:55]
Grace Mauser
Foreign.
- [13:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Let's talk about Iran more specifically for a moment. I mean, Lebanon has taken out. The ambassador, has made all of these kind of rhetorical shifts away from the Iranian regime, obviously a display for the US and for Israel. But Iran, how has it responded, how has the government responded? And how does this agreement relate to the MOU that Iran signed with the United States?
- [13:29]
Ilya Ayyub
So it's quite complicated because the MOU was signed just about a week or so before. So the deal between the Iranians and the Americans was signed roughly agreed upon. I don't know if they signed these things roughly a week before this one, the one between Israel and Lebanon via America, the tripartite one, as they call it. One interpretation that I've seen is that by going directly to Lebanon, America actually managed to bypass these. These kind of bullet points that, that Iran was putting forward. So, like, let's say Iran is saying, well, there should be a ceasefire in Lebanon and that there should be like, territorial integrity and sovereignty. In the meantime, the Lebanese state is saying to Iran, like, you do not negotiate on our behalf. So the Americans go to Lebanon directly or Lebanon goes to America and they supersede it. They supersede this and they do a negotiation, or they rather they get the Lebanese to sign this latest agreement directly, which of course does not include Iran anyway. So the main differences between the MOU between America and Iran and the agreement between, let's say Israel and Lebanon is that Israel had no part whatsoever in the MoU. And if it had come to pass, if the Iranians had basically gotten what they were asking for, the Americans would have been forced, at least legally, to pressure the Israelis to leave Lebanon altogether. No ifs and buts, no negotiated exit, whatever that means. No making up pilot zones, none of that stuff. It would just be, you've been doing this occupation illegally, you need to leave, as simple as that. That's been the Iranian position, which is not a position that most Lebanese would disagree with because it is just a fact.
- [15:08]
Grace Mauser
Right.
- [15:08]
Dana Al Kurd
And it's interesting. I mean, obviously we don't want to speculate, but it is interesting that Iran made the ceasefire in Lebanon so kind of central to a lot of their demands. Right.
- [15:19]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [15:20]
Ilya Ayyub
It's not that surprising to me, I think, because they, they see this as saving Hezbollah. So like, it's, it's like, it's almost like an easy thing to, to do. It doesn't cost them anything, in a sense. It would have, of course, put pressure on the Israelis, which they're happy to do since Israel and America started the war against Iran in the first place.
- [15:38]
Ari Chambers
Right.
- [15:38]
Ilya Ayyub
And it would, you know, give some kind of breathing space for their, their main ally in Lebanon, which.
- [15:46]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [15:46]
Ilya Ayyub
So in and of itself, I don't think it's surprising that they included it. Maybe they knew that Lebanon would reject it officially, given the position of the Lebanese government, you know, thus far. And I can't know for sure, but yeah, in and of itself, it doesn't surprise me that they went for this because one, one other thing I should say that they were proposing in that MOU is a so called deconfliction cell, the details of which are not entirely clear to me yet and at this point may never happen anyway. But the way it's been interpreted that I saw is that it would see its influence in Lebanon restored. So there's also like a self interest in all of that, but not in a militarily occupying way. So for me, it's not that the option has been either an amazing option or a bad option. It's more like either we get the Iran option, which is not ideal but still functional, or a catastrophic option, which is the one that we actually got with the Israelis.
- [16:39]
Dana Al Kurd
Right. And I mean, we've had some episodes about Iran. I've hosted a few people about Iran, and I think it bears repeating that their strategy, their ability to kind of withstand even this level of severe, you know, warfare in the latest escalation has depended on their allies in the region and kind of the diffusion of Iranian power to non state actors, essentially.
- [17:05]
Grace Mauser
Yeah.
- [17:06]
Dana Al Kurd
So what was the public reaction to the Lebanese government signing this agreement? The Lebanese public reaction, to be clear.
- [17:14]
Ilya Ayyub
Yeah, the most immediate reaction on the streets has been by, of course, by Hezbollah and its ally Amal, in which they, they, you know, they burn stuff down, they yell, they, they threw stuff at the cops and stuff like that. The Secretary General of Hezbollah, as I said, has declared a null and void and so on. As for the rest of the country, there hasn't been any kind of mobilization against it. But this shouldn't be interpreted as consent it's more, I think, in my view, that the Lebanese population as a whole has been exhausted by nearly three years of war now, and there is an appetite for kind of diplomacy. In fact, there's been a poll, a nationwide poll that was just released a few days ago that says that roughly 54% of the population support diplomacy versus 35% that support armed resistance. Now, the 54% that support diplomacy, which, you know, just over half, it's not because they believe this is the best option. It's more that they believe. I think this is my interpretation. It's more that I think most people genuinely believe that there are no other options. So it's more like, I think, a reflection of how desperate the situation is more than anything else. It should not be confused with any kind of like, warming up towards Israel. In that same poll, which again was nationwide, 87% of people in Lebanon identified Israel as their main enemy versus 51% that identify America and 38% that identified Iran. And this is across sects. So usually when you see the reporting, you could be led to believe that it's only Shias in Lebanon that oppose Israel, but actually it is really across sect that Israel is a deeply unpopular state in Lebanon, which is not surprising because it's been bombing Lebanon for on and off for decades now.
- [18:48]
Grace Mauser
Right.
- [18:49]
Dana Al Kurd
You've written about this for 972Mag. You have another article coming out, I'm sure, or it's already out, I'm not sure. But I will definitely link it in the show notes by the time this episode airs. Is there anything you feel like we missed and that listeners should know?
- [19:03]
Ilya Ayyub
It's very difficult to know where things are heading in terms of the security situation in Lebanon. I would argue that kind of the specter of a civil war, whatever that actually looks like, is never too far away and hasn't been too far away for a while now. I don't think it's likely in the traditional sense of multiple armed actors in the near future, largely because I think the population is really exhausted. But the Israeli war on Lebanon has created kind of this fault line that's very, very difficult, I think, to overcome now. And it's not, again, a fault line between pro Israel and anti Israel. Both sides of this fault line are technically anti Israel. It's more of like what the priorities should be for the Lebanese state. And it has created a sense for a lot of people who are from southern Lebanon that is currently, as we're speaking, still being bombed. It is giving the sense that the rest of the country is abandoning them. And this sort of grievances is quite literally what gave us Hezbollah in the first place.
- [20:02]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [20:02]
Ilya Ayyub
Hezbollah was created in the mid-80s. This was a couple of years, two, three years after the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon really started, which was not even the first one. It was the second one. It was just the biggest one. It would last for 18 years. And in those 18 years, this obscure group that did not really exist grew in popularity because they were the most effective one, thanks to the fact that Iran was backing them until they became the de facto kingmakers of Lebanese politics for a couple of decades after that. So the worry here is not even that I feel that, like, history would just repeat itself and whatnot. It's more that there doesn't seem to be any actual path forward that proposes any alternative to people from southern Lebanon, which is roughly a fifth of the country in terms of both sides, more or less. And population, more or less. Those people have nowhere else to go. They will go back to their homes when they can. They go back to their lands if their homes are destroyed, and they will try and rebuild as they have done already in the past, if not once, sometimes more than once. And if there isn't a solution for them that is just a fair solution that brings them justice, that stops the Israeli bombings and permanently forces the Israelis out of Lebanon, there's going to be some force somewhere that's going to find a way to appeal to that population. And if they're not offered an alternative, they will seek that alternative, which, again, is the history of Hezbollah in the first place. So as much as I oppose Hezbollah for very Lebanese reasons, like, and as a Lebanese myself, because of the sectarianism and authoritarianism and so on, that's a completely separate question for me than the right of people who are under military occupation to resist that military occupation, because that is actually a right that's guaranteed under international law. And I'm really worried as now, and I'm not just speaking for myself here, that's virtually everyone I know, that the situation is getting to the point where essentially the Lebanese state is hoping that the Americans would just pressure the Israelis. And the way it's been happening as of now is that they would pressure them here and there a bit, but not much. And then the rest of the time, they just let them do whatever they want with American tax money. Of course, if they don't actually force the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon, it can create like a, you know, a whole different political beast. In a sense, that would be even more violent.
- [22:25]
Dana Al Kurd
I think we're specifically talking about Lebanon, but this is the case in so many contexts in the region is that when the conflicts are unresolved, when the violence is unresolved, then it'll only perpetuate more violence. Everyone I know has been warning about that in every context in Palestine, in Lebanon. So it's extremely depressing. But thank you so much for sharing your insights with us, and I will link Avia's work in the show notes. And yeah, hope you all stay safe.
- [22:59]
Ilya Ayyub
Thanks, Dana.
- [23:08]
Bob Pippman
Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I also led the team that created
- [23:12]
James Stout
MTV, and my co founders and I
- [23:15]
Romeo Kokriatsky
are celebrating MTV's 45th anniversary this month
- [23:19]
James Stout
on my podcast, Math and Magic Stories
- [23:21]
Romeo Kokriatsky
from the Frontiers of Marketing, you'll hear
- [23:23]
James Stout
the untold origin story from the people
- [23:25]
Romeo Kokriatsky
who built MTV from the ground up.
- [23:28]
James Stout
I want my mtv.
- [23:30]
Ari Chambers
Those are powerful words.
- [23:31]
Garrison Davis
My something for me that felt like mine and want.
- [23:35]
Ari Chambers
What a powerful word.
- [23:37]
James Stout
Listen to math and Magic Stories from
- [23:38]
Romeo Kokriatsky
the frontiers of Marketing on the iHeartRadio
- [23:41]
Bob Pippman
app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [23:44]
James Stout
I'm Nick Turturro.
- [23:46]
Bob Pippman
You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's blackkklansman,
- [23:51]
Garrison Davis
but I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest.
- [24:00]
Ilya Ayyub
Are you delivering pizza now?
- [24:01]
Garrison Davis
Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins.
- [24:06]
Bob Pippman
What are you doing?
- [24:07]
Ari Chambers
My belt.
- [24:07]
Bob Pippman
To Alex Rodriguez.
- [24:09]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Just to let you people know we're
- [24:10]
Garrison Davis
talking to one of the goats.
- [24:11]
Bob Pippman
Here to Bill Burr.
- [24:13]
James Stout
I don't think I've ever met somebody
- [24:15]
Bob Pippman
so exactly out of their mind as I am.
- [24:18]
Garrison Davis
And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.
- [24:23]
Bob Pippman
It's called Happiness.
- [24:24]
James Stout
Delivering Happiness, Mariano Rivera, and many, many more.
- [24:29]
Garrison Davis
Open your free iHeartradio app search delivering
- [24:32]
Bob Pippman
Happiness with Nick Turturro.
- [24:33]
James Stout
And listen now.
- [24:34]
Ari Chambers
This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'mma check you.
- [24:48]
Grace Mauser
Okay?
- [24:49]
Ari Chambers
If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I' ma play you. Join Yamaneika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the problem with Yamaneika.
- [25:01]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Do you know, I just found out
- [25:02]
Garrison Davis
who Sydney Sweeney was.
- [25:04]
Ari Chambers
New episodes weekly, every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women,
- [25:11]
Romeo Kokriatsky
then I should have a bunch of
- [25:12]
Garrison Davis
men do better or do less so I don't have to do so much.
- [25:17]
Ari Chambers
So join Yamini each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika and I'm out. Listen to youo're the Problem with yamaneika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:34]
Garrison Davis
Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan, $15 a month even unlimited.
- [25:51]
Robert Evans
That's it.
- [25:52]
Garrison Davis
Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [25:57]
Ari Chambers
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan. Required $15 per month. Equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy.
- [26:04]
Grace Mauser
See terms.
- [26:08]
Robert Evans
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart and that that's happening in a lot of places right now. But not every place also has things regularly, unfortunately falling from the sky. But that's life in Ukraine for a lot of people, including our guests today, every single day because they are still under invasion from the Russian Federation, which I guess we're still calling it the Federation. Romeo Kokriatsky, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? I mean, I know it's not great, so I don't know why I'm asking.
- [26:43]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, thanks for having me back on. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah, like you mentioned, it's. It's not great, especially for me personally. My neighborhood's been targeted by ballistics twice in the past two weeks, one of which hit a improperly stored munitions dump and blew up half the neighborhood. So that's been, that's been fun to deal with.
- [27:05]
Robert Evans
I mean, we have other stuff to talk about, but I, I do want to just kind of talk about what life has been like, like in terms of, with that. I mean, thank God you have not been hit, neither has your home. But like on a day to day basis, how are y' all enduring? You know, so many years passed when this escalated Most recently.
- [27:25]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Honestly, I had thought prior to half my neighborhood being blown up that I'd basically gotten numb to the bombing.
- [27:32]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [27:33]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Turns out that's not true.
- [27:34]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [27:35]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Turns out I was just completely lying to myself.
- [27:38]
Bob Pippman
Yeah.
- [27:38]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I have mortal dread pretty much all the time. Every night, I am desperately checking every single monitoring channel I have access to and praying that the Russians aren't going to shoot us. And if they do shoot us, I then have to think, hey, should I wake my wife and son up? Should we go down to the shelter? Is there any point? We live in the 15th floor, so we'd have to walk. What if a missile hits while we're in the stairwell?
- [28:04]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [28:05]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And it's a little tiring. It's a little tiring.
- [28:09]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [28:09]
Romeo Kokriatsky
To constantly live your life with the feeling that you may die at any goddamn moment. I'm not even in the military.
- [28:18]
Bob Pippman
Yeah.
- [28:18]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I am pretty much constantly afraid for my life and, of course, the life of my family and friends. Every morning after a mass attack, I have to call or text every single journalist who works for me, make sure that they're still alive.
- [28:32]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [28:33]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And so far, everything's been clear. Everything's been clear for five years. But you really have to wonder, how long can one's luck last?
- [28:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah. It's like you were talking about the moment you start to feel like maybe I've hardened or maybe I've gotten past the point that this can affect me is the moment where something happens. I feel so awful. The constant state of panic, fear, arousal that everyone has to be in over there because they're just shooting missiles and tears home every day is just. It's hideous.
- [29:07]
Ilya Ayyub
Yeah.
- [29:07]
Romeo Kokriatsky
It's not great. I haven't left the country since the start of the full scale.
- [29:11]
Bob Pippman
Yeah.
- [29:11]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And to be quite honest, I'm not sure how I would do once this threat is no longer above my head. It's hard to imagine going to sleep and not wondering whether I'm going to wake up in the next. Like, the next morning. It sounds a little absurd, but then I think someone about 300km away has made a decision to lob multi hundred kilogram warheads at the general area of where I live within 2-3 km. That is not a large radius.
- [29:46]
Robert Evans
No, no, it really isn't. No. I mean, ballistic missiles, you know, often can go thousands. Like that's so easy to build something that you could just fire blindly into a city at this point.
- [29:56]
Romeo Kokriatsky
That's.
- [29:56]
Robert Evans
That's why war looks like this. For most of the people involved in it. Right. Like, for. All the movies are about the guys, like, kicking in doors and shit on the front lines. The vast majority of everyone's experience of war is shit falling on you from the fucking sky or exploding in traffic or something like that.
- [30:12]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Right.
- [30:12]
Robert Evans
Like, that's the reality. I'm fudgeing. Sorry, man.
- [30:16]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah. And in Kiev, honestly, we don't even have as bad.
- [30:20]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [30:20]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Here. So they're just doing a human safari. They've been doing that.
- [30:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [30:25]
Romeo Kokriatsky
For, I don't know, like, six months now. The front line is right over basically the river and they. The Russians just send drones to hunt people in the streets just for fun, you know? Funsies for the lulz. So as bad as I have it here, sometimes I read the stories I'm publishing and I'm like, man, thank God I don't live in that place. Thank God I don't know anyone from that city.
- [30:49]
Robert Evans
Everything becomes so relative after a while. I mean, it's the only way to stay sane. Even though your situation is objectively unreasonable, impossible, you kind of naturally just look over to whoever's got it worse, I mean. Which says something beautiful, I guess, if you'll let it.
- [31:03]
Bob Pippman
But, you know, I guess that's one
- [31:06]
Romeo Kokriatsky
way of looking at it.
- [31:07]
Robert Evans
Fuck, man. I'm sorry. I don't know. I brought you on here today to talk about some of the political changes that have been pretty massive that have just hit the Ukrainian government as the result of the sacking of Mykhailo Fedorov. But that also feels like we should talk about that some. I just. I don't know, talking to you reminds me of how much I even let myself over here focus on war in terms of stuff like that. Right. These, like, moves by governments and moves by forces, which by default means excising the majority of what's happening from your mind. Because in some. I mean, sometimes it's just too big to think about otherwise. Right. But, like, it's.
- [31:47]
Romeo Kokriatsky
No, that's exactly right.
- [31:49]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [31:49]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Whenever there's any sort of domestic political intrigue, I am just overjoyed. I'm ecstatic.
- [31:54]
James Stout
That's why something I. I know a
- [31:58]
Romeo Kokriatsky
lot of people wanted to be war correspondents and, like, be there in the trenches. And I have a lot of friends. My buddy Dylan Burns, I saw a clip of him just getting shelled last week somewhere, I think comes Upper Easha front. Yeah, that. That wasn't what I wanted to do. I became a journalist because I love politics. The envy, the pettiness, the egos, all the little, like, garbage bullshit that Makes up the. The experience of human politics. That's what calls to me in my dark, little shriveled heart. So whenever I have the chance to engage in just domestic political bullshit, I feel overjoyed. That is fantastic.
- [32:38]
James Stout
Well, good.
- [32:38]
Robert Evans
Okay, well, let's. Let's talk about some domestic political bullshit because there's been a wild train of it in the last couple of days. I'm just to let you go after starting this off, but like, kind of what, what prompted this is on July 15th of this year, Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, fired or dismissed Mikhailo Fedorov, who was the Minister of Defense of Ukraine. And Fedorov, he'd been the President's social media marketer initially. Right. Like back during he was when he was campaigning, way before his involvement in the military, if I'm remembering correctly.
- [33:10]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, he was a. Not just social media, he was the young, like, IT guy. He was the IT guy. Did all the IT infrastruct from SMM from social media to the actual physical infrastructure itself. That was all Fedorov. He was like the IT dude for the Zelenskyy administration.
- [33:29]
Robert Evans
Yeah. And he's only had the position for about six months. He was appointed in January, but it's been an incredibly popular. Six months. Right. He is widely popular in Ukraine. There were large protests following his dismissal and he got a lot of credit for his use of drone warfare and particularly some of the promises he was making and some people would say some of the promises that he fulfilled about drone warfare. Right. And one of the issues that he had is he kind of clashed, as I understand it, with an older General Syrsky who was much more of a conventional weapons guy. And I think like the big fight that Bertilis came over, like a fight over munitions.
- [34:07]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [34:08]
Robert Evans
Fedorov was canceling an order of artillery shells or something like that. And it kind of embodied the greater conflict between them, it seems like.
