It Could Happen Here Weekly 184

Summary

Podcast Summary: Behind the Bastards – It Could Happen Here (Weekly 184)
Release Date: May 31, 2025
Hosts: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Behind the Bastards, titled "It Could Happen Here," the hosts delve into multiple pressing issues, including the crisis surrounding transgender healthcare in the UK, the intricacies of the U.S. asylum system, and a disturbing act of anti-Semitic violence in Washington, D.C. The episode intertwines investigative journalism with personal insights, highlighting systemic failures and societal challenges.

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2. Transgender Healthcare Crisis in the United Kingdom

Guests: Mira Lazine, Freelance Trans Journalist

The episode opens with a grim exploration of the escalating oppression of transgender individuals in the UK. Mira Lazine discusses a two-stage cover-up involving the National Health Service (NHS) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) concerning transgender youth.

• NHS Whistleblowers:
  Mia Wong [04:50] describes how whistleblowers within the NHS revealed that 16 transgender minors had committed suicide due to prolonged waitlists for essential healthcare. Lazine explains, "Doctor for Safeguarding Children... tried to warn people basically. And they all ignored him."

• The CAST Report:
  The CAST report, authored by Dr. Hilary Cass, is criticized for its flawed methodology and anti-trans bias. Lazine points out, "She left out a bunch of studies, especially more recent ones with better methodologies."

• Media and Government Response:
  The BBC is accused of disproportionate coverage favoring anti-trans narratives. Lazine states, "They rushed to report on it, something they claimed was not newsworthy previously."

Notable Quote:
"These meeting minutes are still public too. Moggan is not bullied in that. It's still on his Twitter account. Good Law Project is not fully a thing anymore. They're kind of dissolving their stuff right now." — Mira Lazine [17:10]

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3. Investigating Deportation Flights and Government Accountability

Guests: Clayton English, Aviation Enthusiast and Journalist

The discussion shifts to the use of private jets for deportation flights, highlighting Plane N588AT, which was involved in transporting individuals to Djibouti under suspicious circumstances.

• Flight Tracking:
  Clayton English [53:30] explains his use of aviation tracking apps to identify the plane's route, noting its unusual departure from Harlingen Airport.

• Government Response:
  Despite initial inaction, local authorities in Ireland begin investigating after awareness is raised through aviation enthusiasts. English describes, "I called the Shannon Garda... trying to send someone to check the plane."

Notable Quote:
"This is a luxury jet... moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for kidnappers." — Clayton English [57:00]

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4. The U.S. Asylum System Under Siege

Guest: Taraji P. Henson, Immigration Lawyer

Taraji P. Henson provides a critical analysis of the deteriorating asylum process in the United States, exacerbated by recent executive actions.

• Expedited Removal Proceedings:
  Henson [81:31] discusses how individuals crossing the southern border now face immediate deportation without the usual due process, under sections like 212F and 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

• Case Study – Primrose:
  The episode details the plight of Primrose, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker, illustrating systemic failures such as judges issuing deportation notices mid-case. Henson remarks, "It's completely inappropriate... it's a due process violation."

• Calls to Action:
  Henson emphasizes the importance of legal representation and community support, urging listeners to connect with mutual aid networks and support affected individuals.

Notable Quote:
"These auditions are finite. So if you know any asylum seeker or can support any asylum seeker right now, now, they made it in. Let's give them their best shot." — Taraji P. Henson [87:43]

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5. Anti-Semitic Violence and Media Response

Hosts: Greg Lodd, Debbie Brown, James

The episode covers the harrowing shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., carried out by Elias Rodriguez, a man with deep-seated anti-Israel sentiments.

• Incident Details:
  Debbie Brown [119:03] describes the event where Rodriguez targeted and killed two individuals outside the Capitol Jewish Museum, chanting "Free Palestine" during his arrest.

• Perpetrator's Background:
  Rodriguez's manifesto reveals pro-Hamas and anti-imperialist ideologies. His associations with extremist online communities like Something Awful and Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) are highlighted, though it's clarified that his actions are not typical of these groups.

• Media and Political Reactions:
  The international backlash includes condemnation from U.S. officials and the Israeli government, with Netanyahu labeling Rodriguez's actions as "today's version of Heil Hitler."

Notable Quote:
"Free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler... They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years." — Netanyahu [119:52]

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6. Impact of the U.S. Budget Bill on Trans Healthcare

Reporters: Mia Wong, Maddy Kastigan, Mira Lazine

Mia Wong reports on the House Resolution 1 (HR1), a budget bill that poses significant threats to transgender healthcare through Medicaid cuts and restrictions.

• Medicaid Cuts:
  Mia explains, "Republicans implemented a ban for gender-affirming care for minors... expanding it to all ages on Medicaid and ACA plans."

• Legislative Strategies:
  The bill uses reconciliation processes to embed policy changes into the budget, bypassing standard legislative scrutiny. Advocates urge citizens to contact their senators to oppose these provisions.

• Long-Term Implications:
  Hosts discuss the necessity of building grassroots support and mutual aid networks to counteract ongoing and future legislative attacks on marginalized communities.

Notable Quote:
"We cannot rely on the government to give us essential healthcare... We need to start focusing on building long-term solutions." — Maddy Kastigan [118:29]

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7. Conclusion and Calls to Action

The episode concludes with strong encouragement for listeners to engage in activism, support affected communities, and stay informed. Emphasis is placed on the power of grassroots movements and the importance of solidarity in combating systemic injustices.

Closing Quote:
"The frontier of the rebellion is everywhere and even the smallest insurrection pushes our line forward... These things can be resisted in so many different ways." — Mia Wong [148:00]

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Key Takeaways:

• Systemic Failures: Both the UK and U.S. healthcare and asylum systems are failing marginalized communities, leading to tragic consequences.

• Media Bias and Government Accountability: There is a concerning trend of media outlets and government bodies either ignoring whistleblower evidence or favoring biased reports that undermine vulnerable populations.

• Call for Activism: Listeners are urged to take actionable steps, including contacting legislators, supporting legal defenses, and joining mutual aid networks to resist oppressive policies.

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Recommended Actions for Listeners:

1. Contact Senators: Advocate against discriminatory budget provisions affecting transgender healthcare.
2. Support Legal Efforts: Donate to organizations fighting for asylum seekers' rights.
3. Join Mutual Aid Networks: Engage with local groups to provide direct support to affected individuals.
4. Stay Informed: Follow reputable sources and investigative journalists covering these critical issues.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "These meeting minutes are still public too. Moggan is not bullied in that." — Mira Lazine [17:10]
• "This is a luxury jet... moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for kidnappers." — Clayton English [57:00]
• "These auditions are finite. So if you know any asylum seeker or can support any asylum seeker right now, now, they made it in. Let's give them their best shot." — Taraji P. Henson [87:43]
• "Free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler... They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years." — Netanyahu [119:52]
• "We cannot rely on the government to give us essential healthcare... We need to start focusing on building long-term solutions." — Maddy Kastigan [118:29]
• "The frontier of the rebellion is everywhere and even the smallest insurrection pushes our line forward." — Mia Wong [148:00]

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Further Listening:

For more in-depth analysis and ongoing coverage of these critical issues, subscribe to Behind the Bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

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Transcript

[Clayton English]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Greg Lodd]

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated.

[Clayton English]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lod, and this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes, we met them at their recording studios.

[Debbie Brown]

Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

[Taraji P. Henson]

It makes it real.

[Mia]

It really does.

[James]

It makes it real.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drug Podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

Being able to say, I feel like.

[Clayton English]

Crying, so I will cry today. I'm a little depressed. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and.

[Greg Lodd]

Deeply well is a sanctuary for your healing.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Debbie Brown, healer, well being, expert.

[Clayton English]

Teacher and fellow seeker.

[Robert Evans]

And each week we explore what it.

[Debbie Brown]

Means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices. So today, wow, I feel really powerful.

[Clayton English]

And ready to serve and use my skills and it's like that's the heart of what it is to be an authentic woman. To hear this and more ways to prioritize your peace. Listen to Deeply well from the Black.

[Debbie Brown]

Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app.

[Clayton English]

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts at.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And T connecting changes everything.

[James]

And it's gonna take us to heal us.

[Greg Lodd]

It's Mental Health Awareness Month and on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey.

[Clayton English]

I never let that little girl inside of me die.

[Greg Lodd]

To hear this and more things on.

[James]

The journey of healing.

[Greg Lodd]

You can listen to just heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts at.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And T connecting changes everything.

[Debbie Brown]

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I 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 gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

[Mia]

Hey, this is Mia from the Future. This was recorded in the Now Hal days of January 2025. Lots of things have changed. Basically everything everywhere has gotten worse. This is the story about, about the oppression of trans people in the United Kingdom that is very bleak. In many ways, the United Kingdom has gotten worse since then. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the definition of sex in the Equality act of 2010 is quote, binary and is decided by, quote, biological sex. So whatever the sex that some fucking doctor assigns you at bir your sex, specifically under the Equalities Act, a bunch of people in the UK have decided that this means that like the courts have ruled that like sex in general means quote, unquote, biological sex. That's actually not what they ruled, but they're doing it anyways. So there's been a whole bunch of things where for example, the labor party has started purging trans women from any like one of their bodies that's supposed to be a woman's body. So through the oppression of trans people continues to escalate. Yeah, our only path out is just open an active resistance against them. In a more positive note, Mira, our guest for this episode, has since this episode has struck out on her own and is now the mind ingenious behind the outlet Free Radical, which we will link to here. And you should go support her work because it's great. Now to our episode. It's It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is largely about the U.S. that might, that might exaggerate the extent to which it's about the US but it is. Most episodes are about the US but sometimes it's about other places. And one of the frequent places that it's about is the United Kingdom. And specifically we're here to talk about the United Kingdom because the UK is both an image of the present and the future of the oppression of trans people. And there have been a bunch of just absolutely horrible things happening there that have gotten very little press attention. And one of the one of those things is what appears to be a like, I guess I would call it like a two stage cover up of a bunch of suicides of trans kids on waiting lists for healthcare. And with me to talk about this fucking terrible shit is Mira Lazine, who's a freelance trans journalist. Mira, welcome to the show.

[Greg Lodd]

Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Mia]

Yeah, so, I mean, God, this is one of those I, I always am Excited to talk to people, but I swear to God, like, one out of every four times this happens. It's like a. I have to pull, like. Do I want to say I'm excited to talk to you about this? Because, like, Jesus Christ, this is the most depressing I've seen in ages.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

It's not a fun story. It's an important one. Probably one of the most important I've ever corded on, but not remotely fun.

[Mia]

Yeah. So let's. Let's go back to the halcyon days of mid 2024. I don't know. Things were extremely bad then too, but they're worse now. But they were also bad then. Yeah. So can you talk a bit about how this story started and about what was going on with the National Health Service, the nhs, which is the British, basically, the British healthcare system has run out of National Health Service. Can you talk about the whistleblowers there and what was going on with them?

[Greg Lodd]

So, yeah, I first became aware of what was going on independently. I was working with Alejandra Caraballo, the clinical instructor of Cyber Law Clinic at Harvard. She's a friend of mine, and we worked together on subjects she and Ira and some other people were talking about the horrific wait lists going on with the nhs. It's terrible there. I mean, not even just for trans stuff. There's probably millions of reports of people having to wait months to get essential health care. Some people have died just from, like, their conditions being on the wait list. We had both stumbled upon some old news reports from, like, years prior about trans kids who had unfortunately committed suicide as a result of not getting the essential help need on the wait list. These stories are not talked about in the media at all. They got like one art mentioning what happened to them and then that was it. So we started to investigate it. She was compiling a spreadsheet of everything she could find. Every news report of kids who experienced this. I was pitching, helping contribute to that spreadsheet some. And then right around the same time, the director then of the Good Law Project, a civil rights organization that does a lot of legal stuff in the United Kingdom. His name is Jolin Mogam. Apologize if I mispronounced that. He came out with a Twitter thread revealing. And this was very suddenly. He hadn't contacted anyone about this. He just kind of posted it right when he got enough of a story and everything. He revealed that he was talking to a couple whistleblowers within the NHS about what was going down. And not only did he talk to some Whistleblowers. But he also gained some independent evidence from himself, his own investigation, from meeting minutes from officials in the nhs. And so what he found kind of began with the first whistleblower. This one was someone who did not reveal much about who they were publicly, presumably to protect their job. But Mongan said that with his whistleblowers he independently confirmed that they did work for the NHS. He saw their IDs. Malcolm's up to the guy to lie. He's a trusted figure in the UK political scene. First one said that there was only one reported suicide prior to 2020. Significance of 2020 in relation to trans healthcare at night Kingdom. Was that the infamous case, Bell vs. Tavistock? Not going to go into detail of this case because it's convoluted and messy and hellish, but the gist of it is that it led to tightened restrictions on gender affirming care for minors, particularly in the new realm of puberty blockers. This ruling ended up kind of restricting how minor acts as puberty blockers. Some it was later overturned, but it already led to lasting damage. Even after it was overturned, a lot of doctors were hesitant to even prescribe puberty blockers because they were worried about political consequences. So a lot of minors weren't getting the care they need.

[Mia]

Yeah, and we should also mention here too, because I think this has been lost in a lot of the reporting on this because like, I mean, I guess this is a story where a lot of the reporting was done by trans people just because like, nobody gives a shit. But like, the thing about puberty blockers is that puberty blockers with trend, the healthcare of trans youth were always a sort of compromise measure that was, you know, sort of put in place as a compromise of like, instead of letting kids actually transition and like, you know, go on hormones, which is, you know, the thing that kids need, right? If your goal is to like improve the health outcomes of trans kids, like the thing you actually want for them, like maximally is for them to have the ability to get gender affirming hormones. But you know, the, the, the, the sort of, the sort of compromise thing that was happen was like, well, you could have puberty blockers but you know, you can start hormones later and that is not a good compromise to begin with. But losing it is even worse because the alternative to that is like you are now spending even more time with a bunch of fucking hormones in your system that you don't want technical explanations, more of more of the hormones than you want and you know, you're Getting. You're being forced to go through puberty, which sucks if you're going through. I don't know, I don't know if the wrong puberty is like the correct language or whatever, but like it sucks, it's awful. And. But now you know, and this is something that's happening in the US too, it's also happening in the uk is that the compromise solutions are being knocked out and we're seeing the sort of knock on effects of these kids losing even the sort of compromise stuff they were supposed to be getting.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah. And they use complete bogus justifications for this. They're like, we don't see any benefits at puberty blockers. And it's like the point is not that they are benefiting these kids directly. No kid is like, oh boy, I get to be five years behind on puberty from my peers. I get to look like a 10 year old while all my peers have full on B and everything. Oh boy. Like, no, the point is that these kids are being deprived of the care they absolutely need to stay alive. And it's being targeted just for the sole purpose of gaining cheap political from whoever the hell is in office.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

But more back to the whistleblowers. So prior to 2020, when the Bellevue Tavistock ruling came into effect, only one trans minor died from suicide. I don't quite remember timeframe they used to estimate it, but it was broader than the one they used after. I believe it was like seven years, I think. And the years after which was measured up to like the very beginning of 2024, like January 2024. So not even four years, more like three years and two months. They've recorded 16 deaths.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

Sixteen transgender minors committed suicide and they were all able to be linked to restrictions on NHS wait lists. This whistleblower says this data came directly from a doctor who analyzes this stuff professionally as like part of his job in the nhs. The doctor also wanted to be anonymous, understandably. He named himself the quote named Doctor for Safeguarding Children. He tried to warn people in the NHS about this. He was like, hey, there's something wrong. This isn't right, we are fucking up.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

And he talked to so many different people, including Dr. Hilary Cass, who I'll talk a bit about later.

[Mia]

Yeah, this is a literary device called foreshadowing. Etc, Etc. Giant clip flashing thing here.

[Greg Lodd]

Giant ominous music surrounding her name. He just warned of people basically. And they all ignored him. They all just according to him. And this is all alleged, I have to say, you know, this has not been verified in the court of law or anything. This is according to the whistleblowers in Mongan. But we have no reason to believe they lied or fabricated this. Information about this was not even revealed publicly. There's no public outcry. There was no action taken by the NHS or any of these clinics. So that is the first whistleblower and the whistleblower's connection to that doctor. The second one basically, Ken. And gave independent verification of this. They were like, yeah, I've seen the data for myself too. I can confirm this is legitimate. Now. It wasn't just these three staff members who were trying to raise alarm bells. According to the second whistleblower, staff in the NHS were like, hey, well, this is not cool, we need to do something. And so they got an open letter, sent it to their higher ups and reportedly the director of the Tavistock Clinic, which was at the time the only gender affirming care clinic for minors in the entire United Kingdom since. There's more opened up, but it's a really complicated thing. That's a headache to deal with. But head honchos at Tavistock completely retaliated. They threatened them with disciplinary action, they suppressed material. They basically were like, you go public about this, if you continue talking about this, you're gonna face consequences.

