It Could Happen Here Weekly 197

Summary

Behind the Bastards – It Could Happen Here Weekly 197

Date: August 30, 2025
Host(s): Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, David Forbes (guest), Danielle Kurd (guest)
Podcast: Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts

---

Episode Overview

This week’s compilation dives deep into the state of U.S. politics, focusing on Democratic Party dysfunction, the rise of "meme politics," GOP authoritarianism, anti-academic/anti-queer backlash, and the dangerous landscape for marginalized groups. The hosts critically dissect viral Democratic strategies (with a focus on Gavin Newsom), analyze the failures of establishment resistance in contrast to grassroots populism, and provide an in-depth look at the legislative landscape in states like North Carolina. Key themes are the emptiness of performative social media politics, the real-life fallout from attacks on trans rights, academia, and civil liberties, as well as resistance strategies for the left. The episode further covers a major mass shooting linked to true crime fandoms, the Trump's administration's move to seize Federal Reserve independence, “national socialism” in U.S. chip policy, the rise of federal/state repression, and more.

---

1. The Gavin Newsom "Meme Politics" Meltdown

[02:40–16:25]

Key Points & Discussion

• Gavin Newsom’s intentional adoption of Donald Trump’s social media style (all-caps tweets, excessive exclamations, AI-generated images) in an attempt to troll and “mirror” Trump’s bigotry is critiqued as deeply unserious and politically ineffective.
• Newsom’s actual record stands in stark contrast: rather than taking meaningful action to protect marginalized groups in moments of danger, his “resistance” has been relegated to shallow online posturing.

Notable Quotes

• “He’s confusing engagement with actual political action.” – Unnamed Co-host [07:11]
• “Good things piss off conservatives, but pissing off conservatives is not inherently a good or useful thing.” – Unnamed Co-host [07:44]
• “I don’t think there’s a single voter, especially in a fucking swing state, who is like, I wasn’t gonna vote for Gavin Newsom until I saw him mimicking Donald Trump’s tweets.” – Robert Evans [08:31]
• On Newsom’s approach to anti-trans policy:
  “He believes...that there’s a whole huge chunk of voters who are just itching to vote for a Democrat if they weren’t in favor of all of these icky cultural issues.” – Robert Evans [10:02]

Context & Takeaways

• The hosts eviscerate both the tactical and moral bankruptcy of Democrat “move-to-the-right” strategies.
• Newsom is seen as the symbol of a party addicted to imitation and short-term engagement at the expense of real resistance.

---

2. The Limitations of Establishment Liberalism vs. Grassroots Populism

[21:20–25:26]

Contrasting Example: Graham Platner Ad

• An effective, straightforward populist campaign ad by Graham Platner (Maine) is played, featuring direct language about economic struggle and anti-oligarch sentiment.
• Hosts praise the grounded, working-class authenticity and highlight what establishment Democrats don’t seem to grasp: material needs and honest messaging trumps “meme wars.”

Notable Quotes

• “The bar is reasonably low, but, like, that dude hit it, I think.” – Unnamed Co-host [23:53]
• “This guy seems like he rips. I would vote for that dude.” – Robert Evans [24:25]
• “Let’s compare this... Newsom has not done the material things that he could be doing instead of tweeting.” – Unnamed Co-host [25:19]

---

3. The Democratic Party’s Real Failures in California

[26:00–30:39]

Detailed Critique

• Newsom is called out for inaction on ICE raids, surveillance, police overreach, and the targeting of unhoused communities.
• Legal mechanisms actually protecting vulnerable people are ignored in favor of spectacle.
• The pattern: Democrats seek “middle ground” or “parity” with right-wingers in the media, but betray marginalized people and never display actual risk-taking for the oppressed.

Notable Quotes

• “He hasn’t put his neck on the line once for marginalized people in California or anywhere else.” – Unnamed Co-host [27:55]
• "I think for a lot of people in the legacy media…the real tragedy...is that they have to see scary, nasty stuff on their telephones." – Unnamed Co-host [27:56]

---

4. The Assault on Universities, DEI, and Academic Freedom

w/ Danielle Kurd
[36:44–55:38]

Summary

• Universities are attacked as sites of power and diversity by the Trump administration.
• Crackdowns on DEI, faculty governance, and foreign students are linked to broader right-wing goals of social control and stifling dissent.
• Palestine is highlighted as the “canary in the coal mine”—academic freedom is suppressed first here, becoming a national precedent for broader attacks.

Notable Quotes

• “Are universities truly sites of power? The short answer is yes, for two reasons…” – Danielle Kurd [40:09]
• “The attacks on Harvard, Brown, George Washington, UCLA...is predicated on attacking DEI.” – Danielle Kurd [45:31]
• “Palestinian scholars have long been under attack in the American Academy.” – Danielle Kurd [52:38]

---

5. Anti-Trans Bills and Democrat Complicity in North Carolina

w/ David Forbes
[59:49–109:19]

Section 1: NC’s Recent Sweeping Anti-Trans Laws

[59:49–73:01]

• HB805: Bans state health plans from covering trans health care for any age, redefines which jails/prisons trans prisoners are sent to.
• SB442: Redefines child abuse, opens door to conversion therapy, legalizes anti-trans placements in foster care.
• Democratic politicians in NC (across House, Senate, and the governor) supported, signed, and refused to condemn these bills.
• Mainstream LGBT orgs in NC failed to hold Democrats accountable; NGOs prioritized party access over real resistance.

Notable Quotes

• “Nine Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass this, and then [Governor Stein] signed the bill.” – David Forbes [63:15]
• “It didn’t stop being [catastrophic] when Democrats started supporting it.” – David Forbes [70:30]
• "This is a collaborationist party in a lot of extremely important cases." – Mia Wong [71:04]

Section 2: Historical Roots—Democratic Control, Social Control, and Class

[73:23–84:57]

• NC Democratic Party has historically masked racist/anti-worker repression under “civility,” serving as a moderating force while enacting anti-civil rights violence and anti-labor policy.
• Legacies of the Wilmington massacre, textile labor crackdowns, and civil rights “containment” are tied directly to contemporary betrayals.
• The South’s role as a laboratory for both left and right-wing strategies is emphasized.