- [34:15]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, that's basically right. Fedorov prior to taking the ministry defense position, like I said, he was the IT guy and he had the Minister of Digital Transformation. Because we have a whole ministry set up to digitize our government. We've got the DIA app and a couple of good results from it. So he had a relatively high level popularity compared to the typical Ukrainian official coming into the MOD position. And he became popular, or I guess his popularity grew, not so much because he was doing drones. Like the transformation to drones occurred pretty much from the start of the full scale, right?
- [34:54]
James Stout
Yes.
- [34:54]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Every single unit has been ordering and begging and getting drones however, they can, since literally the full scale started. However, what Fedorov promised to do and what he did, which is what won him a lot of accolades with the common soldier, is he said, we would actually get you drones. Instead of you having to go through 15 layers of bureaucracy and procurement to maybe sign up for a list where you might get delivered something in four months somewhere, we'll set up a simple direct system where you can request the equipment you want and you'll get it. Well, it's not quite as simple. He developed some gamification crap which you can get into later. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not a fan.
- [35:37]
Robert Evans
It is really interesting. But, yeah, yeah, he's tried some really fascinating.
- [35:41]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, he's, he's. He's tried a lot of things and it has worked. Yeah, people have started getting drones. Like, I know guys in the front who had complained previously that they were unable to get equipment even though they're posted, they're deployed, they have a mission, and command's just like, oh, we don't know where your drone is. That started to be resolved. However, in order to do this, you need money, right? To buy drones, you need money, right? So the Ministry of Defense controls the actual monetary flows. They have to actually sign off on whatever the request from the General Staff or the military is to, to purchase this or that equipment system.
- [36:18]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [36:19]
Romeo Kokriatsky
The way it typically works because the Ministry of Defense is a civilian institution and the military is obviously a military institution. Typically speaking in wartime, civilians are intended to defer to military expertise. Right. So if the army goes, we need, I don't know, a hundred thousand, 155 millimeter shells. The Ministry of Defense is not really supposed to say, you know what? No, we think you need this. Instead. This is the, the kind of the. The crux of the conflict here is that Fedorov seeing these requests from Syrsky, like you said, he's a very conventional guy, a very conventional Soviet general. He grew up in Moscow, went to the Moscow Red Army Academy. To be quite honest, he's pretty much a Soviet general through and through.
- [37:09]
Robert Evans
My understanding is he has a reputation for accepting pretty gnarly casualties.
- [37:15]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah.
- [37:15]
Robert Evans
Fair or unfair, he's gotten that reputation. I'm not like an expert on his record.
- [37:19]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, absolutely, yes, he has that reputation. And like you, I'm not a military guy.
- [37:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [37:25]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I'm not an army expert. I've never studied strategy or tactics, aside from meme posting. So I, I have no idea how you know. True or not true. It is obviously you can look at the loss records of the units that Sursky said to personally favor and you can see that they are higher. But are they hired because they are simply being used more often like it's a war, there are going to be casualties. There is simply no way to remove that fact. Or are they higher because his commanders are incompetent in throwing away human meat? You know, you've got people that'll say one way, you've got people that say the other way. But regardless, Syrsky would continue to request these kind of conventional munitions. And according to Syrsky's version at least, Fedorov would just completely ignore this and buy whatever he wanted. The ministry by typically, this was drones. There was a funny meme I saw of Syrsky complaining to Fedorov with a text reading, the buzzing of your stupid drones are hurting the infantry to advance. To give you a sense of how Ukrainians viewed this.
- [38:28]
Robert Evans
Oh man, that's beautiful.
- [38:31]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I really love that meme.
- [38:32]
Bob Pippman
Really, that's beautiful.
- [38:35]
Robert Evans
That's going in a history book.
- [38:50]
Romeo Kokriatsky
From the Federoff side. What they say, way the, the conflict is, which knowing how Ukraine works, I tend to believe them.
- [38:57]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [38:58]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Is that in federal attempts to move these cash flows from buying conventional munitions to buying drones, he started stepping on a lot of toes in the general staff.
- [39:11]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [39:12]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Because this is Ukraine, because this is defense procurement. If you want to buy something from a domestic supplier, the chances are that supplier is owned somehow via shell company, connected to some general or some highly placed military officials. That's just the nature of the game, obviously. Let's say if the general staff requests, I don't know, a hundred thousand shells and they source, you know, half of it from a Ukrainian firm, there's a good chance that there's a lot of generals that are going to be building themselves in Uvilla after this. If, however, you don't put that order in and instead buy, you know, drones from the 500 or a thousand different garage manufacturers, which is how the drone industry works here, that money is not going into people's pockets and those people get upset. Those people start complaining that you are not a team player, that they can't work with you, that you don't listen to them, they stop taking your calls, etc. Which is exactly what we saw in the conflict between Fedorov and Syrsky on the reporting of it. So that's, that's basically the gist of it is Fedorov tried to use his own judgment and stepped on people's toes, redirected money. And Syrsky and the general staff were not fans. I doubt Syrsky cared really all that much. However, he needs to keep everyone happy and the officer class is very heavily involved in this. Ukrainian military salaries, even officer salaries, are not great.
- [40:40]
Robert Evans
No. And there's a lot of corruption in procurement and a lot of allegations of corruption in procurement, which is not something any military doesn't have, to be honest. But yeah, that makes sense.
- [40:52]
Romeo Kokriatsky
So finally gets to the point where Syrsky went to Zelensky and said, look, you have to get rid of this guy. I can't work with him. Then Fedorov separately went to Zelensky and said, look, you have to get rid of this guy. I can't work with him. And then Zelensky goes to a private meeting with his party in parliament and says, hey. Well, they both said they can't work with each other and I kind of need them to work with each other, so I should fire them both. But I can't fire Cerski yet, so instead I'll fire Fedorov. And that's what kicked off this whole shebang.
- [41:25]
Robert Evans
How much do you buy? Because the Times had a piece recently that was kind of, I mean, quoting some insiders alleging that this was partly to do with Zelensky being jealous of are of popularity. And I've heard, I've heard rumors of that before. That has not seemed to be like the most, I don't know, believable answer. So I was kind of surprised to see the Times give so much credence to it. But I mean, do you feel like that's credible? Is that something you hear a lot or is that. Where is that coming from?
- [41:51]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I guess, I mean, I have considered this a lot because it has been something saved before.
- [41:56]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [41:56]
Romeo Kokriatsky
When Valerius Illusioni was made to step down as top general in, he was replaced by Syrsky. A lot of the kind of speculation why this move was made was because Illusion was very quickly becoming the most popular political figure, public figure in Ukraine. And then we saw Budanov, Kirill Budanov, the, the head of military intelligence who is now Zelensky's chief of staff. When his star was rising and Zelensky had to fire your mock. He took the. The country's top spy basically and put him as chief of staff. Now you don't hear about Budanov at all except for some unflattering rumors on anonymous telegram channels. So there is kind of a pattern you can see, with Zelensky seemingly defusing popular people around him. So they are no longer in a position where they can be so popular. And, and in Solutiony's case, he recently announced that whenever we do have presidential elections, he does plan to stand in them. Right. So he has in fact directly declared he will be politically opposing Zelensky whenever we get back to normal politics. So how do I say this? I am a cynical bastard.
- [43:17]
James Stout
Right.
- [43:17]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I will believe the worst about anyone, especially a ego driven TV star slash politician. It is not difficult for me in my citizens.
- [43:26]
Robert Evans
Oh God, yeah.
- [43:27]
Romeo Kokriatsky
To look at a man and say, huh, you know what? He probably doesn't like being outshone on the stage.
- [43:32]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [43:33]
Romeo Kokriatsky
At the same time, I like to hope that Zelensky has the understanding that we're fighting a full scale war and that his ego is unnecessary and detrimental to the war effort. But, but the, the truth of the matter is. I, I have no idea. It certainly can be construed that way. Let's say that I don't think construing events that way is unfair to Zelenskyy. I think that's a, it's a reasonable interpretation.
- [44:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [44:00]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Based on the actions that he's taken and based on, you know, the rumors and so on that come out of the office of the President.
- [44:07]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I mean that, that makes sense what you're saying. I don't have trouble believing that. Now one of the things I have noticed as I've kind of read into Fedorov and I'm wondering, and this is we're kind of are veering into some, some military theory here. But it is something that concerns me when I kind of look at some of the alle about what he believes. And I'm not sure if this is entirely fair to him, but it seems like his critics within the Ukrainian military seem to believe that he basically is a believer that drones and robotics can handle a huge amount of the fighting load.
- [44:37]
James Stout
Right.
- [44:37]
Robert Evans
And that this is like a major solution to the manpower crisis. To the extent that is sometimes accused of believing that they can handle much more of the load than is really realistic. In a way that sometimes sounds similar to me to what some people said about like Air Force generals and kind of the Post World War II period, where there's this big understanding that all we need is air power. That seems to be like the allegations against Fedorov. He's saying all we need is drone power and robotics and we can kind of use that to fill in every gap. And there's a very reasonable critique that that's not sufficient. Now I don't know if that's fully fair to Fedorov, but it seems to be like that's how he's being characterized, certainly by his opponents.
- [45:15]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Having listened to him speak, I'll say that the characterization is a little bit off. Like he might honestly believe that drones and robotics have to completely replace human warfare. But it's not like he. He lives in a fantasy world where he understands that that's a possibility that we can implement right now.
- [45:30]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [45:30]
Romeo Kokriatsky
It's more that he faces the banal mathematical fact that we cannot match Russia. We.
- [45:38]
Robert Evans
We. Right.
- [45:38]
Romeo Kokriatsky
We are a much smaller country. It is mathematically impossible.
- [45:42]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [45:43]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Add into that the general unpopularity of mobilization, the. The whole busification stuff, the fact that no one trusts our aging Soviet officer class to value their life or contribution if they are drafted or join the military.
- [45:59]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [45:59]
Romeo Kokriatsky
All of that together leads Fedorov to the I think pretty obvious conclusion that the only possible thing we can do to even start to match Russia in manpower is heavily embrace robotics. Now, I do want to say a couple of things. Fedorov is a libertarian in the American sense.
- [46:17]
James Stout
Right.
- [46:18]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And he's very young. He's 35. He's. He's literally my age.
- [46:21]
Robert Evans
Jesus.
- [46:22]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And this was back, I think 2017 or 18, he ran as part of. We had a tiny libertarian movement called the 510 party, which. Their idea was a flat 5% VAT tax. Flat 10%, something else. I mean, it's stupid libertarian shit. I didn't ever pay much attention to it because I always ask them how old their girlfriend is and if they need to use the car seat is by paying you libertarians there.
- [46:48]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [46:49]
Romeo Kokriatsky
And again, he is so he may very well believe that this is the case that humans need to be taking out of. Or what's the military euphemism. Humans have to be taken out of the kill chain.
- [47:01]
Robert Evans
Right, Right. Removed from the kill chain. Yeah. I love the term kill chain.
- [47:05]
Romeo Kokriatsky
He may very well believe that he is good personal friends with Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir. That's very true. Obviously the Omni Surveillance Corp were headed by the devil himself, Peter Thiel. So there's a lot of red flags.
- [47:21]
Robert Evans
One of the first statements he made after getting sacked was that he's been already gotten a bunch of offers from different Silicon Valley companies. Someone close to him said that. Not that he hasn't taken.
- [47:30]
Romeo Kokriatsky
No, no, he said that during the briefing I was listening and he was him. Alex Karp has already called me and offered me a job.
- [47:36]
Robert Evans
Oh, he said Alex Karp. Okay, great, great. I'm Just remembering from a news article I read now that said I wanted to be fair to him because one thing he also gets a lot of credit for is over the last six months, which he was not in his position for long, but it's been a reasonably good six months compared to some of the previous couple of years. Right. The front has stabilized in a lot of areas and there's been an incredibly successful campaign to damage Russia's oil refining capacity. That's taken out about a quarter of it. Right. And those are seen part of why he's so popular. I would imagine there's a debate as to how much credit does he deserve for both of those things. Both of those things have happened. Right. Over the last six months.
- [48:15]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, exactly. And the, the hope was that if he was allowed to complete his reform, so his, the next big thing that he had planned to focus on was ground robotics, ground drones. The, the hope was that if he had actually been able to implement plans, we would see the same kind of sea change away from human soldiery, human infantry, into robotic soldiers. Just as we saw drones replace the sniper team, the artillery team, the mortar team. You know, so many of these kind of fundamental roles that we thought a modern military, modern minds, armed military needs. Turns out you could replace all of them with drones. We don't know if that's going to be true for ground drones, but that was going to be his, his next project and it definitely helped bolster his standing. Let's say when he goes, well, first off, I'm getting you the drones. And second off, we don't need to throw away Ukrainian lives on worthless, need assaults to win back half a kilometer of territory. We can use easily replaceable robotics instead.
- [49:22]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's a very hard thing to argue with. I mean, especially given how it's functioned. You know, it is worth kind of noting that he was brought in as well to solve the manpower crisis and that that certainly has not been solved. Although, you know, he was in there for six months, but like there, that still continues to be a significant issue, even with the advent of a lot more robotic fighters, which is, you know, proven successful in certain areas of the front, certainly, but it continues to be a pretty contentious and mobile front in some areas as well.
- [50:06]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, exactly. And the fact is we still have, I don't know, maybe let's say another 2, 10, 15 years to reach the Terminator feature where you just, you don't need human infantry. It is a liability if you have flesh and blood guys on the battlefield. We're not quite there yet you still do need flesh and blood meat sack humans to, to do things. So mobilization is obviously a thing, but I gotta say, every single minister of defense we've had since the start of the full scale has had the brief of reforming mobilization. So he is hardly the first guy to fail it.
- [50:43]
James Stout
Right?
- [50:44]
Romeo Kokriatsky
The general staff was given the brief of reforming mobilization. Zelensky himself said that the office of the President has the brief of reforming mobilization. Fedorov, during his kind of exit press conference that he gave after being fired, he said this, a very interesting thing. He said that in order to do mobilization forum in Ukraine, we need a new social contract. The fundamental social contract between Ukrainians and the state is seen by the, the average Ukrainian to be broken because of the continuous and constant corruption scandals, because of the seeming, you know, Soviet indifference and callousness towards human life. All of these factors make the Ukrainian populace not especially want to die for the state. It's not that we don't want to die for Ukraine, but no one wants to die for the Ukrainian state. And this is the fundamental issue. And until that is addressed, there is, there is no solution for mobilization except for greater repression.
- [51:50]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [51:51]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Like round people up even more, use greater force. That's the only thing you can possibly do. There is no soft handle to fix that. It's not even really a question of money. Because if you think that once you're drafted they're going to throw you in the back of a van driving to the middle force, stick you there for two weeks, not teach you anything, yell and beat you, then drive you to the zero line and leave you there. That's what the average Ukrainian men man thinks is going to happen to them if they're drafted. And the fact is we have lots of stories exactly like that. So it's not exactly an unfounded fear. And until that's addressed, until the Ukrainian state can, you know, possibly tell the Ukrainian people, look, we care about your lives. We are doing this because we are doing this to survive. Not because some general wants an extra badge or an extra villa or something. And at that point mobilization, reform can start. But, but without that change, you're not going to see anything. No, no amount of bureaucratic wrangling or raising salaries is going to result in, in any kind of mobilization bump.
- [52:56]
Robert Evans
Well, man, is there anything else you wanted to get to today? I think that was a really good point to make.
- [53:03]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I'll say this, that the, we did see that the protests did pay off. So, so I think that's the one aspect of this we haven't talked about.
- [53:11]
Robert Evans
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a very good point.
- [53:13]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Why he is actually doing this or why he, he is actually taking steps to remove Sirsky is because of the protests.
- [53:22]
Robert Evans
So we didn't even get to that so much because that just happened hours before we recorded this. But he has announced that Syrsky is now being removed.
- [53:29]
James Stout
Right?
- [53:29]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes, yes, Just happened. Sorry.
- [53:32]
Romeo Kokriatsky
It was always going to the case once Syrsky's name was out in public.
- [53:35]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [53:35]
Romeo Kokriatsky
The country's top general cannot be this controversial. He cannot be the guy everyone is talking about derogatorily. In a nation at war, you just, you need to have the trust of both the people and the troops. And Syrsky, once this scandal had reached the level, it was clear that he no longer had the juice to continue. But again, the reason Zelensky made these changes is because of the protests. So we learned about Fedorov's dismissal like late at night, I want to say, in the 15th. And then that evening a couple of, I think it was one ex volunteer, one ex soldier posted that we, everyone should gather out on Twitter, I think. And then that, that gained steam. That was the start of the kind of five day process. I don't know if they're going to continue today now that Sir Ski's been replaced, but they've been happening every single day this week. And again people came out first to kind of keep, to protest Federal's removal, to say, hey, keep federal. Then it became clear that Federal himself had refused to continue to work with his Lansky team. He, he pretty much told Zelensky that I, I don't want any job. I wanted to the job that I had, but since you made that no longer possible, I don't want to work for you. Once that dynamic became clear, the protest shifted more towards trying to get Syrsky fired or to, to get him to resign than to get Fedorov back in office, which is unlikely to happen. But the protests have been first off, they, they occurred not just in Kyiv, but pretty much in every major city, even the frontline cities, even in Zaporizhzhia, in Kharkiv. One of my journalists was in Harkiv and did a report from their protest. And these are people who are getting air bombed during the day and they're gathering in the center of the city and protesting. The scale of it, the speed of it and the, the general societal agreement is really what, what gave these protests their steam. The same with the pro Naboo process that we Saw a couple of years back or last year, the same kind of dynamic, same kind of protesting class, let's say it's younger people, you know, from 18 to like 30, typically more liberal, more progressive. However, we come out and protest, not for. I mean, sometimes we do come out for gay rights, but currently it's. It's more to correct our government's personnel choices than anything else.
- [55:57]
Robert Evans
Right, Yeah. I mean, I guess it is positive that it matters still, you know, which is certainly in some ways a legacy still lingering of the maid on Right. Is that the government's not going to ignore that.
- [56:11]
James Stout
Yeah, Yeah.
- [56:12]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I wouldn't just say it's positive. To be quite honest. I cannot think of a single other democratic country on the planet that is as responsive to the undifferentiated random cries of the masses than Ukraine.
- [56:25]
James Stout
There's this huge negative to that. Yeah, sorry.
- [56:28]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I mean, I say it like this, and it might sound like I'm saying this derogatorily, but I'm not.
- [56:33]
Robert Evans
No.
- [56:33]
Romeo Kokriatsky
I think quite frankly, pretty much all liberal democratic nations in the 21st century have almost completely abandoned the democratic part.
- [56:42]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [56:43]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Either people vote for local parties that simply don't matter and all the decisions are made in boardrooms that they have less than zero impact in. They go out and protest and nothing happens except. Except some kids get beaten up by cops and then nothing fundamentally changes.