[Mia]

The thing, the thing that instantly came to mind here, and I think it's just specifically because of number 16, but like, the first time I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was there, you know, there's the sort of famous Chicago story of the police killing of Clint McDonald where the slogan afterwards was 16 shots and a cover up. And this is fucking 16 dead in a coverup. And the amount of fucking rage that I have for all for this, all of this fucking shit, that these people covered this up, that they knew this was happening and were just. And not only knew this was happening and not only didn't do anything about it, but like actively contributed to fucking making it worse by threatening anyone who tried to talk about it. Is just so unbelievably disgusting.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, I was the first one who broke the story. I basically reported on it, like almost immediately after Maldrim went public about this. Because I knew not many people were going to report on this right away and it was going to kind of be a headache. I didn't know how lip you would, but I was the first one to report on it. I did it for journalist Aaron Reid. Subs Error in the morning back in June of last year and I had to stop writing it multiple times. I spent the entire day working on it because it was stomach wrenching reading some of these stories and doing everything. The only reason I even got through it was because I dissociated the entire time and kind of compartmentalize the anger a bunch because it's like, Jesus Christ, this is horrifying. But Morgan was not talking out of his ass with this too. He brought receipts.

[Clayton English]

Right.

[Greg Lodd]

In the initial thread, he showed leaked meeting minutes and like you can see watermarks from the NHS on these meeting minutes like it is. Unless someone wants to suggest that he did a giant conspiracy and fabricated a bunch of very accurate meeting minutes that reflect publicly available meeting minutes elsewhere. It. It's pretty reputable.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

These minutes show that any test officials were aware of every single one of these deaths. Every single one of them. People were in these meetings calling for an independent investigation into each of these deaths, into gender affirming care for minors, into the restrictions. They, they wanted to investigate everything and had detailed data. They had information on the type of care they received, which was basically negligence. And instead of reporting on this publicly, instead of doing an investigation, they covered this up. They didn't do anything and they just pretended like everything was fine, like there was no debts as a result of this. They were acting nothing wrong was going on. And these meeting minutes are still public too. Moggan is not bullied in that. It's still on his Twitter account. Good Law Project is not fully a thing anymore. They're kind of dissolving their stuff right now. But Moggan is still keeping all information up. It's all detailed, it's publicly there. People can see for themselves these minutes. And it's horrifying. Seeing the physical proof.

[Clayton English]

It's.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, it's horrifying.

[Mia]

Yeah. And we need to go to ads. And when we come back, we'll get to the second cover up because there is a second one. They did it again, this time with the British Broadcasting. What the fuck does the C stand for? Corporation. That one British Broadcasting Corporation leading the charge.

[Greg Lodd]

Foreign.

[Mia]

We are back. So let's. Let's talk about the second cover up because normally, normally you only get one cover up when your healthcare policies kill a bunch of people. But no. 2, I got multiple cover ups. Before we get to the second cover up, we need to talk about what the cash report is because that's also part of this, that we kind of bounced around a little bit, but then didn't. Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

Oh, yeah. So the cast report is probably one of the worst things to come out of the anti trans crowd in the past decade. Yeah. The gist of it is it's essentially a supposedly independent report commissioned by the Nigerian government to investigate the efficacy of puberty blockers and gender affirming care for miners, authored by Dr. Hillary Cass, who they claim is an expert in this subject. I'll get to that in a second.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

The gist of what it was claiming is that, nope, puberty blockers do anything to actually hurt the kids. They don't improve mental health, they don't protect anything. Suicides stay the same. It's all bad. Get rid of them. And actually restrict gender affirming care, too. And also, maybe we should detransition these kids too. It's a very long document. It's actually a set of documents, but the primary one isn't incredibly long. I remember when it first it came out last year. It's been in the works for the better part of the last decade. Most of the 2010s it's been in the works. I don't remember the exact year that it was initially commissioned, but it's been something the United Kingdom government has been waiting on for a while to take action for gender affirming care. Now, to understand the cast report, you gotta understand a little bit about Hillary Cass. Hillary Cass is not an expert in gender affirming care. Standing up for minors. She has never treated a transgender patient in her professional practice whatsoever, which, thank.

[Mia]

God, because holy shit. Oh, she is such a transphobe. Oh, my God.

[Greg Lodd]

Yes.

[Mia]

But, yeah, also utterly unqualified.

[Greg Lodd]

Completely unqualified. While she was writing it, instead of talking to a single trans person as, like, part of the consultant, because she didn't do it by herself. It's way too long for anyone to do by her by themselves. She got a bunch of unknown advisors to help her with this, one of which is a Finnish psychiatrist who has been campaigning against transgender rights for the past 20 years.

[Mia]

Yep.

[Greg Lodd]

But she did not have any trans people on the consulting board. Not a single one.

[Mia]

Well, of course. Why would you talk to a trans person about trans healthcare? Like, that's.

[Greg Lodd]

Why would you? Trans people don't know anything. They need to be regulated and told exactly what's best for them by people who have never even talked to them before. She actually, while she was writing it, she talked to Florida health care officials during the Ron DeSantis administration for information.

[James]

Yep.

[Greg Lodd]

On what to do. Like. And these officials, by the way, they weren't just like leftovers from the prior governor. They were appointed by Ron DeSantis. And have literally been to his bidding in restricting health care.

[Mia]

Yeah, appointed by the guy who in the last campaign cycle had a fucking ad with a Sonnen Rad in it. So, like, you know the level of Nazi we're dealing with here.

[Greg Lodd]

And not only did she work with them, but there's even more. She worked with numerous people who were tied to anti trans hate groups, most notable of which is the quote, society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine.

[Mia]

Oh, God.

[Greg Lodd]

They are probably one of the leading anti trans groups right now. They are a Southern Poverty Law center designate group. They're not very fun people. They all have a financial interest in opposing transgender rights. Many of the people with them have been quite literally paid to oppose transgender rights in court. There's a whole rabbit hole to get into there. The point being, she's worked with hate groups, she's worked with the Sanchez appointees, she talked to no trans people, and she often lied a lot. When the cast were drew first came out, I was one of the people who was working around the clock to try to be like, hey, let's not just assume that this is immediately accurate because we should wait for independent scholars to evaluate this. There's a lot of shady stuff going on here and wouldn't you know it, a lot of things were wrong. For starters, Tess misrepresented a lot of what she did for the review. It was supposed to be a systematic review into all the literature on pubic blockers. Problem is, she left out a bunch of studies, especially more recent ones with better enrologies. She, in her method to grade them, basically changed it up last minute and didn't seek peer review for it from her institution's review board. She didn't seek any ethical verification on anything.

[Mia]

Yeah, which.

[Robert Evans]

Which is.

[Mia]

Which is amazing. It's like, do you know how your report has to be to like, your anti trans report has to be to not be able to survive a British peer review board? Like, Jesus, it's like, yeah, like it's it.

[Greg Lodd]

It gets even worse because as time went on, a lot of journalists, myself included, found a bunch of little factual narcissists there. She was misrepresenting this study. She was misrepresenting that study. Lots of little information it was. She at one point cited a YouTube channel that is dedicated to opposing trans rights. Sent me the YouTube channel in her fucking citations. It was a tangential citation, but the point being the fact that she even discovered that shows her allegiances. She was in the cast review. She was trying to cast doubt on the leading Medical association for Trans People, the world professional association for Transgender Health. She was like, oh, no, you're actually not good. They're politically biased. I'm not, though. Don't worry, guys. Don't investigate me.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

And in the time since, there's been a shit ton of medical experts coming forward opposing the cast review being like, no, the methodology is garbage. Not just journalists saying it. There have quite literally been hundreds of Mediterranean who have come forward to publicly oppose the cast review. These are people across a variety of fields. Psychiatrists, pediatricians, endocrinologists, basically everyone you could imagine who would be relevant to the study of transgender health. And minors, they have come forward against it, including most of the leading researchers in the field, including people who have actually worked with trans people in a professional capacity.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[James]

Wow.

[Greg Lodd]

And this review, it's the reason the United Kingdom went on last year to ban puberty blockers in all four countries within it. They started in England, then they spread it out to Scotland, Wales, with their beauty blocker ban, and most recently, right before New Year's Day, banned it in Northern Ireland. And because of this, so many clinics are now just not treating trans people, including transgender adults. There are now transgender adults not getting the care they need.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

Because of something that even discussed trans adults in a meaningful capacity.

[Mia]

Yeah. And that's. And that's part of the thing with. With the Cash review, right, Is that, like, you know, it literally, like, it could have just been like, 700 pages of fuck you over and over again, and it would have had the same effect. Because the point of the cast review wasn't actually to, like, establish anything medically. It was to just have a document that you could point at and then justify any policy whatsoever. Like, it's. It's kind of like. It's kind of like the. The way the gambits and the bell curve works where, like, none of the actual policy recommendations follow from any of the arguments that they're making. But it. It exists so that you can make those policy arguments and then point to, like, oh, it's because of iq. And this is. This is the same, like, complete bullshit, fake IQ science. Right?

[Greg Lodd]

Like, there's literally IQ science used to justify the puberty blocker ban.

[Mia]

Of course there is.

[Greg Lodd]

They are claiming that puberty blockers reduce IQ using a study from, like, 2001 on one of the. And a separate study on sheep. A separate study on fucking sheep.

[Mia]

How are you measuring the IQ of sheep? Like, yeah, okay, yeah, we wheeled in the sheep to do the fucking army standard amplitude test. Like, Ah, it scored real bad. We gave it puberty blockers and it scored even worse.

[Greg Lodd]

It's garbage science.

[Mia]

Yeah, but one of the important things, like conclusions here is that like, so one of the, one of the sort of things that's happening now is that fucking feral attack dog. I don't know. Fucking sue me, you motherfucker. We won the revolution. Eat shit. West Streeting, who's now running British healthcare, issued a fucking thing to ban puberty blockers for trans youth. You know, and he cites the Cash report. Do you know what's not in the cash report? A recommendation to ban puberty blockers. You know what he's fucking, he's doing anyways, because that's the actual sort of purpose of, of the report is to serve as sort of like just a, a kind of like talisman you can hold up and say, ha. See, this is justified.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah.

[Mia]

And can you, can you talk about the whistleblowers and, and the Cash report too? Because this is the thing that I has seen very, very little coverage that is extremely important.

[James]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

So the whistleblowers, they literally reached out to the cast while she was writing the review. She had to be like, hey, restricting puberty blockers isn't good. And like you said, Cass did not recommend to ban puberty blockers. She called for more research into it and like some restrictions, but not an outright ban. That was not anywhere within it. Even with her extremism. She's like, maybe we shouldn't restrict everything completely. You know, maybe we should just detransition some of the kids. But she did not advocate for a full on ban and she has even gone public into the media to clarify that she has, does not believe in a full on ban. And yet she ignored the whistleblowers. She ignored them when they came to her being like, hey, there's evidence that restricting peer review blockers is causing these deaths directly and she didn't do anything. We don't know the specifics of that conversation. That's not public information. But you read the cast review, you're not coming away with it thinking, oh boy, she's really concerned about kids who are killing themselves. Yeah, you're coming away with it thinking she doesn't believe a shit and she has her own agenda.

[Mia]

Yeah. And so, okay, we're gonna take another ad break and then we're going to get to the promised second Cover up foreign. We're back for Cover up number two. So, okay, we, we have now introduced briefly the spawn of Satan himself. West reading. Can you talk A little bit more about him and the. The COVID up that he commissioned of this.

[Greg Lodd]

So, yeah, when I dropped this story, it was getting no coverage. No other news outlet wanted to touch it. There were actually some journalists I talked to. I'm not going to name any names, but journalists I talked to who were trying to get their editors to publish a story on these claims and they were like, I don't think so. I think we're going to do that. It's too speculative and things like that. People were actively shutting it down, especially in the British media.

[Mia]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

And for about a month the NHS was ignoring this and not giving public comment. Enter Wes Streaming. You said he is the head of British healthcare. Officially, he's like fucking the head of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care or some shit like that. But he's a sellout. He's a Labor guy, you know, the party that's supposed to be at least kind of left wing in some way. And he threw trans people under the bus the first chance he got. Right after Terf started pressing him for it. Wes Dreating in all his awful, awful glory, looked at Mulgum's thread and thought, what if I denied this? So he commissioned Professor Lewis Appleby for Appleby. He is a leading suicide researcher. He at the University of Manchester. Except even though he's been in the field of suicide research for decades, in the past year or so he's been cozying up to a lot of anti trans people. Yeah, there's a ton of tweets of him basically talking to TERFs, repeating the oh, we can't have men in women's sports nonsense. You can witness him going down the pipeline.

[Mia]

Yeah, he's just. He's a. He's a turf. Yeah, like that's the.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, he's with the turf. He's a Terf, who, mind you, does not professionally really work with transius commit suicide. He does not discuss LGBTQ issues in his research as his primary focus. He does it for the general population. Yeah, I haven't reviewed every single study of his, so it's probably like one or two that talk about LGBTQ suicide rates, but by no means is he like the guy you go to to learn about why suicide attempts and suicide rates are a thing in the LGBTQ population. West Streeting was like, hey, Lewis, do you want to write a quote unquote debunking of Morgan's dread? So enter the. I have it up right now. The quote, review of suicide and gender dysphoria. The Tavistock And Portman NHS Foundation Trust independent report. This guy, he basically claimed that, nope, there's no data to support this. Actually, Mongol's wrong. It's the data pans it out. The data doesn't lie.

[Mia]

It's also funny because his argument is that trans people were already killing themselves.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah.

[Mia]

Which is like. Which is really fucking bleak when you think about it.

[James]

But.

[Greg Lodd]

Now there's gripes, a million gripes people can have with this. For starters, the data set is obviously too small to analyze fucking statistically. Makes no sense to try to do a fucking in depth statistical analysis on what MOG was claiming was 16 kids. That's not. But you're not going to get shit out of that. That's not really the big issue with it. The big issue that Mulgum himself actually pointed out in the same day that this came out. Mum pointed out that its analysis was just wrong from the start. For starters, this guy analyzed, quote, current and former patients of Gender Identity Service. Malcolm's claims weren't about that. Malcolm's claims were about those who were on the waiting list, which is just nuts.

[Mia]

Like, stop here for a second. It's like the difference between again on the waiting list and have finished care.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Like, what?

[Clayton English]

Yeah, what are we doing here?

[Greg Lodd]

Like, oh, yeah. God, how did this get past any media outlet?

[Mia]

I mean, transphobia. But like, really?

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah. Now there's other problems with it. For one, it's kind of suspicious. So Appleby, Applebee, however you pronounce his.

[Mia]

Last name, he's gonna call him Applebee's because fuck em.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, Applebee's. Fuck it. He used data directly provided by NHS England. Now, Stu viewers will notice something. Malcolm never claimed to access data directly given to him from NHS England. He was given data from whistleblowers. Malcolm actually in this direct because he wrote a whole slide debunking this. Debunking. And Mogam was like. He revealed that he actually, a month before this was published, he reached out to NHS England to be like, hey, can I have your data on this subject? I've gotten a lot of information, I want to try to corroborate it. They denied him the data. They just denied him it. Yeah.

[Mia]

If I'm remembering correctly, part of it was they claimed the data didn't exist.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, yeah, they claimed it didn't exist, that they just didn't have it at all. And something they pulled out of thin air for good old Applebee's. Nope. There's some other inconsistencies, as we know. Maugham had receipts he provided information on minutes directly from NHS meetings discussing these suicides. The minutes don't match up to the data Applebee's has. Applebee's is underestimating everything and very recently, this has not gotten any media coverage at all. Those who have been following UK politics for a while, especially trans politics, will remember the unfortunate case of Alice Lippmann.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

She was a young trans woman who committed suicide as a result of NHS waitlist years ago. Her mother, Claire Lippman, has been a staunch ally of trans people since. She's been one of the few CIS people in the UK to be like, hey, no, I'm not. I'm putting my all behind trans people. She's wonderful. She came out publicly revealing that Alice Lippman was not included in Applebee's data set, even though she should have been. She was within the years. So what this says is that Applebee's had bad data that didn't include every kid.

[Mia]

Yeah, well, here's the thing we don't know about that, right? It's possible he had bad data. It's possible he's also just been falsifying his data data because, like, again, he won't show it to us, so we have no fucking idea what, like, what he was, what he was actually provided with and what he was like, you know, what or what things he did to the data sets that he was given beforehand to produce what he's analyzing in his report.