Notable Quotes

• “Beneath the green ivy of civility, but a stone wall of coercion.” – David Forbes quoting Timothy Tyson [74:29]
• "North Carolina’s the moderate example of the South... they were more careful about repression, but it still happened..." – David Forbes [75:00]
• "If you don't want the country to be like this, you have to fight in the South." – Mia Wong [83:53]

Section 3: The 2016 Bathroom Bills and the Democratic Response

[89:05–109:19]

• HB2’s “repeal” (HB 142) preserved anti-trans and anti-worker elements—Democrats actively compromised rather than lead.
• This set a national precedent: each capitulation made future, more extreme betrayals possible.
• Critique of “Gay Inc.” organizations safeguarding Democratic reputations rather than queer communities.

Notable Quotes

• “What the far right learned was that...the Democrats will fold if trans rights is made an issue.” – David Forbes [100:32]
• “Nazis always need quislings.” – David Forbes [102:52]
• “If you want even the most die hard bigot to start losing their nerve, you attack their money and their power…and you don’t stop.” – David Forbes [105:56]
• “The more you fight them, the weaker they are.” – David Forbes [108:19]

---

6. The Minneapolis School Shooting: Meme Maximum, True Crime Fandom, and Media Panic

[118:10–138:57]

Key Analysis

• A Minneapolis Catholic school shooting is dissected—not as an ideological attack but as the apex of “true crime community”/Columbiner fandom nihilism, obsessed with meme aesthetics and internet virality over coherent ideology.
• Shooter’s motives & influences: glorification of previous mass killers (referencing memes from Control-Alt-Delete’s “Loss” to “Remove Kebab”), nihilistic suicide drive, non-ideological use of slurs/images, and a journal fixated on violence/fandom.
• Right-wing attempts to frame the shooting as a trans or anti-Catholic hate crime are critiqued as opportunistic and disconnected from reality.

Notable Quotes

• “This is the natural extent of a bunch of things... a mass shooter putting a loss meme on the barrel of their gun before shooting up a school." – Robert Evans [121:49]
• "This nihilistic meme maximalism has no trans causation... there’s no coherent or ideological leftist screed." – Garrison Davis [136:55]
• “Combining all of these references to previous mass shootings. So they're incorporating everything they can and things they just think are funny… that's the point: to make everything mean nothing.” – Garrison Davis [137:40]

---

7. Trump’s Assault on the Federal Reserve & Growing Authoritarianism

[139:04–147:38]

Main Ideas

• Trump attempts to fire Fed Board member Lisa Cook, challenging the independence of the Federal Reserve.
• The long-term far-right project: bring money creation, interest rates, payment systems, and global settlement infrastructure under direct presidential control ("eliminating the independence" of the Fed).
• Potential catastrophe: If the Fed becomes a direct presidential tool, the world financial system (from money supply to gold holdings to World Bank settlements) could spiral into crisis.

Notable Quotes

• “This is the beginning of the fight over whether the Federal Reserve is going to be an independent entity.” – Mia Wong [140:44]
• “Handing the keys over to these people is something that is dangerous enough that it is creating significant pushback among the actual people in finance and in the banking system who matter.” – Mia Wong [147:38]

---

8. “National Socialism” – U.S. Chip Policy & Intel

[149:50–152:14]

Key Points

• The U.S. government purchased 10% of Intel and is expected to continue state ownership in "strategic" firms.
• Policy is described facetiously as “national socialism”—state control/guarantee over private capital for global power rather than any worker benefit.

---

9. Federal Repression, National Guard Deployments & Eroding Civil Liberties

[165:05–169:12]

Summary

• National Guard deployments by executive order to D.C., Chicago, and 19 other states, aimed at “quelling unrest” and targeting undocumented immigrants with ICE.
• Trump seeks to federalize National Guard duties, bypass non-compliant governors, and establish quick-reaction forces for civil suppression.
• New executive orders target "cashless bail" (punishing states that use it), criminalize flag burning, and ramp up DOJ & DOD repression.

---

10. Closing Notes on Political Possibilities and Resistance

[105:56–109:19]

Strategy & Hope

• Only pressure (material, economic, and militant resistance) makes the establishment budge.
• The “sky is falling” effect: American fascination with mass violence is numbed, but real political consequences accrue by confronting complicity directly—through divestment, protest, organizing, and never letting party hacks define "resistance."

---

Important Timestamps

• 02:40–16:25: Critique of Newsom’s meme politics; Trump imitation
• 21:20–25:26: Graham Platner populist ad vs. Dem timidness
• 36:44–55:38: Danielle Kurd on academia under attack, Palestine as precedent
• 59:49–109:19: David Forbes on anti-trans laws & the roots of Democratic complicity
• 118:10–138:57: Minneapolis school shooting, memetic violence & TCC fandom
• 139:04–147:38: Trump vs. the Fed; threat to global finance
• 149:50–152:14: U.S. “national socialist” chip policy
• 165:05–169:12: Executive orders, National Guard mobilization, and surveillance state

---

Overall Tone & Style

Direct, irreverent, and deeply informed, the hosts swing between gallows humor (“This is your one moment of levity…trying and failing to do math on air.” – Mia Wong [71:43]) and sobering analysis. They don’t mince words about failures on the left or the dangers posed by the right, underscoring throughout that resistance requires more than memes and voting blue. Instead, solidarity, militancy, and organized struggle—especially from those most affected—remains the only viable path forward.

---

For listeners:
If you want the real story behind the headlines, including how establishment politicians (Democrat and Republican) conspire to erode civil rights and what actual resistance might look like, this week’s Behind the Bastards has you covered.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast. There's a vile sickness in Ambas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Garrison Davis]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and mild from Aaron Manke.

[Robert Evans]

This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcast, Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mia Wong]

I just normally do straight stand up.

[Robert Evans]

But this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

[Honey German]

A new podcast called Wisecrack, where a.

[Robert Evans]

Comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story.

[Mia Wong]

Does anyone know what show they've come to see?

[Robert Evans]

It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app.

[Honey German]

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German and I'm back.

[Robert Evans]

With season two of my podcast, Gracias. Come again.

[Honey German]

We got you. When it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities, you didn't have to audition.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G talk right there. Oh, yeah.

[Honey German]

We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of Cheeseman and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great biblas you've come to expect.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to the new season of Gracias.

[Honey German]

Come again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Robert Evans]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[David Forbes]

Check out behind the Flow, a podcast documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club.

[Garrison Davis]

San Diego. Coming to MLS is gonna be a.

[David Forbes]

Game changer because this region has been hungry for a men's professional soccer team.

[Mia Wong]

We need to embrace this community.

[David Forbes]

Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Media. 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 and 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. All right?