- [56:57]
Robert Evans
That.
- [56:57]
Romeo Kokriatsky
That is not true. In Ukraine, we have seen multiple times where protesters go out with a concrete call and the government heeds that call. It doesn't simply ignore us, it doesn't just beat us up. It's fundamentally democratic in a way that I have not seen any other country in the world replicate so far.
- [57:15]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that is very much worth continuing to note and acknowledge. Although, as you said, a mixed bag, because the voice of the people is not always correct about aspects of strategy and governance, as a lot of places have learned.
- [57:29]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah, exactly.
- [57:31]
Robert Evans
All right, man.
- [57:32]
Bob Pippman
Well, do you want to plug anything
- [57:33]
Robert Evans
before you come out here? Tell people where they can find you?
- [57:36]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yes. I am the managing editor of the New Voice of Ukraine, which is Ukraine's best and premier English language daily news site. You can read us at English NV ua. Really easy to remember. That's English NV ua. And listen to Ukraine Without Hype, which is a podcast from myself and my colleague Anthony Bartoway. And you can find us wherever podcasts are listened to. Just search Ukraine Without Hype.
- [58:04]
Robert Evans
Awesome. Well, thank you all for listening. Thank you, Romeo for showing up again. And we'll be back tomorrow with something Else.
- [58:17]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Foreign.
- [58:25]
James Stout
And welcome to the show. My name is James. We're starting again because I forgot to press the record button. And I am very lucky to be joined by Wendy Fry. And we're going to talk about a piece that Wendy did for Calmatters about the feds DHS buying detention centers in California. Hi, Wendy. Welcome to the show.
- [58:44]
Ari Chambers
Hi, James. Thanks for having me.
- [58:45]
James Stout
Yeah. Okay, so let's begin, I suppose, by summarizing this article. We'll link to it. Right. And I think everyone should read it. It's a really good piece of reporting. But can you explain what is happening here with these two detention centers?
- [58:58]
Ari Chambers
Sure, yeah. Thank you so much. So last week, CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in the. In the country, in the nation, publicly traded company, announced that they had sold two of their properties to the Department of Homeland Security for a billion and a half dollars. And those two facilities are two of the largest immigration detention facilities in California. Otay Mesa Detention center in San Diego county that has a capacity of just a little under 2,000 beds. And then the other one is the newly opened California City facility up in Kern county, and that one's just a little bit bigger with a capacity of 2,500 beds. And we learned the details about the sale through this filing with the Security Exchange Commission. Like I said, because it's a publicly traded company, they have to make some of the information about this deal public. And we learned that the Federal government paid 739 million, I think, for Otay Mesa. And then the other one was, I think about 730 million for California City. And we've done some additional reporting, too, since that article came out. We just last Friday were talking with the San Diego county appraiser, the assessor's office, and Kern county found out that the last appraised value on these properties was about a quarter of what the federal government paid for them. So the last appraised value, I think about 160 million for Otay Mesa, I don't have the exact number, but around that. So they paid maybe four times. And of course, appraised value, we have to take it sort of with a grain of salt because it's not the market value. But it would be very hard to figure out what the market value is on a property like this because there just aren't very many of them. Both places are these huge, sprawling federal prisons, prisons that don't get sold very often. So it's hard to figure out what the market value is. But those were the last appraised value.
- [60:45]
James Stout
Yeah, sure. Not much of a market for giant prisons, I suppose. So, like, best guess.
- [60:50]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, not much to compare it to as far as the sale.
- [60:53]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [60:53]
Ari Chambers
Like, and on the federal government side, on Corsovic side, they said that this whole thing went through a very rigorous process of governmental review and that everything is above board there.
- [61:03]
James Stout
Yeah. So, yeah, of course they'll say that. Yeah. These facilities, like, they spend a lot of money on them.
- [61:09]
Bob Pippman
Right.
- [61:09]
James Stout
And they have a lot of money. Right now, they're sitting on a giant pile of money. Actually, before we talk about what they spent on them, people will remember when President Biden came into power, him saying he was going to end private prisons.
- [61:20]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [61:21]
James Stout
So we should just I guess, begin by explaining how that didn't include immigration detention and how these places have, like, as you say, they haven't just continued, but in the last two years, I guess, they're trying to expand immigration detention capacity.
- [61:35]
Garrison Davis
Right, right.
- [61:36]
Ari Chambers
Yes. So in California, particularly California, state officials have tried to ban private prison companies from, from operating within the state of California. And the Ninth Circuit didn't, didn't uphold that. Like, the California passed a law, Governor Newsom signed it, it went, ended up in court. Geo Group and corecific, the two largest private prison companies, were fighting against this. And they, they, they won. The Ninth Circuit upheld that. California can't ban these facilities from operating, but they have pushed back a lot. And California lawmakers are trying to write a series and pass a series of laws that would require, you know, more of the tax revenue from these companies to be, you know, absorbed by the state and disincentivize, basically financially disincentivize these private prison companies from operating. And that is one of the reasons why dhs, in a statement that they put out, Jason Sweeney with ice, told me, you know, it's financially infeasible. It's become too burdensome from their point of view for the private prison companies to operate in California because of all the oversight and because of all the pushback that California officials have tried to do and have done as much as they can, basically.
- [62:49]
James Stout
On let's talk about this new attempt to grow detention capacity. Right. Because their previous attempt was these warehouses. Right. We spoke to some folks in Social Circle on this show, Social Circle, Georgia, a while ago about that. Can you give people who haven't been following this little synopsis of why they've moved away from the putting human beings in warehouses models?
- [63:12]
Ari Chambers
Sure. So the spending bill, the federal spending bill that President Trump signed last year included just the Insanely unprecedented amount of money for immigration enforcement. Like more than even the entire budget of the entire federal prison system. Right. It includes about $45 billion just for detention capacity alone. So they poured a ton, like you said. They're sitting on just this huge pile of cash that they have to spend. They have to do something with that money. The plan at the beginning of the year were, as you mentioned, these warehouses. Right. That they wanted to, from their perspective, sort of more intelligently design the both detention capacity and the deportation machine. I think. I'm not 100% sure DHS officials said this. I think it was Tom Holman in Phoenix, but it could have been another DHS official. But basically they said they wanted to design the, quote, Amazon prime for humans. So, like, they want to make this as fast and as efficient as possible. They want to have a capacity to train up to 100,000 people on any given day. And they have a ton of cash, cash that they've never even seen before. Right. So buying up this billion and a half dollars of real estate in California is feasible to them. And they've signaled that owning it rather than leasing IT or having CoreCivic run it is more beneficial to them in not having to comply with the oversight. The different inspections and laws that California officials have tried to put into place that allows, for example, inspectors with the California Attorney General's office, and there was a 2024 law that California passed that would allow local health inspectors to go in and do a health inspection. San Diego county is the only place where they've actually tried to do that, and the private company pushed back. So they've said. DHS have said in their statement that owning this rather than another entity owning it, gives them the upper hand as far as avoiding some of this oversight. And the federal courts have upheld that, actually.
- [65:18]
James Stout
Right, let's dig into that a little bit. A lot of people have started paying attention to immigration detention approximately halfway through January in 2025.
- [65:29]
Ari Chambers
Right, right.
- [65:29]
James Stout
And if you had been paying attention before in California, you would have known that thousands of people were detained without food, water or shelter in the open air for months. Not like an individual duration. Stay was at most like a week. But the practice continued in Jacumba, right? Yep, in Jacumba and then down in San Ysidro. Yeah, in at least three places in Jacumba, I believe. There were also other OAD sites that we didn't find, at least I didn't know about. And then they'd also happened in Arizona as well. But at that point in Time, there was not a great deal of inspection by the county. I saw a office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman person once. Their visit didn't seem to result in any changes. But, like, has California commented on why they suddenly care about the, I guess the conditions migrants are detained in when they didn't seem to care in a way that mattered three years ago?
- [66:28]
Ari Chambers
Right. They certainly weren't coming out in statements and pushing back as hard as we have seen them push back against the Trump administration. That's true. And I have asked, like, top California officials that in an interview I did with California Attorney General Rob Bonta. I did ask him. I was like, this is my really hard question for you is it didn't seem like you were pushing back in the same way when, you know, there were babies sheltering in Porta Potties, right?
- [66:56]
James Stout
Oh, yeah. One night in September, I remember a lady breastfeeding a baby. The baby was shivering, which, like, it's not a good sign when babies are shivering. And like, I was warming up milk in the camping stove in my truck and my friend was cycling toddlers in and out of like a little warming station they built. Like, I've been through the Darien Gap and that's still some of the worst shit that I've, I've ever seen. It was horrific.
- [67:20]
Ari Chambers
Right. I remember thinking, like, where is the un? Like, where is like the Red Cross? Like, this is a humanitarian crisis out here.
- [67:26]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [67:27]
Ari Chambers
And it was in such a remote area. It was so it lacked so much visibility both from the media and, you know, public officials. So we did talk about that at one point. And Bonta's response was, you know, we had a working relationship with the Biden administration that wasn't controversial or wasn't adversarial in the way that our relationship is with the Trump administration. And so we could work on that stuff behind the scenes. Now, I know you were out there. Anybody who was out there would say nobody really ever saw the results of that collaboration or that work. Right. And, you know, it is a concern for sure, that it does seem like California politicians do get more bang for their buck in opposing the immigration policies that the Trump administration, when it's important to note that a lot of this infrastructure, including especially a lot of the AI infrastructure that are being used to surveil people who are against these policies and the palantir, the AI technologies that is being used right now to find people and detain them without making the headlines. And in quite as a high profile way, as we saw last year, all that was put into place by the Biden administration. Right. Yep. And so it is important to note that for sure that a lot of these systems that now the Trump administration is able to utilize were handed to them.
- [68:55]
James Stout
Let's entertain the idea that we have a midterm election and a presidential election, and they are conducted in a way that we kind of are accustomed to with elections and the results are respected. Let's imagine we have a Democrat in 2028. Intend to do the maths there. The feds will still own these two giant detention centers. Right. The way that immigration, in my experience works is like, it only seems to move in one direction, I guess. Like, this is why this is such a concern.
- [69:26]
Ari Chambers
They're saying themselves, DHS is saying themselves that this is a deliberate strategy to make their detention build out more permanent and harder to roll back with the changing political winds.
- [69:38]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [69:39]
Ari Chambers
And so they're acknowledging that. That that's what they're trying to do.
- [69:42]
James Stout
That's not great. Yeah, yeah, that's.
- [69:44]
Ari Chambers
But yeah. So it's from their own mouths. Right.
- [69:46]
James Stout
So, yeah. Deeply concerning. I wonder, though, like, previously they've had a practice of moving people out of San Diego County. Like, I guess a practice is the wrong word. There is, like, a number of incidents that I'm aware of where they've moved people away from their lawyer in San Diego County. Right. To a detention facility like Dilley or somewhere in Texas or somewhere like that. I guess I wouldn't make that impossible. If it did the same as it was before, it'll just be from federal prison to a private prison, maybe.
- [70:14]
Ari Chambers
Well, it's a less favorable federal jurisdiction. Right. A district. So in San Diego, I would say probably it's a more favorable outcome to go before a federal district judge in San Diego for a possible habeas petition and to slow down the process as far as being deported. Right. I think that that probably happens faster in a federal district in Texas than it would here.
- [70:37]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah.
- [70:38]
Ari Chambers
I have heard a lot from families about family members being moved out to, you know, these very remote. I mean, there's been an effort for a long time to make sure that these facilities are set up in very remote areas of California and in other parts of the country in remote areas that are hard for advocates, it's hard for attorneys, hard for journalists like me to get to. To report what's going on in them. You know, it's like six hours to get to California City as a drive. I've made way more times than I want to now at this point. Right. So, you know, it does. It does impact the amount of resources that people can be connected to. It is the biggest expense that ICE has is moving people around the country. I remember Senator Padilla did say, like, it seems sort of illogical the way they're moving. Like, they're moving people from California out of California while they're moving in other places into California. And it seems illogical the way they're moving people around. But the impact of that. I don't know what their purpose or their intention is of doing that, but the impact of is. Is it really disorients people. Right. It's like, where am I? What am I doing?
- [71:42]
Bob Pippman
What.
- [71:42]
Ari Chambers
What are the rules here? How do I get my phone card set up? It takes them days where they're kind of pushed back on their heels trying to figure out what the system and the guards and the new place where they go. And then, like I said, it's definitely makes it harder for people when they get moved around to these different facilities. And it's something that we're definitely seeing happen a lot more. Definitely hearing it from a lot of families in LA that have concern about people being moved way out to California City, which is like, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Right. It's hard for families to get out there.
- [72:13]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. It's like something. Kern County, I think. Right. But, like, it's a hike from anywhere, from any major population center in California. It's a long drive.
- [72:22]
Ilya Ayyub
Yeah.
- [72:22]
Ari Chambers
It's like an hour and 40 minutes from, like, the farthest Eastern community in LA, like, cheerlead. They have an office in, like, Eastern LA. And it. I think it was like an hour and 20 to an hour and 40 to get to that office from California City. So it's just. Just remote. It's in the middle of nowhere, you know?
- [72:39]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [72:39]
Ari Chambers
And if you think about where. Where would I put a place that's in the middle of nowhere where I'd have the least amount of oversight? Right. Like, that. That's the place. Like, that's definitely where you would pick.
- [72:49]
James Stout
Yeah, definitely. Compared to, like, Otai Mesa Detention center, there are many bad things about what happens there. But, like, it is relatively close. People can get to it. There are almost always people there, like, outside if someone is released or people protesting what's happening there. Like, you say, like, it's hard even to do things, like, for someone to get money on their. On their phone card or like someone I've reported on many times on the show was detained at Dilly and, like, it's difficult to work out how to, like, put money on their commissary so they can buy food because the food they get is absolutely awful. Things like this. And every time you move that, that's different again. Right. Like, it's.
- [73:24]
Ari Chambers
I was talking to an individual in El Salvador and they were saying that, you know, they were moved around maybe nine times before they were deported. And each time they got to the different facility, it was like, well, where am I? And who are kind of the leaders in this, in this place? Or like, who. Who do I talk to? Because I need to get. I need to get this worked out. And sometimes they wouldn't even be able to get the phone card set up up before the next time they got loaded back on a bus to go somewhere else.
- [73:52]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [73:52]
Ari Chambers
To even let their family know where they are. And that's why it's so concerning that ICE is going around opening facilities. Like, we had one facility open, I think, also in Kern County. It's like, right next to Golden State Annex. So it's like kind of part of that property. But they didn't tell anybody. Right. Like, nobody knew that this facility was open until we reported on it opening. And, you know, if you're a family member and you're looking on that ICE detainer, you're trying to find your family member. If we have these, these, you know, almost. Almost like black site ICE detention facilities opening up that nobody knows are running. How are you going to find your family member if it's not even listed there in the facilities? Right. I mean, there's been a lot of reporting about how sometimes people are disappearing into these systems. But that's one of the reasons why California has tried to set these laws to say, like, you have to give the public a certain amount of notice before you open a new facility so that people are aware that it's coming and they can have an opportunity to, you know, say, go to the California City Council meeting and make their opposition known. But we've seen both ICE and the private detention companies have, in some cases, been able to find ways around those rules.
- [74:57]
James Stout
Yeah. One of the, I guess the interesting things that we have seen in the last maybe six months, even maybe somewhere mostly this year. Right. Is like, communities coming together to oppose these things and data centers.
- [75:12]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [75:12]
James Stout
Or like across a wide swath of American politics. Like, a lot of the folks organizing in social circle are not people who I think would generally identify as progressive politically, but they were opposed to all the local consequences as well as the abuses that happen. In these detention centers. Like, it's definitely getting harder, I guess, for them to build from scratch detention centers, right?
- [75:36]
Ari Chambers
That's correct. I mean, some of these when, at the beginning of the year when they had the warehouse plan and they were planning some of these mega detention centers which like they were trying to hold, you know, 10 to 12,000 people, which is crazy. More than Rikers, right? Right. Yeah. Like the largest would be the largest facility anywhere. And you know, they were talking about even making their own wastewater treatment plants, bringing in their own services because the cities where the local municipalities wouldn't be able to handle the influx of people, of employees, of, you know, the, the roads, all the, all the different services. And so I think that's one of the things that people are realizing is that these properties have an impact outside of just the people that they're detaining. Right. They have an impact, a ripple effect on the entire community. And I think people are becoming aware of that now.
- [76:25]
James Stout
Yeah, definitely. And it seems like, yeah. That they're trying to do other things. I know they sold some of those warehouses a loss as well. But it doesn't matter in the, in the grand scheme of how much money they have.
- [76:35]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, they have to get rid of $45 billion. So they really aren't, aren't stressing the losses.
- [76:41]
James Stout
You know, it's a, a, a weird
- [76:43]
Ari Chambers
problem to have, but they feel like they have to spend this 45 billion or it's kind of like use it or lose it. If they don't buy the next, I think by, I think it's three years that they have.
- [76:51]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [76:52]
Ari Chambers
So I think we will see them buying more properties for sure. I think they really have their eye on Adelanto. I set a script that like scans the SEC to like automatically alert me if any of those companies sell anything. Right.
- [77:07]
Ilya Ayyub
No.
- [77:07]
Garrison Davis
Cool.
- [77:08]
Ari Chambers
The other thing to keep in mind too about this is, you know, the federal government doesn't pay local and state taxes. So where they go into these small cash strapped cities like California City and say, hey, you're going to get $2 million a year in tax revenue from this facility opening. And that's kind of how they convince or like they try to win over the local politicians with hey, we need this money, we need this facility to lower our water bills and stuff like that. But none of that is going to, it's like a bait and switch. Right. They're not going to be getting that $2 million tax revenue anymore because, you know, other than the income tax of the employers, maybe that might but yeah, so that's another, you know, part of it.
- [77:47]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Bait and switch is a good way to describe it. Like, people think they're getting one thing and they end up getting another thing. You talked about the employers, like, when these, for some facilities change hands, will it then be like federal employees or will they still be staffed by CoreCivic?
- [78:14]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, so that's the, that's the interesting thing is the federal government is going to own the real estate. But Corecivic has said in its SEC filings that it expects, it thinks that it's going to be keeping those contracts to continue operating the facilities. So the contract for California City runs through August 2027. The one for Otay Mesa is supposed to end in 2029, but there's an option to extend it another five years. And my impression is that ICE is quite happy with the way CoreCivic is running these facilities and GEO Group is running these facilities. So that would mean the same guards, the same medical directors, the same kind of operations and day to day at both facilities, and they plan on keeping their existing management contract. Now, they acknowledge in the SEC filing that there's no guarantee that they get to keep it, but it sounds like that's the deal that they've worked out and negotiated with the federal government.
- [79:10]
James Stout
Sure. Even when they've done these, they stood up that one camp, East Montana, they call it, which is still run by a contractor, even though it's on Department of Defense land. And the conditions there are atrocious from what we saw with the inspector general report. And it doesn't seem to be a concern.