[Greg Lodd]

True. And there was, of course, a bunch of smaller issues you could point out with Applebee's review, but the crux of it, it's bogus data is a matchup, as you said, he could be falsifying it. He could have just been given bad data. We don't know. He's not sharing anything. The NHS isn't sharing anything. Yeah, but all we know is that there's major inconsistencies and they. They're not doing shit with it. And this is where we enter everyone's favorite mainstream media, the lovely British media, specifically outlets like the BBC. Right. Literally within the first 24 hours of this review coming out, they reported on it. At this point, my coverage has been there for a month. Logan's claims have been out there for a month. They weren't touched. And yet the moment someone came out with the NHS trying to be like, actually, it's false, they were rushing to report on it, something they claimed was not newsworthy previously. Yeah, and mind you, Malgin's rebuttal to this review was posted publicly at this time, at the Time that this media coverage was going up at the BBC article breaking the story up. The only discussion they give to basically any issues with this is just a couple brief sentences talking about Malcolm's issues with him. At the beginning they just claimed that Mogam had profound difficulties and at the very end of the article, buried at the bottom, they gave Mogam like three sentences and they left out a lot of information. Like the minutes Mogam showed that he got from whistleblowers, the exact claims he got from whistleblowers, they just didn't report on it. They gave such intense coverage to Applebee's, Applebee's claims in the review and then they just flat out ignored everything Logan was saying, everything everyone else was saying. Now again I add, sure, we don't know for sure whether who's telling the truth, but the NHS has an incentive to lie here. Malcolm is getting his career torched basically because of going forward about all this.

[Mia]

And you can tell which side the BBC is on. They give the game away at the end where they give the last word of this article to Ken Barker, who is the chief executive the LGB alliance, which is an anti trans hate group. And you know, and they, they give her the last sentence saying that, oh, trans people are spreading misinformation to serve a dangerous and homophobic ideology. And I like quite specifically like Kate Barker, if you ever listen to this, you eat like this is direct evidence at the, of the BBC's political line here because again they're, they're, they're giving the closing statement to a group that is literally just an anti transacre. Because the BBC is the Institutional Institute, institutional fucking media arm of the British government. And the British government is institutionally transphobic.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, and I'm not going to say that what the information right now we have a definitive. That's not the problem. The problem is this has been being investigated. Any non biased fucking nhs, any non biased British media would look at Moggan's claims and think, oh, wow, we should look into this, we should independently verify. Yeah, we should try to corroborate everything saying or at least see if he's accurate.

[Mia]

Which, which again, and I want to point this out, this is the job of a journalist. The job of a journalist is not to fucking literally reprint a press report from fucking like commission by the fucking government. Your job is to go find the fucking whistleblowers and talk to people. Did the British, did the fucking BBC do this? No, of course they didn't because they're fucking PR hacks Yep. They're, they're PR hacks for a trans genocide. And like quite frankly, and I, I, I will say this on the fucking record because I'm not a journalist. Fuck these people. Like this, this, this is what the BBC wants. Like, like fucking dead trans kids in a cover up is what they institutionally what this fucking organization wants because they fucking hate trans people. And they are completely okay with all of this shit happening as long, as long as they fucking get to do another story about how fucking J.K. rowling is a brave truth teller or whatever. Like this is, this is what these people want.

[Greg Lodd]

I agree. And I also agree with your statement. The British media can all go fuck themselves and I hope they've rotten.

[Mia]

Hell yeah.

[Greg Lodd]

I don't know how you can, as a journalist, someone trained to prioritize the truth and nothing but the truth, look at all this and think there's suspicious going on here. There's nothing that warrants further investigation. Even if Malcolm's claims are false, right? Even if everything Malcolm says, he made it up. He's an influential guy. He has been covered by the media for his lawsuits with the Good Law Project countless times before he's made national headlines there. And they don't investigate this at all. Like yeah, they're rushing to report on everything fucking J.K. rowling says everything some random fucking TERF is saying. Maya Angelou, whatever turf you want to own.

[Mia]

Oh yeah, I'm realizing there are people listening to this. I don't, maybe you're still listening to the episode and you don't know about the JK Rowling TERF stuff but like to, to get an understanding of like how vehement of like an anti trans hate figure she is. Like anti trans groups literally wear her face as a mask. Like I'm not joking. She, she retweeted them. An anti trans group literally wearing like printed out copies of her face as a mask. Like that is that, that is the status that she has in, in, in the anti trans world. Right? Like, and then the BBC loves her.

[Greg Lodd]

So everything she does and she's not even an expert in anything. She's a author of children's books.

[Mia]

Like yeah, you know, it's like, well we'll talk to the authors of children's books. Will we talk to trans people? No. And I mean that's another thing about this is like the BBC never talked to a trans person. They did talk to an anti trans hate group though. So you know, you, you know, you know what side of this is, is considered valid. By the, the British political and media establishment. Oh and also at the bottom. And like I, I know that they're doing this because this is just like standard policy for like if you're doing a story about suicide. But the very end of the article is a, is a link to a bunch of suicide crisis hotlines. So one, one last you to every trans person reading this.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah.

[Mia]

The, the one two punch of we quoted an anti trans hate figure here is a suicide hotline is like real.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah. It's a fucking insult. It just gets me how they didn't report on these claims at all when they were initially made. It didn't even have to be a big story. Most outlets I've written for would have just reported as like, oh, this guy said this. We're waiting more information. Okay, whatever. It wouldn't be a good reporting but it'd be the bare minimum. They didn't even do that. They rushed to just repeat whatever the fuck a commissioned review from the government said because that's more reputable, I guess than you know, leading advocates who actually cited their sources instead of just throwing shit at the wall.

[Debbie Brown]

Yep.

[Mia]

And I think that's that, that's as, that's as good of a place as nd to stop. Unless you have anything else you want to make sure people know about about this.

[Greg Lodd]

No, I think that's it.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Mia]

Thank you so much for coming on the show and where can people find you in your work?

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, thank you for having me. I. I can primarily be found on Bluesky. That is the main place I post now. Yeah, I'm irrelevant Bluesky Social. Beyond that, you'll probably see one of my articles published around because I am constantly working my ass off.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah.

[Mia]

So this. But it could happen here. Yeah, I don't know. I mean there's still time for this not to happen here. So yeah. Go organize and go make West Reading and the BBC.

[Debbie Brown]

Have a bad day.

[Greg Lodd]

Hell yeah.

[James]

If your brain is at full capacity.

[Greg Lodd]

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[James]

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[Greg Lodd]

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[James]

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[Greg Lodd]

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[James]

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[Greg Lodd]

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[James]

Your 15 inch calendar. That's S-K-Y-L-I G-H-T C A L.com talk.

[Greg Lodd]

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the Revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava For Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.

[Clayton English]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[James]

It's really, really, really bad.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episode episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good. Plus on Apple Podcasts.

[James]

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the.

[Clayton English]

Providers, but we also have to learn.

[Taraji P. Henson]

To take care of ourselves.

[Greg Lodd]

Arapa way you gotta pray for yourself.

[James]

As well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.

[Clayton English]

Never stop being a dad.

[Mia]

That's dedication.

[Debbie Brown]

Find out [e-mail] brought to you by.

[Greg Lodd]

The U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

[James]

And it's going to take us to heal us.

[Greg Lodd]

It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us also reconnecting to our childhood in some sort. You said I look how youthful I.

[Clayton English]

Look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes.

[Debbie Brown]

I love funny.

[James]

I love laughing.

[Clayton English]

I laugh at myself.

[James]

I don't take myself too seriously.

[Clayton English]

That's the stuff that keeps you young.

[Greg Lodd]

And stops you from being so hard to hear.

[James]

This and more things on the journey of healing.

[Greg Lodd]

You can listen to just heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts at.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And T connecting changes everything.

[James]

Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's me, James Today, here to bring you more terrible news about migration and deportation. And I'm joined to share that terrible news by Gillian Brockell, a journalist who has been tracking deportation flights to Djibouti. Hi, Gillian.

[Greg Lodd]

Hi.

[Clayton English]

How are you, James?

[James]

I'm good. Well, amidst the crumbling of everything, it's wonderful.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. I mean, this is terrible news, but I'm also very excited to be in the Cool Zone universe. I love all of the shows.

[James]

Yeah, welcome. Welcome to the Cooldown universe. It's the Sophie Lichterman comic universe.

[Clayton English]

Oh, my God. Such a fangirl.

[James]

Okay, the United States government attempted to deport 12 men, none of whom are Libyan, to Libya on 7 May. Right. It got so far as to take them to the airport, right. In San Antonio, in San Antonio, Texas. And then, thanks to a injunction, a court injunction, those people were not taken to Libya. Those people were instead returned to a detention center where, as listeners of the show will now be aware, they were informed that they were being deported, renditioned, however you want to say it, to South Sudan. This news broke a couple of days ago now, I think Tuesday.

[Clayton English]

Tuesday afternoon.

[James]

Yeah, yeah. And that was when you were able to begin using your, like, OSINT aviation knowledge, looking for, like, this. This flight, right. That was taken over to South Sudan because at the time, yeah. The United States government was claiming the flight was a. Was classified or like a state secret, and that even in court, the judge wasn't aware of the flight was in the air, on the ground. Could it turn around? The judge in the enthalpy was going to ask it to turn around. So I wonder if you could, like, walk listeners through the timeline of this deportation and then how you were able to find out of millions of maybe not millions, thousands of planes in the sky, the one that was. Was taking these people to, as it turned out, to Djibouti.

[Clayton English]

Sure. Yes. So I've been a journalist for 15 years, but before that I was a flight attendant, and I'm an avgeek, an aviation enthusiast. The shorthand, the hashtag for that is Avgeek. And so I'm always looking at Flight Radar 24. It's an app where you can track different aircraft. And so when I heard that the flight might still be in the air, I just thought, oh, I wonder if I can find it. So first I went onto flight radar 24, and first I looked at all of the departures out of San Antonio for, like, the previous 24 hours, since the previous flight that was supposed to go to Libya, that was stopped, that departed from San Antonio. And so I was looking there and, you know, didn't see anything. Just commercial flights, very obviously, military flights. And I know they've used military aircraft sometimes, but I said, I'm not going to try and touch that right now. I want to see if it's one of these charter companies, you know, Global X Avelo, that have been doing these deportation flights.

[James]

Can you explain those to people? Because I don't think everyone's aware of those.

[Clayton English]

So these are, you know, commercial carriers, but they're. They're contracting with DHS to deport people on their aircraft. So, you know, the A320 that you take across the country is sometimes used to deport people to other countries. And the main companies that are doing that right now are Avelo, Global X. I think Omni does some of them sometimes. And I should say there are a lot of people, especially on Blue Sky, a lot of avgeeks, who are tracking and cataloging all of these flights. I wasn't even aware of that community until I started looking for. So I didn't see anything in San Antonio. And then I realized, oh, these people had been transferred to Port Isabel in the last few weeks. So they would have departed out of Harlingen Airport, which is nearby. It's, you know, deep, Deep South Texas.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And so I looked at departures out of Harlingen. It's a small airport. They have like 10 departures a day, and it's generally puddle jumpers from one small Texas town to another small Texas town, you know, and there was one Global X flight to Miami the day before. The timeline wasn't exactly right, but I know that dhs, you know, has been slow to no notify attorneys.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

So I thought, well, maybe this is the flight. And they just didn't tell the attorneys till the next day. So then I spent way too much time looking at all of the departures out of Miami to see if there were any global exploits. I saw a few things, but, you know, nothing heading across the Atlantic. And so at that point, Flight Radar 24 will show you publicly available information on flights. It won't show you all flights, but there is another, you know, for like, Deep, Deep avgeeks, there's another website called ADSB Exchange, and this is a pool of all feeder data all over the world, of all aircraft in the air that aviation enthusiasts maintain themselves, and they will have military flights that aren't going to be on flight radar 24. They also have a lot more information about planes that have a LAD designation, which stands for limited aviation data displayed. I don't know how much you want me to explain about that.

[James]

Yeah, explain. Explain that because I think it's interesting for people.

[Clayton English]

Sure. So a LAD designation is used most often for private jet owners like celebrities and the ultra rich. And basically it means that they have an extra layer of privacy for their movements in their private jets. So if you try and find a specific private jet on flight radar 24, it won't come up. So, like, the tail of this plane that did the djibouti flight is N5AA88AT. If you search for that in Flightradar24, you won't see it. Nothing will come up. However, if you know what you're looking for, if you know, like, oh, I think the flight is heading to Djibouti right now. You can see on Flight Radar 24 that there's a Gulfstream 5 headed to Djibouti right now, but the registration information is obscured.

[James]

Okay.

[Clayton English]

You know, it's not like that on the ADS B. You can.

[James]

You can see it.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, your filters have a lot more power, basically.

[James]

Okay.

[Clayton English]

You know, your search terms, they're going to go around different designations.

[James]

Okay.

[Clayton English]

And so some people hate that. You know, Taylor Swift had beef with some guy a couple of years ago, right. Because she has a LAD designation on her private jet. He was using ADS B exchange to post her flights, you know, ostensibly to shame her for her carbon footprint, but then she, like, threatened to sue him and she was like, I have stalkers. Like, I don't want them to know when I'm landing in Nashville, you know? Yeah, not going to get into that. But, you know, that's basically the LAD designation and ADS B doesn't care. And so I went on ADS B and I said, well, since I've already seen all the publicly available flights, let me just look at LADD flights.

[James]

Okay.

[Clayton English]

And so I set that filter and that took it down to a couple hundred planes in the air. And I honestly just got lucky. I just started clicking on planes because I don't know how to search for all departures out of one airport on ADSB Exchange. I'm sure AV geeks who are better at it do. But I just started clicking on planes and I clicked. I think like the third plane that I clicked on had taken off out of Harlingen a couple hours earlier and was over the middle of the Atlantic, which is not a usual departure for Harlingen, right?

[James]

Yeah, it's quite unusual.

[Clayton English]

And so, you know, I posted on Blue sky to the other avgeeks who were looking for it. I think this might be it. You know, it's a private jet with a LAD designation that took off from this very obscure airport and is traveling internationally. Nothing else really fit the profile.

[James]

Right.

[Clayton English]

So we all started looking at it. Another reporter named Jacqueline Sweet. You know, I looked up the registration. It's registered to a man named Igor Smirnov, which there are a lot of Igor Smirnovs.

[James]

Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty common name.

[Clayton English]

He's not the chess guy. He's not the Moldovan guy. He appears to have once owned an airline in Uzbekistan and has been in the US for some time. So he has, you know, this private jet. And then Jacqueline Sweet looked up that, yes, he has DHS contracts.

[James]

Okay.

[Clayton English]

Then the other thing was I just googled the tail number N588AT. One of the first things that came up was that this was the private jet that carried Brittney Griner home from Russia when she had been released in a prisoner swap.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And so that, you know, was the thing where I was like, okay, this plane's been used for, like, weird government business before.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

Like, I think this might be it. Yeah. So that's when I posted once I realized the Brittney Griner thing, then I posted it, and other people, other avgeeks were saying, yeah, I think that might be it. And then, you know, Jacqueline got more info on the contracts. And so this is for about two hours we watched it, and JJNDC said, I think it's about to land in Shannon. And, you know, soon enough, it descended and landed at Shannon.

[Debbie Brown]

Yep.

[Clayton English]

So Shannon Airport in Ireland is a frequent refueling stop for the US Military. And, you know, that's something that a lot of Irish people really fucking hate.

[James]

Yeah. Not a US Base, to be clear. If people aren't aware.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, it's not a US Base. This is US Military that are just. They're just refueling, but they're refueling to, you know, do a lot of things that the Irish are not okay with.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And so there's. There's an organization there called Shannon Watch, who, you know, they're watching all these US Activities and, you know, pressuring the government to stop this. So, you know, I tried to email them before the plane even landed, and I don't know if it was user error on my end or, you know, if I don't know why it didn't work. But they didn't get the message. I only found that out, like, half an hour ago. Yeah. But so I messaged them, and then I, like, messaged a couple friends in Ireland like, hey, wake up, wake up. You know, call somebody. You Know, but it was 2:30 in the morning. I'm glad my friends were asleep. And. Yeah. So I don't know how, how much I wanted to get into my personal hedging or my journey. But, you know, I used to be like a neutral, objective journalist at the Washington Post for 10 years, and I left a year and a half ago. And I've been enjoying being an opinionated journalist. I've been writing a book. But, you know, there's a difference between being an opinionated journalist and actually interfering in a story.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And so I kind of hedged for a minute of like, should I, Should I do anything else? Should I actively participate in trying to stop this flight? You know, am I not gonna get a columnist job someday if I do that?