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

It's, it's. It could happen here. It's me It's Robert. And we are gathered here today to talk about one of the most annoying things that can happen on your telephone, which is that you can be sent a tweet from Gavin Newsom, which is just.

[Robert Evans]

No one needed that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's already really bad.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

I see really bad things on my telephone every day. I don't need to see a tweet from Gavin Newsom. If you're not familiar with this, you're living a better life than me, and I'm proud of you. But I'm gonna give you some context here for those of you who are not familiar. Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. He's also kind of been the presumptive 2028 Democrat candidate for quite a while. He's term limited out of running for California governor again, so he won't be doing that, and his term will end in January of 2027. He had for a while tried to dismiss claims that he was interested in the presidency, but he's been a lot more over about it recently. Yeah, I don't believe any claims that he was not interested in this for a long time. He has definitely tried to cast himself this summer as a sort of leader of the resistance type figure. Yeah, he hasn't done that by, for instance, ordering the California National Guard to go home, protecting people from the masked men with guns, snatching them in the street, or even standing up for trans kids. Instead, he has focused on, I guess, what you could generously call Twitter trolling. Like, it's. Well, we're going to get into it. It's extremely annoying. So about a week ago Now, I think the 11th of August was when he began. Newsom began his social media rebranded. He did this by posting about himself in all caps as America's favorite governor. His posts since then have mimicked this. Donald Trump has a pretty distinctive posting style, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Newsoms are written in all caps, which Trump doesn't tend to do. Trump tends to capitalize sporadically and as far as I can tell, entirely randomly. But Newsom's doing it in all caps. He overuses exclamation marks. I should say. This beef between the two of them is not new.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Trump has. Has called him new scum on true social. I don't think Trump can claim the intellectual property to new scum. I've seen that one.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like, it's a. It's up there with like, ha. Gel Hitler and Mussolini. Like, yeah. Anyway, if you. If you're buying a firearm in California, you will hear someone say one of these things almost without fail.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

The claim that Newsom's team is making is that he's like holding up a mirror to Trump's bigotry by. By doing this Trump style posting. But I think in doing so, he's really illustrated the difference between them is not as profound as you'd think or hope. He, in one example, called Scott Pressler, Nancy Mace Scott Pressler, gay conservative, right wing figure. And then he was called out for misgendering. Pressler by. This will shock and amaze you. Tommy Lahren.

[David Forbes]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Which.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no one. Okay.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, he responded, quote, you sound woke. This really isn't funny. It's just bigotry. Like comparing gay men to women is an old, worn out and lazy jab.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

So when you combine this with him having right wing figures like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast.

[Robert Evans]

And just for reference, folks, I don't know how much detail we can get into legally here, but this being our business, we are aware of the numbers different podcasts do, and Gavin Newsom's podcast is not like it does. Okay, but there's certain podcasts about, for example, bad people in history that lap at several times. So, like the, the star power that Gavin Newsom has, I'm not seeing it. We're not talking about a guy who has shown evidence that he is capable of, on his own, generating like a super loyal fan base or continued interest in his personality. Now, I'm not saying that's. That on its own isn't a bad thing. A lot of politicians who are very competent at certain things are not competent at that. And in fact, most of the worst politicians we have are also the people who are the best at that, at building a fan base, so to speak. But what I'm saying is that Gavin Newsom is obsessed with doing something being this Trumpian populist figure that he has not exhibited faculty for. Right, yes, that's. That's what I'm saying.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah. No, and that's what I'm saying too is that he's confusing engagement with actual political action.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And he's confusing the kind of engagement that you get on social media when it's someone else's algorithm. And a lot of the engagement is like, not people who are going to vote for you or support you, but people who the algorithm is pushing your content to because it knows they'll get pissed off by it.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Right, yes, exactly that.

[Robert Evans]

I'm not against, you know, pissing off conservatives, but that doesn't help you necessarily. Right. Like, there's not a clear benefit to us in this. Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like, good things piss off conservatives, but pissing off conservatives is not inherently a good or useful thing. It's just a thing.

[Robert Evans]

It's not enough. Right. Like, again, it can be. I'm not. Sometimes that's. That's necessary just for morale purposes alone.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

But, again, I don't really think Gavin Newsom is making the right scared. I don't think he's breaking their morale. I think he's just kind of creating content that people on the left are sharing because it pisses them off. People on the right are sharing because it makes them laugh. I think they think it's sad more than anything else. And obviously, you've got a chunk of, like, a decent chunk of, like, centrist, dim types who like Newsom, and I guess maybe it's working for some of them, but I don't think it's broadening his support. I don't think there's a single voter, especially in a fucking swing state, who is like, I wasn't gonna vote for Gavin Newsom until I saw him mimicking Donald Trump's tweets.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, exactly. He is doing, in a sense, what Harris did, which is this consistently failed Democrat political strategy that they seem so addicted to that no amount of losing will break them of it, which is moving to the right to try and capture moderate Republicans. They've done this ever since Trump took the Republican Party closer and closer to fascism.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like, I want to give an example of this. Here's Gavin Newsom talking to Sean Ryan about transgender athletes.

[Robert Evans]

I'll be canon with you. I looked at that issue, and I.

[Honey German]

Said, boy, they're just exploiting this.

[Robert Evans]

It's a handful of people. What the hell is this? It's being weaponized. It was just another cultural issue until two years ago, there was a state track championship. We had trans athlete that was successful, and there was a video of the girl that lost, and she was devastated. And that video went around everywhere, and it was very emotional.

[David Forbes]

It was very real.

[Robert Evans]

I remember calling my team in, and I said, this is legit. And I did this podcast with Charlie Kirk. Unsurprisingly, he brought it up, and he said, tell me that's not fair.

[Honey German]

I said, it's not fair.

[Robert Evans]

You're right.

[Honey German]

My party was pissed.