- [79:28]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, that's the one outside of El Paso.
- [79:30]
James Stout
Yeah, Bliss.
- [79:31]
Ari Chambers
I've seen it.
- [79:32]
James Stout
The tent camp.
- [79:33]
Ari Chambers
Oh, okay. Outside of Port Bliss. Yeah. The white tent camp.
- [79:36]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [79:37]
Ari Chambers
You know, seems like they're violating their own rules. Right. When they, they have these rules, they have these set of standards that they have set up. And that's the first thing Corecivic or GEO will say is like, hey, we follow all the federal standards that are set up for us. Right. For detention standards.
- [79:50]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [79:51]
Ari Chambers
But it seemed, especially with that one that you're mentioning that they violated all their own standards and setting that place up.
- [79:57]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that place is particularly egregious. Like, even among immigration detention facilities, some of the stuff in that inspector general's report was genuinely shocking. And I thought I had lost the capacity to be shocked by this stuff, but, yeah, lots of terrible things have happened. Like, I think you reported on the Mongolian person. Right. Who was who used sign language and was detained for, I think, months without an interpreter, if I'm remembering correctly.
- [80:22]
Ari Chambers
Right. Yeah. He had never gotten a chance to even tell his story on how he had crossed the border because CBP had, like, really confused his story. He was telling them about his sister and they thought that. That it was his daughter, and they were using like a. I don't know, AI, Some kind of online translation thing that was not even close to what his actual story was. And, yeah, he spent months without able to tell anybody what happened to him. And, you know, finally. Yeah, after we did our story, like, finally, the ICE attorney was trying to set up, like, a relay team of translation, but the federal judge was just. Just said, like, doesn't he have a right to participate in his own proceedings? Like, does it. Isn't he. Shouldn't he be an active participant in. In the proceedings against him? Right.
- [81:08]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [81:08]
Ari Chambers
And not just a bystander in that. And then. So then he. The judge ruled that they had to get him an interpreter. And I guess they decided it was too hard to do that because they let him out fairly quickly after that ruling. But, yeah, I mean, some of the conditions that we've heard about, I mean, obviously, I think everybody's heard, like, the overcrowding, really severe lack of access to medical care, the horrific food. We've been hearing about how bad the food is for decades now in there.
- [81:33]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [81:34]
Ari Chambers
You know, smelly, moldy waters. Particular problem in California City. And just sometimes just like, kind of the retaliation that people face if they try to bring an issue up or if they try to, you know, advocate for somebody else. They feel like, oftentimes they say, they tell us that they feel like, you know, they get sort of retaliated against for that. You know, Mesa Verde is one of the. Have one of the most egregious violations that we've ever heard of of, like the hunger strike. The hunger strikers, gal, got dragged out and according to them, you know, beat up or handled very roughly and then taken to Texas and force fed with a tube down their nose. Right. Like, yeah, we. There's definitely been some very egregious things that have happened inside these detention centers. And that's why it's so important for people to be able to, you know, especially the Congress members or. And the local state inspectors. It's very important for somebody to be able to get in there and see what the conditions are like inside.
- [82:29]
James Stout
Yeah, this court case doesn't matter anymore, like, with this new development. Right. The court case, at least it matters in other detention facilities, but not in Oto Mesa. Specifically in San Diego County.
- [82:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [82:38]
Ari Chambers
It's going to remain to be seen. I think, like I said, the federal courts have upheld that the state can't overstep their authority and step on federal authority to carry out immigration enforcement. Right. I think that those health inspectors, they already have done their health inspection, so they already did one. And the report, I think, is coming out at the end of July, so there will be that.
- [82:58]
Dana Al Kurd
But.
- [82:58]
Ari Chambers
And then I think my understanding is San Diego county plans to fight.
- [83:02]
James Stout
That's what I thought. They were going to appeal it. Yeah.
- [83:04]
Ari Chambers
Yeah. They're trying to try to press the issue in court to see if they can continue going in there and doing their inspections. But like I said, you know, the courts haven't tended to rule that way. And DHS thinks, like, we know from their own statement, that they think that this will sort of put an end to the different inspections and oversight stuff that the state and the local officials want to do.
- [83:27]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty bleak, pretty big outlook for immigration detention, which was not really a great outlook to begin with, I guess.
- [83:36]
Ari Chambers
Yeah. But it's not come 100% decided. It still is an open question whether these inspection laws will survive the federal ownership or not remains to be seen, I think.
- [83:44]
James Stout
Right. Yeah. You said they had plans for other locations. I'm guessing they have plans for GEO Group locations as well. Do you think this is their plan going forward to try and acquire all of these private immigration? They have the money to, I assume.
- [83:59]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, I think everything points to yes on that. I think Corecivic said in their statement that they are already in talks with ICE about selling more of their facilities. GEO Group has said on earnings calls that they would like to sell their facilities. And like you mentioned, you know, DHS definitely has the money thanks to that massive appropriation from the federal government. So, you know, really, they've already said that it's kind of their preference to outright own them rather than lease them or have a private company operate them in California.
- [84:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [84:33]
Ari Chambers
So, yeah, I think we will see more of it. And I'm definitely, you know, trying to monitor it as much as possible to see when that happens.
- [84:41]
James Stout
I wonder if this also changes the legal environment for people who are either protesting or like they're in a. In a sort of mutual aid capacity for the migrants. Right. Sometimes people can hear migrants shouting from inside and they can hear them like asking for someone to put money on their phone card or what have you, or just describing their conditions relating Them will it being a federal owned facility, do you think that changes? Because it's legal to stand outside a thing. Right. But if it's a fed facility, maybe it's even harder.
- [85:10]
Ari Chambers
Yes, I do think it will change. I do think we'll see the federal government trying to crack down harder on protesters that come, you know, in Otane Mesa, they had the people were putting information about how they were being held in, in bottles and throwing the bottles over the gate. I do think for sure that the federal government will operate differently now that it's federal property. Another thing that's very interesting, you know, they already hold people who are not immigrant detainees in California City. So they have a section of that facility that are like people who are in the custody of the US Marshals already. So there are already people in there who aren't immigrants. I wonder if, if we might see more of an effort to detain more people in these facilities who are not immigrants.
- [85:55]
James Stout
Right, yeah, yeah.
- [85:56]
Ari Chambers
Because they have promises made to CoreCivic and GEO Group that they are going to try to give them a certain population of detainees per day. Right, right. So that's another part that remains to be seen.
- [86:08]
James Stout
Yeah, that's also super concerning.
- [86:10]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, it really is super concerning of where it could all go. Right. Especially you see, see, you know, the federal government calling protesters domestic terrorists and stuff like that. It is really concerning.
- [86:22]
James Stout
Yeah. And we saw that in like, I was in Minneapolis in like late January and the same thing happens there, right. They have their federal building, though, it's called the Whipple Building. And like they do immigration detention there. But then that was also where people who were detained for protesting against that immigration, those immigration actions were taken. Right. Like they used the same facility and like there's a certain kind of menace to that. Right.
- [86:47]
Ari Chambers
Like, it's really alarming where it could go if you think about it. Right.
- [86:51]
James Stout
Yeah, it's really, really concerning. Like, this is one of those things that's very little people can, can do much about.
- [86:57]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [86:58]
James Stout
It's a like willing seller, willing buyer kind of situation where unfortunately, like, there's pretty few means for address. Like, I hope California is successful with being able to inspect them, at least that would be something Think. And I know there are lots of really good groups doing work to keep people out of detention to help with habeas, to improve conditions in detention, et cetera. So like people can, can help out those groups if they want to. But yeah, it does seem like this is a particularly kind of bleak area of immigration enforcement right now.
- [87:31]
Ari Chambers
Right. And Especially since, you know, one of the first things that Trump did is shut down the mechanisms that people can appeal or report. Like, you know, when you have a complaint about something that's happened to you within immigration detention, you complain about it either to the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. There's another dhs, and both of those have been shut down right now and not funded right now. So those mechanisms with which you can get any oversight from within the federal government right now are not operating.
- [88:03]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Is it Oido, the other one?
- [88:05]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, that might be it. Yeah, that's right.
- [88:07]
James Stout
Yeah, I've seen them precisely once. Wendy, if people want to follow your work, you've done lots of good stuff on California. Calmatis does some really good reporting. You had great reporting about the Operation Return to Sender, for example, back when that was shocking.
- [88:22]
Ari Chambers
Thank you so much. Yeah.
- [88:24]
James Stout
How can people find you?
- [88:25]
Ari Chambers
Yeah, that's right. So all our stories are there on calmatters.org thank you for that. And then our Operation Return to Sender documentary is on YouTube, so you can find that there. We did a lot of work to show kind of what Bovino was saying and what was actually happening on the ground. So that's a really good one to watch.
- [88:44]
James Stout
Yeah. And you guys publish also in Spanish, right?
- [88:47]
Ari Chambers
Yes, we do. More recently, we started translating more of our stories into Spanish so that folks who want to read it in Spanish can find that there, too.
- [88:56]
James Stout
Yeah, that's great. That's super nice.
- [88:58]
Ari Chambers
Nice. And I speak fluent Spanish. If people need to contact me in Spanish, I can communicate there, too.
- [89:04]
James Stout
Nice.
- [89:04]
Bob Pippman
Yep.
- [89:04]
James Stout
And there's a contact link for you on the website, I'm guessing if people want to talk to you about some of this stuff. Right.
- [89:08]
Ari Chambers
Absolutely. Or yeah, I can just share my email for sure. It's wendyowmatters.org and I am always hoping to hear from people so we can do more in depth reporting about what's going on inside these facilities. So thank you so much for that opportunity to share that.
- [89:22]
James Stout
Yeah, of course. Thanks for joining, doing this. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us anytime.
- [89:38]
Garrison Davis
Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. For the past few weeks on Executive Disorder and some regular episodes of this show, most notably the DSA Red Scare. I've been covering the ongoing battle for the future of the Democratic Party, spurred on by a recent wave of electoral victories by DSA in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and most notably New York City, where last month the DSA doubled their block of socialists in office. This episode is another installment in this informal series. And this time we are going straight to the source by talking with the co chair of the New York City chapter of dsa, Grace Mauser, in an interview where we talk about everything from the chapter's electoral strategy to their theory of power and what organizers can learn from New York City DSA's recent string of success. So without further ado, here is my interview with Grace Mauser, Co Chair of NYC dsa. To start on like the most like broadcast broad picture aspect, what is the Democratic Socialist of America if people are not super familiar with like what the organization actually is or what the point of the organization is?
- [90:55]
Grace Mauser
Sure. Thanks so much for having me. So dsa, Democratic Socialists of America is a political organization. Legally we're a non profit. We're a 501C4 which enables us to engage in a lot of different types of campaigns, including electoral campaigns. But also we're very involved in labor work and we often partner with unions and with rank and file workers for both internal union reform purposes and external demands. We do issue based campaigns. For example, in New York City, our Immigrant Justice Working Group ran a very successful effort to conduct Know youw Rights trainings earlier this year that trained over 5,000 people in the city. So we do a lot of different types of things including social things. We have like book clubs and softball leagues and things like that.
- [91:53]
Garrison Davis
The Run Club is a very formidable political group in this city.
- [91:57]
Grace Mauser
The Run Club is very popular. It's true, it's true. They've really taken off and how we are structured is that there is a national dsa, so national organization and then there are I believe over 200 chapters all across the country. New York City is by far the largest, I think for more than twice as large as the next biggest, which is la. And the chapters engage in localized work. But then we also tried to have participation from chapters on national campaigns and questions. I would say we're, you know, we're not a party, not usually Americans, but some people are call us a party or think we're a party. We don't have a ballot line, but we do run people in primary elections, usually in Democratic primaries, because we want our members to select and endorse candidates that they think will represent not only their interest but the interests of a broader working class space. And then we want people who are elected to actually collaborate with DSA and other outside organizations in a real and serious way that the Democratic Party simply does not encourage and sometimes even even tries to stop.
- [93:22]
Garrison Davis
So obviously within the name of dsa, there's democratic socialism and socialism more kind of broadly. What does DSA mean by socialism? I mean I've seen, seen multiple articles specifically in the Atlantic really, really concerned about what socialism means and the quote unquote Trotskyist tactics that DSA is, is, is employing. There's been a whole bunch of, whole bunch of media coverage being scared of you know, communism and socialism. But what does like DSA mean by socialism?
- [93:55]
Grace Mauser
So DSA is what we call a big tent organization. There are a lot of different ideologies that are members imprisonment embrace. Some people are more social democrats that you might find to be the standard in some European countries. Some people identify as communists for example. So what we mean by socialism we try to make really concrete and demand based. We're looking at things like universal healthcare, passing bills like Medicare for all. We are trying to make housing more affordable by expanding the role of government in the housing market through things like what Zoran Mamdani just help do, freezing the rent. We are trying to make universal childcare free. Right. Like public education as it currently exists is functionally socialist.
- [94:50]
Ari Chambers
Right.
- [94:50]
Grace Mauser
It's the government providing free education and childcare for millions of children. And for some reason it arbitrarily starts at five years old. We're saying what if we had that but a little bit sooner. So we try to center our demands on these really material ideas. One because it enables not only leftists of all different stripes but all sorts of people to come in and identify with these ideas because they know it would help their lives, but also because winning these things will take a very long time. So my day to day is not so much concerned with what the economy should look like in a hundred years, but what we can achieve in the next five, 10, 20 years. And you know, even if I'm not a communist, but if I were, we're not going to be communist in 10 years. Right. So what matters is actually making people's lives better now and using the government to do that which you know, American politicians, socialists and not have done for many decades before.
- [96:01]
Garrison Davis
You were talking about like how DSA is, is organizing to like see what the country could be like in like five to 10 years. And I think something that people might not be aware of is the past work that New York City DSA has done the past five to 10 years. Right. I think people certainly saw or were drawn to DSA around the election of Zoron and you know, maybe this most recent like Slate win, but this is, this has been kind of a long term project of like building power and, and experimenting with electoral strategy and canvassing and like this, the specific path to victory. So could you speak a little bit how NYC DSA has achieved like this winning streak, especially like in the past year and like the build up to that winning streak?
- [96:44]
Grace Mauser
Definitely. New York City DSA really got serious in 2016, both because many people were inspired by Bernie Sanders and then many people were horrified by the ultimate victory of Donald Trump in that presidential election. In 2017, we took on our first electoral races in the modern era. There was two city council races. We lost both of those by. We did learn a lot and we gained a new member, Zhong Madani, via one of those races. But something we learned is that we could certainly run field campaigns. And by field I mean canvassing and door knocking. But we also saw that, hey, actually a lot of the skills that are required in other parts of the campaign, like communications, political maneuvering, fundraising and budgeting, these are also things we think that our members can do. And we really tested that out in 2018. We endorsed AOC that year. But in some ways the bigger chapter project was Julio Salazar state Senate race where we had members not only on staff, but also basically helping in a volunteer capacity almost every aspect of that race. And we want. So from there we learned that we could teach ourselves and begin to replicate the skills of not only canvassing, but all these other skills that the political class and the consulting class in particular want to believe that they have a monopoly on that they're so hard to understand that you simply must pay them tens of thousands of dollars. So we have built out from that. We have now 16 socialists in office at the state legislature level, not only in New York City, but also in Hudson Valley and in Buffalo. And we have four city council members and now three Congress members. Some of those came post Iran, but most of them came pre Suran. And it was just really nose to the grindstone kind of work, knocking on a lot of doors, replicating skills, fundraising from small dollar don. And we lost some of our races. I think we've probably lost a little less than half of the races we've won. But we took some big swings, but strategic swings. So these kind of skills developed over time and really formed the foundation and the backbone of Zaron's campaign. So for many, Zaron seemed to come out of nowhere. But his first campaign event, his field launch in December of 2024, when no one had really heard of him as a serious candidate, had 500 people at it, which I would guess is bigger than any other candidate had at any point in the race. And that's because DSA members knew him, were really excited about what this meant, and also knew exactly what kind of work would be required to make this race successful. And it was work. Work of basically building out huge infrastructure and knocking on millions of doors so that we could talk to voters.
- [100:11]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. One of the most impressive things is this sort of like, like, parallel campaign structure that, that DSA has, has developed that you don't need to go through the regular channels of like, consultants, sort of like inside baseball of politics. And I. People often get very confused about, like, what the word like party means. Right. Because party in, you know, Europe means something very different than what it means in the US US but in terms of running in primaries, the DSA often has to go up against the party infrastructure of the Democratic Party establishment itself. And the fact that DSA has been able to, especially in the past two years, like, out organize the local political establishment has been like, one of the most impressive feats. And like, I've been able to see this in person. I'm in Brooklyn in the, you know, the past two months, I had multiple DSA canvassers come to my door. I received a truly absurd amount of mailers. There was, you know, people canvassing on the sidewalk, you know, all the time. You know, same thing, same thing in Ridgewood and Queens. A lot of canvassers there, especially going into the mayoral race. Something that's stuck in my mind a lot is I used to live in Atlanta. Some, like, friends of friends, people I didn't know, but people I kind of loosely knew of, were paid to do canvassing for the 2024 presidential election for the Democratic Party Party. They were basically just operating kind of like a scam. Like, they did not actually do any of the work. They basically sat in, like, a parking lot and scrolled on their phone. And something that makes the DSA's form of canvassing so different is that the people who are actually involved in it actually care about the political project. Right. They're actually, like, invested in these candidates, invested in putting forward this, like, working class politics, and are not just getting a paycheck from the dnc. And that changes the way that they do canvassing on the ground. I know this is something that you refer to as like, the DSA difference. Could you guys briefly touch on, like, what the DSA difference, like, represents?
- [102:01]
Grace Mauser
Yeah, it really, for. For me, it starts from the endorsement process, which is very long and quite rigorous, but also extremely Democratic. And because of that people really feel bought in to the races that we endorse. I mean, if you come to an endorsement forum, it's said over and over again, if you would not personally be interested in canvassing for this candidate, do not vote to endorse them. And that's a kind of an easy standard. We tried to share with members on top of a lot of strategy and data consideration, and there's a lot of things that go into it, but core is that like, will you go to this? If not, how can we expect others to. That initial buy in, that initial ownership that members have over what races we run and why really extends then into the entirety of the campaign. So our campaigns do have staff and of course larger campaigns have more staff, but we also have a practice of really elevating volunteers who show capacity and interest to be more engaged in strategy. So canvassers are also strategic actors. That's sort of the first rung of engagement. I mean, canvassing could just be like, oh, go out and do this. But we, we really actively seek to create a feedback loop between canvassing and other parts of, of a campaign. So not only is canvassing data, of course very critical and tracking ID progress and things, but we also teach our field leads to lead canvases, to solicit feedback and to systematize that feedback. What are you hearing on the doors? Did you meet anyone interesting? Should we follow up with that person? And I've seen in real time our messaging overall change because of feedback that canvassers are getting on the doors from the next rung. If a canvasser is really great and excited in, we often encourage them to become a field lead. These are pretty intensive and high responsibility jobs. So these people manage logistics, they run trainings, they move materials around. If there are problems or questions that come up during a canvas or after, they're the first point of contact for these volunteers. They're really, really quite skilled leaders and we try to create as many of these people as possible and that's kind of the next rung of engagement. From there. It sort of varies from campaign to campaign, but on most of the campaigns that I've seen, you have robust volunteer teams around all of these functional areas. There's a fundraising team who are trying to execute not only comms and digital strategy, but also peer to peer fundraising and house parties. There is a communications team who, yes, works closely with staff often, but is drafting and helping produce a level of content that, you know, if you're a state assembly race and you have two staffers, it's pretty hard to produce as much content as you might want.