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

You know, I'm ashamed to say that, but I have to tell the truth. That's what I thought. And then I just, just decided, you know, screw it. I have to do the right thing. So I called the Shannon Airport police. I called the Shannon Garda. They call the police the Garda in Ireland.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And I talked to, you know, whatever man answered for like a minute. And then he was like, let me, let me, you know, knock you up the chain. And I was forwarded to someone else, to a woman who, you know, she sounded smart, urgent, interested. It sounded like she was taking notes. It sounded like she was taking this seriously. And I was saying, there is a plane with this tail number that landed 15 minutes ago that may have people on board who have been illegally removed from the United States, who have not consented to go to their destination, who are being sent to South Sudan when they are not from South Sudan, you know, And I made clear that, like, I don't know that this is the right plane, but I'm pretty sure that it is. This plane has been used before for US Government business. And I said, I know that our judges orders don't matter in your sovereign country, but a judge has said this is not allowed and it might be happening. And I don't know what your human trafficking laws are like, but you should know that if there are human trafficking or kidnapping laws in Ireland that might apply to this, like maybe check the plane.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And, you know, I didn't record the call and I didn't take notes, but I do recall her saying that she was trying to send someone to check the plane and she was, you know, taking detailed notes. What are their nationalities? How many are there?

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

You know, and yeah, so, you know, the call lasted 13 minutes. And then I waited. You Know, was talking with the other AV geeks on Blue sky who were at this point, you know, this is around 10pm it's getting a little late. And then, yeah, I don't know what happened, but the plane taxied to a parking stamp near the terminal for a while. And I thought, oh, it's been, it's been turned off. It's parked for the night. I don't think they're gonna let him leave. And then the plane took off. It was two hours after it landed.

[James]

Yeah, yeah. And it went to Djibouti where it, where it remains at the time of recording.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[James]

It's been raised since you first kind of identified this plane, it's been raised. I talked to Dallas like an Irish Member of Parliament raised it today. I saw there was an exchange about it. I spoke to Paul Murphy, who's the TD for Dublin Southwest. Paul gave me a statement. I'm just going to read here. The very least the Irish government must do is to inform the US authorities that no more deportation flights are permitted to use our airspace and our airports. We must not facilitate this inhumane and illegal deportation policy. So it does seem like even if nothing was done in this instance, hopefully this isn't something that will be able to happen again. I know, as you said, people have been upset about that use of Shannon. I think they use Knock airport as well for a long time because the US used them a lot in its war on terror. And Ireland has been a neutral country for a long time. And there's a feeling that it compromises that among some people. But this raises a really interesting question for those of us who are following the deportations, which is, we'd been thinking that it was happening on military or commercial flights like you said, but there's this possibility that these smaller planes are being used for deportation. And that's very concerning. It means we could have missed things.

[Clayton English]

Absolutely.

[James]

It also shows the timeline here is extraordinarily rapid. Right. From the people being informed at 6pm, I believe it's 6pm Pacific. I've been spending a lot of time on PACER this week.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, good old pacer.

[James]

Yep. A lot of the money generated by the adverts in this show on PACER. So at 6:35 Central Time, NM, who is one of the Burmese people in this, this class action lawsuit? Right. So the lawsuit, a number of people trying to get a tentative restraining order against being sent to South Sudan. Now previously Libya, at 06:35 Central Time, that person's lawyer was told that they had an order of removal. At 9am Pacific, the lawyer had scheduled a video conference, but at 8:27 Pacific, they were told that that person had already been removed.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[James]

So pretty fast. And, like, perhaps that's why they're using these, like, small. Can you give an idea of, like. I guess a lot of people won't have flown on small aircraft, but these are quite, like. This isn't a usual thing, right? To be.

[Clayton English]

No, this is a luxury jet.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

That, you know, is moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for kidnappers. And I just. I'm so struck by the dichotomy of the luxury of this vessel transporting them to hell, to a country where they do not speak the language, they have no family or friends, to a prison where people are being tortured that is about to descend into civil war. May already be in civil war. I mean, the dichotomy of that is so striking to me and so perverse.

[James]

Yeah. Perverse is the right word. It is. It's perversely ludicrous. I don't know. It's so striking to me as well that somebody who has the financial means to own a private luxury jet to fly themselves around the world is also profiting off the rendition of people who are trying now to plead in convention against torture. Right. Like, they will be tortured if they are flown via luxury private jet to South Sudan. And the South Sudanese government seems to have stated that it would just return them to their countries from which they have withholding of removal in the first place. Which is why the US can't send them to their countries.

[Clayton English]

Right. That's why the US hasn't done it. Right.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

It's like, you know, it's a diplomatic pickle. But, like, the solution isn't we'll just, you know, dump them somewhere else.

[James]

Right? Yeah. And then have someone else do our dirty work, like, send them back.

[Clayton English]

Right.

[James]

You found these contracts. Do you know how much DHS is spending, like, per flight on these things?

[Clayton English]

I have no idea. I mean, that is something that other reporters, I think, are, you know, gonna be better sources of that information. I've really just begun tracking these flights.

[James]

Right.

[Clayton English]

You know, I like to track flights all the time just because I have adhd. You know, it's a wonderful activity if you're neurodivergent to spend some time on Ads B exchange. But like I said, I was just like, I wonder if I can find this plane.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And I did.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And that has opened up a whole world to me of, you know, really dedicated people. Tom Cartwright is one. And then JJNDC is another. He wants to remain anonymous. Who have been tracking these planes for some time, and I'm really inspired by them and, you know, want to join them and help them.

[James]

We see a number of issues like that. We can. Questions that we can answer with these things. Right. You know, United States deporting people to Venezuela. Well, there are lots of entities in Venezuela which are under sanctions. Right. So, like, how is it doing that? Who is it paying to do that? Like, where is our taxpayer money going? How much is it costing to achieve this rendition of a dozen people? Right, right. Who at the current time, bar recording, which is Thursday afternoon, Pacific Time, the 22nd of May. There you go. I just checked the PACER again, which is what I do all day now. And Judge Murphy's most recent order had clarified that these people would have 10 days to present their reasonable fear. Right. So to present their reasonable fear and convention against torture proceedings that they would be. They could face torture. Right. If they were sent to these. These places. If the Department of Homeland Security determined that they. They didn't have credible fear, then they would have 15 days to again petition for reopening of their migration case. So that's 25 days for those who are counting, that these people will presumably now have to be accommodated in Djibouti.

[Clayton English]

Right.

[James]

The DHS is claiming that they can do all these interviews and that will necessitate translators. Like, one of them speaks Karen. Not a language that we have. I mean, that there are lots of Karen speaking people in the United States, but it's, you know, it's not a language that many immigration lawyers speak. So I'm guessing there will have to be a translator provided. And so all that is now happening in Djibouti, and, like, we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able to track these flights. Right. And so it's a very interesting way of. Of approaching this. And I think, like, increasingly, the government have recently lost a number of FOIA requests. I guess, like, public records do not move at the same speed as the news cycle does. Like, I file a lot of public records requests. Most of them, I don't get anything back.

[Clayton English]

The ones that I do take, like, eight years sometimes.

[James]

Yeah. Literally. Yeah. I mean, I have public records requests that I made under the previous Trump administration that I believe are still ongoing. Yeah, it's infuriatingly slow. You have a right to those species records, but you don't have a right to inspect them at any particular time period. And so doing this kind of open Source tracking offers us a window into this deportation machine that the government is building.

[Clayton English]

Right, exactly.

[James]

In cooperation with the super rich, like using your taxpayer resources. I wonder if people are interested in doing this, how would you suggest they kind of get going? They're good explainers out there.

[Clayton English]

I mean, the first thing I would do is that I would follow Tom Cartwright and JJNDC on Blue Sky. Then, you know, get the Flight Radar 24 app. You can see a lot of the charter planes on that app. Ads B exchange is pretty buggy and hard to use if you don't have any aviation experience at all, but, you know, you can learn.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And yeah, I mean, like I said, if you're neurodivergent, this is a terrific activity to just kind of like massage your brain and hyper focus and, you know, putting it to good purpose to maybe witness or maybe even stop some of these activities from happening, you know, would be great.

[James]

Yeah, no, I think that's like there are countries which have strong legislation that could possibly prevent these, you know, these either planes transiting their airspace or if they're refueling their. As you. As you said in Ireland, like perhaps prevent these people being renditioned to somewhere where they might face torture. And I think it's a really valuable thing to try. Like, we should try whatever we can right now.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. And I mean, now that Ireland knows this is happening, you know, I don't know what happened with the Garda on Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. I don't know if they were able to board the plane, if they tried to stop it and couldn't. I have no idea.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

Now that they know this is happening, maybe they can look a little bit deeper into their laws and regulations and find a justification so that if this happens again, they can be prepared to respond. You know, I know that the Irish are exemplars in human rights and so, you know, if anybody is going to do something, it might be them.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, I know. RTE are now camped out at the airport waiting for the plane to come back, which.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, I know. I wish they had checked with the AvGeeks first because the plane's not on the way.

[James]

Yeah, it's not in here.

[Clayton English]

It hasn't left the duty.

[James]

Look at the court proceedings. It's going to be three weeks, but. Yeah, yeah, it's great. You've made this an issue there, which I think it helps. Like all this stuff makes a difference.

[Clayton English]

I mean, I just, I want the Irish people to realize, because none of their lawmakers have said it yet, that Irish authorities knew when the plane was on the ground at Shannon, that there were people who were possibly being illegally detained on this specific airplane. I just want them to know that.

[James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Clayton English]

You know, and I'm. I hear that their public information laws are also not great. But the police there recorded the call. So there's a recording somewhere if they can find it.

[James]

Right. I guess I can't find anyone who can answer the satisfactory. The question of, like, whose jurisdiction the plane is under.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, I mean, and it really depends too. Like, was the plane parked in the international transit area? Was it in a place where, you know, the Garda didn't even have authority? I have no idea.

[James]

Right. You know, but yeah, these are all questions we can now ask because we know.

[Greg Lodd]

Right.

[James]

That it was there. And I think that's very valuable. Gillian, where can people follow your work? Said you published this on your ghost newsletter first, right?

[Clayton English]

Yeah, I'm writing a book, so I post extremely sporadically. But I do have a ghost newsletter. It's hard ghistory because it's hard G. Gillian. Hardghistory Ghost IO and then I'm on blueskybrock Hill.

[James]

Nice. Do you want to plug your book while you have the opportunity?

[Clayton English]

I mean, there's not like a pre order link. I'm very much still writing it, but. But you know, my agent will be mad at me for saying this. The working title is People Didn't Know it was Wrong Back the Lie at the Heart of American History.

[James]

I will look forward to reading that.

[Clayton English]

Thank you. Thanks for having me, James. I really appreciate it.

[James]

Thanks for joining us.

[Greg Lodd]

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the Revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.

[Clayton English]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[Debbie Brown]

It's really bad.

[James]

Really, really bad.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good. Plus on Apple Podcasts.

[James]

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to to, you know, we're.

[Clayton English]

The providers, but we also have to.

[James]

Learn to take care of ourselves.

[Greg Lodd]

Arapahoe way you gotta pray for yourself.

[James]

As well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.

[Clayton English]

Never stop being a dad.

[James]

That's dedication.

[Debbie Brown]

Find out [e-mail] brought to you by.

[Greg Lodd]

The U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

[James]

And it's going to take us to heal us us.

[Greg Lodd]

It's mental health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us also reconnecting to our childhood in some sort. You said I look how youthful I.

[Clayton English]

Look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dog. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes.

[Debbie Brown]

I love funny.

[James]

I love laughing.

[Clayton English]

I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young.

[Greg Lodd]

And stops you from being so hard to hear.

[James]

This and more things on the journey.

[Greg Lodd]

Of healing, you can listen to just heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast at.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And T connecting changes everything.

[Clayton English]

I'm Clayton English.

[Greg Lodd]

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the.

[Taraji P. Henson]

War on Drugs podcast.

[Greg Lodd]

We are back in a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This kind of star studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

[Clayton English]

It's just the compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

[Greg Lodd]

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

[Debbie Brown]

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.

[Greg Lodd]

Benny the Butcher, Brent Smith from Shinedown got be real from Cypress Hill, NHL enforcer Riley Cote, Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

[Debbie Brown]

Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

[Greg Lodd]

It makes it real.

[Mia]

It really does. It makes it real.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early.

[James]

And ad free with exclusive content.

[Greg Lodd]

Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[James]

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show. It's me, James, today, and I'm joined once again by kst. We've heard from her before. She's an immigration lawyer who takes asylum cases. And we're going to talk about the asylum system, or I guess what's left of it today. Kirsten is representing somebody I met in the Darien Gap Primrose, who you've heard from before. So we're going to talk about that case and then we're going to talk a little bit about ICE detentions inside immigration court. Welcome to the show, Kirsten.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Thank you, James. It's good to be here.

[James]

Yeah, thanks for, thanks for coming. I know you're extremely busy. Can you explain to us, like, the asylum system is essentially coming to an end? Right. We are not getting new asylum cases. Like, what is the situation for people in the asylum system right now?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yes, that's a correct statement, James. So there are no new asylum cases. In other words, people who cross at the southern border are now detained, only to be removed immediately, basically, or as soon as possible under what's called 212F authority. It's under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Trump has used this authority, which basically, broadly says that if the president finds a certain class of immigrants or the entry of immigrants would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, they may, by proclamation, you know, suspend all entry of said immigrants. So that was the purpose and the effect of the executive order discussing the invasion at the border and all the other executive orders discussing invasions and criminal aspects such as cartels. And trend, which we all know now.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Is, you know, is the justification for alleged justification for just shutting it down at the border. So whereas people used to get credible fear interviews or were paroled into the United States to be allowed to fight an asylum case, none of that is happening anymore. And people are, if anything, only screened for what's called a convention against torture screenings to just determine, like, hey, are they going to be tortured by their government or with the acquiescence of their government if they're returned to their home country. But even then, they are not allowed to remain in the United States or fight any relief in the United States. That just means that they will be deported to a third, third country. So that was the situation like when we saw the Iranians sitting in the hotel room in Panama. That's what happened there, most likely. So that's the situation at the southern border. Whoever is still in the United States, you know, who came in before Inauguration Day, is still allowed to fight their case as of now, but there are no new asylum cases, essentially.

[James]

Right. So for those people fighting their case, the asylum system was already an uphill battle. Right. And it became harder after Biden's asylum. It was already harder after title 42. Like, people who listen to the show would have known about the people who crossed in 2023, and of course, they would have followed those people who I met in the Darien Gap, some of whom very few of whom crossed before January, literally, one I believe that I'm aware of. Can you explain what the asylum system is like for those people now?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah. So I think the biggest two factors affecting asylum cases these days is what you just referred to, which is the asylum Ban Convention against Lawful Pathways that barred people essentially from asylum if they did not use CBP1, the application to apply for an appointment, which of course, only allowed, I think, 1500 a day or something absurd, forcing most people to cross unlawfully. So that's still very much in place. The litigation has been stalled forever. There's no hope of. You know, I don't think there's no movement on that. I haven't seen or heard anything.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Most likely intentionally, because when Trump did a similar ban, it was overturned immediately. So this is like a new strategy that we're seeing where things are just lagging in court.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

You know, for example, just a quick side detour. The birthright citizenship issue got up to the Supreme Court real quick, whereas the asylum issue, meaning the border shut down to asylum, is still languishing somewhere before, I think, even just a federal district judge. It's not even in any appeal to court yet. So this is all, I think, think, strategic. So that circumvention against lawful pathways ban is still very much an impediment. You know, we. We all, of course, argue that every migrant in Mexico was in danger and thus qualifies for the exception to the clp, that their life was in danger and that they couldn't afford to wait the many, many months for the CBP1 appointment. But judges, it's been met with mixed reviews. They generally like to see, like, somebody basically near death for the exception to apply. And, of course, the immigration bar argues that all migrants are basically under threat of death. I mean, any. Any cartel or even immigration official contact in Mexico could have been a death sentence very easily, as we all know.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So that's a big thing affecting the latest thing that's also being implemented as a result of this cartel, terrorist organization designation is, you know, where it's not just the cartels it's Ms. 13 and 10 de Aragua is that there's a. What's called a trig bar that's applied then also to asylum. And the bar is basically about material support of any of these groups. But it's construed to an absurd degree where even if you made a bowl of food for Samaras under duress, or you made payment because your kid was about to be killed.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

That's considered material support. And you're barred from asylum.

[James]

Geez, I wondered if they would do that.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah, so we're seeing that, too. Other than that, I mean, I have been fortunate to win asylum for folks under Trump 2.0. I mean, I don't know how long that'll still last, but judges are still, you know, granting cases, so I'm. I'm glad to see that.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So that. That's generally what it's looked like these past four months for asylees.