[Robert Evans]

LGBTQ caucus furious with me because I don't think it's fair. It's not. But because you oppose sports doesn't make you homophobic, and my party needs to stop saying that. Yeah, again, I know with who he thinks this is going to help. He believes it's a religion, effectively among a lot of establishment Dems, that there's a whole huge chunk of voters who are just itching to vote for a Democrat if they weren't in favor of all of these icky cultural issues that are hard, hard to touch, that the right is, you know, spend so much time harping on. And I think part of what they're seeing and where a lot of the logical disconnect comes into effect is that they see how much money conservatives and time and discourse conservatives spend talking about this and obsessing over it. And they believe, well, oh, if we just kind of fold on these people, then we've taken this great weapon out of their arsenal and they'll be helpless because they're stupid. And I don't think these are fundamentally very smart people in the political sense of the world. I think they're bad politicians. I think they're bad. I think they were good politicians in terms of a competency sense at a prior age to get to where they were. But the ground has changed. And intelligence is largely a product of adaptability and they have not proven adaptable. And I think what's actually going to happen, because we've seen this, is if they throw trans people under the bus as they're actively talking about doing, the right will grab another chunk of their coalition and start ruthlessly trying to destroy that group of people. And these people's suggestion will once again be, okay, well, we got to, you know, throw those people under the bus because then we'll deny them that weapon and eventually you won't have any Democrats left.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, right. They'll come after same sex marriage, they'll come after fucking interracial marriage. And Newsom will try and find the middle. Yeah, like where he has received praise for this is in the legacy media. I want to quote here from a Calmatters op ed which suggests that Newsom was, quote, someone trying to hold space for a hard conversation in his podcast. He's not.

[Robert Evans]

You don't have conversations with Charlie Kirk. He's never had a real one in his life.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, the conversation is not hard to have.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Trans people deserve the same fucking rights as everyone else. It's very easy to have. Also, he's having this conversation with someone who agrees with him. Like, I would love to see him tell a young trans woman that she can't play on the fucking third string high school volleyball team because then he's going to see a kid cry too. I don't want to go over there. Like, trans people can compete in sports. Like, I've made my living as an athlete for much of my life, and this is bullshit. And it's fundamentally disrespectful to women athletes to continue to suggest that they're biologically inferior. But I do want to talk more about Gavin Newsom's slide into meme politics. His press office claimed that after the fires in la, they claim this is the New York Times in a piece that I'll link. He was troubled by the misinformation that came out. This apparently was his first fucking time in encountering misinformation on the Internet. Like, oh, wow. Yeah, well, when you think about the ease with which he lies, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Absolute comfort. He has bullshitting. It sort of makes sense until it hits him. He doesn't care because he's lying, too. So they decided to, like, take the fight to the Internet. I guess they began with Star wars memes. And then when the redistricting debate in Texas we've covered extensively on executive disorder was kind of reaching its peak, Newsom sort of began this. I know you are. You said you are, but what am I kind of tendency in his posting, he posted in all block capitals. I'm not going to shout Donald Trump, if you do not stand down, we will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in CA to offset the rigging of maps in red states. But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will do the same. Thank you for your attention on this matter. Sorry it's hard to read because it's entirely unpunctuated. Apart from at the end there. These tweets aren't on his personal account or the official, like Governor of California 1. They're on an account called Governor Newsom Press Office. But that account does have the little gray tick mark that you can get in Twitter now for, like, government accounts. Then he moved on to AI generated images and signing his post with initials like Trump does, claiming Kid Rock had endorsed him, which isn't true, incidentally. They did this exactly a year after Donald Trump posted an AI generated image of Taylor Swift with a Swifties for Trump montage, which shows how much time they spend looking at Trump's post rather than doing anything fucking useful. Then they moved on to mocking Greg Abbott for using a wheelchair, saying he rolled over for Trump. Again, like, you do not build a political coalition by mocking people with disabilities. There are a million things to fucking hate Greg Abbott for. I could spend an hour talking about the loathsome shit he has done. But using a wheelchair is not one of those things. If you cannot find anything else that really shows the paucity of Democratic politics right now, let's take a break and we'll come back.

[Robert Evans]

Awesome.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

All right, way back. Unfortunately, and probably predictably, Newsom has received praise from all over the legacy media for these posts the NYT quoted. It's actually unclear if they quoted I don't know if this was just a mistake that they haven't corrected, but it was phrased like she said it directly, but it wasn't in quotation marks. So I'm a little unclear. I'm just going to assume they quoted this lady. Sarah Roberts, a director for the center of Critical Internet inquiry at UCLA, said, quote, Mr. Newsom's posts are perhaps grabbing so much attention because they stand out from the rest of Democratic Party's ineffective approach of and get safe and proceedings of its business as usual. And then just to double down on this useful podcast, idiot Jon Favreau tweeted, quote, I mean, it's pretty clearly a parody of Trump's absolutely insane all caps, often nonsensical posts. Probably why all the people in my life who aren't political junkies keep reaching out to say they don't know much about Newsom but think the tweets are hilarious. Humour and mockery can be quite effective. Neither of them say what they are effective for, right? No one seems concerned that these make no material difference and he is doing them instead of doing things that make material difference.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

I'm gonna play another clip from Chris Hayes here.

[David Forbes]

California Governor Gavin Newsom and his team have figured out a very entertaining way to deal with Donald Trump at his own rhetorical level.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

They've got a new social media strategy.

[David Forbes]

That is both, I gotta say, pretty damn funny and I think extremely effective. Mocking the President with a spot on impression of his very weird communication style. Since Newsom jumped into the ongoing redistricting fight, his official Twitter account has been posting Trump style. Donald is finished. He is no longer hot. First the hand so tiny and now me. Gavin C. Newsom have taken away his step.

[Robert Evans]

Many are saying we can't even do.

[David Forbes]

The big stairs on Air Force One anymore. Uses the little baby stairs now. Sad has all the Trump trademarks, all capital letters, random quotation marks, little parentheticals, complete unhinged absurdity. I thought that was a good one.

[Robert Evans]

I hate Kid Rock.

[David Forbes]

GCN reference to Trump's infamous I hate Taylor Swift. Another drags the Vice President into it.

[Robert Evans]

Not even JD Just dance.

[David Forbes]

Vance can save Trump from the disastrous maps war he has started. Not even his eyeliner lines look as pretty as California map lines. He will fail as he always does.

[Robert Evans]

Sad.

[David Forbes]

And I, the peacetime governor, our nation's.

[Robert Evans]

Favorite, will save America once again.

[David Forbes]

Many are now calling me Gavin Christopher Columbus Newsom because of the maps. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Beyond the mockery of Trump's text post, Newsom has also been posting Trump style AI generated images of himself, including this, I think, absolute masterpiece of Newsom, deep in a moment of reflection or prayer.

[Robert Evans]

Flanked by three MAGA icons and the.

[David Forbes]

Laying of hands Kid Rock, who he hates, Tucker Carlson and the angelic spirit of the recently departed Hulk Hogan. Again, a spot on mockery of Trump, who isn't doing any of this satirically. What has been equally hilarious has been to watch the joke just go soaring over the heads of Trump's sycophants in.