- [105:29]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [105:30]
Grace Mauser
There's research who are helping do oppo and, and helping figure out what stories we might be able to place in the press. So these areas that can be pretty opaque in some ways and are not often a visible part of the political process, we really try to open up and invite people into and then we talk openly about that in our debriefs and also in our endorsement forums themselves.
- [105:57]
Garrison Davis
I guess something else that people might not be be fully aware of. There's, there's kind of like two ways of like fielding candidates. Candidates can be DSA endorsed and then you can have DSA members who then run for office and for, for the people who are more kind of like outside of the organization but seek, seek a DSA endorsement. If they secure it, they then get access right to this, to this, this whole like on the ground like organizing network and that and that can be very appealing. But there's certain things that endorsement is like contingent on in terms of like platform as you said. It's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty intensive process actually to get a DSA endorsement. After the series of victories New York DSA has had the past few months, has that affected the size of the membership in like any like notable ways? Is it like, is that grown the amount of on the ground volunteers like that whatever the next campaigns are?
- [106:57]
Grace Mauser
Oh, absolutely. I mean of course we are, we are subject to like macro political trends.
- [107:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Right?
- [107:05]
Grace Mauser
We see large jumps when there's a presidential election like we saw in 2016. I saw it again in 2020 and in 24. But you know, not every campaign results in a huge membership boost. I think they do all result in a large capacity boost because even if we're not gaining new people num, we're expanding the skill set of people who are there. But last year certainly we gained a lot of, a lot of members between the time that Zaran announced his campaign in the fall of 2024 and now we've almost tripled in size in New York City and between the primary elections this year. So June 23rd and today, so about a month we have gained over a thousand members. So we are obviously helped along by like high profile wins too that the media is really interested in covering. And then we get kind of more eyeballs on, on our ideas and more interest in the project overall. So there are some, some wins that result in a lot of members, but every win I think think expands capacity and even losses expand capacity because we're teaching people these skills and we're able to better replicate ourselves for future cycles.
- [108:32]
Garrison Davis
I'm sure, as most people are aware, we are right in the middle of, like a huge debate right now over the future of the Democratic Party. And, you know, this debate's being waged online, it's being waged in the newspaper, it's on TV news tv and most importantly, right in the, in the primaries.
- [108:50]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Right.
- [108:50]
Garrison Davis
And then eventually the general elections. You know, it seems like every week the Atlantic has a new article out about how scary the Democratic Socialists are. As I mentioned, I think today they put out a brand new article about like, the secret, like, Trotskyism of tsa.
- [109:06]
Grace Mauser
I saw that. Which, I mean, all these articles suggest to me that they neither understand DSA nor do they understand the history or ideology. They're comparing us to you.
- [109:19]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, but it's been really interesting, especially after the, the wins in New York and Colorado and Pennsylvania, hopefully in Wisconsin. But this past month we've seen more and more, like establishment Democrats join people like President Trump and Fox News in effectively declaring war on the DSA and like the left wing of the party. And, you know, there's this idea that you see in the Atlantic, Washington Post that, you know, communists and socialists are taking over the Democratic Party. But I think for a chunk of the people listening to this show, their concerns are probably more of the opposite, that by running as a Democrat, these Democratic Socialist candidates risk being captured and, like, brought into the very party establishment that they're trying to oppose. I guess I'd like you to speak on, like, what is the nature of the DSA's relationship to the Democratic Party Party?
- [110:11]
Grace Mauser
Yeah, I mean, the thing about the Democratic Party that I think a lot of media and political pundits miss is that there's no one to have a relationship with. Right. Like, the Democratic Party is three boys in a suit. Like, there's no one to talk to. That's why they can't act like a party does in Europe. I mean, of course, there are electoral and ballot reasons for that as well, but the Democratic Party does not really organize either voters who are Democrats. Right. Like, no one has ever attempted to organize me as a Democrat because I am a registered Democrat. Nor is there really a serious effort to organize Democratic elected officials as a block and move in the same direction. Like that infrastructure simply doesn't exist. So I, I feel like the risk of being captured is only a risk in so far as DSA does not try to keep our own people organized and acting as A block which is very much central to our project. And in New York City, for example, we have weekly meetings with both our state legislators and our city council members. And now we have regular meetings with administration officials as well in the mayoral administration that try to keep us all on the same page when we have a big project that we're moving on together. Like Tax the Rich was this last legislative session. We do really active organizing in those meetings. Like, okay, have you talked to your colleague about this bill? Will they move? Do we need to pressure them some way from the outside or do you think you'll get somewhere in internal conversations? So to me, I, I don't feel worried about being captured by the Democrats because the Democrats don't have the infrastructure to capture people. The people who can capture you are like moneyed interests. Right. Big corporations.
- [112:21]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [112:21]
Grace Mauser
And sure, sometimes they act through the Democratic party, but for us, that's such a clear red line that I don't feel super concerned about it. The more complicated questions are not so much of, of capture, but of, of when do we compromise? Right.
- [112:38]
Garrison Davis
Sure.
- [112:38]
Grace Mauser
We could be a block of people who vote no on every budget. Right. Every state budget, every city budget is politically compromised. It's not enough. They never tax the rich enough. They never fund public services enough. Yeah, it's, it's never good. But if we always say no, then can we get any, any wins? What kind of wins are the, you know, the non reformist reforms we might be looking for? And deciding that collectively doesn't mean our choice is always correct. But I think it's much more likely to be correct than if we let even someone who's a committed democratic socialist kind of go out on their own and try to make those decisions by themselves. The collectiveness and the connection to dsa, I think is the biggest barrier to the capture that people are worried about. Whereas if we just say no to everything. If we ran as third party, I think, well, if we ran as third party, I don't think we'd ever win. But if we just say no to everything and our orientation is as like a morally upstanding group that doesn't achieve anything, I think we lose our credibility not only in the eyes of like the political class and of other politicians, but in the eyes of voters right now we can look at a voter, have a conversation on a door about how we are a different type of politician because look at what Iran has already done. Iran froze your rent.
- [114:13]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [114:14]
Grace Mauser
We are the group behind Ziran. Don't you want more people like him? And if Saran hadn't frozen the rent, that would be a much harder conversation to have.
- [114:22]
Garrison Davis
No, it is really easy to point to the, like, the delivering of goods and be like, yeah, this is what we are about. And this is actually, you know, improving the lives of workers. And like that is what matters. What else is this whole project for? I can understand that, you know, people are concerned with like the idea of like holding politicians accountable, right? Holding politicians accountable to this working class platform that they're running on, that they were elected to represent, that the organizing put them into office to fulfill. But I think one of the biggest ways to do that is through a mass membership organization like dsa because not only does it provide, you know, campaign infrastructure which could help them get reelected if they stick to this vision, but it also provides this sort of like, like, like social bond, this internal process to stay being tethered together together while they are serving or occupying a seat of power. And once you're occupying a seat of power, there is obviously constraints on that power and there's going to be contradictions that arise. And I think a lot of people, especially online, view those contradictions as like a bad thing, as like a reason to not engage in this project. Alternatively, I think those contradictions are actually very often a good thing like this that is a sign that history is in progress, that we are actually, actually moving forward and we're going to seek to resolve those like over time. And dealing with those contradictions is good in the sense that we have to deal with them. We actually, we are at a point in our strategy where this is something to be dealt with as opposed to not engaging in this sort of strategy like at all. Right. And the power that a politician has that is running on a working class platform, their power comes from the working class. And the DSA is a manifestation of that. And DSA can be in anger.
- [116:04]
Robert Evans
Thinker.
- [116:04]
Garrison Davis
But I think there also is these like questions of like this like long term vision, right? Or if these candidates are just going to have to like administer capitalism in a more equitable way or if there really is like this kind of bigger vision to increase the power of the working class towards some sort of, you know, ultimate class struggle for socialism. And I guess like, is that like balance in their heads between this sort of like equitable administration and like this ultimate class struggle?
- [116:31]
Grace Mauser
Yeah, it certainly is. I mean, thinking about how we actually permanently change power structures and not just kind of mitigate harm, I think is one of the things that separates a socialist from a progressive.
- [116:48]
Garrison Davis
Sure.
- [116:49]
Grace Mauser
Some Ideas that I'm really excited about that I would point to that, that do some of this. This didn't pass. But. But I think something like the PRO Act.
- [116:58]
Garrison Davis
Absolutely.
- [116:59]
Grace Mauser
Would that expand and makes it easier for workers to organize themselves and empowers unions is part of that structure and central to what, what democratic socialists want to do. In fact, right now, actually in New York City, there is a bill held by city council member Tiffany Caban, who's a DSA member and a city socialist in office, called the Delivery Protection act that would functionally make it extremely difficult for Amazon to consider last mile delivery workers as individual contractors.
- [117:37]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [117:37]
Grace Mauser
And force them to be employees of Amazon. Which one makes sense? Like it's crazy that all these people in Amazon trucks that you see all the time are contractors.
- [117:49]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [117:49]
Grace Mauser
When functionally they're not. Everything that they have to do with is controlled by Amazon. And doing that, we're partnering with the Teamsters on it. Because doing it would make those workers unionizable.
- [118:02]
Garrison Davis
Yes.
- [118:03]
Grace Mauser
And that's a huge workforce in your city. So that's kind of a labor example. Another piece that I'm really excited about. So yes, Siran froze the rent. That's an extension of government power in the market. But, but one thing that is really promising is that the administration is exploring how to legally recognize and empower tenant unions in a way that, you know, workers unions are recognized so that tenant unions actually have bargaining rights with a landlord. And we don't have all the answers for how that would look, but that's, I think another example of a type of reform, a type of policy that is explicitly socialist and is actually trying to permanently change the power relationship between tenants and landlords, just as joining a workers union changes the power relationship between a worker and a supervisor. So I'm not saying we have the perfect answers across all policy areas and certainly there are policy areas that socialists will, will advocate for and get behind that I would consider more progressive because our country and society is a very harsh environment for many people and mitigating harm is in fact something good to do.
- [119:31]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [119:32]
Grace Mauser
But it cannot be the sole thing we do. And backing these types of non reformist reforms, ideas that change power structures is central to our work.
- [119:44]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. I think this, this sort of tension between this sort of more like social democratic administration of capitalism and like just pushing for, you know, like the revolution or something is a false dichotomy and oftentimes it can resemble the. This is, this is bad because I'm referencing Twitter, but there's, there's this old tweet that's like, don't siege Leningrad. Take it immediately. Like, don't build working class power, just do the revolution. But if you look at like where the labor movement in the US is right now, we are so behind where the movement was in the 20s and 30s that allowed workers to extract the New Deal. We have a long way to go to be able to really threaten capital in a serious way. And these minor social democratic policies, rather than being a release valid valve, could in fact provide workers more autonomy and the extra time needed to organize and keep building power. Like another thing from Zoran's rent reforms is that the administration is advancing a new rule that landlords could only request proof of income or a credit check, but not both in apartment applications. And like, that would be huge for people. Right. And there is, there's, there's ways to do small stuff like that, while also, you know, in a bigger sense trying to just increase the amount that our society is socialist. Right. That's through public ownership of utilities and key industries, commodifying necessities of life like housing or food, and democratizing the workplace. I've been yelling about the Protect the Right to Organize act in my personal life a lot lately. I've been kind of just like evangelizing about the pro act because that, that is something that, like if that, if that gets paid past that would be one of the biggest boosts to working class power that we've seen in probably decades.
- [121:35]
Grace Mauser
Yeah. And I mean having Clara Valdez is a labor organizer, like that was her first organizing experience. And yeah, there's no one like that in Congress right now, you know, so I don't know that her first move will be the proact, but it's certainly top of mind for her.
- [121:54]
Garrison Davis
That kind of relates to one of the last questions I want to get to, to. But first, let's do one last ad break. Okay, we are back. How does the DSA actually like, communicate with and relate to a broader working class base or like, like a broader, like working class, like coalition? Right. Because if this is the politics that DSA is about and this is the class that DSA is trying to like, uplift, lift. What exactly is like the nature of the relationship between DSA and the working class?
- [122:31]
Grace Mauser
DSA is striving to be a multiracial working class organization. I would say that right now the majority, if not entirety of our membership, not only in New York City, but also nationally, are our working class. We embrace it pretty broad definition of that because the only way you get class solidarity is by, you know, refraining from nitpicking who is middle class, who's working class, who's working poor, and like, separating the interests of those groups and recognizing that basically anyone who relies on their own labor in order to live is working glass. And they have a lot more in common than the people who live off of their own wealth. And that we should be united in basically finding the interests of the uber wealthy who. Who run our lives and run our economy. So I would say we're already a working class organization, but we want to become one much bigger and also more diverse. More people in different types of industry, more people from across different demographics. Politics, it's trending that way over the last couple years. But we need to get more of the people who vote for our candidates to also take the plunge into becoming a member and into actively organizing to better their own conditions. So I'm excited about how things are heading in that direction. It's also true that becoming a multiracial working class organization in the US is. Is notoriously difficult. You know, country that's divided violently not only by class divisions, but also biracial ones. So we have a. We have an uphill battle, but I think we're moving in the right direction. And voting trends should show that too. Like, Claire Valdez won a majority of Hispanic election districts in her area. Darielitz won a majority of black election districts in her district. District. So I think we're seeing that these ideas have more and more mass appeal.
- [124:46]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [124:46]
Grace Mauser
As voters are looking especially at establishment Democrats who are really just continuously failing to stand up to Trump. And more people are saying maybe we need to try something different.
- [124:59]
Garrison Davis
What's.
- [125:00]
Grace Mauser
What's this socialism about?
- [125:02]
Garrison Davis
There is an article in New York Times. By the time you're listening to this, like, a few weeks ago ago, looking at, like, the voting data from the last June primary, and it showed, like, the divisions in voter behavior between, like, DSA candidates and either progressive or establishment candidates was not largely divided by race, but rather by age.
- [125:20]
Grace Mauser
Yes.
- [125:21]
Garrison Davis
And I think that is another significant factor in this.
- [125:24]
Grace Mauser
And we're also notably holding on to millennial voters. I mean, trends show that unlike previous generations, millennial tend to stay fairly left as they age, in part perhaps because millennials aren't really gaining well, as we
- [125:43]
Garrison Davis
age, the capitalist system has nothing to offer them.
- [125:48]
Grace Mauser
Yeah.
- [125:48]
Garrison Davis
So, yeah. Why. Why would you make like, the fiscal conservative turn to close out. A few weeks before the June primary, Canary mission started getting very scary of the dsa. They put out this big, this big post on, you know, the. The slate candidates. But what something that I found to be more interesting rather than just like, you know, talking about who these candidates are, they focused a lot on, like, the organizational structure of New York DSA and how, quote, New York is the testing ground. The machine is already being built. The machine doesn't stop, unquote. Which sounds kind of cool.
- [126:27]
Grace Mauser
Yeah, right.
- [126:28]
Dana Al Kurd
They.
- [126:28]
Grace Mauser
They made it sound cool.
- [126:31]
Garrison Davis
If you ignore all of the, like, hor. Evil parts of the Canary mission write up, they kind of make New York DSA sound pretty cool. How, you know, it has all these members, almost like 100,000 volunteers, all these field leads that coordinates with candidates once they get into office and maintains that connection. Helps them, helps them stay accountable.
- [126:49]
Grace Mauser
It's funny too. They treat it like a big secret, like they're revealing something when, like, I literally just told you the same thing. Right. Like it's not a secret.
- [126:58]
Garrison Davis
But, you know, considering stuff like this and, you know, the DSA momentum we're seeing across the country and the reaction it's getting from the gop, the president and the Democratic Party establishment, what can organizers and, you know, chapters around the country learn from New York City, DSA's electoral strategy, or like, what's. What's something that I think New York DSA is doing that. That you would like more people to kind of understand or you'd like. You'd like people to like, you know, learn from or like, take. Take something away from what we've seen in these past few campaigns.
- [127:29]
Grace Mauser
Yeah. One thing, especially after Zuran won that I noticed is a lot of people were really focused on his charisma and his communication strategy, which. Ziran is certainly charismatic and his communication strategy was really strong and very intentional. But to me, his communication strategy was. Have not gone anywhere if one he hadn't been saying something real that people resonated with. I mean, people are not totally fooled by an. An empty charismatic vessel. I mean, otherwise, Jack Slashberg would have won In New York 12, I think. But also, there was an extremely robust field strategy that meant when someone saw a video, was inspired or interested, they could immediately find something to do to act on that feeling. And often they could find something to do basically within a mile and within a week of where they lived and what day it was. The core of this run campaign was not communications. It was field. And building up that structure and that muscle can take a lot of time. You know, it's hard to jump from zero to a mayoral race, but it is possible if you build out the kind of deep ownership from like an endorsement process and also a culture of not only valuing volunteers, but really like depending on volunteers. The campaign doesn't work if volunteers are expendable, if volunteers are treated as like an ancillary nice to have have. It only works if volunteers are both treated and truly are essential. And that kind of creates a culture where people are valued, where they become friends, where they keep coming back, where they talk to their friends and family about the campaign or things spread out from there. So what I would say both to DSA organizers in other parts of the country, but also just general organizers who are interested in replicating some of the success. I think culture is really key, centering people who are not staff, who are not the politicians, making sure that the experience of the campaign is actually built around the experience of a canvasser and moving up from there. And that's how you get a campaign that is not only accountable to the people who are building the it, but that's really fun and positive and grounded in people and place and not just in like kind of ideas and videos and things like that.
- [130:30]
Garrison Davis
So yeah, yeah, no, this is a real material aspect. It's not this just like idealistic kind of abstract thing that you're participating in or you believe in. It's a real like material process. It's a real engagement. One of the funniest things I've seen recently is that there was a Wall Street Journal article where they sent one of their like hit piece writers to attend all these DSA events. And the write up is essentially, yeah, I had a great time at all these events. Everyone was really nice.
- [130:57]
Grace Mauser
I saw that. Yeah, there was like one of our, one of our incoming assembly members, Yap Azar Dupac was like giving a shout out because he like remembered someone's name and I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Organizers remember people's names needs. That's, that's a central part of, of our work.