[James]

Okay. Yeah. I think it's really important that we do, like, there are still possible, like, victories to be had within the court system. And asylum is one of the places where like, like, there's no more getting on the train. I guess, like, the people who are on the train now, we can. And people should, if they have the financial means, and we'll talk about how they can do that later. People should support those people because there's no one else who. Who can go through that system. And like, there are people who have gone through horrific things to get here and horrific things in the places that they came from. And even if it's not everyone we would like to keep safe, we should do everything we can to keep those people safe, 100%.

[Taraji P. Henson]

You know, just to say, I mean, and funding somebody's legal fees, I mean, an attorney makes all the difference in navigating these types of issues that I just talked about and other issues in presenting your case. I mean, asylum cases are still incredibly difficult to win. And so representation of counsel is often key.

[James]

Yeah. I think that the rates of success, people who don't have counsel are dramatically lower. I haven't looked on track recently, but you can normally find that. That on the. I think track is no longer at the University of Syracuse, but it's a place where you can find information, statistics. Let's talk about one of those cases, if that's okay. And obviously, you know, we won't intervene in anyone's privacy any more than we have to. But, like, I want to talk about Primrose. Primrose is a Zimbabwean woman who I met in Bajojiquito when I was in the Darien Gap reporting on my series. People heard from her in the series, even me.

[Clayton English]

I was crying myself. I was like, I, I want to just put myself in the water. Then I can just go.

[James]

Both the genuine stuff, really, really tough.

[Clayton English]

The mountain, the stones, the river.

[Debbie Brown]

It's not easy at all.

[James]

It's not, it's not very.

[Clayton English]

I, I, I don't even recommended someone to say, yeah, use daring gift. No.

[Debbie Brown]

And even myself, I did know about it.

[James]

Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

I was regretting hurting myself.

[Greg Lodd]

I was crying. I was like, God, I don't know. My family and my family, they don't.

[Clayton English]

Know where I am right now. But I make it.

[James]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

Thank God I make it.

[James]

You're safe. Yeah. She is now in the asylum process. Right. Can you explain a little bit about, like, where she is in the process? And I will eventually do a scripted series on this, but, like, I guess can we get an update on her situation and how it's progressing?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Absolutely. So I came into the case about, I want to say, a month or two ago. She had somebody supporting her, a friend living in Texas. And that situation, a living situation, has changed, I believe, which is also not the worst thing. She's, she will be moving with a friend to Southern California or moving in with a friend, rather. But just the situation is very different in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and those types of states. Markedly so. And her case is a good example of that. And there's a reason that people like Mahmoud Khalil and many others are sent to detention centers in that area, because it's in the fifth Circuit, first of all, which is widely renowned to be not a favorable circuit court of appeals to immigrants.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

But more so than that, even the judges themselves are very different from what we would encounter in California, for example. So my first encounter with the judge was, you know, and this is all virtual. I submitted a motion to appear for her. She had a master calendar hearing in, in June. I submitted a motion to appear for that telephonically explaining I was representing her at lower, no cost, you know, whatever funds could be raised. And could I please appear for a stat. It's a status type conference, telephonically. And that motion was met with a really strange response. I don't to this day, I don't really know exactly. It was sort of approved but then moot because eventually a final court hearing was set. So that's where we're at right now. She has a final court next year in about a year. And a couple months. But in ruling on my webex motion, I was emailed the order of the judge along with a notice that Primrose should self deport. So judges are sending out these notices with routine other orders in cases where the immigrant has counseled is fighting their case. Yeah, it's obvious they're fighting their case.

[James]

Jesus.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And yeah, so it's one of the things where you just feel very strongly this administration's influence.

[James]

Are they obliged to do that or is that a choice that the judge is making?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Not at all. And in fact, it's completely inappropriate. So all of us are okay. The immigration bar is taking a different approach to it. You know, some are filing motions to recuse, telling the judges, hey, you need to recuse yourself. You're, you're a non neutral judge to send this out in the middle of the case. It's absurd. It's a due process violation. They're entitled to a neutral judge.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

I think my approach would be more one of playing dumb because often this has happened. The system, if you will, of ecas, the electronic system that we use for court immigration filing systems that Elon Musk briefly had access to or whatever was going on there. But anyways, I digress, you know, will send out automatic notices with the emails with the judge's order. So my approach I think will be to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and ask them if this was an electronic notice. And if they say no, then I've gotten it on the record and if they deny the case, I have that in there for the appeal. But yeah, it's happening all over the country with all sorts of different judges. And it's definitely something that we're grappling with right now. And it's just, it's very ballsy for a judge to say, hey, leave the country. And oh, by the way, I'm a neutral arbiter.

[James]

Yeah. I mean, what's the point of having the judge or having the, having the whole process. Right. If then they're going to declare this clear bias.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah, it's absurd. I mean it's, you know, I mean it's such a violation of due process rights. And I, I know everybody in this country now knows the importance of due process, whereas before only attorneys threw that term around. But no, I mean this stuff really matters, you know.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And then also another thing that happened in Primrose's case is that when you have a work permit clock. Right. Which is another absurd thing for Asylees that once they file their asylum application they have to wait 150 days before they can apply for a work permit. And of course they're expected to be independently wealthy during those five months or you know, or star over. I don't know what they're expected to do.

[James]

Yeah. Rely on the generosity of others like exactly.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So if you do something like try to change venue or a motion to continue. If you, if you do something in your case that the judge perceives as not moving the case along and rather like kind of trying to stall it or possibly pausing it or slow it down, the judge will stop the work permit clock the days and it's a whole thing. So primroses was stopped because the judge wanted her to get an attorney. So usually when the case is set for a final hearing, that code, adjournment code they call it, I know from. We have the access to the codes and what stops the clock and what doesn't and it always restarts the clock. Because you moved your case along because you're setting it for trial. It's, it's, you know, obviously moving your case along. Hers was not restarted did for whatever reason. And my, my only remedy would be to write some court administrator who may or may not ever respond. I can't even go to the judge about this. You know, it's, it's absurd. So that's just the situation that one asylee is one asylum seeker is dealing with in Texas. So you can only imagine what goes on in detention set, you know, detained cases in those states.

[James]

Yeah. Or people who don't have counsel. Like getting that self deportation notice. If you don't have counsel, like you could assume that you are just obliged to leave and like.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah.

[James]

That your, your process is over 100%.

[Taraji P. Henson]

100%. And there's no legal basis for the judge to be issuing that. In fact, it's completely unlawful.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

To be issuing something like that at the beginning of the case, at the end of the case and at the beginning the judge does have to give certain advisals. But telling somebody to self deport is never an advisor that should be given under the law ever.

[James]

Right. Yeah. Like it kind of nullifies the whole system.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And plus I should mention real quick that it's disingenuous and harmful and that with these, you know, this administration on purpose isn't telling people with the thousand dollars, take the thousand dollars in self deport and you know, we'll pay for your flight and all this stuff. What they're not telling people is that when you leave you are then subject to a deportation order. And that comes with a ten year bar.

[James]

Mm.

[Taraji P. Henson]

This is not mentioned. And that's a big deal.

[James]

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it seems even like, like I think the executive order said permanently leave the United States. Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Well, it did, and then, but then they switched tactics a little bit with the app to self deport saying like, you know, leave now, leave now so you have a chance to come back later or something like that.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

You know, without mentioning that. Hey, no, you're barred from the United States for 10 years. And, and if you ever return unlawfully, then you're subject to a whole series of, you know, I mean, it's just there's all these warnings that need to come with the deportation order that are strategically left out of all the administration's messaging on this topic.

[James]

Yeah, that's, that's pretty bad. Let's take a break for advertisements here and then we'll come back. All right, we are back. And so we've spoken about these like self deportation orders. Right. For other people who have entered more recently. Right. Entered within the last two years. This has been happening, we're recording on the 22nd for the last two days now. It seems like ICE is dismissing the cases against them and then detaining them directly in court, if I'm correctly informed.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yes. So this has been happening periodically throughout the past four months, but in the past few days, like this week, it's been dramatically ramped up. Like right now, as we're recording this, ICE is arresting people in the downtown San Diego court and also court reports throughout the country. It's been reported everywhere, happening widely this week. And this is another thing the administration said they were going to do and is doing. I mean, you know, they're doing what they said they were going to do.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And it's to use what's called 235 authority more broadly. So INA section 235 applies to people who entered within less than two years, like you said, and they can be then subject to what's called expedited removal. That means that they have to take a credible fear interview and be detained and that they only get to fight a case if they pass their credible fear interview and then they do not qualify for an immigration judge bond. So they only get out if ICE lets them out, which of course ICE is letting nobody out. So the, the administration wants to have people detained under this authority, this235 authority, as much as possible to have them have to fight their case detained and either lose the will to do so and or not be able to afford an attorney, because detained cases move along a lot quicker and are very costly as well for that reason. So what they're doing is anybody who was here two years or less, but was paroled in. So they're in the regular immigration court proceedings. They got out there under 240 proceedings, it's called. So DHS attorneys in court are terminating those proceedings. They are asking the judge to terminate the 240 proceedings. So then that case is closed. And then they immediately restart a case under section 235. And the second they do that, the person is subject to mandatory detention and ICE is right there in the courthouse to arrest them and detain them.

[James]

Jesus. Yeah. I thought ICE couldn't arrest people in California. Is that California state courts, not federal courts, which are in California?

[Taraji P. Henson]

I believe so. And colleagues and I have been talking about this. I haven't researched it thoroughly, but I think also the nature of these proceedings, like the 235 proceedings, like, you are mandatory detention. Like you.

[James]

Okay.

[Taraji P. Henson]

You were taken into custody. It's as if you just crossed the border and you know.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Are taken in a custody. It's treated like. Like that type of situation. Like no warrant is necessary. I don't believe. You know.

[James]

Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. So they could. They have very broad authority to detain people, like, anywhere that makes sense.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Exactly. So the real issue here is the. The ethical. I mean, a lot of us are grappling with this and of course, fiercely opposing these motions in that the justification that the DHS attorneys are attempting to use is that circumstances have materially changed since. Since the issuance of their initial case that they're in now, which of course is not the case.

[James]

Right. Like whose circumstances?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Exactly. Exactly. Like the rise of fascism doesn't constitute a changed circumstance. So it's just. There's no. There's no basis for this motion. And secondly, the only basis, like there's zero justification for this other than filling detention centers lining core civic and geo groups pockets.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And intentionally prejudicing an immigrant to have to fight their case. Detained. I mean, right there. There's no. There's no good or legitimate justification for this. Period. The end. You know.

[James]

Yeah. And fighting it detained will be a lot harder. They will be obviously in like, terrible situation. They are, as we have covered before, often moved to a different state from their council. It will make it a lot harder for them if they choose to go that route. I'm guessing that ICE is hoping that people won't fight and will just. Or DHS is hoping that people will just choose not to fight.

[Debbie Brown]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

100. That. That's the whole point is, is, is this whole administration's, the messaging and their actions are all about forcing people, breaking people's spirits and forcing them into a situation where they feel their only option is to self deport.

[James]

Yeah. It is heartbreaking.

[Taraji P. Henson]

It's very sick. Yeah. It's, it's very disturbing. It's very, very different from Trump 1.0.

[James]

Yeah. I think that's what worth sort of focusing in on that this is a completely distinct and much more radical disassembling of the asylum system as we know it.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Absolutely. I mean, I think we can all agree or disagree as far as how we feel about the past four months and what has happened, but I think everybody can agree the pace at which it has happened is extremely concerning.

[James]

Right. We are four months into four years and it, we have seen like a constitutional crisis, like a full blown defiance of the courts. We at the day we're recording the Trump administration is attempting to deport people to South Sudan, many of whom, 11 of 12 of whom are not South Sudanese. Right. I guess from what I understand, their attempt at giving those people a credible fear screening was that they didn't hear them shouting from the cells they were detained in that, that they were afraid of being tortured.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah. They're. They're supposed to give them opportunity to be heard essentially and give notice of this third country that they're going to be deported to, that nobody and no judge has ever considered whether they have a fear or if they would be in danger or deported to this country.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So again, this is a due process situation where, hey, before you can be sent to some random country, especially South Sudan, maybe you should be given an opportunity to present why you have a fear or that something bad might happen to you over there, to a judge. And so this was recently ordered, I believe the case is called DVD versus dhs was what stopped the Libya situation from happening where. Yeah, a judge said this is exactly what needs to occur. These people need to be given real notice. Not this, whatever has been ha. You know, and, and an opportunity to be heard. And then. Yeah. And they immediately thereafter attempted to, as you said, or I think, I don't know if they actually accomplished it with South Sudan.

[James]

Yeah. My understanding is they are in a country which is neither the United States nor South Sudan on an aircraft at this time and DHS is arguing that they can do their credible fear screenings there on the aircraft. I don't know how they plan to Give those people privacy, translation, access to counsel. I just looked on Court Listener right before we recorded, and Judge Murphy had clarified. Massachusetts District court judge that 10 days would be the amount of time that they would need to assert the credible fear. And then if DHS determined that they didn't have credible fear, they would then have 15 days to ask for the reopening of their case. TBD is the United States going to somehow accommodate them in where they are? People are speculating. They're in Djibouti, which is the largest US Military base in the continent of Africa and close to South Sudan. And so if that's the case. Yeah. I don't know how they will get due process. We will find out if they will get due process, I guess.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah, they, they probably won't, but we'll be told that they. They did.

[James]

Right.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Or we'll be. Or we'll be told that they were criminals in the first place, which is the other theme of this administration. Right. With the. The Alien Enemies act, which has basically been put on pause by a number of Satan judges who, who have said there's no invasion, there's no war. This is absurd. This just flat out doesn't apply. And I have to say that the immigration bar is very. I think not just the immigration bar. I think all of us are very frustrated that the Supreme Court has not yet come out with a definitive substantive ruling on this. Because for the people who don't know, the Alien Enemies act allows the administration to circumvent the ina, which is the, the whole immigration court system, and immediately deport supposed criminals who were invading the country. I mean, we all know this with the Venezuelans who are accused of being Trinidad Aragua just for having tattoos.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And so, so that is, to me, and I think all of us, the mo. The biggest threat to just be able to put somebody on a plane to another country and in a prison in another country, as we've seen with seacot in El Salvador. I mean, we need our Supreme Court to speak on this and we need it quickly.

[James]

Yeah. Like if we no longer have habeas, it's a frontal assault on the Bill of Rights, like most of them.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And there's so many assaults on the Bill of Rights. And then we need our Supreme Court to, To. To really to step up. And I think I'm not the only one who's extremely frustrated by that because we're, we're in crisis. And as we've seen, it's fallen on courts and, and lawyers and, and judges to try to defend the semblance of democracy in this country. But the, the highest court in the land needs to help out soon.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah.

[James]

And like, this is where like the rubber meets the road. Right. For like maintaining people's basic rights, dignity and, and, and yeah. The right not to be sent to a labor camp in El Salvador or, you know, South Sudan country which is rapidly descending into conflict again. I thought the government was barrel bombing this week.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Well, and just real quick, another note on the Supreme Court is that they're, they're also concerning. I mean, as we know, there's a lot of Trump appointees there.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And so, I mean, it's not even that that's the answer. It's just we're, you know, but we need answers more quickly than, than what they're, they're giving us. And it's just given the rate that this is, is, is working at, I, I don't know that they will if they ever get the case or the asylum ban at the border would even overturn that because historically they've sort of supported his 212F powers. So I'm not saying that's the answer to everything, but it's definitely frustrating to not have basic things.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Already decided. Like the use of the Alien Enemies Act.

[James]

Yeah. Like just not to know where we're at. Like when, you know, people are trying in good faith to move forward with the legal processes that they have spent their entire life savings on to get here and do the right, quote, unquote, the right way. You're still fighting a number of asylum cases, as we said before the call. Like, you probably won't be forever. Right. Like, at some point there's just not going to be any more asylum cases. I know that you're accepting donations, I think through Venmo on behalf of Primrose, that we'll be sure to link to that Venmo account in the description of this show. So people can donate if they'd like to. Now is the time to do it. Right. It's not like this is going to be an ongoing thing. Like, if people don't help now, then there won't be migrants to support or asylees to support later. So, like, how can people materially support maybe in other ways? Right. If they're like, like on hard times, they don't have the financial resources. What else can people do to just to make this a little bit less cruel to some people who are among the most unfortunate people on the planet?