[Robert Evans]

The media for the last week. Gavin Newsom and why am I giving him advice? You have to stop it with the Twitter thing.

[Honey German]

I don't know where his wife is. If I were his wife, I would.

[Robert Evans]

Say you are making a fool of yourself. Stop it. Do not let your staff tweet. And if you're doing it yourself, put the phone away and start over. And if you. He's got a big job as governor.

[Garrison Davis]

Of California, but if he wants an.

[Robert Evans]

Even bigger job, he has to be.

[Honey German]

A little bit more serious.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yes, right.

[David Forbes]

Be more serious. Stop posting exactly like the President United States does. Newsom's account responded to that advice, quote, dana Ding Dong Perino. Never heard of her until today. Is melting down because of me.

[Robert Evans]

Gavin C. Newsom, Fox Hate that I.

[David Forbes]

Am America's most favorite governor. Ratings king saving America. Trump has lost his step and Fox is losing it because when I type American now wins. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Again, it is just, it is a stark reminder with someone else doing it of how truly, utterly deranged our current president sounds whenever he communicates.

[Robert Evans]

And also how accustomed we've all become.

[David Forbes]

To this very, very weird behavior.

[Robert Evans]

I know we wouldn't be talking about.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

This if it was just bad tweets, right? We're talking about it because I think it shows a fundamental inability of the DNC to meet the moment right now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we're talking about it because people are dying and more people will die as a result of this administration's policies. Other people are being imprisoned and like I, you know, the damage being done, you know to medical science, to the future of humanity, to the future of this country is tremendous and escalating. And the fact that, like, this is the best. A major, a major contender for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 has been able to pull out so far is like, terrifying. Like, and again, obviously no one should be reliant upon the dims. But unfortunately also, like, what are you gonna do? What am I gott. Right. I don't have the resources of the Democratic Party. I don't have a bunch of elected leaders listening to me. Like, because of the status of our situation, individual people and small groups and towns and, you know, we talk about mutual aid on this show, we talk about unions. All of these increase personal resiliency. They increase the ability of groups and of individuals within groups to be resilient. But none of that is going to stop the fucking DHS from turning into the ss. Right? Yeah. And the Democratic Party clearly fucking isn't either. But the fact that this is what they're doing instead of effective resistance is. I mean, it's important. I wish there was more to say than we should know how badly they're failing us. Right? Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like a world where Democrat gets elected in 2028, it's. It's getting less awful, less quickly. And we should want that.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like, I'm not one of these. Like, like acceleration is.

[Robert Evans]

No, I just, I don't think that's gonna help either.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, yeah. Look, right now it is accelerating and it is bad. There are so many obvious challenges Democrats can make and I want to play. Robert, have you seen this? Graham Planter for Senate campaign ad.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Main. All right, I'll play this for you. I think it's good as a contrast. Right.

[David Forbes]

What I love most about Main of the people, I have never met people who are more hardscrabble. Even in a place that requires you to work like two or three different jobs.

[Robert Evans]

We have watched this state become essentially.

[Mia Wong]

Unlivable for working class people, and it.

[Robert Evans]

Makes me deeply angry. My name is Graham Plattner and I'm.

[David Forbes]

Running for U.S. senate in Maine to defeat Susan Collins.

[Robert Evans]

A decade of military service going overseas.

[David Forbes]

Farming oysters to feed my community, diving.

[Robert Evans]

To lend a hand to other fishermen, trying to start a family.

[David Forbes]

But everywhere I've gone, it seems like the fabric of what holds us together.

[Robert Evans]

Is being ripped apart by billionaires and.

[David Forbes]

Corrupt politicians profiting off of destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty and.

[Robert Evans]

Crushing the middle class.

[David Forbes]

I did four infantry tours in the.

[Robert Evans]

Marine Corps and the Army. I'm not afraid to name an enemy.

[David Forbes]

And the enemy is the oligarchy.

[Robert Evans]

It's the billionaires who pay for it.

[David Forbes]

The politicians who sell us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins. I'm not fooled by this fake charade of Collins deliberations and moderation. The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling his out, not giving a damn. People know that the system is screwing them. They know it in their bones. Nobody I know around here can afford a house.

[Robert Evans]

Healthcare is a disaster. Hospitals are closing. We have watched all of that get.

[David Forbes]

Ripped away from us, and everyone's just trying to keep it all together. Why can't we have universal health care like every other first world country?

[Robert Evans]

Why can't we take care of our.

[David Forbes]

Veterans when they come home? Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children? Why are CEOs more powerful than unions? We fought three different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage. I'm not pretending to have all the.

[Robert Evans]

Answers, but I know that I'm asking the right questions. When I tell people around here that.

[David Forbes]

I'm running for Senate, sometimes the initial reaction is, what the.

[Robert Evans]

But.

[David Forbes]

But when I tell them why I'm doing it, because I truly do believe.

[Mia Wong]

That we can build a system that.

[David Forbes]

Is going to represent working people, the number one responsibility response has been, well, thank God somebody's gonna do it.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

You're supposed to fight for the things you love.

[Mia Wong]

This is our home, and I will.

[David Forbes]

Fight tirelessly for it. For you. It's Mainers.

[Mia Wong]

First in Maine, always.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, that didn't seem bad. No, it's good. That's a solid ad. Yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Like, the bar is reasonably low, but, like, that dude hit it, I think.

[Robert Evans]

I mean. Yeah, yeah. Like, I would say that's just outright good. Like, if I were. If I were crafting an ad to run from. Other than the fact that he's lived a different life, but, like, how he's talking about the oligarchy, how he's talking about the lack of progress on things like minimum wage and how unacceptable it is, and, like, how the difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is that at least Ted Cruz is honest. Like, yeah, I'm on board. This guy. This guy seems like he rips.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

I would vote for that dude. Like, yeah, sure, he might turn into a fucking Fetterman, but, like, I mean.

[Robert Evans]

They can all get milkshake ducked, but he's saying the right things at this point.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, it's remarkably straightforward.

[Robert Evans]

Right? Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

And yet that seems to evade most Democrats.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's got the audio of a car ad, but I guess if it works, it works. That's the thing. I don't know. I'm not familiar with the platinum race, so I'm not sure where the polling's showing.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

This video is like two days old. Like, he's extremely fresh. So yeah, I will say that visually it hangs together. Dude uses the same open cell wetsuit I do. Like, he didn't just buy all this shit. Like didn't buy an axe and chop wood for the first time in this video.