- [131:18]
Garrison Davis
Where could people learn more about DSA or New York DSA online or by any other means?
- [131:27]
Grace Mauser
So yes, if you're in New York City or even near New York City, you can go to Socialists nyc. There you can see how to join dsa. You can look at our events calendar which is, is robust. We're at a point where we have basically at least three events every single day that cover a wide range of geographies across the city, but also interests. There's a Run Club event on, on Friday if, if that's of interest to people. If you're not in New York City, there's almost certainly a chapter where you live. You can go to dsausa.org to join, but also to find your chapter, find out about national work that's going on, especially as it relates to like the ongoing imperialist wars we have that's often held by national dsa. So definitely encourage everyone to check those things out.
- [132:29]
Garrison Davis
Thank you, Grace, for coming on.
- [132:31]
Grace Mauser
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [132:45]
Garrison Davis
Bradley Whitford, Hot this is it could happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.
- [132:58]
James Stout
Sophie's also here.
- [133:00]
Garrison Davis
Sophie is also here.
- [133:02]
Bob Pippman
Allegedly.
- [133:03]
Garrison Davis
We were talking West Wing before this
- [133:05]
James Stout
and Sophie has been excommunicated.
- [133:08]
Garrison Davis
Sophie said something that Robert will not let us repeat.
- [133:11]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, we legally can't repeat it. You'd all go to prison and we would be right to send you there.
- [133:16]
Garrison Davis
West Wing as in the TV show?
- [133:17]
Bob Pippman
Yeah.
- [133:18]
Garrison Davis
This episode we're covering the week of July 22nd to July 29th. James, some small things to start.
- [133:25]
James Stout
Yeah, let's do it. So today on the day that we are recording, which is 29 July, the United States and Saudi forces conducting strikes inside Iraq at what they are calling Iran backed terrorists. This comes after a Iraqi national security adviser earlier this week suggested that Ukraine was responsible for strikes inside Iraq, which is a thing that isn't true. Iran again attempted to target US bases in Jordan today, but at the time of recording the US military is reporting that its missiles were all intercepted. Iranian strikes on Kurdistan have continued. And Reuters is reporting that Iran is soon to receive Chinese shoulder fired manpads, its MAN portable air defense system. Women can use them too. Probably not in Iran, but these are part of what Reuters is saying is a recently signed deal between the two states. China of course denying it, but that would be very interesting, right, considering that it was a shoulder launched manpads that shot down down the jet that triggered the massive seesaw mission a few months ago.
- [134:31]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, it's always funny when something comes around like this in the history of like military colonialist adventures overseas. You know, it wasn't so long ago that we were sending manpads into Afghanistan and the Soviets were going, oh no, all of our helicopters.
- [134:45]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [134:46]
Bob Pippman
And yeah, it's just beautiful how cyclical nature is.
- [134:49]
James Stout
Yeah. Here we are. Finally, I want to talk about the TPS temporary protective status for Haitian people. So a few weeks ago on our Supreme Court Special we spoke about the court case that effectively ended this protected status. Right. And it is set to expire this week. We know that this will impact as many as 350,000 people going with a number from Haitian bridge alliance there. A lot of these people that going back is not an option. It's not in any way going to be safe for them or they just don't simply have a place to go back to there. Many of these people will have US citizen children, children who therefore will not lose cps. Right. But it's unclear what exactly or I mean I think the administration probably doesn't give a shit what happens to their children. I'm going to keep reporting on this. There are already rumors of ICE raids targeting Haitian people. I'm going to try and get some folks on from HBA or one of the other advocacy organizations but I'm going to wait a little bit just to see how things play out in the next couple of days. But I'm afraid whatever happens won't be great.
- [135:49]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [135:50]
Garrison Davis
The House approved the $1.15 trillion 2027 National Defense Authorization act and a 216 to 212 vote largely on party lines, though six Democrats voted in support. The version of the bill that passed includes section 219 which expands cooperation between the US and Israeli militaries, specifically the co development of military technology and joint training and information sharing to deploy jointly developed technology. The budget contains 750 million for these U. S Israel joint programs. The bills currently installed in the Senate court documents revealed that last October the Trump administration canceled nearly $8 billion of clean energy grants by explicitly targeting states whose electoral college votes went to Kamala Harris in 2024 or who have two senators, others who caucus with the Democrats, that is Georgia and lawyers for the Department of Energy just explicitly laid this out in court doc saying that's how these grants were selected. Was was on these political lines.
- [136:59]
James Stout
Yeah. Incredible.
- [137:01]
Garrison Davis
Last Friday saw the White House press correspondence dinner take two. President Trump delivered a rambling monologue with what were supposed to be jokes to very tepid reactions from a largely friendly audience audience. Once again Trump joked about running for president in 2028. Wolf Blitzer presented an award to the Wall Street Journal and their reporters for their reporting on the Trump signed Epstein birthday card sparking a $10 billion defamation suit from the president. As Wolf Blitzer presented the award, Trump laughed from his seat on stage before shaking hands with all the winners. The dinner, which ostensibly is to celebrate the free press and the First Amendment took place the Same week that the Trump administration subpoenaed New York Times journalists, their spouses and one of their moms, following times reporting on the security capabilities of the Qatari gifted Air Force One. The DOJ withdrew those subpoenas last Thursday after pressure from a federal judge. But that was not the only instance of press freedom coming under attack from the government. Just this last Thursday week on July 22, the Nonprofit Newsroom Breakthrough News reported that they received a congressional subpoena from the Republican controlled House Ways and Means Committee demanding, quote, internal communications, financial records and more. A letter to the outlet from the House committee said they were, quote, unquote, disturbed by the outlet's connection to quote, Chinese Communist Party linked organizations on quote, and that the committee was investigating connections between, quote, unquote tax exempt groups and foreign nations. This was of course following the State Department's left wing terrorism summit that we covered last week. And parallel to Mark Rubio's crusade against Cuba and what he sees as Cuba aligned left wing organizations, the People's Forum, a PSL linked left wing anti imperialist protest organization and community space in New York City City, which was named in Rubio's Cuba report, was also subpoenaed by the House Committee. The People's Forum was one of the organizers of the humanitarian aid trip to Cuba earlier this year.
- [139:17]
Bob Pippman
I've got a fun thing to talk about.
- [139:18]
James Stout
All right, let's do it. What's fun?
- [139:20]
Bob Pippman
There's an article in the Guardian that just came out July 28th that is about this new company based out of Austin called Campus Guardian angel, which is taking lessons from the Ukrainian war and applying them to US public sector schools. Specifically in Ukraine. They've seen a lot of luck in stopping breaches of areas of like the front of trenches and stuff using waves of small drones.
- [139:42]
Garrison Davis
Oh, I've seen this video. I know what you're talking about.
- [139:46]
James Stout
I haven't. Hit me with it. Come on, I want to see this.
- [139:50]
Bob Pippman
These are waves of drones that can launch mace and pepper balls and have like, they've got glass breakers so they can fly through windows.
- [139:58]
Garrison Davis
They want to fucking send a drone swarm to stop a school shooter?
- [140:02]
James Stout
Yeah, that's what they wanted to.
- [140:03]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, yeah.
- [140:04]
James Stout
The thing is, with a drone swarm, it can't be a coward, which has historically been an issue for the cops. Right? It is true.
- [140:10]
Bob Pippman
This could work better. The problem is that in terms of actually stopping school shooters, this actually might be a lot more effective than calling the cops. I'm not going to say I don't think it's Possible that this could work.
- [140:20]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [140:20]
Bob Pippman
But everything about the like press around this says tells me this company is also billing itself as a way that like school administrators can use drones to fuck up kids who misspay.
- [140:29]
James Stout
Sure. I can see that being a.
- [140:31]
Romeo Kokriatsky
That's.
- [140:32]
Bob Pippman
That's kind of the what I'm expecting.
- [140:34]
James Stout
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna get maced by a drone.
- [140:37]
Bob Pippman
I want to read a quote from the article here. They could be flown from thousands of miles away and support two way communication through an embedded speakerphone, allowing the company's response team to engage verbally with a threat or communicate to teachers and school staff. Campus Guardian Angels website stated, this allows our team in our op center to communicate to law enforcement officers verbally with messages such as follow me and I'll take you to the sub suspect or open the door and we'll go in and clear the room. And I'll tell you what you see. And it's the whole thing about going after the suspect that I'm like, I can see this also just these drones being swarmed after some kids smoking pot or somebody who has a suspicious looking backpack to some shitty AI like visual identification system because you can't have a guy on the cameras at all times. I don't know. I don't think this is going to wind up saving as many lives as it is causing drone related assaults in public schools. Schools. But I guess we'll see.
- [141:26]
James Stout
Fascinating. The video's great.
- [141:28]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah.
- [141:29]
James Stout
I want to see the video. Can I?
- [141:31]
Garrison Davis
You should look up the video.
- [141:32]
James Stout
Campus Guardian Angel. Let's get a live reaction.
- [141:35]
Bob Pippman
Campus Guardian Angel. There you go.
- [141:36]
James Stout
When someone. I hear that phrase, the first thing that comes to my mind is pedophile. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking when I hear some. Okay, watch video. The first active shooter suppression service. I'm sure that's true. All right, here. Here we go. Got a couple of cops.
- [141:52]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [141:53]
James Stout
Why is it still. It's still blurry. I still can't quite. It's still. Wow. It's having a long thing. Okay, here we are.
- [141:57]
Robert Evans
Here we are.
- [141:58]
James Stout
Okay.
- [141:58]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, this does make me think about what if the latency's bad between the camera and the drone operator flying an armed drone through a public school.
- [142:05]
James Stout
Okay, we're here. We're watching a bunch of news clips. A bald man is giving a talk.
- [142:10]
Bob Pippman
That's the Navy SEAL who runs the company.
- [142:14]
James Stout
Okay, I see. Okay. Wow. The drones are moving down the corridor. Fuck me, Here they come. Oh, they sit in some little boxes. There's a cop. Cop Has a gun. Oh, there's someone in a balaclava. He's surrendering to the drones. He's down.
- [142:30]
Ari Chambers
Surrendering to the drones.
- [142:31]
James Stout
He's down. The air.
- [142:32]
Bob Pippman
He took that right from front. Footage of, like, Russian soldiers surrendering to drones.
- [142:36]
James Stout
So they don't. These guys. Okay, this guy's playing a shooter. He has a BB gun. A couple of drones have got him cornered. He's not shooting at them, though.
- [142:45]
Bob Pippman
Cowards.
- [142:46]
Robert Evans
Cowards.
- [142:46]
James Stout
Okay, here's someone from Seminole county public school schools. So the drones live in a little box. And it opens, and I like that they've done blue lighting. It's like a white box with blue lighting. Like, it's very gamer.
- [142:56]
Garrison Davis
Cody.
- [142:56]
Bob Pippman
It's a little drone carrier.
- [142:57]
James Stout
Yeah, a little. Little drone box. Here he comes. He's breached through the window.
- [143:01]
Bob Pippman
Whoa, they're fucking up a dummy.
- [143:02]
Garrison Davis
That's the cliff. Yeah.
- [143:03]
James Stout
Look at it go. They've missed. They've missed a few times, I notice. If you look closely. Yeah, way off. He's fucking way off. All right. I'm not. I don't trust these drones about this. They're like, what if there was a child nearby?
- [143:16]
Garrison Davis
No, literally, that was my.
- [143:17]
Ari Chambers
My first thought is like, this just
- [143:19]
Garrison Davis
makes it easier for cops to shoot people accidentally.
- [143:22]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [143:22]
Ilya Ayyub
Or.
- [143:22]
James Stout
Or an AI drone to shoot someone by accident. They're going after the same dude again. He's running away. Oh, he's cornered. He's gone to ground. He's surrendering.
- [143:31]
Dana Al Kurd
Wait, it's probably guys that couldn't pass the cop exam that are the ones flying the drones. Yeah.
- [143:39]
James Stout
In this pov, it looks like someone's manually firing because the drone is. Has, like, a crosshairs in its video. Now we're seeing the drones pov. They're coming out their little box. That's the Navy SEAL in through the window. And he's surrendering as this shooter. Again, he's surrendering. They haven't really engaged with the hypothetical of what if the shooter doesn't surrender to the drone? Oh, there's flying laps around him.
- [144:00]
Robert Evans
Whoa.
- [144:00]
James Stout
They took out the whole dummy. The whole dummy fell over. Okay.
- [144:04]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, that's the clip.
- [144:05]
James Stout
Wild stuff.
- [144:06]
Dana Al Kurd
Wow.
- [144:07]
James Stout
Nick. They can strobe them as well, I guess. Guess. Wow, there's a lot of cops in tactical gear. None of them have gone in. They've sent the drone in instead.
- [144:13]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, that seems realistic.
- [144:14]
James Stout
Okay. Yeah, the guy's, like, baffled by the number of targets and just lies down, surrenders. This is great. I can't see this being used to harass teenagers for doing things that every teenager does.
- [144:27]
Bob Pippman
So I wanted to talk a little bit about an article that just came out very recently in the New York Times about a metadata center in Louisiana. Now, obviously, I've talked about data centers a few times in the fairly recent past. I did a dedicated article on the fight against or the different kind of grassroots activism campaigns against new data center construction. One of the ones that is not really in any danger of being canceled through local protest is a massive Facebook data center in Richland Parish that was originally planned to be, like, a $10 billion data center and has now ballooned to, like, a $50 billion project. Facebook was not originally planning to construct in Louisiana. They were taking bids back during the Biden administration. I don't think the state was really on the map, but officials, particularly in the very poor county of Richland Parish, had a problem, which is that they had leased 1400, 440 acres to Toyota to build a factory, but Toyota had decided not to around 2006, I think, in part because the factory was proven to be uninsurable because it's a floodplain. So basically, they were like, we're not gonna spend billions of dollars in a factory. We literally can't insure in a place that's famous for having having infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes.
- [145:36]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [145:37]
Grace Mauser
Yeah.
- [145:37]
Bob Pippman
So Richland Paris had a problem. The area was already economically depressed, and Intergy, which is a Louisiana state power company, also had an issue, which is that they were not making enough money. So their CEO, Philip May, decided he wanted to put Louisiana through as a dark horse contender for this massive fucking Meta data center. And they wound up winning, and they basically wound up winning through promising to be corrupt on behalf of Meta. Right. There was a big bill being pushed at the start of 2024 because, like, the thing, they offered Meta a bunch of incentives, and the only thing they couldn't offer them was like, a tax break on the different kind of materials you buy when you're building a data center. And everywhere else that Meta was considering had already offered those. So In April of 2024, Richard Nelson, the state revenue secretary, was kind of helping to shepherd through a bill that was a tax rebate for fiber optic equipment. And they just wound up changing it in two months to a massive tax rebate for data center equipment.
- [146:31]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Equipment.
- [146:32]
James Stout
Amazing.
- [146:33]
Bob Pippman
Super fucking corrupt. But also, here's the thing. Nobody in Richland Parish really cares, because these people are incredibly fucking poor. And Facebook is bribing basically the entire county. There's some sort of local law they have that if there's like an overfunding in county tax revenue. Then like, teachers get a bunch of money. And so because of how much money Facebook has pumped in, a bunch of teachers in the parish got like a $50,000 bonus. And that's like the lowest level of what is effectively like legal bribery going on at every level of life in the parish. So I. There's no chance really that anyone is going to protest or stop the construction of this. People are enthusiastic because Meta has turned a firehose of money on one of the poorest counties in the United States. The problem is that, as I've said, the project is really obviously fucking doomed. Again, it's uninsurable because it's in a fucking floodplain. And the actual like text of the arrangement that Meta inked basically gives them the ability to bounce and leave the project within like four or five years.
- [147:29]
Dana Al Kurd
Years.
- [147:30]
Bob Pippman
Leaving Intergy and a bunch of other Louisiana interests on the hook for this entire massive project if, say, a hurricane comes through and renders the entire site inoperable. So it seems like that's kind of thing that's going to cause a massive problem and like destroy the local economy at some point. But there's so much money being slalomed out to people right now that I don't think anything's going to stop that. So I guess we, we hope that the obvious thing doesn't happen, but I kind of think it's going to anyway. Louisiana, Nice.
- [148:00]
James Stout
Let's talk about the public charge rule. So the Trump administration has announced that it will do away on September 18th with the DHS rule on public charge determination. That rule came into effect in 2022. So under the Biden administration, they're not making a new rule at this time. They're taking away the old rule. So what we will have to go off now is a text in the Immigration Nationality act and presumably they will issue some guidance soon. Right. Whatever guidance they issue is likely to be more restrictive than what we had in 2022 rule.
- [148:35]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [148:36]
James Stout
They did publish a public notice about this last year. So we knew that this was coming, that they had planned to rescind this rule and we should talk about what public charge is. We can go back to the 1999 guidance and that's what was clarified in 2022 for a definition. That guidance says that someone who is likely to be, quote, primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long term care at government expense, can be inadmissible to the United States or ineligible for permanent residency. This doesn't apply to some permanent residency applications like sij, Special immigrant Juvenile green card applications, TOU visas, asyles or refugees. Some other categories including those in the Violence Against Women Act. Public charge has generally been understood to mean cash benefits. Right. So SSSI or TANF would be the ones that like be generally understood to be that if somebody received those dhs I guess it would be USCIS could find that they would be inadmissible. Somebody who is found inadmissible for this reason previously could post a box bond and still be admitted. Right. Just the bond is basically saying I'm not going to be like a burden on the United States state. Right?
- [149:56]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [149:57]
James Stout
We're not exactly clear what they're going to do next, but we can look at the DHS presser for some clues which says quote, aligning immigration with law and congressional intent that aliens of the United States be self reliant and not dependent on taxpayer funded government benefits. This could be really bad. Right. There are a lot of different benefits people take advantage of. To include free school meals, to include things like snap, to include wic.
- [150:27]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [150:28]
James Stout
Right. To include rent controlled housing even. Right. Like they could draw this. I think what they are probably going to move towards is a sort of looking at the whole case thing as opposed to a looking for specific things in the past. Another thing that we should understand is that this is forward facing. Right. It's not just have they used this, it's are they likely to. An extremely broad interpretation of this could be very bad for people definitely looking to adjust their status. Right. So this is something we will keep an eye on. It's not ending yet. I just want to reinforce that it's on September 18th. So for people who are in these proceedings, this is something you should discuss with your immigration law lawyer if that is pertains to you. I will include links to all the government press releases and the Federal Register pieces about this if you want to read it yourself. Should take a break.
- [151:19]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, I think so.
- [151:32]
Bob Pippman
And we're back. I want to talk about Texas. And normally that's not a hopeful thing when I say I'm going to talk about Texas. In fact about 80% of the time when I come on to talk about Texas, it's because either someone in Texas committed some sort of horrible violent crime or everyone's getting excited about an election and I need to tell them not to because it's Texas.