[Taraji P. Henson]

Often, I think even mental and emotional support for the Immigrants in your life, I think is something that that is underestimated because speaking as a very privileged white woman attorney, U.S. citizen, this has taken a tremendous toll on me and the mental toll that has taken on the actual undocumented community and asylees. This messaging is so harmful and so disgusting that I think I would just caution people to not underestimate the power of human kindness to those already in your life and just empowering them, distributing know your rights cards and information that still matters. But also I think the people who are, as we've been discussing, going to be at the most disadvantaged in terms of being able to keep up morale are these people who are going to be mandatorily detained. So in terms of what we were talking about, I believe before we started recording, reaching out to any organizations I know in San Diego, there's detention, resistance, or even reaching out to the detention center that's near you to be able to determine how you can send a letter, how you can put money on somebody's books so that they can have phone calls with their family or phone calls with you even. I think these types of things are key in light of the administration's clear messaging that immigrants are very much unwanted and criminals. So I think that's where I would come at this from. If you cannot donate, again, like we were talking, if you have a few dollars to spare. I mean, if everybody has a few dollars to spare, there is a finite number, like we were saying, of asylum cases left like primroses. So if people can spare a few dollars here or there, whenever they can, it does make the difference.

[James]

Yeah, no, it does. And it shows that, like, even if the government doesn't want you hear, a lot of people want you to be protected. We want you to be safe. Like, yeah, the mental damage it does. I think it's hard to overstate. Like, I was talking, I remember, to a young woman in Bajaquito, and like, she was the only surviving member of her family. The government had killed everyone. And so she came to the US Right to be safe. And, like, now the government is coming after her in addition to the trauma she already has from watching her entire family die. Like, now the most powerful government in the world is coming after you. Like it. I can't imagine how that feels.

[Taraji P. Henson]

That's a very good point. I mean, yeah, people are coming already traumatized, only to be further traumatized by this administration in the system. And yes, I mean, emotional and mental. And any kind of support is not to be underestimated in the slightest. During these times.

[James]

Yeah, like, have people over for dinner if you can, or. Yeah. Like, call the detention center and put money on someone's commissary. Like, just showing people that they're welcome is important. Like, I know a lot of the migrants. Like, if I look at my phone right now, in the time we've been recording, one of the migrants I met in the Daring Gap will probably have texted me. They're in Mexico, right. And they just want the world to know about the situation. They know they can't come to the US Anymore, but sometimes people will say, I guess the Americans don't want us anymore. And, like, that breaks my heart because I think most people, if they knew these people's circumstances. Right. Like, hundreds of people have reached out to me since the Darien Gap stuff to ask how they can help. And, like, most people do want those people to be their neighbors. And it breaks my heart that they think that we don't want them, that we would rather leave them to die wherever they're at. Like, it's genuinely really horrible for me to think of that. So, yeah, I would really encourage anyone listening, if you can, to do what you can.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Absolutely. And just remembering that, again, these. These asylum cases are finite. So if you know any asylum seeker or can support any asylum seeker right now, now, they made it in. Let's give them their best shot.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, we can still help those people. And while we can, we should.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Absolutely.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

Well, thank you so much for joining us. We do appreciate it. I know that your time is very valuable and. And you're really busy right now, so we really appreciate your time. You're always welcome back. And if there's anything else you'd like to say before we finish up.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah. Thank you, James. I think the only thing I just want to emphasize is that, you know, from the standpoint of immigration attorneys, like, I feel that we're obviously a subject of an executive order, and. And, you know, big law firms are being extorted by the administration to represent causes that the administration believes in and not pro bono immigration work and so forth and so on. So it's not like too many of us have been personally attacked, although, you know, judges have been arrested, even judges, for just hiring an immigrant to do work around the house. So it is. It is a scary time to be practicing immigration law. But unfortunately, yeah, I do see there being a time when it won't happen. I mean, I see the writing on the wall where I will not be able to continue mentally and. Or economically because A side effect of all this, and a very intentional side effect is to make it so that we can't do much for people anymore and, or they can afford us or there's not people here to do anything for because their spirit was broken or their finances and. Or all of the above and they had to leave. So. Yeah, it is a very intense time.

[Greg Lodd]

Time.

[Taraji P. Henson]

But I came from different areas of law. I've only been in immigration seven years and it's the first time I've thought of, okay, where am I going to go to next?

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

In these seven years. And it's, it's a very real thing. So if you. Like I said, it feels very different than Trump 1.0, so.

[James]

No. Yeah. This is considerably more severe.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So in other words, take care of yourself if you are an ally.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Because you know, the attack is on immigrants and anybody who advocates, supports and so forth. And it's a very targeted, direct attack and it's very easy to get run down.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And consumed by it. And so definitely do what you need to do to take care of yourself. And if that means stepping back, then, you know, I mean, I want to keep my foot in the door as much as possible these next four years on something immigration and asylum related. But there's also economic and other realities that are happening.

[James]

Yeah.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Intentionally so, so.

[James]

Yeah, definitely. And I think it is important for people to do whatever they need to do to self preserve and, and take care of themselves as well. I think that's a good place to end. Thank you so much for your time. And again, like, if you're listening, please check the description of the show and we will have a Link to Primrose's GoFundMe if you'd like to help.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Thank you so much, James.

[James]

Thank you.

[Greg Lodd]

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated.

[Clayton English]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[James]

It's really, really, really bad.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4. Ad free at Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts Sometimes as dads, I.

[James]

Think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the.

[Clayton English]

Providers, but we also have to learn.

[Taraji P. Henson]

To take care of ourselves. Wrap away.

[James]

You got to pray for yourself as.

[Mia]

Well as for everybody else.

[James]

But never forget yourself. Self love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.

[Clayton English]

Never stop being an dad.

[James]

That's dedication.

[Debbie Brown]

Find out [e-mail] brought to you by.

[Greg Lodd]

The U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

[James]

And it's going to take us to heal us.

[Greg Lodd]

It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of of us also reconnecting to our childhood in some. So you said I look how youthful.

[Clayton English]

I look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes.

[Debbie Brown]

I love funny.

[Greg Lodd]

I love laughing.

[Clayton English]

I laugh at myself.

[James]

I don't take myself too seriously.

[Clayton English]

That's the stuff that keeps you young.

[Greg Lodd]

And stops you from being so hard to hear.

[James]

With this and more things on the.

[Greg Lodd]

Journey of healing, you can listen to just heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast at.

[Taraji P. Henson]

And T connecting changes everything.

[Clayton English]

I'm Clayton English.

[Greg Lodd]

I'm Greg Lobb, and this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Sir, we are back in a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

[Clayton English]

It's just the compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

[Greg Lodd]

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

[Debbie Brown]

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.

[Greg Lodd]

Benny the Butcher, Brent Smith from Shinedown got Be Real from Cypress Hill, NHL enforcer Riley Cote, Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

[Debbie Brown]

Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

[Greg Lodd]

It makes it real.

[Mia]

It really does. It makes it real.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast. Season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early.

[James]

And ad free with exclusive content, subscribe.

[Greg Lodd]

To Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Robert Evans]

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, Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.

[James]

Hello.

[Debbie Brown]

What's up everybody? Who's got Ed? Us, you, everybody.

[Robert Evans]

We're giving you Ed this episode. We're covering the week of May 21 to May 28. It was a really busy news week for the latter half of that week, so we're going to be mostly catching up with that Jesus.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And let's start with the biggest news from late last week domestically, the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. the shooting took place around 9pm on Wednesday, May 21, outside of an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According to witnesses and surveillance video, a 31 year old man named Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people leaving the event. As he walked past them, he turned to face their backs and shot two people and continued to fire as they fell to the ground. One of the victims, a 26 year old woman, tried to crawl away after being shot. Rodriguez followed her and fired again.

[James]

Jesus.

[Robert Evans]

While he was reloading, she sat up and then Rodriguez shot her several more times before throwing his gun into a bush. He ran into the museum after the shooting. Security let him in thinking that he was a victim. Witnesses say he appeared traumatized and in shock. People from the museum event brought him water and when they asked him if he was okay or if he was injured, Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted to the shooting and according to witnesses, quote, grabbed a red keffiyeh out of his pocket and started Free Palestine. Chance quote, there is only one solution. Intifado revolution, unquote. While being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free Free Palestine. Israel's ambassador to the US Claimed that the two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli Embassy employees and that Rodriguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee, disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register for their event but was denied entry following a background check. Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun in Illinois, and flew with it to D.C. the night before the shooting, this event was an American Jewish Committee access D.C. young diplomats reception. The description for the event reads, quote, this special event brings together Jewish young professionals age 22 to 45 and the D.C. diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce this year's theme, Turning Pain Into Purpose. Hear from members of the Multi Faith alliance and israde as they delve into humanitarian diplomacy and how a coalition of organizations from the region and for the region are working together in response to humanitarian crises through the Middle east and North Africa regions, unquote. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lisinski, 26 and 30, who met through their work at the embassy. Luzinski identified as a Christian, though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in the idf. There is an alternative claim that he was born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager, but most reporting says that he was born in Israel. In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this as anti Semitic violence. The acting U.S. attorney said that they are investigating the case as a hate crime and act of terrorism. Dan Bonino, deputy FBI director, said the shooting was a, quote, act of targeted violence. The Israeli foreign minister and Netanyahu have laid blame at college protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France, Britain and Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking about Israel's, quote, supposed genocide and crimes against humanity, unquote, and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel, quote, unquote, incitement. Netanyahu said, quote, free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler, Jesus Christ. You don't want a Palestinian state. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years, unquote.

[Debbie Brown]

This is obviously, I think, in a lot of ways the kind of thing Netanyahu has been waiting for and probably the kind of thing that a number of folks in that Trump has put in federal law enforcement have been waiting for because it provides them with some opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student organizing and organizing against Israeli war crimes. Right? Like the, the, the argument they want to be able to make is that just saying free Palestine is an act of terrorism and there was an act of terrorism here, right? Like shooting two embassy employees for the crimes of their government, like that is a clear act of terrorism. Right. You can, like, feel however you want to, like, that's the definition of what was done. But the things he was chanting were not part of the act of terrorism. The fact that he shot people to death was the act of terrorism.

[James]

Yeah. It's the murdering people that's terrorism.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And that is already illegal, by the way, and quite heavily. I'll be interested. We don't seem to know much about where he got the firearm yet that I've come across.

[Robert Evans]

So he legally purchased it in Illinois.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has, like, fairly sort of strict gun laws.

[James]

Yeah, some of the strictest in the.

[Debbie Brown]

US So it's one of those things where there's already quite a bit of regulation around everything that he did here. But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you are because of this, you know, there's an amendment, there will be people who carry out attacks like this. And I don't really know. There certainly didn't seem to be, outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends, a lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar. He had been at, like, a PSL Party for Socialism and Liberation march in 2017 or something. But, like, this wasn't a guy who had a history of violence or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a reality of the country that we live in, is that when people like this decide to carry out shootings for whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low. It's.

[Robert Evans]

It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like. Like this, because there's a lot of them out there.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah. And most of them don't do shootings. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

This act has been widely condemned. Like, pro Palestine commentators have said that this style of, like, adventurous terrorism does nothing to help the Palestinian people and in fact, only hurts them and plays into what, like, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu have been, like, wanting to happen for a while.

[James]

While.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

I think Kat Abu Gazela, a Paris, still an American woman who's running for.

[Debbie Brown]

Office in Illinois, worked for Media Matters for years. Yeah. Does a lot of videos. Yep.

[James]

Yeah. Anyway, I. I saw that she'd shared something about how, like, yeah, this was something that evidently should be condemned. Right. That is wrong and is not advancing the cause of Palestinian freedom. Like, I think adventurous terrorism is a good way to describe it and was just getting panned by people on the Internet, which, like, I don't know, people engaging with this, like, from a place it doesn't come from, like, it's bad when random folks get shot and killed.

[Robert Evans]

No. People have. Have used the horrific genocide as a way to, like, channel their general societal frustration and find a way to, like, just act incredibly hostile, like, to actual Palestinians.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Who don't share the exact same, like, anti imperialist TM views that they might have.

[James]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's just permission to abuse people online.

[James]

Yeah. Deeply. Like. Like verbally violent and like, I know, like psycho.

[Robert Evans]

And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as well as. Yeah, as. We'll see.

[James]

Well, let's talk about that.

[Robert Evans]

Let's get a little bit into his background. So he has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.

[Debbie Brown]

And it's. It's cogent. Like, in terms of. It's not the ramblings of like, a madman or something. There's nothing like it at all.

[Robert Evans]

He has an English degree. Right. He knows how to write.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

He has worked as a writer for, like, almost a decade.

[James]

Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

I mean that in terms of, like, it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not any evidence here of like, a disconnect or whatever. He's not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the weather bad or whatever. Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The manifesto is titled Escalate for Gaza, Bring the war Home. And he attempts to explain the rationale behind his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale of dead Palestinians, writing that, quote, atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification, unquote. He writes about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the US government has continually refused to reign in Israel and instead moves to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action. Quote, an armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is. Not usually. It is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares in many unarmed actions. Unquote.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And I. I do find, you know, one of the first things that happened when this attack was carried out was people started theorizing that this had been some knots Nazi who was using this to. Using the pro Palestin cause to, like, camouflage his Nazism. And I don't think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things. One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name was Habbo88. And he was not born in 88, obviously, whatever you see in 88, it's an accursed millennial. And the other is the, the bring the war home reference in his manifesto, which is basically a Reference to something that I believe it was Louis Beam, who was a neo Nazi organ, said about trying to get Vietnam veterans to essentially bring the war home to the United States in order to spark a race war. And it th. Those two little things are weird. However, the rest of this guy's fairly well documented history and background does not suggest anything like that. So I, I don't think that that's the credible thing to blame this on, quite frankly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, I'll go over some of that background in brief.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

He also talked about targeting government representatives. Quote, the impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then tells the story of a man who tried to throw Secretary of defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea. He finishes with his thoughts on the, quote, unquote, morality of armed demonstrations, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize the perpetrators of atrocities as a method for us to cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of. Quote, this action would have been morally justified, taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible. It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least, there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and in some funny way the only sane thing to do, unquote. I did find it interesting that on December 5, 2024, Rodriguez posted on his Twitter account that, quote, 80% of the country applauds the targeted annihilation of a health care insurance executive, unquote. As for his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a. A Maoist third Worldist and believes that the Global south alone has, quote, unquote, revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to journalist Ken Kleppenstein like this, quote, he was a big proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad, Syria.

[Debbie Brown]

How'd that go?

[Robert Evans]

He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years. Years way before 2023. He'd always hated Israel and would call it, quote, the little Satan, unquote.

[James]

For sake, the Assad test reigned supreme as the, as a ab test for someone having shitty politics.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. With the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Assad.

[James]

Yeah, yeah. Assad who gassed his own people, who.

[Debbie Brown]

Murdered little children, including thousands and thousands of Palestinians, by the way. Yes, yeah, yeah, like, but again, you, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well informed opinions out of folks like this.

[Robert Evans]

His online Presence mirrors what I would call like the typical, like, anti imperialist TM poster where he's airs most of his frustration at the Democrats, sometimes at Republicans, but mostly. Yeah. Posts about being pro Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, pro Assad, and particularly the past few years, posting a lot about Palestine.

[Debbie Brown]

Right?

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

With explicit defense and like, veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein also said, quote, it's driving me crazy that people are calling it a false flag. This development is shocking, but not completely out of character. He always had strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's the same as he was, unquote.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, and I, I mean that, that seems true. Again, we, we still don't have an, like a perfect knowledge of all of this guy's, you know, online life.

[Robert Evans]

No, this is just a week away.

[Debbie Brown]

But based on what Ken's posted, based on this interview, that makes complete sense. Yeah, right. I, I like, I don't have any trouble believing that for a number of reasons.

[Robert Evans]

No, absolutely. This is, this is not a false flag attack. That's, that's conspiratorial nonsense sense.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, I think that's, it's. This guy did a thing that he sincerely believed in and it seems like everything he'd been expressing in the year or two leading up to doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did.

[Robert Evans]

Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, back in 2017, and spoke to the media on their behalf, though he would later regret his association with the group. Telling friends, quote, psl sucks shit. I wish I had just done a misadventure with the Freedom Road Socialist organization rather than the psl. Lol. Unquote.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In 2023, he posted video from a local pro Palestine march on his Twitter account. Klippenstein spoke with at least five friends of his who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez express anti Semitic sentiment. Now, one of Rodriguez friends gave Klippenstein access to a years old private WhatsApp group chat that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day before the shooting. Klippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things, especially Israel and its war in Gaza, unquote. Yeah, and from what we can see of the chats that can't post posted, this matches pretty well. A chat member wrote, quote, I'm almost surprised you're not anti Semitic, Elias. It usually goes Hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong mantra.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And his response to this was like Stalin and did, you know, among other things, Stalin and did the greatest anti Semitic state in history, which I've seen as evidence that he wasn't pro Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know, defeating the Nazis. But he, he, he says like among other things. So he's clearly got a number of reasons he like Stalin. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

From the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly like a, like a tanky anti imperialist type.

[Debbie Brown]

Yes, yes.

[James]

Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

Million such examples.