[Robert Evans]

Right, right, right. He didn't do the normal weird Democrat trying to reach out to rural thing of like posing awkwardly with a shotgun.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, yeah. Like, this is a dude and just like physically he appears to have done some work with his hands.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he looks like a working class guy.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah. Let's compare this to like, Newsom has not done the material things that he could be doing instead of tweeting.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Trump didn't call up the California National Guide on the Insurrection Act. He used Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. code. That section states orders for these purposes should be issued through the governors of the states. It also outlines procedures for DC which we don't care about here. I don't see why he couldn't at least try to force the issue. In ordering the guard to go home, he's pursuing a court case. Yeah, but leg force the crisis because we're already in one. He has not taken a single meaningful action to stop ICE snatching people from our communities in California. Nor has his Attorney General taken a single meaningful action to stop individual sheriff's departments from violating SB54. SB54. If you're not familiar as a California Values act which limits which inmates can be transferred to ICE custody and when. It doesn't oblige anyone to transfer them, but it does allow them to transfer them if certain felonies have been committed. In the last 15 years, the San Diego Sheriff has been accused of violating this. I'll link to a KPBS article on that where they transferred someone who, according to the claims in the article, had a 21 year old conviction. Where as I said before, the cutoff is 15 years. Newsom could do something about the surveillance which is being installed all over California. These license plates readers like the ones that San Diego has spent thousands if not billions of dollars on. These license plate readers have had their information shared with federal agencies more than 100 times in May alone. According to Calmatters, that is a violation of California law. Specifically, It's Senate Bill 34, which limits the sharing of license plate data. Rob Bonter issued an advisory. But again, this is resulting in our communities being harassed.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Californians being snatched. Newsom has done nothing about that. He could stand up for unhoused people, but instead, alongside Tod Glory, he has led the charge against them. Todd Glory is seemingly intent on driving our city into debt to pursue Castro approach against the unhoused. Newsom posed for a photo shoot destroying unhoused people's property. He hasn't done a single thing that puts him at any risk. Right. He's presenting himself in this Sean Ryan podcast, the Big Risk Taker. Cause he spoke out about fucking teenage girls running. But he hasn't put his neck on the line once for marginalized people in California or anywhere else.

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely not.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

I think where I want to end is I don't want you to engage with Newsom's tweets. That doesn't help. He's going to mistake that for making a difference. Right. Because I think for a lot of people in the legacy media, and probably knew some of his friends, the real tragedy of what's happened in the last eight months is that they have to see scary, nasty stuff on their telephones. So seeing something funny on their telephone seems like an antidote because it's not their community, it's not their people, and it's not people they fundamentally give a shit about either. That, I think, is why, to them, this seems effective. And hopefully to you, as it does to me, it seems completely ineffective.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I don't know how much else to say. It's nice to see guys like Platner at least seem to be figuring it out. There's not. I've been looking into it, and there's not. There's not much polling. There's not really any polling. Because of how recently he announced his bid.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

To show how well he's doing. Other than that, the video has gotten like 2 1/2 million views. Something like that. Which. Which is good and seems to be spreading well online. But that doesn't translate electorally. What we do have electorally is that polls in Maine show that the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, including with Democrats. This is from a July survey. There's a good article in PBS that's just titled they Roll Right Over. Many Democrats Think Their Party Is Weak. APNORC poll fines. Oh, sorry. This is actually. No, sorry. This is overall across US Adults. Sorry. The initial article I had seemed to be saying that this was just in Maine. No, this is nationwide. Right. So, I mean, I, I, I think that what Platner has seen, the opportunity he's seen is real, that there are a lot of people who are not at all interested in voting for a Republican who have not been swayed to the right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Who identify as Democrats but hate the party and think it is weak. Right. Like, about 2 in 10 Democrats, according to this poll, described their party positively. One in 10 said it was empathetic and inclusive. That said, terrible. Right. And that is that, I mean, that shows that just what we were saying, kind of based on our gut, which is it's a bad idea to hang people out to dry because you don't think you can defend them. You think that it'll be beneficial politically to make the choice to, you know, let them die. Basically, yeah. And it seems like Democrats largely are responding by saying, well, this party doesn't give a shit about us and they are ineffective. They can't do fuck. All. Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And that's definitely what's happening. So, yeah, I, I don't know if Platinum is going to win, but I'm growing more convinced every day that there is opportunity for people who are actually willing to fight these bastards. Yeah. And who understand that fighting these bastards isn't just like, well, let's give them almost everything they want and hope that somehow lets us win.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah. Yeah. Talking of, like, not leaving people out to dry, for instance, talking about trans women in sports, he says it's a distraction from the things that impact Americans materially every single day. Then he said, I'm dedicated to equality and justice for all in this country. And I think this specific topic has become such a touchstone of the media discussion because it pulls away from the conversation that needs to be happening, which is getting every American affordable healthcare. It's not the best response. It's not the worst one either. And I think he is right. For most of these conservative people, they don't care about women's sports. Right. They're not there when women are getting shit prize money, when women are getting shit tv, time this for them, it's just a culture war issue. He also called the genocide in Gaza a genocide, which is something that it's.

[Robert Evans]

Like, yeah, I enjoyed the line about, we're just killing kids with bombs. Yeah.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yeah, I like that. He didn't mince his words about it. When asked by abc, he said he's following the lead of Israeli scholars on genocide on this issue. So, yeah, it's remarkably easy to build a coalition right now of people who are fucking mad. And a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they were sick of this same smarmy bullshit. Some of them also voted Donald Trump because they're hateful, terrible fucking people.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Just to be super clear. Yeah, but, like, it's so easy, and yet it seems to be evading, like you say, the presumptive nominee, this guy who for nearly a decade, we have assumed will run in 2028. And I guess I know, fuck Gavin Newsom. I hope that he does not succeed with his presidential campaign ambitions.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. All right, well, that's. Yeah, most of what I got to say about that son of a bitch.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Yep, me too.

[Robert Evans]

Let's roll out.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

Bye.

[Robert Evans]

Bye. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

[Mia Wong]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Robert Evans]

Get back, everyone.

[David Forbes]

Let's go, Dax.

[Robert Evans]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him.

[Mia Wong]

Burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Robert Evans]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and.

[Garrison Davis]

Grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this.