- [151:54]
James Stout
Sure.
- [151:54]
Bob Pippman
This time I'm here to tell you there's an election in Texas. You might want to get excited about the election between Ken Paxton, Paul and Talarico.
- [152:02]
Garrison Davis
Fuck.
- [152:02]
Bob Pippman
What's his first name? I wanna say Tommy or James Tallarico.
- [152:05]
Garrison Davis
Sorry?
- [152:05]
Bob Pippman
The election between Kin Pax and Tommy Tallarico.
- [152:08]
Ari Chambers
I know.
- [152:08]
James Stout
I kept thinking about that fucking grifter.
- [152:11]
Bob Pippman
I can't stop every time I hear his name. But no, James Talarico is not a grifter. James Talarico might be a US Senator in the very near future because Ken Paxton is not doing too well. And if you aren't Texan, the name Ken Paxton may not immediately conjure dread and disgust, but it should. I would be hard pressed to name a more scandal ridden, corrupt and evil elected leader in the United States, and that includes Donald Trump. Before we get into Paxton's latest race for a U.S. senate seat, I want to tell you a little bit more about Ken, friend of the pod Ken Paxton. K Pax, as we call him. I don't think anyone actually saw the movie K Pax, so that's not really a joke. That's gonna land, but didn't know that was a movie.
- [152:49]
Robert Evans
It was a movie, James.
- [152:51]
James Stout
Okay.
- [152:51]
Bob Pippman
In 2008, when Paxton was a new Texas House member for McKinney, where my mom used to teach, the AP reported that he and another state representative had been accused by ethics watchdog Fred Lewis of greasing the skids to settle a contract with Watchguard, a company that made in car video systems that record video directly to DVD for like the cops and stuff. Paxton and Byron Cook, two state representatives, were both found to have disclosed ownership in Watchguard. But in Paxton's case, he didn't disclose his ownership until well after his 2008 personal financial statement was filed. Shortly after the deal was made, Watchguard net earnings increased year over year by 250%. And Paxton and Cook sold their shares of the company for an undisclosed amount. But a lot of money. Paxton denies any knowledge of the company's state contracts and claims he did nothing shady. However, per the barbed wire quote, Paxton claimed he had no knowledge of the company's state contracts at the time, which he would have been required to disclose with the Texas Ethics Commission under state law. However, Associated Press reporter that Watchguard's website boasted that the company company was held by an influential shareholder group that includes three state representatives.
- [153:52]
James Stout
Perfect.
- [153:53]
Bob Pippman
You hate it when you're dry snitched on by the company that bribed you. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, after coming under scrutiny, Paxton shifted his investments, including those in Watchguard, into A blind trust. A blind trust is an account managed by a third party trustee without the beneficiary's knowledge to prevent a conflict of interest. However, the Journal uncovered text between Paxton and the trustee, who is a friend of of his, concerning stock trades in 2020, a violation of the blind nature of the agreement. Paxton received $2.2 million from his investment.
- [154:23]
Garrison Davis
So that's more like a see through trust.
- [154:25]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, yeah, it's more of a see through trust. Not so blind. It's more just. You're committing a series of crimes. So he's gonna get charged with securities fraud for this, and that case is gonna wind on for a while, but not long. You know, kind of actually in the middle of this whole process of corruption in 2013, when he's a state senator, he's entering the courthouse, like, state courthouse, and a lawyer who'd just been ahead of him in line at, like, the metal detector leaves behind $1,000 Mont Blanc pen in the metal detector tray. And Ken Paxton steals it. And he's on video stealing it. Like the Dallas Morning News gets access to the video and publishes it. It's really funny.
- [155:09]
James Stout
What a series of events.
- [155:11]
Romeo Kokriatsky
Yeah.
- [155:12]
Bob Pippman
In like 2014, Ken runs for and wins Attorney General of the state of Texas. And his opponent in the campaign, Justin Nelson, runs video ads using the footage.
- [155:22]
Garrison Davis
It is really funny to have top cop be like the most corrupt criminal in Texas politics.
- [155:28]
Ari Chambers
Yeah.
- [155:29]
James Stout
And like, really dedicated to it. You know, the laziest criminal, too. Just seeing an opportunity and taking it without a second thought. It's really beautiful. Yeah.
- [155:38]
Bob Pippman
Now, despite this, Paxton was still narrowly elected, thanks in part to spending twice as much as his opponent on the campaign.
- [155:45]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [155:46]
Bob Pippman
In 2022, Paxton faced a primary challenge from George P. Bush, one of the C list Bushes and nephew of the most recent former President Bush. Huh. This would prove to be one of Ken Paxton's easier victories, even though he had been charged with and was still under investigation for securities for fraud, as well as, at this point, a separate federal investigation for alleged corruption in favor of an Austin real estate developer. I'm going to quote now from an AP article by Thomas Beaumont, quote, Paxton responded by portraying himself as a Trump era Republican, and Bush is the heir to a privileged political legacy.
- [156:18]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [156:19]
Bob Pippman
Pro Paxton organization spent more than $20 million, about twice as much as Bush and his allies. The race went into a runoff in which Paxton defeated Bush by 34 percentage points.
- [156:27]
Grace Mauser
Points.
- [156:28]
Bob Pippman
So just a panting on behalf of George P. Bush, one of the worst ass kickings in Texas state political history. It's beautiful stuff.
- [156:37]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [156:37]
Garrison Davis
I mean this is a very, very clear sort of like neocon versus the new like mega Republican Party matchup in which the neocons have just no, no ground to stand on.
- [156:46]
Robert Evans
Well, and it's, it's also just like
- [156:48]
Bob Pippman
purely on like the shallowest basis of like what sounds good to a dummy. George W. Bush. W is a nickname that's trustworthy. George P. Bush.
- [156:57]
James Stout
P. Bush.
- [156:58]
Bob Pippman
Nobody wants to be Bush anywhere. It's just a bad idea.
- [157:03]
James Stout
I do think 20 years of, of war in the Middle east have maybe, maybe like dropped the value of George X. Bush stock as they're being a
- [157:11]
Bob Pippman
George Bush anywhere in the neighborhood.
- [157:13]
James Stout
20. If we're doing George Bush's.
- [157:15]
Ari Chambers
I guess guys, we're talking about Texas.
- [157:18]
Garrison Davis
I mean even there.
- [157:20]
James Stout
Yeah, even in Texas. Whole lot of people from Texas died in was really. We didn't need to have actually.
- [157:27]
Bob Pippman
I mean even when Texans were voting for him, people had a tendency to say the man was all hat, no cattle. So I'm not super surprised about this. But anyway, Paxton beats Bush handily in the primary and then he runs against Democrat Rochelle Garza in the general. And Garza entered the campaign with a 300 page opposition research bio on Paxton, but also faced a really difficult quandary which is like what can you say about kin that voters haven't already heard and evidently decided they don't care about.
- [157:55]
Dana Al Kurd
About.
- [157:56]
Bob Pippman
Right.
- [157:56]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah.
- [157:57]
Garrison Davis
This is like the same thing with Trump, right? It's his. Like, yeah.
- [158:00]
Bob Pippman
How do you attack?
- [158:00]
Garrison Davis
He has all of this, all of this stuff that's fucked up that we all know about.
- [158:04]
Bob Pippman
Yeah.
- [158:05]
Garrison Davis
That like, is it worth just retreading all this all the same stuff.
- [158:08]
Bob Pippman
No. And it, it just wasn't right. She loses too. Not by as badly as George B. Bush, obviously. And Paxton continues to cling to office and scandal. Now, in the years after his victory, his wife divorced him. Citing the Bible, he was impeached by the state House but then acquitted by the Senate. His fraud case ended in 2024 with a judgment that he pay $300,000 in restitution. But through it all, he maintained enough Republican support to squeak by because he's,
- [158:36]
Garrison Davis
he's been very powerful as the Attorney general of that state and has done a lot to help the Republicans in that state. And like a lot of really ugly stuff has been done at the behest of and the help of Paxton.
- [158:47]
James Stout
Yeah, he's wielded his power and I'm
- [158:50]
Bob Pippman
leaving a lot of that out. I don't mean this as A comprehensive look at his past. We're kind of doing a greatest hits. I'm going to have to do a btb.
- [158:56]
James Stout
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [158:57]
Bob Pippman
K Pax deserves it. So, in that AP article, Thomas Beaumont interviewed two Paxton supporters, David and Nancy Lapp, who were retired conservatives from Woolworth, Texas, or Wolforth, Texas. And quote from that article, they described him as a conservative warrior who has been a victim of persecution. He's had his share of scandals, and almost all of them have, so it's not necessarily disqualifying anymore. Said David Lapp, 76. He's a flawed person, no doubt about it, but he fights for traditional American values.
- [159:23]
James Stout
Oh, man.
- [159:24]
Bob Pippman
He added that nowadays, as long as you're not in jail, they'll elect you,
- [159:29]
James Stout
which is very true. Yeah, yeah. That's not a wrong statement.
- [159:32]
Bob Pippman
But also you. You'll elect him, David.
- [159:35]
James Stout
Yeah. Yes.
- [159:37]
Bob Pippman
You're making a choice. Now, there is much more to the tale of Ken Paxton's scum and villainy, and this isn't an episode of btv, so I'm going to save us some time and just discuss arguably his worst and most famous call as Attorney General.
- [159:50]
Dana Al Kurd
General.
- [159:50]
Bob Pippman
Ken was elected after promising to be tough on crime and attacking his predecessors and opponents for being weak on crime. And then in 2025, a Waco attorney named Adam Hoffman went on trial for sexually abusing his son's best friend during multiple sleepovers from the age of 6 or 7 up to age 10.
- [160:06]
Dana Al Kurd
Jesus.
- [160:07]
Bob Pippman
The victim initially told a forensic interviewer he believed Hoffman had ejaculated over 1300 times in his presence. Hoffman denied the allegation, although they did like a. So semen. They looked for semen and didn't find any. So, like, I don't know. But also, he could have cleaned stuff. Who knows? Hoffman denied the allegations and called the boy a liar. The jury wound up deadlocked. The judge ordered them to keep deliberating, and long story short, it becomes a mistrial because the victim did not want to testify a second time. Paxton's prosecutor struck a plea deal with Hoffman. So Hoffman pleads guilty, but the plea deal includes no jail time or registry for. As a sex offender for Hoffman.
- [160:43]
Robert Evans
Hoffman.
- [160:44]
Bob Pippman
So that's pretty fucked up. And obviously it's Paxton's people doing this, but Paxton's the Attorney General.
- [160:50]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [160:51]
Bob Pippman
So this. This really grosses a lot of people out. And the case becomes a major avenue attack when he undergoes a primary challenge by John Cornyn earlier this year in the Senate race. Right?
- [161:00]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. He challenges Cornyn, the incumbent for Senate,
- [161:03]
Bob Pippman
the Attention around this caused critics of Paxton to look into other cases, per the Texas Tribune, quote, For instance, attack ads from Cornyn's allies highlight the case of a man originally charged with with child sex trafficking who received a deal for a probation sentence. And Judge Roy Sparkman brought up another case in open court last month, noting Paxton had also taken over a murder for hire case that he oversaw, which resulted in a misdemeanor plea and a four day jail sentence. And of course, Paxton still beat Cornyn. So you could be forgiven for being like, what could take fucking this guy out right? At this point, what could matter? And I'll be honest, I was really hesitant to have any hope about this race until extremely recently. But within the last few days, a bunch of new polling has come out that makes this look not just competitive, but winnable. The most striking example of evidence you know, in favor of that would be a recent Texas Public Opinion Research poll that showed talarico leading Paxton 45% to 40 after multiple other polls had consistently shown a nail biter of a race. Now, TPOR is officially a nonpartisan research group, but it is run by a Democratic strategist, so there's reason to suspect some favoritism. The Texas Tribune in a separate article had this to say about the survey. Quote, the group surveyed 1,048 likely voters between July 15 and July 17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Of those poll respondents, 53% voted for Donald Trump and 42% voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, making the sample only slightly bluer than the 2024 electorate which favored Trump by a 14 point margin in Texas. Trump carried Texas by 5.6 percentage points in 2020, two years after the last midterm held there during his presidency. Presidency and a recent New York Times Sienna poll from June found an overall tie in the race, 47 to 47%, with Talarico winning about 5% of Republicans. The most significant data from this recent batch of polling that has me hopeful though is that Talarico seems to be doing really well among non college educated voters, which is traditionally like the strongest group for Paxton. That's the group that has carried him over the line consistently. And from that same argument article, quote, perhaps the biggest outlier was Talarico's lead among non college educated voters who favored the Democrat by 9 percentage points, 45% to 36%. He led by 1 percentage point among those with at least a bachelor's degree. I don't want to suggest that the other races in Texas are going to go this well. Right. Ted Cruz is currently about 18 points ahead of his opponent Colin Alred, right now among non college educated Texas Texans in 2024.
- [163:34]
James Stout
Man.
- [163:35]
Bob Pippman
Yeah, like, so I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to extend past Talarico versus Paxton, but there is evidence that like Paxton's longevity with the specific group that's carried him past the line is at its end. Like maybe there's just too much scandal for him to stand up next to someone who seems as like relatively squeaky and nice as Talarico. Now, there's other things to credit Talarico's success for one of them. Is that it? He's doing a lot better than Paxton in terms of like, money right now. As of the most recent disclosures, Talarico's campaign has about $21 million on hand. Paxton has less than eight.
- [164:08]
James Stout
Huh.
- [164:08]
Bob Pippman
And if you remember, every other election I've got or every other campaign of Paxton's I've run through here, he usually had like a 2 to 1 advantage in funding over his opponents. Yeah. So the fact that that's kind of falling apart for him too, suggests this might be a really winnable race. Now, there are some reasons to doubt that too. Most polls I've seen show a number of undecided Republicans large enough to close the gap or a tie between the two candidates. Candidates led by Paxton. And if that group all breaks for kin, and historically they're likely to, things could be really close or wind up in favor of Paxton. Right. One of the polls found about 14% of voters of all political stripes are unsure of their picks. And among undecided voters, it looks like Paxton has the most room to grow. About 19% of that block said they lean towards a Republican compared to 10% who lean towards Talarico. But most of them were just totally on the fence, or at least that's what they, they said. So a lot is going to depend on how those people break. I'm not saying this is definitely going to go telo's way, but if you're talking about like, what is a race where maybe the Democratic Party might want to actually invest money in, I'd say here this thing seems winnable. And I don't say that about Texas races often.
- [165:14]
Garrison Davis
It is a very particular matchup.
- [165:16]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [165:16]
Garrison Davis
Paxton has a lot of unique vulnerabilities. Tyler Cosel is doing very well in polls for Latino voters, up like 45 points ahead of Paxton. And that will be very crucial. Crucial Especially considering ice like that's going to be a big factor in this race.
- [165:30]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [165:31]
Garrison Davis
There was an ICE killing in Texas just a few weeks ago. Certainly a lot of funding could come to Paxton towards the end of the race. Sure the campaign finance ratio could could change dramatically over time. But I do wonder if the sort of strategy from the GOP right now which is to like paint paint Talarico very early on is this like you know woke gender ideology maybe will kind of run a little bit hollow now that Trump is in charge and Republicans control all branches of government and the sort of like economic issues that can not be blamed on like woke liberals sending, you know, money to sex changes in prison. It's going to be an interesting race. Very close.
- [166:15]
Ari Chambers
Yeah.
- [166:15]
Garrison Davis
Another close race next Tuesday, the Michigan Senate primary with I see Israel in my dreams. Haley Stevens versus is Dr. Abdul Al said they had their last last debate on on Monday else he'd continually hit Stevens for her corporate funding, $60 million of outside spending, $46 million of APAC funding. And the the moderator was really going after Stevens for this too asking if if all this APAC funding will result in Stevens quote unquote doing their bidding, referring to AIPAC and like the pro is Israel lobby.
- [166:54]
James Stout
It's kind of interesting.
- [166:55]
Garrison Davis
And she also lied about receiving funding from the local utility company during the debate. So early voting for that's already started. The primary's next Tuesday. We'll cover that on next Executive Disorder. Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race also had a debate on Tuesday. Had not seen that yet but she is really pulling ahead in polls right now. But that that primary is still a
- [167:19]
James Stout
few weeks away way.
- [167:21]
Garrison Davis
But to stay on the topic of evil Republicans on July 21st Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed domestic violence allegations against Republican Representatives Max Miller and Corey Mills saying quote, well the key word there is allegation and then said that the House Ethics Committee would shake things out of those two Reps. Max Miller of Ohio Ohio is facing re election in the midst of escalating legal issues including restraining orders, a defamation case and a custody battle. Max Miller's ex wife Emily Morano of the America First Policy Institute and daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Morano has accused Max Miller of abusing her and their daughter while investigating suspected child abuse. Morano told Bay Village police that May Miller yelled and held a gun to her head after she turned on the lights to change their baby's diaper.
- [168:20]
James Stout
Jesus.
- [168:21]
Garrison Davis
According to a police report, Marano told police about another domestic violence incident from earlier this year where during a custody exchange, Miller, quote, grabbed and threw her against the wall, which resulted in an obvious grab mark on her upper arm and bruising to her stomach and side where she hit the wall, unquote. This alleged incident also was in front of their daughter and the police report later states that Rono's daughter told her, quote, daddy kill you. Morano and Miller were married in 2022 and Morano filed for divorce in August of 2024 after telling Miller that she wants a divorce. In June of 24, Rono alleged that he threw hot steaming water at her. And in a recorded phone call, Miller admits to what he refers to as the water incident after his wife said on the call that he abused her and, quote, poured a steaming hot water on her neck. On the call, Miller said that the, quote, unquote, water incident wasn't done with, quote, unquote, intent to hurt his wife. Morano told police she moved out of the house because she was, quote, unquote, scared of him. Now, all of these allegations came to light earlier this year after Marano discovered her two year old daughter's collarbone was broken after the child came back from Miller's house this past February. This prompted a cascade of investigations and back and forth court filings which eventually made their way into news reporting. A Bay Village police report investigating suspected child abuse stated that a child Protection special specialist found that the two year old's broken collarbone was accompanied by a bruise that, quote, appears to be in a handprint and appears to have been inflicted. According to another police report obtained by Mother Jones, Marano recounted her daughter saying, quote, daddy's house is scary. Miller, of course, denies all claims of abuse or domestic violence and has theorized that the broken collar bone was possibly caused by a seat belt.
- [170:25]
James Stout
Why is a kid wearing a seat belt? Shouldn't they be in a car seat when they're two?