[Robert Evans]

The only time he talked about race explicitly was to lambast white people. Quote. Lol. You probably would have to actually genocide white people to make this a normal country. Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonment of tens of millions of white people.

[James]

There's the, there's the Stalin did nothing wrong.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

There's that guy brained type that we were looking for.

[Debbie Brown]

Well, and again, it's one of those things. We're talking about this because there's a bunch of guys who express similar views. This is the only one who's done a shooting. When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking about this like as evidence that like, oh, someone who's a, a fucking tanky type is like, is likely to commit a mass shooting.

[James]

Right. That they go hand in hand.

[Clayton English]

No.

[Robert Evans]

This is the first time a tank. He's done anything.

[Debbie Brown]

This is the first one these I've heard of in quite, quite a long time.

[James]

Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

It just this guy. There's a bunch of people who express similar things to this guy, right?

[James]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

On October 7th, he celebrated the Hamas attack. Quote, just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush. Absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters. I m a o love checking back in with the news every few hours. Like I wonder if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly wonder if Israel is over yet today or not. Unquote.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And again like that just kind of shows the general lack of knowledge.

[Robert Evans]

A level of political delusion.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah.

[James]

Like a lot of kind of telegram, propaganda, consumption type worldview here. Yes.

[Debbie Brown]

And can convince you that what's happening is different from the reality.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

In this chat he lamented to friends and expressed sorrow at the deaths of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. And sometimes his ire was directed at other members of this leaked chat. At one point going on an unhinged able rant attacking one of his friends for Being privileged. After they discussed the challenges of having a brother with schizophrenia. Quote, why not just have him committed? You can't possibly be gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that. Just put him in a padded room and forget about him.

[Debbie Brown]

Jesus Christ.

[Robert Evans]

If there was a person you loved, he's gone now. Let it go. Can you just chain him in the basement and slide meals under the door? I'm just tired of hearing about this guy. He's useless. We get it. Stop complaining and just dispose of him.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

[James]

I mean, this goes with the, like, people who, I don't know, aren't useful to me are of no value. Right. Like, people don't have inherent value and, you know, they don't agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them. They can die. Like, I guess there's some kind of coherence there.

[Robert Evans]

Robert, do you want to mention the Something Awful?

[Debbie Brown]

Yes, I do. Garrison. So the other thing that came out in Ken's article is that that this dude was a poster. His friends described him as a dedicated poster, which is the worst thing you can be described as being, and noted that he had been. There had been some. When it came out that, like, his former Twitter username had been like, Habbo 88. That was very clearly a reference to a game called Habbo Hotel that if you're. If you're Gen Z, there's very good odds you don't remember, but it was a big thing for people who were on 4chan and who were on Something Awful. And Something Awful was the website that gave birth to 4chan. It's where I was raised on the Internet. And many, many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I think. I don't remember the exact year, but we started gathering on this game for children. It was like an MMO for little kids and like, pretending to be members of a cult in order to, like, confuse small children. And then 4chan did their own version of that that was a bit more racist, which is often the case.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, many such cases.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there was a debate, was this guy a Channer or was this guy a Goon? You know, a member of the Something Awful forums. And a lot of people thought I. I called Goon. A lot of people thought Shanner, because of his age, he was a little bit young to have been a part of the Something Awful, have a hotel things. I think it's actually likelier he did both. But his friends described him as somebody who was really into Something Awful. Right. As somebody who had been influenced by that, and particularly a subset of the Something Awful forums called fiat, which stands for fuck you and die, which kind of pioneered a lot of the most toxic aspects of online discourse apparently.

[James]

Jesus.

[Debbie Brown]

Now folks have found at least one of his accounts that doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't mean much because number one, he could have deleted a lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older. Number two, he could have had another account, which is also the case. The one account that people know was his was banned for shooting and killing two embassy employees. There's, there's reasons given in the, in the ever lengthening Something Awful ban list. When somebody gets banned, obviously, again, I don't think there's like a, a causative thing to him being like, him being on Something Awful didn't cause him to shoot two people people, but him being on Something Awful was a natural part of the progression that led to him being the kind of like toxic online asshole that he was. And sort of evidence of that is that one of the last things he had done online before the shooting was he had gotten briefly onto Blue sky and then gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stancil, who's another annoying asshole on the Internet who was also a Something Awful goofy who was raised in this same chunk of the Internet and who became a similar kind of asshole just with wildly different politics. Yeah, and these two hated each other. And Elias like threatened to murder him over the Internet because he's like, again, these guys.

[Robert Evans]

He's that type of guy.

[Debbie Brown]

He's that type of guy. Which doesn't mean. Again, which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting or had anything to do with that. Because there's a lot of this type of guy and almost none of them committed commit acts of terrorism. It just like his background makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we can see that he was online.

[Robert Evans]

The last thing I'll say about this is that, you know, beyond this like senseless loss of life, which is like an issue in and of itself, obviously this also contributes to further loss of life in the way this plays into like media capture. Right now we have a whole week where the news cycle is dominated by two people getting murdered in the streets of D.C. b.C. And this does not help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The exact same day that this happened, Wednesday, the 21st, 93 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. And that type of stuff does not really get reported anymore because that's how like media capture works. Americans are really good at getting desensitized to this in a large scale media environment. But stuff like this only serves as a distraction and fuels Israel's own motivation for their continued actions.

[James]

Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by the advertisers in this show.

[Robert Evans]

It's true.

[Debbie Brown]

There you go.

[Robert Evans]

And we are back. Another big news item from last week was the passing of the big beautiful budget bill in the House. We'll talk more about this bill as it churns through the Senate. But first, our co host Mia Wong has a special report on how the bill targets trans health care.

[Mia]

So we're going to talk a little bit about the budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes in the Senate that's been passed by the House. I'm, I am Mia Wong and we're going to talk about how this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is Maddy Kastigan from maddycast and Mira Levine from the Free Radical. Glad to have both of you two here. You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First, can you, can you explain what is going on in this budget with the, the ban on trans healthcare using Medicaid?

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, absolutely. So the budget bill, also known as House Resolution 1 is, is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding next year's budget and how they're going to allocate all their funds. This time around, Republicans decided it would be a great idea to push through. So what, what it was at first was a intense limitation on what Medicaid to cover. Essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I began investigating first. Me and Maddie were talking about it a bunch. She's the one who took me off to to it. They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that would result in millions of people losing access to their healthcare, not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts, for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps of the, I believe it was the Capitol building in the 90s to raise awareness and help get the American Disabilities act passed, they stage a protest on the United States Capitol. During a hearing for this bill where Republicans were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple activists got arrested. They're all fine now, apparently, apparently they weren't treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But what ultimately happened is more and more came out and it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected, but basically every marginalized group. Queer people, of course, being what we were focusing on given the beat. But this will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're low income, especially if you are a person of color. You are more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this bill and how sweeping it is. And Republicans implemented a ban for, for gender affirming care for minors on it. It was a very milkatoast ban that at the time was projected to pretty much get over to court right away if we were to pass. They didn't stop there, though. They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it into a sweeping ban on gender affirming care for all ages on Medicaid and for any health insurance received through Affordable Care act marketplaces. And ultimately this led to a lot of panic and a lot of people assuming that their care is going to be taken away immediately. That wasn't what's going to happen. The minimum effective date that's currently in the bill is 2027. I'm telling people to prepare if it passes for 2026, because there's a decent chance Republicans will try to expedite it because it passed through the House, it passed through committees in the House, it was sent to the Senate. And I think that's what we'll give to Mattie to talk about kind of what next steps for that are.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Yeah, so like Mauro was saying, there's a lot of really, this bill is tremendous.

[Robert Evans]

They could talk for hours about it.

[Taraji P. Henson]

But focusing on the transports, there's a ban on Medicaid funding and there's also a ban on including Transcares and essential health benefit and ACA plans. And the thing about both of these.

[James]

Provisions is that normally with reconciliation bills.

[Taraji P. Henson]

They'Re supposed to be focused on budget.

[James]

Items, not policy items.

[Taraji P. Henson]

So, for example, you couldn't say, hey, weed is legal everywhere now, or something like that, or raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried to do in 2021 and they failed because there are rules regarding how this process works.

[James]

And so what we argued in our.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Article was that there's a possibility that.

[Robert Evans]

If ACT activists and advocates reached out.

[Taraji P. Henson]

To their senators and advocated to point.

[Robert Evans]

Out that this part of the bill.

[James]

Is completely against those provisions, against those.

[Robert Evans]

Procedural rules, the Senate parliamentarian could rule against it and basically strike that portion.

[James]

Of the bill without it ever even becoming law.

[Robert Evans]

And you know, that would save people.

[James]

A lot of stress and anxiety.

[Robert Evans]

And you don't have to worry about the court battles.

[James]

And what happens with Scumetti vs. US, which is a Supreme Court case.

[Taraji P. Henson]

That'S going to be ruled on on gender affirming care soon. So what we've been telling people and.

[Robert Evans]

You know, including listeners for your show, is that people really need to reach out to their senators every single day.

[James]

Email Col and ask them to vote.

[Taraji P. Henson]

No on this bill on HR1 and specifically mention the trans healthcare aspects. And if you're, if you want, there's.

[Robert Evans]

Templates online on our website or you.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Can just, you know, ask them, hey.

[Robert Evans]

We don't think this bill is good.

[James]

We don't. We want you to challenge specifically the.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Parts that are attacking trans people.

[Robert Evans]

And I can confirm with you, I.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Can'T share too much information, but I can confirm with you that we are making real legitimate progress on killing this provision.

[Robert Evans]

And the more people we have calling.

[Taraji P. Henson]

In every single day, the better our odds are.

[Robert Evans]

But there's still more ways to fight.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Back and I want Myra to pick.

[James]

Up on how people can fight back on the ground.

[Greg Lodd]

Yeah, so in addition to reaching out to your senators, of course do that. There's an email to template. Maddie wrote up a great one. It tells you everything you need to do. You can even leave a phone call at the script. It takes like five minutes. But more long term is this is not going to be the only attack on gender affirming care. It's not going to stop here. This is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately, we cannot rely on the government to give us essential health care. We cannot rely on the government to protect us and give us what we need need. Because fundamentally the government and the laws that it aims to uphold are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy. The law is functionally something that gives police power to act as essentially an occupying army on the state and to persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are disproportionately rich and powerful decree. And we need to start focusing on building long term solutions. Everything we can do with legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not save us because there will be more attacks down the line. They'll keep coming and they only need to win once. We need to win that every time. But there are long term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual aid network. Get plugged into people doing work on the ground in your state, in your area area who are focusing on a plethora of different issues. Bit of a self plug here, but I wrote an article for instance last month where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the Twin Cities who told me just a lot about the history of radical praxis in the cities, especially in light of the George Floyd riots and especially in right of corporate pride. Rainbow capitalism, whole nine yards. Recommend reading it? It's on the freeradical.org check it out. But beyond of course my own writing and my own interviews, there are so many people doing work that doesn't get covered because it either isn't paddleable to mainstream news audiences or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons in every single major city. This I can guarantee. There are people doing the work. Most of the time it's not going to be able publicly visible, but they are there. I would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in get started with something that is much more entry level and something that is much more like meant to be kind of for everyone who may not be willing to do more in depth and more crazy type of stuff. Food not bombs is the great thing I recommend for everyone to check out. Not every city has one. Most do. Every state has has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of local mutual aid groups in every single locality and if there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend, I'm a bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones that are decentralized and non hierarchical. Ones that don't revolve around centralizing power and placing that power in the hands of people who are, they're good at smooth talking or who have a lot of money. Ultimately the way forward for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just trans people, you know, undocumented immigrants, black, indigenous people of color, low income people, disabled people and so forth. The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect all of us. Attacks on trans healthcare are not limited there. Inevitably, let's say they ban trans healthcare overnight, they're going to come for intersex people next. They're going to come for gay people next, they're going to come for everyone. So I would just say get involved in your local groups and reach out. There are resources out there if you need some. Check out the freeradical.org I recommend a ton of them.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Thank you. And yeah, our website for medicast is m a-ycast.com and you can find our templates for contacting your senators there. Thank you so much for helping yourself and helping your community.

[Mia]

Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to close on, I want to read, wrote a real line from fucking Namix, Manifesto from Andor. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere and even the smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the arguments that Nimbik makes here that I think is just true is that in order to maintain their holds, these people have to win a hundred battles across a hundred fronts. But this means that there are so many different things that you can do to resist them and to make sure that this fucking budget they're trying to pass to make sure that everyone in this country suffers and specifically the trans people, cannot use the health insurances that we need, use Medicaid, use the Affordable act to pay for stuff. This stuff can be resisted in so many different ways. You can, as we've talked about, you can call your senators, you can yell at them, you can make their lives miserable until they agree to not do this. And then also you can join your local A groups, you can join local activist groups, you can start, you know, getting seriously organized in other ways.

[Greg Lodd]

You can.

[Mia]

Again, like, we've talked a lot about unions and the role of unions and trans struggle on this show. We've talked. Oh God, we've talked about so many things. I'm going to do a one second plug for the episode I wrote last year called you Already know how to organize Organize, because you do already know how to organize. And yeah, none of the things that are happening here are inevitable. They can be stopped. And there are so many different ways for you to start stopping them.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. So we're back and we're talking about Gavin Newsom and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect. So. So if you remember a little earlier this year, there was a big brouhaha publicly because a California transgender high school athlete won at the woman's 8ft triple jump. This is an 11th grade transgender athlete from Europa Valley High school near Riverside, California. And she won the Division 3 girls long jump and triple jump and placed seventh in the high jump at her Southern Section championship championship. A few weeks later, there's going to be, I don't think it's happened yet, a championship meet that she qualified for as a result of this. And when this happened, it was immediately leapt on by the Trump administration and by right wing media as evidence of this thing that they've been trying to push for forever, which is that trans athletes are a threat to women's sports right now. This is something that, number one, there's just not a lot of. And this is also something that, like, think something like 2/3 of Americans when polled told, say that they don't feel like trans athletes should be competing with, you know, quote unquote, naturally born women in women's sports. Right? Like, this is a thing that the right has built a lot of support for because they have made this a political issue for so long. And they've been largely successful in that the state of California and California lawmakers have been pushing back against this. There have been state bills in order to allow these girls to continue to compete. But Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same degree of support. And this kind of largely came out earlier this month when he had a meeting with conservative personality Charlie Kirk on his new podcast. As Newsom said, Kirk pushed so hard on the topic that Newsom said he felt like he had to address it. Here's how Newsom characterized it. And then he asked me, tell me that's not fair. And I looked at him, I said, you're right, that's not. And so it wasn't some grand design sign. And I know, I know that hurt a lot of people. But respectively, I just disagree with those on the other side of this. Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom. He was attacked for flip flopping because again, like, the California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend trans athletes. But Newsom kind of flipped as soon as he was in a room with Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom will argue that he also tried to stick up for trans athletes to Charlie. Charlie Kirk, to be clear about that, this is exactly what he said to Charlie. Completely fair. On the issue of fairness, I completely agree. So that's easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression. And the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well. So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think you know is inherent in, in you, but not always expressed in the issue? And first of all, there's no decency inherent Charlie Kirk. And second, yeah, there's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide. What is that?

[James]

What does that mean?

[Debbie Brown]

What does that mean, Gavin?

[James]

That's not a sentence. Also, like, just like, I made my living exercising for most of my 20s, right?

[Debbie Brown]

Like you're a professional athlete, done sports yeah.

[James]

Like, and then I've done all kinds of other shit where I still got paid to race my bike. Right. Like, yeah, sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I coached people who worked way harder than me. They trained super hard, they slept well, they ate better. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were not able to get to the same level. That sucks. But, like, sport is inherently unfair. The idea that, like, the only difference is like, this, like, your XX or XY chromosomeality is nonsense. Like, especially in high school sports, kids will develop at different times. That is unfair. Some kids will excel and then other kids will get better. The function of high school sports is not to find who can go, like, higher, faster, stronger. It's to teach people to play nicely with one another and to communicate inclusion. And excluding trans kids is completely contrary to that.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And that's like. Yeah, I think that's a great point, James, is that, like, number one, this is all being entirely made about, like, who places how, which is always going to be based largely on things that, like, people can't control because, like, people's bodies are different, you know?

[James]

Yeah. And they develop differently. Like, there are people who I beat at bike races when I was a kid who have won stages at the Tour de France.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

Like, if our bodies develop differently, that's completely normal.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And it's this again, the thing that should matter here is not treating a community of people hatefully, which is the entirety of the reason the right has made this an issue. It has nothing to do with fairness. It has nothing to do with sports. It's entirely about hurting a group of people.

[Taraji P. Henson]

People.