[Robert Evans]

Is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil walks in Abbostown. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on Earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you, and we didn't know what to expect. In the morning, nobody tells you anything. Listen to Shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Honey German]

Hola, it's honey German.

[Robert Evans]

And my podcast, Gracias, Come Again is back.

[Honey German]

This season, we're going even deeper into.

[Robert Evans]

The world of music and entertainment with.

[Honey German]

Raw and honest conversations with some of.

[Robert Evans]

Your favorite Latin artists. And celebrities.

[Honey German]

You didn't have to audition.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors.

[David Forbes]

Musicians, content creators and culture shifters sharing.

[Honey German]

Their real stories of failure and success.

[David Forbes]

You were destined to be a star.

[Honey German]

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisme, a lot of laughs and those amazing vivas you've come to expect.

[Robert Evans]

And of course, we'll explore deeper topics.

[Honey German]

Dealing with identity struggles and all the issues affecting our Latin community.

[Robert Evans]

You feel like you get a little.

[Honey German]

Whitewashed because you have to do the code switching.

[Robert Evans]

I won't say whitewashed because at the.

[Honey German]

End of the day, you know, I'm me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. But the whole pretending and co, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Gracias.

[Honey German]

Come again as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of your life.

[David Forbes]

That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have.

[Robert Evans]

Big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us.

[David Forbes]

I'm your host and co president of this organization, Dr. Lea Tritate. On my new podcast, the Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like and sounds like in real time.

[Robert Evans]

Each week I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and.

[David Forbes]

Are now reshaping the systems that failed us.

[Robert Evans]

We're going to talk about the adultification.

[David Forbes]

Of black girls mothering as resistance and the tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Honey German]

Hello everyone and welcome to It Can Happen Here. My name is Danielle Kurd and I'm a writer, analyst and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor of political science and a senior non resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. I'm also occasional co host of the Fire these Times. Today I want to talk about the attacks on American universities in American academia and what role Palestine plays in all of this and maybe end on what's being done to stop it. So you may or may not have heard about the attacks on universities and academia, but given the general onslaught of disastrous news, even for those of you who have noted something is happening in higher education may not be keeping up with the details. So let me give you a brief summary. A number of universities, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and ucla, have been investigated for campus antisemitism related to pro Palestine protests on those campuses over the past two years. From there, the Trump administration has escalated by slashing federal funding that those universities receive and forcing those universities to settle with the administration, not only monetarily, but also by implementing changes to how their universities are run. So, for example, Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration $220 million, punish 70 students involved in the protests in a variety of ways, including by expelling them, and they agreed to monitor and report their programs for unlawful DEI goals. That's a quote. One of the ways Columbia has agreed to monitor, as the Intercept reported in April, is by appointing a vice provost in charge of monitoring the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department in particular, for, quote, balanced curricula. The faculty in that department will no longer run that department. And as the Middle East Studies association, in a statement back in March noted, this placing the department under administrative receivership is a, quote, fundamental abrogation of the autonomy of university governance. This comes at a time when the Trump administration has also attacked the National Science foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health. All of these are federal funding sources for the majority of research that happens at universities across disciplines, the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities. The Trump administration has also attacked foreign students and the processes by which they are able to get visas to study in the United States, which is just another way to get at a major revenue source for many universities. But why is the Trump administration doing all this? Here is Vice President J.D. vance speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in 2021.

[Robert Evans]

We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country, ladies and gentlemen.

[David Forbes]

The universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies. And it's not time to be honest about that fact. And we subsidize, we support, and in our own ways, all of us reinforce the power of universities to control our.

[Robert Evans]

Lives and control how we live them.

[David Forbes]

So much of what drives truth and knowledge as we understand it in this country is fundamentally determined by, supported by.

[Robert Evans]

And reinforced by the universities in this country.

[Honey German]