- [170:29]
Garrison Davis
Yes, this was part of the investigation because Miller said this, okay? And he had to show police that he had properly installed a car seat. Right after news outlets reported on the spousal and child abuse allegations, Miller filed a defamation suit against his existence wife. And this is not the first time Miller has used a defamation suit to shut down allegations of abuse. In 2021, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary in Trump's first term, wrote in the Washington Post that her unnamed boyfriend from 2019 to 2020, quote, unquote, got physical with her, that their relationship, quote, unquote, turned abusive and that her ex boyfriend had, quote, anger issues and a violent streak. These claims were later included in a box book. But earlier that year, Politico reported that Max Miller, quote, pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her in the face at his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her, unquote. Max Miller sued Grisham for, quote, libelous and defamatory false statements made about him, but he dismissed the case in 2023 after agreeing to a settlement. Though Grisham is now suing M. Miller for breaking the settlement's NDA by publicly claiming that Grisham fabricated abuse allegations against him while defending himself against new allegations of abuse by his ex wife. Max Miller's abuse allegations have been a sort of open secret in Washington for a while. When. When George Santos was dealing with his whole thing a few years ago on the House floor, he referred to Max Miller as a woman beater.
- [172:08]
James Stout
Huh.
- [172:08]
Garrison Davis
And talked about how he didn't want the Republican Party to just turn into repeating media attacks against each other as he was being kicked out of Congress.
- [172:17]
James Stout
Wild.
- [172:18]
Garrison Davis
He is running for reelection in Ohio.
- [172:22]
Ilya Ayyub
Yeah.
- [172:23]
Garrison Davis
And Miller has maintained support from Republicans in Congress and it's been backed by the President for years. Let's go on a break and then discuss some more news.
- [172:47]
James Stout
All right, we are back and I want to update people on the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund versus Rubio case we spoke about a few weeks ago. So I have reached out to Public Citizen about this and they haven't got back to me. I'd love to do an interview with them. I have worked with them before on some access to med stuff, so. So hopefully someone from Public Citizen will listen and reply. But we have learned a lot from the new filings in this case. One of the things we learned was that people were required by ICE to meet Iranian government officials, the very people they had fled to the USA to be safe and protected from. It seems that the person who met them was introduced as a consul. But Iran obviously doesn't have a consulate in the United States. Right. They have the Iranian interest section, which is in the Pakistani Embassy. This person had information about their cases. In other cases, they were told they had to take calls from the Iranian interest section and they wouldn't be allowed to return to their housing pod until they spoke to them on the phone. In one of these calls, the Iranian officials said they had a transcript of the person's credible fear interview. That is wild. Right. So the credible fear interview is when people explain why they feel fear going back to where they have fled, I. E. What it is that they think the Iranian state in this case is going to do to them. So what the credible fear interview will have will have detailed for these people would have been their participation in Jin Amini protests. I saw that in several of the testimonies. I've also spoken to dozens of Iranian migrants who participate in those protests, were arrested, released, and realized that they were going to be arrested again and fled or fled before they were arrested, arrested or their participation in the Christian faith. You see that in a lot of the testimonies in this case, if the Iranian government have them writing down they're Christians, they were distributing Bibles, they were evangelizing, like, it is absolutely not safe for these people to go back. Some of these meetings actually appear to have occurred right here in San Diego. The Otay Mesa Detention center facility. People were bought to the Iranian government official and the official then sat down with them and tried to persuade them to return to Iran. The official had a list of names of people who they were going to meet and they read it out. So even some people who weren't there, their names were read out. So it looks like the officials either selected these people or were told by ICE who these people were. One of the people names, the individual is Mr. Mehrabadi and he threatened that they would be sent to, quote, Africa. So this is the United States doing either its chain refoulment or it's sending people to third countries. Deportation. Right. We also see a lot about the current state of the asylum system in these declarations. One person attests that she has been and will be tortured in Iran. The judge responds to her that everyone gets tortured in Iran. In their interview with the quote unquote consul, one person said they were told by the consul, even in the US if you are political, the same things can happen to you, which is very clearly a threat. Right point. The regime agent also knew when her husband was being deported and to where. So he had that information before he met this woman. In another case, someone testified then ICE agent said, I will force you. This is my job. And this was with reference to signing self deportation papers. They cuffed the woman and then quote, he literally forced my fingerprint by forcing my finger to a stamp and then on a paper paper, no matter how much I tried to take back my finger. Which is pretty wild. It's not the first time I should add that we've heard the allegations of them doing exactly this. So many of the people in this document are women who have stories exactly like the Iranian women I met in the Darien Gap. Many of them also say they took that route they went from Iran to either Venezuela or Brazil and then traveled north from there. They also give details of their detention conditions which are predictably appalling. Right? With one writing quote. Water here smells very bad and we are always itchy. We all have red dots on our skin that have also gone away on my body after I started antibiotics and then skipping a bit. The dental care here is unbelievably dangerous. Any happening with teeth and they only extract. The doctors here have already extracted three of my teeth and have told me they will extract another three more when my antibiotics remove over. I have always taken care of my teeth. They also talk about the I'll just quote from one of their one of their statements here this disclosure and then I'm adding this of asylum information to the Iranian government. Returning to the quote here has materially increased the likelihood that I will be detained, interrogated or tortured or killed if I ever return to Iran. Another said when I saw him talking about the Iranian Conflict Council, I was disgusted with the US Government by forcing us to meet with agents of the regime, which I told my pod manager. Many of these people have been in detention for more than a year. It seems like most of these people entered in 2025. A member of staff at the Iranian Interest Section also called the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and informed them that United States State Department had approached the Interest Section to ask for help getting rid of Iranian detainees. That's a quote that last's getting rid of. The Iranian officials said they met monthly with ICE to select individuals for deportation and that ICE provided their asylum applications to the Iranians. At these meetings they said they met with someone of Indian descent with a Georgetown degree who is described as the General Director of the Middle East Section. The meeting stopped when the war with Iran began began, but apparently they still deliver documents, or at least they were delivering documents in March. This call from the Iranian Interest Section to the IALDF is wild. It involves this Iranian official recounting for instance that on the first deportation flight in September of last year, two people cut their wrists with razors, presumably attempting to end their lives rather than go back to Iran. It also details how in many cases the United States can't get get the people's travel documents together because they fly via a third country to Iran. Right. There's no direct flights between the US and Iran and so these flights end up not being as full as the United States no doubt hopes. He also says that the clothing and state of the detainees were so poor that the Iranian government Official purchased some clothing from Costco with his own money. He also said that at no point did the United States ask Iran to guarantee their wealth being in Iran. The official kind of posits himself as like, intervening on behalf of the Iranian people to make sure they're treated correctly. Right. Which is how generally one would expect the consular administration of a state to intervene on behalf of their citizens. This, though, is different because these people are fleeing the very government that he represents. Right. I will keep covering this. I will also link to the court listener page where you can read these testimonies. They're all handwritten, written. They can be a little harder to read sometimes. But there's some really shocking and upsetting stuff in there.
- [179:59]
Garrison Davis
Forgive me if you've talked about this already, maybe this would help for some listeners too. Like, how does this relate to the asylum laws that the United States has? Like, have they been denied asylum in so called immigration courts and this is the process for removal? And how is that actually, like decided? Because, like, these people seem to have, like, in the testimony you're reading, very credible fears to the point where they're attempt like harming themselves to avoid going back to this state.
- [180:26]
James Stout
Yeah. So it seems like most of these people entered after Trump came in with his day one, effectively like southern border crossing asylum ban. Right. And so they are having to fight their cases from detention, which is what they are doing. In some cases they are already appealing because the government has found that they don't have credible fear or that they're otherwise not eligible for a sign asylum. The reason the IALDF knows about these people is that that is what it is doing as a nonprofit group is helping them fight, fight their cases.
- [180:56]
Dana Al Kurd
Sure.
- [180:56]
James Stout
It shows a pretty bleak situation for like, people do still get asylum. I hear about it occasionally. You know, I hear from, from friends in, in the community who do court accompaniments. They occasionally have a success still. But with the way that the Trump administration is purging the ranks of immigration, quote, unquote, judges is that's getting less and less likely. So, like, these people are in that system, Many of them are either in ever spiraling delays. Right. Because we have fewer and fewer of these judges because they're getting purged. More judges are coming on board now or they're already appealing or going through the cat process, convention against torture process. Right. These are the sort of asylum claims that are like in the bullseye of what an asylum claim is.
- [181:41]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [181:41]
James Stout
All of these people in there, I didn't want to read them out because I don't think there's any reason to traumatize people. People, nearly all of them detail torture. Most of the women detail sexual abuse. They talk about the horrific things they went through on the way here to like this is like front and center of what you would think a textbook asylum case would be normally. And there are exemptions for some Christian minorities or religious minorities from Iran who are largely Christian. People ran some of these visa bans, but these people didn't come that way, right? They didn't come by applying for a visa. They came across the southern border. Like it's very possible possible that one of the people in this case is somebody I met in the Darien Gap. Like the timing would line up. It's been really fucking upsetting for me reading these things.
- [182:22]
Garrison Davis
Thank you for that context. Earlier in this episode we talked about attacks on the First Amendment as a part of the Trump admins crackdown on the left. But before we close, I want to go over a novel case of state repression against an Atlanta based activist. This is a first of its kind case focusing on an extreme privacy feature of Graphene os, an open source operating system for Android phones. This feature is known as a duress password, a special code that when inputted into a phone's locked password screen, triggers a wipe of certain data on the phone. Last November, a federal grand jury indicted an Atlanta activist for allegedly wiping the data on his phone phone after being detained at the airport upon reentering the country in January of 2025. U.S. attorneys say this was in violation of Title 18 USC Section 2232A, I.e. the destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure. The short single paragraph indictment reads that the defendant, quote, did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of and otherwise take any activity action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone for the purpose of preventing and impairing the government's lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control before and during the search for and seizure of property by Customs and Border Patrol Tactical Terrorism Response Team Supervisory Officer jc That's the name of the officer. Last week this case had its first hearing hearing which was focused on a motion filed by the defense to suppress evidence and statements for violations of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. According to the motion, the FBI Atlanta Joint Terrorism Task Force coordinated with CPB to question and search US Citizen Samuel Tunick as he was returning to the United States from the Dominican Republic because of his association with the Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement or Stop Cop City, which we have covered on this show, basically. After arriving at the airport, CPB put Tunic in secondary inspection where their Tactical Terrorism Response Team, quote, Proceeded to question Mr. Tunic, search Mr. Tunic's body and all his belongings, and insisted that he provide the password for his phone. Despite Mr. Tunick's request to speak with his lawyer. Lawyer. And not engaged in any further questioning, the officers insisted they could question Mr. Tunick and search his phone to determine whether he had child porn. Evidently, this was a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr. Tunick's connections with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, unquote. Journalist Timothy Pratt reported in the Guardian that during last week's hearing, it was revealed that unbeknownst to to Samuel Tunic, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watch list and that a Homeland Security agent circulated an email three hours before Tunic arrived back in Atlanta containing his name and photo and indicated he was being investigated for, quote, unquote, suspected terrorism activities. I think it is important to mention that Samuel Tunick, to this point has not been charged with terrorism and does not face any charges forges directly related to protest activity for Defend the Atlanta Forest or Stop Cop City. According to the defense's motion, Tunic early and repeatedly during questioning said that he would not speak without his lawyer. But the officers ignored these requests and never Mirandized Tunic. The motion states that the officers told him, quote, because you're refusing to talk, which is your right, we have the authority to go through your first phone to see what we're looking for. After officers demanded his phone password a second time, the Tunic asked again why he wasn't allowed to call his lawyer. And the officers responded, quote, when it comes to immigration and customs, right, it's a whole different ball game. And we have search authority. We don't need a warrant, unquote.
- [186:34]
James Stout
I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. If this is something you are concerned about, then you should seek out legal counsel. I'm just going to give you my best understanding of it. This is a civil situation. Well, it's also a criminal situation for him now. But like when you're entering the border, these are civil proceedings. And so that's why you're generally not Mirandised. Depending on where you enter the United States and what circuit you are in, they can inspect your telephone. My German understanding goes to it is should you refuse to unlock that telephone phone, you can expect to leave without your telephone. The general way that they do this is for them to put the phone on airplane mode and then search it, because they are searching the Device that is entering the United States, not the remote cloud stuff that is not on the device. Right. Because they are inspecting a thing that is crossing the border. Right. And that is within their purview view in most circuits in the United States right now as federal immigration officers. And then the other thing I would add, at some point, I think we're going to see a Supreme Court case about it, and this might be the one. Right.
- [187:47]
Garrison Davis
That's very possible. Yeah.
- [187:48]
James Stout
Albeit there'll be other elements to this case. Right. Like, as you said, like who destroyed the data that was on the phone is something that's very much not legally clear to me. Right. Did graphene destroy the data? Did the BP agents, when they entered that passcode, destroy the data? Right. Or did the person destroy the data?
- [188:05]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [188:05]
Grace Mauser
This.
- [188:05]
Garrison Davis
This case is a whole bunch of legal gray areas. This is the first time we've seen a case about a duress password. The exact way this interrogation went and introduces a lot of questions on when exactly this regular, you know, border patrol questioning turned into an actual interrogation based on allegations of a crime.
- [188:23]
James Stout
Right.
- [188:24]
Garrison Davis
With this mention of child sexual abuse material.
- [188:27]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [188:27]
Garrison Davis
And all those things could possibly trigger different legal statutes in various court cases. Now, the motion says that officers explained to Tunic that he would have to give over access to his phone, quote, whether it was done with his cooperation or not. Eventually, Mr. Tunic provided a password to his cell phone and e reader. According to the government, when the CPB officers entered the password on his cell phone, quote, the screen went blank, flashed several times, times, and the phone appeared to restart, unquote. After this, another officer entered the room to conduct a pat down, which Tunic did not consent to, but they did anyway. Then a DHS agent arrived with three other individuals to conduct another interview, which Tunic did not consent to, and pointed to his attorney's card to quote from the motion. Again, quote, the agent explained that he was seizing Mr. Tunick's electronic devices and that they would be returned to Mr. Tunic after 30 days.
- [189:24]
James Stout
Days.
- [189:25]
Garrison Davis
Notably, the DHS agent explained that Mr. Tunick was, quote, not under arrest, but once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave, unquote. So this motion to suppress evidence argued that the border questioning became, quote, unquote, custodial in nature when Mr. Tunick was not able to leave, was never informed of his rights, and was denied access to his law lawyer. And so any, quote, evidence obtained from his phone, or lack thereof, should be suppressed as fruits of unlawfully obtained evidence. The specific statute that he's being charged with 18 USC 2232 refers to, quote, the government's lawful authority to take such property. So this motion is arguing that the exact way this properties was taken was not lawful.
- [190:14]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [190:15]
Garrison Davis
To quote from the motion again, again, which I think will expound on this quote, CVB officers introduced themselves to Mr. Tunick and explained that they were looking for people who are pedophiles. Officers justified their questioning and demands to search Mr. Tunick's phone by stating that they had to confirm whether he possessed child porn. The government's reports do not indicate any suspicion whatsoever that Mr. Tunic was in possession of child porn, but rather that their purpose in detaining Mr. Tunic and seizing his blood belongings was to investigate his ties with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. Tunick's unmorandized statement, the alleged wiping or encryption of the contents of his phone by providing agents with a specific password is testimonial in nature. Mr. Tunic had not been charged with committing a crime in connection with the Defend the Atlanta Force movement. But law enforcement seemingly took advantage of the relaxed constitutional protections at the border to try to dig up evidence on quote and the the motion states that circuit courts have contradictory rulings if this sort of search is permitted. If, if you can search someone's phone at the border not to actually intercept digital contraband, but to fish for evidence in an unrelated criminal investigation. Now, something that may come up if this goes to trial is technically using graphene's stress password. It does not delete all of the data on the phone phone, but rather the phone loses the ability to access its encrypted data. GrapheneOS wrote on X the everything app quote ardurest pin password leaves all the encrypted data on the device intact. It only wipes keys in the hardware key stores the secure element and encryption metadata. It's an ear instant and then it powers off the device to wipe ram, unquote. So basically it wipes what the phone needs to decrypt its content contents and read the data, though graphene followed up on Twitter quote we doubt that's legally different from wiping data, unquote. So this technicality may or may not actually matter to the court, but this might not be a sort of get out of jail loophole that I see some people online presenting it as graphene. OS further explained that the duress password wipe should be legal not because of this quote unquote tech loophole poll, but because the defendant, quote, wasn't being investigated for any actual crime, wasn't under arrest, wasn't read his rights before being interrogated, wasn't under oath, etc. Adding that it's quote, near impossible that they get anything of value if the phone was in before first unlock with a strong passphrase plus second factor fingerprint unlock setup, unquote. Whether or not this stress password was used, it is very unlikely that federal authorities would have been able to break into to a phone running the graphene operating system. Yeah, that means that the device has been fully turned off and has not been unlocked since being turned back on. Similarly, it is very hard to break into an iPhone running iOS's lockdown mode with a complex alphanumeric password before first unlock. The combination of all those things can make it really hard to break in.
- [193:30]
James Stout
We saw that, right, Rhys, with a reporter from get who one of the broadsheets whose phone was using lockdown mode that they've said they couldn't open. Right. Yeah, I guess I will just say that like if people want to know more about border searches and telephones, I would suggest going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's page, eff.org they have a great deal of information and you can find a lot there. It's currently the Southern District of New York, which is the one that requires a warrant. But there are various other degrees that we don't have the time, nor is this the place for us to go over. So yeah, Eff, always a good source for this shit.
- [194:09]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. But like James said, this is a case that could become Supreme Court precedent over time. This is, this is invoking a bunch of legal gray areas. The motion here to suppress evidence probably won't be decided on until at least October. So this is going to go on for quite a while. This is another new frontier in digital privacy and how that relates to the law, which the Supreme Court has taken up a lot of cases on recently. So this could become a very influential case going forward. So I wanted to go over some of these details now and we will certainly be covering this in the future as this case progresses.
- [194:45]
James Stout
Yeah, the outlook hasn't been great so far, I would say with this. Like the US vs Belmonte Cardoso was the most recent case of that that was I think this week or last week. Again, not the place to go into this. But I will include a link in the source notes if you want to read about some of the case law.
- [195:05]
Garrison Davis
I think that does it for us today. Sick add it could happen here.
- [195:11]
Robert Evans
Oh good.
- [195:12]
James Stout
Yep. If you would like to email us, it's coolzonetipson me I'll include the legal
- [195:21]
Garrison Davis
fundraiser for Sam Tutnick's case below.
- [195:25]
Bob Pippman
We reported the news the news reported
- [195:28]
Ari Chambers
we reported the news.
- [195:35]
Bob Pippman
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more
- [195:37]
Robert Evans
episodes every week from now until the
- [195:39]
Bob Pippman
heat death of the universe.
- [195:41]
Grace Mauser
It Could Happen.
- [195:41]
Dana Al Kurd
Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,
- [195:46]
Grace Mauser
visit our website, Cool Zone Media media.
- [195:48]
Garrison Davis
Com, or check us out on the
- [195:49]
Ari Chambers
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.