[James]

Yeah. If these people gave a single shit about women's sports, they'd have been there when women weren't getting paid the same. They'd have been there when they didn't get the same TV coverage, they'd have been there when they didn't get the same prize money.

[Debbie Brown]

And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at that point in time. Yeah. Now, I do think one thing that's funny here is that when Newsom was, when people asked, rightly, like, when California legislators were pushing to, like, protect trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you felt this way? And his answer was, I didn't have a podcast. I wasn't having that conversation. I was out there on the campaign trail in the big blue bubble, on the. The big blue bus and the big blue crowds having big blue conversations. And then he went on to say that basically the backlash to him agreeing with Charlie Kirk on this has convinced Him. I always thought the right overstated how judgmental my party was. And I'll be candid with you, I have a deeper understanding now of that critique than I ever, ever, ever understood. It was like, now that people are angry at me, I believe there's a problem with my party being judgmental.

[James]

Yeah. Now that I've faced a consequence for my shit, I hate trans people even more. Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It must be so hard to be Gavin Newsom.

[Debbie Brown]

It's gotta be tough and betray your.

[Robert Evans]

Constituents to get the approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around who still hates you, touring college campuses to debate 17 year olds. That must be so hard for you, Gavin.

[Debbie Brown]

It's gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, Gavin.

[James]

He did say in his podcast that his kid likes Charlie Kirk.

[Robert Evans]

Not surprising.

[James]

Maybe this is all just a ploy to be a cool dad.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, I'm not surprised. He sucks at being a dad.

[James]

Gavin used to makes you want to be a cool dad energy. It's embarrassing.

[Robert Evans]

Reminds me that Jake Tapper just said his kid's not really into politics, he's just into World War II and gaming.

[Debbie Brown]

Great part of World War II. Tapper.

[Robert Evans]

Curious. Curious.

[James]

Many such cases. Doesn't his kid want to be a cop? Is that Jake Tapper?

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. That makes sense. That sounds like Jake fucking Tapper's kid.

[James]

Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

So look, earlier this week, on Tuesday, President Trump shared a truth social post post a truth threatening to. Yes. He retruthed a post threatening to withhold federal funding from California over the participation of this high school trans athlete in the upcoming California Interscholastic Federation State Track and field Championships. Right. And he said that under the leadership of radical left Democrat Gavin Newscom, California continues to illegally allow men to play in women's sports. The governor himself said it is unfair.

[James]

Fair.

[Debbie Brown]

Trump wrote. First off, the fact that Gavin agreed with Charlie and his podcast did nothing to change the rhetoric around him. He's still radical left Democrat Gavin Newscomb. Because you can't make these people unhappy. Because it's not about fairness, it's about hurting people. Right.

[Robert Evans]

You can. You can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.

[Debbie Brown]

Yes, I wanted to talk about Maine. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

So Trump made this same threat to the state of Maine when the governor of Maine refused to stop allowing trans people to compete in women's sports. And the administration attempted to freeze funds intended for a Maine child nutrition program.

[Robert Evans]

No more food for your kids because woke.

[Debbie Brown]

No more food for poor kids because woke. And in response, the governor of Maine was like, all right, let's fucking go to the mat. And they filed a lawsuit against the U.S. department of Agriculture, and the Trump administration settled. Like, they, they backed down. They agreed to stop freezing the funds if main Maine drop the lawsuit. Right. Like, as soon as Maine sued, Trump backed down. Right. And rather than attempting to do that, even though there's ample evidence that the administration backs down, and to be fair, nothing against Maine. California's got a lot more weight to throw around. Yeah. It's the fifth largest economy on the planet. They have some. They have some fucking heft behind them.

[James]

And like, Newsom clearly has no moral principle other than advancing his own career and personal power and wealth. Right. No, but, like, even if that is the case, it's so easy to be like, yeah, I'll fight him on this. I'll fight for the trans kids and get some, like, resistor points. But he's just too much of a fucking coward.

[Debbie Brown]

The first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything. Don't treat them like people. They're monsters. They're scum. You fight them every step of the way. Right. Like, it doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never give pieces of shit like this away win. Right. That's just not the way you fight them.

[Robert Evans]

This is the problem with people like Gavin, who just. Whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging against your previously held progressive, DEI woke LGBTQ plus values.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Then you just go along with that swing and you would actually don't even care about getting this, getting those points anymore because you think the culture is going into a different direction and all you care about is being in the cultural zeitgeist. You don't actually stand for anything. Like, you, you're just. You're just nothing.

[James]

Yeah. And everyone can see that.

[Debbie Brown]

As opposed to understanding what Governor Frey of Maine understands, which is that, no, you stand there, you accept that the zeitgeist is a scream door and it's going to bounce off of you and back in enough another direction if you stand for something. Right. Gavin decided not to stand for something. And immediately after Trump made that tweet threatening to withhold funds from the state of California. And you know, the Department of Education has opened Title 4 investigation into leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF, which is California's high school governing sports governing body. Right after Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF released a statement saying that it had made the decision to pilot an entry process for the championship that's coming up that will alter the way they hand out awards. It will expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes is the exact way that they have phrased this. And basically what they're going to be doing is giving an award for biological men, biological women, and then trans competitors. Right. So there will be, like, three long jump awards.

[Robert Evans]

It's like a segregated scoring field.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And it's. It's sim, I guess you could say it's not as awful as trying to ban people, but also, it's kind of like you're not even taking. Taking any kind of stance here.

[Robert Evans]

It's nothing.

[Debbie Brown]

It's nothing. It's nothing. Now, Newsom spokesperson izzy Garden said CIF's proposed pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness. The governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach. And I should note here, this has done nothing to actually calm the right or get conservatives to back down. Right.

[Robert Evans]

No, because they don't want trans kids competing at all. They don't want trans kids in public life.

[James]

They don't want trans kids exist.

[Debbie Brown]

Yes. And so, like, conservative Californians are still angry.

[Robert Evans]

You can't take them for their word for it.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

They don't care about fairness in sports. This is all about just eradicating transgenderism from public life. Like, as. As Michael Knowles said at cpac, like, two years ago. Like, that's what they actually care about.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. And there's, you know, there's been a bunch of statements. Some. Some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ Caucasus have been like, well, Gavin's, you know, otherwise been a good ally, you know, for LGBTQ people. And I don't agree with. This is something that assembly member Chris Ward said, basically. I don't agree with this particular move, but he's been a good ally for a long time.

[Taraji P. Henson]

Has he, though? Has he, though?

[James]

Yeah, I mean, when it's convenient to him, I guess I prefer.

[Debbie Brown]

Caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was, quote, just commenting on how he personally feels. He mentioned it on his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a policy direction. And hell, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's a dumb podcast. Yeah, Yeah.

[James]

I mean, you should be concerned that he has a dumb podcast where he demonizes trans people. Like, yeah, he signs vetoes all the time.

[Debbie Brown]

Like, again, I found a KCRA article on this that quotes Republican assembly woman Kate Sanchez, who wrote a bill that would have banned trans athletes from competing in girls high school sports earlier this year. And this is what she said about CIF's rule chains, Pilot policy. It's incredibly weak. We're angry. We're pissed at this. How every day that goes by, no one is protecting our girls. This is inexcusable, and we need to have something done. Governor Newsom needs to pick a side, do something, do the right thing. So, again, this gets you nothing with them. Right. It benefits you. Not at all. There's another quote I want to read here from State Senator Scott Weiner, who is the leader of the Senate Budget Committee and again, a member of the LGBTQ Rights Caucus. Trump is now targeting California just like he targeted Maine, threatening to withhold federal funds of California. California doesn't follow his illegal edicts targeting transgender people. California law protects trans people. That won't change Maine one in court. So will California. There's only one answer to a bully. No. And as Maine Governor Janet Mills said, see you in court. Sorry, I got. I don't know why I said Governor Frey earlier, but anyway, the point here is that you have Californian legislators saying the right thing, and then you have fucking Newsom being like, no, no, no, actually, we're totally going to cave. And in a way that won't even make the Republicans happy. It's just frustrating to me that you do have Democrats trying to do the right thing here in California politics, and Newsom absolutely having CIF do a runaround on them out of pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what I got.

[Robert Evans]

Get him out of there.

[Debbie Brown]

Get him out of there. Fuck. Gavin Newsom.

[James]

We tried to. There was a recall, but it was not for the right reasons.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. The last time we recalled a California governor, it was a real mixed bag.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Speaking of a mixed bag.

[Debbie Brown]

That's right. And we're back.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, we're back.

[James]

We're back.

[Robert Evans]

James, don't want to finish us up here.

[James]

I do. Garrison, I would like that very much. I want to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to try and keep this fast. I know it's already been a long episode. Let's start with ice. Agents have been arresting people in immigration court around the country and placing them in expedited removal proceedings. If you want to know more about exactly what expirated removal proceedings are and how they work, you can go back to our episode, which will have air the day before you hear this, and that would explain. And I talked to an immigration attorney there and explained a little bit more about how that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed. So previously, it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases of people who had arrived less than two years ago and placing them under 240 expedited removal proceedings. Apparently they are also detaining others, other people. I am not sure how that works. I have not seen any, any justifications for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are going to have to fight their removal from detention, which is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience. Right. Detention in these, in these core Civic or geogroup facilities is pretty bad. I'm aware of cases where I misidentified the person being detained, cuffed, the wrong person person. And I'm aware that there are Spectrum Services who are an ICE detention officer, provider officers, at least outside some of these facilities, I believe. Also inside Spectrum Services, I've noticed been posting a lot of job adverts recently. This is something I sometimes keep an eye on. Right. Like right before the end of Title 42, I saw they were advertising for ICE contractors to transport detainees. Right. So this is sometimes, sometimes a sign that bad things are afoot in the immigration world. I'm guessing in this case it's either this or a plan to further expand detention capacity, which is also something the Trump administration has been talking about. Right. So they also, you know, have these various executive orders authorizing more budget and the budget bill authorizing more budget for detaining migrants. Secondly, the South Sudan case, right. We covered this last week DVD et al versus North Nome. We also covered it earlier in this week. If you go back to our episode which aired on Wednesday, you can hear more about the sort of blow by blow timeline of that case. In the South Sudan case, Trump administration seems to have gone directly to the Supreme Court to try and get an emergency stay on the injunction which afforded due process rights to the migrants who are currently detained in Djibouti. The administration asked for a stay of the court's injunction. Injunction. The court's injunction had given them 10 days to assert their reasonable fear of torture and then a further 15 days to ask to reopen their case if the Department of Homeland Security determined that fear not to be credible. Justice Supreme Court Justice Jackson has given the plaintiffs a week to respond to the United States the DOJ's call for a stay. Right. So in practice, these people will still have that 10 days from the injunction to make their, their claim that they have a fear of torture. Right. South Sudan has said that if these people aren't South Sudanese, it will just return them to their country of citizenship. So if the United States can't return them there because they have a fear of torture. It just seems like the whole South Sudan thing is just an end run around the Convention Against Torture. Right. Their obligation not to return people to places where they will be tortured. Talking of returning people to places where they will be tortured. Tortured. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has deported 20 people to Myanmar. This is according to reporting in Myanmar Now. I've also written about it on my page Patreon page. I've linked both of those in the show notes. But it should be noted that Myanmar now broke the story and it's getting very little coverage in the United States. I can speculate as to why, but you probably don't need to hear me to sort of join the dots there. This is atrocious.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

Robert and I have both spoken to people with extensive experience of detention in Myanmar and yeah, like when we talk about the worst detention conditions in the world, we get to a point where it doesn't really make any sense for us to say like a is worse than.

[Debbie Brown]

Right. Right. That this is worse than Sednaya or whatever. But it's on like the level which was Assad's torture prison in Syria.

[James]

Assad's butchery for human beings.

[Debbie Brown]

Like we're talking about. About that level.

[James]

Yeah. Like, I mean, things that I have heard. People have been electrocuted to death. People are waterboarded. People have acid poured in their mouths. Bodies are found without organs. People are beaten to such an extent that their entire bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people will only know that their family member is detained when they disappear. And then a few days later they get a call telling them to pick up the the body. Conditions in in Burmese hunter detention facilities are atrocious.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

These people are currently being held at the On PI Interrogation center. It appears at seven of the earliest. So this has been happening since March. It appears that some of these people have been released. The rest are being held by sac, that's the Burmese hunter military intelligence units, who will almost certainly torture them. Myanmar does have a temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple of posts about this. So I just want to clarify. The TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the TPS was granted or to people who have committed certain crimes. We know that at least one of the men they returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of these crimes are like particularly heinous felonies. Right. You can do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported under a DPS But I'm trying to find out who these people are. I know that you can't download our podcast in Myanmar, which is a huge dub for us.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

But, you know, I know a lot of Burmese people do listen. So, you know, if. If you have any particular insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll drop the email address in a little bit here. It does seem very unlikely that these people were given a chance to make a claim of fear of torture. Right. Because it would be a very easy claim to make given every major human rights organization on the planet has documented torture of detainees in Myanmar. I was just reading a report this morning about harassment of trans women in prisons in Myanmar. But the same thing goes for CIS folks, for straight folks, for everyone. Right. No one. No one comes out of there the same. They went in.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah.

[James]

I can't believe that these people were given a chance to claim a credible fear because it would have been such an easy claim to make. Yep. And they wouldn't have been returned there. So, yeah, I wish this story was getting more reporting. I wish more people in the media in this country cared about Myanmar, but that's a drama I have been beating for four years now, and I don't think shit's going to change anytime soon. So I guess all there is to say is that I really appreciate those of you who do, especially those of you who listen to the show and take an interest in all things Myanmar. But, yeah, if these people had been returned to a country that the US press was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise about this. But this is absolutely unconscionable.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah, yeah.

[James]

These people will be tortured. It would not shock me if some of these people died.

[Debbie Brown]

Yeah. Now this is. I mean, there have been cases so far of, I think at least 7 of the people that have been sent over previously in the last, like, year or so by the US have been released from this prison. So it's not necessarily a death sentence. But first, a good number of them it will be.

[James]

Right. Yeah.

[Debbie Brown]

Especially since there are also Rohingya people who will be deported in the near future and presumably directly back to the same place.

[James]

Yeah. I mean, it's documented that people deported from Thailand are immediately conscripted and, yeah. Sent into the military. Right. So if. If they get out of prison, there's a good chance that. That especially if they're men, that they will be. De. Women do get conscripted too, in Myanmar, but there's a good chance to. So that will happen, too. They've been conscripting a lot of Rohingya people. So yeah, the outcomes of this will be very poor. And yeah, the only way torture stops in Burma is when the revolution succeeds and liberates the Britons. Like there is no reasoning with the Burmese hunter. Yep, that's about all I got. It's pretty fucked.

[Debbie Brown]

Like, speaking of fucked, let's listen to the Tariff song.

[Robert Evans]

There's no tariffs.

[Debbie Brown]

It's no fuck it.

[James]

Well, let's just listen to it and then have the end of the episode just gets a nice song.

[Debbie Brown]

Let's just listen to it now.

[Robert Evans]

We don't have time to listen to it. This is the end of the episode.

[Debbie Brown]

Wow, Garrison took it away from you. Complained to them online.

[James]

The constant ageist attacks on the Clash have not stopped.

[Robert Evans]

Sorry, fellas. All that money for nothing.

[Taraji P. Henson]

We reported the.

[Debbie Brown]

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

[Clayton English]

It Could Happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Clayton English]

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[Greg Lodd]

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[Taraji P. Henson]

Thanks for listening.

[Greg Lodd]

I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.

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I get right back there and it's bad.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to Absolute Season Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lodd and this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems.

[Mia]

Of the drug war.

[Greg Lodd]

This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios.

[Debbie Brown]

Stories matter and it brings a face to it.

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It makes it real.

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It really does. It makes it real.

[Greg Lodd]

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Being able to say, I feel like crying. So I will cry today. I'm a little depressed. May is mental health awareness month and.

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Deeply well is a sanctuary for your healing.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Debbie Brown, healer well, well being.

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[Robert Evans]

And each week we explore what it.

[Debbie Brown]

Means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices today.

[Greg Lodd]

Wow.

[Debbie Brown]

I feel really powerful and ready to serve and use my skills and it's.

[Clayton English]

Like that's the heart of what it is to be an authentic woman. To hear this and more ways to prioritize your peace Listen to deeply well.

[Debbie Brown]

From the Black Effect Podcast Network on.

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The iHeartRadio app app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Taraji P. Henson]

A T Connecting changes everything.

[Clayton English]

And it's.

[James]

Going to take us to Heal us.

[Greg Lodd]

It's Mental Health Awareness Month and on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson.

[Debbie Brown]

Stopped by to discuss how she's discovered.

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Peace on her journey.

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[James]

And more things on the journey of healing.

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You can listen to just heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast at.

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