So that's Vance before him. And Trump won the election, identifying that universities are sites of power. Therefore, he argues very explicitly that conservatives must destroy these sites of power or submit them to their will. Are universities truly sites of power? The short answer is yes, for two reasons. Number one, as Vance himself identifies, universities produce knowledge. And that knowledge produced at universities drives innovation in the private sector, in tech, in health, in weapons manufacturing. Universities are a main engine of economic growth. In fact, universities are part and parcel of American global power. They are a major source of that power for the United States, whether in the students and scholars they attract, whether for the research that they produce, that various arms of the American government can use, or whether for the legitimization that universities provide for certain frameworks like the free market, liberalism, et cetera, et cetera. So really, universities largely generate power for the powers that be. But sometimes universities are also sites of power that can challenge orthodoxies. With greater inclusion of scholars and students from a variety of backgrounds, we get a diversity of thought. And because of how universities are supposed to run in theory, as governed by faculty and as sites of free inquiry, that means sometimes, occasionally, knowledge is produced that can challenge power too. That sometimes, occasional knowledge production is too much for the JD Vances of today's politics though. So they're cracking down. The number two reason why universities are sites of power is because they offer a promise of social mobility. And that's generally true, too. Even the most modest regional public school in America still offers some of the highest quality of education you can get around the world. But that shot at upward social mobility that you can get with a university education is definitely getting harder and costlier and less accessible. There's this book by Marc Busquet I highly recommend reading titled how the University Works. In it, the author details how as universities became more corporatized, tuition increased, university workers were disempowered, and the value of a degree plummeted. And this process started way before Trump. Clifford Ando, professor of Classics and History at the University of Chicago, wrote for Compact Magazine recently on what's happening at the University of Chicago right now. For those who may be unaware, at the University of Chicago, the university is stopping PhD admissions, it's increasing enrollment numbers, it's slashing budgets, it's even proposing to teach some courses using ChatGPT. Ando argues that this current dismantling of University of Chicago that we're witnessing is again not Trump related, but can be traced to this corporatization of the university where universities prioritized money making technologies and investments and as he writes, quote, fundamentally corroded policymaking at universities. So to get a high quality education today at a university that isn't trying to trap you as cheap labor or doesn't just use overworked adjuncts to teach courses to avoid paying faculty their worth, you need to either come from money or you need to be highly, highly exceptional, or you need to accrue exorbitant amounts of debt. And yet, and yet marginalized people still made advances in this system. We saw, for example, more African American presidents of universities, more women. We saw diversifying scholarship courses, pathways for students as universities became more inclusive. That's what diversity, equity and inclusion efforts did, imperfect as they were. And even though the university as an institution continues to exploit labor, continues to exploit their own students, often doesn't deliver enough on the promise of social mobility. Even delivering a little was too much for the JD Vances of the world. They don't want upward social mobility for some Americans, and they don't want those challenges to power, even at the margins. So they're cracking down. The attacks on Harvard, Brown, George Washington, ucla, the list goes on. Is predicated on attacking dei, diversity, equity and inclusion. Conservatives allege that universities taking a person's background into consideration in admissions or in hiring or in scholarships, et cetera, all of that violates anti discrimination laws. And our conservative Supreme Court, in its recent ruling in the cases of Students for Fair Admissions versus University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, agreed. They overturned the 2003 Grutter versus Bollinger case that had allowed higher education institutions to consider race in admissions. And all of this comes at a time after decades of the university as an institution eroded itself. But I would say attacking DEI wasn't effective enough, especially after the Black Lives matter movement. Saying DEI is bad is a harder sell for an American public, 51% of which say they support Black Lives Matter. And this was according to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center. Now, 51% isn't overwhelming, but it's not nothing either. So conservatives to attack the university have had to exploit the weaknesses that already exist within the academy. That has meant exploiting the way the university as an institution has become sensitive to money and endowments and donors. And that has meant exploiting the way the university has not actually been a site of free inquiry or expression for particular people and particular topics. And by exploiting and expanding that gap, they are now trying to take those freedoms away from everybody. This is where Palestine comes in. The truth is. Attacks on student protesters for Palestine, attacks on scholars who work on Palestine or speak on Palestine, that all started before Trump. And that has become the blueprint for attacking universities and academic freedom generally. They're using the pro Palestine protests, pro Palestine programming, or just any knowledge production about Palestine as an excuse to allege anti Semitism, enter into these investigations and demand the universities do what they want. After the Hamas October 7th attacks, we saw student protesters detained, like Mahmoud Khalil at Colombia and Rameyza Osterk at Tufts and many more. We have seen diplomas withheld like what Virginia Commonwealth University attempted to do to many students, including students sitting Haddad. We have seen professors put on leave or fired like what Muhlenberg College did to Maura Finkelstein. The list goes on and on. But again, a lot of this pattern started before Trump. In a November 2023 poll conducted by political scientists Mark lynch and Shibli Telhami called the Middle East Scholar Barometer, the results show that 66% of faculty members who study the Middle east, quote, self censor when speaking about the Middle east in an academic or professional setting. And that number goes up to 77.4% when talking about Israel Palestine. On the Israeli Palestinian issue In particular, almost 52% of scholars have concerns about pressure from external advocacy groups. And of those who said they self censor, a full 83% said the issue they most feel the need to censor themselves about is anything related to criticism of Israel. This is a crazy number if you consider that of the same group, only 1.6% of respondents said they censored criticism of U.S. policy. And a full 98% of assistant professors, untenured professors who work on the Middle east, quote, feel the need to self censor when speaking about the Palestinian Israeli issue in an academic or professional capacity. Part of this story, the censorship story, is the large scale adoption of the International Holocaust remembrance alliance definition of antisemitism. Back during his first term, President Trump's executive order on combating antisemitism directed government bodies to take the IHRA definition into consideration when enforcing Title vi, which is a part of the Civil Rights act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The Biden administration didn't overturn any of that either. They implemented that executive order themselves throughout their tenure. And this definition is one definition of antisemitism that critics say conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In fact, the main drafter of the IHRA definition, Ken Stern, has expressed concerns that this definition is being used as a, quote, blunt instrument to label anyone an anti Semite. And it's for that reason that Human rights watch and 104 other organizations signed a letter urging the UN not to use this IHRA definition. As a result, there are of course a number of competing definitions of antisemitism, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism that has a more nuanced understanding of when criticism of Israel becomes anti Semitism. As their website notes, the Jerusalem Declaration is a product of an initiative that originated in Jerusalem and includes in their numbers international scholars working in antisemitism studies and related fields, including Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine and Middle east studies. But of course, the IHRA definition is the one that the Trump administration wants to follow and the one that universities are adopting. Maybe it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. It's not because this administration that engages with the far right and propagates conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement, it's not like they actually care about antisemitism. It's just a tool. As Jewish organizations working to combat antisemitism, such as the Nexus Project explicitly point out, it's a way to weaponize antisemitism by attacking free speech, dei, foreign students. And in this environment, we can understand why there's so much fear to speak up and so much self censorship. You can be falsely accused of antisemitism for bringing up Palestine as a topic of discussion, for trying to study what's happening, for trying to produce any sort of knowledge on what's going on. I also really want to underscore that this self censorship and fear that already existed in a space in academia is a worsening trend today. But it definitely existed before October 7th too. Take it from me, as someone who studies Palestine in American academia. Palestinian scholars have long been under attack in the American Academy. But after October 7th and before Trump, this of course got worse. External actors and donors got involved in campus governance, as we saw in Harvard and many other places. University administrations cracked down on students, professors, everyone, often preemptively doing the work of the right wing because they thought that taking away freedoms from some groups wouldn't come back to bite them. And this is how Palestine is now one of the cudgels that Trump is using to attack universities and the academy. And it's an effective cudgel because some liberals in universities and outside universities can also be persuaded that to attack scholarship on Palestine and students who speak on Palestine. But those exceptions to academic freedom that have long existed in the academy are now being used to attack everyone. A quick note here to outline what academic freedom for a faculty member actually means, as the American association of University Professors, the AAUP notes on their website, Academic freedom has these main elements. Number one, the freedom to discuss relevant matters in the classroom. Number two, the freedom to explore all avenues of scholarship, research and creative expression and to publish the results of such work. Number three intramural speech, freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when addressing matters of institutional policy or action and number four extramural speech, freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens so faculty members are allowed to speak on matters as citizens. Being a faculty member and being a member of the university community does not take away their right to be citizens. That last one is worth emphasizing. To maintain universities as sites of free inquiry and knowledge production, there has to be academic freedom. And that freedom includes teaching, research, intramural speech, and extramural speech. You can't censor people you don't like or don't agree with and think your institution and your university will continue to function. You certainly can't do that and think the right wing won't sniff it out and use it against you. So what's to be done? Things are happening. People are fighting back. And just like Palestine has been the canary in the coal mine for so many things, including the assault on American academia, Palestine may be one of those crucial issues that helps academics and students and faculty to organize in this moment. For example, because of the arrests of pro Palestine students and their attempted deportation, the American association of University Professors, alongside the Middle East Studies association and the Knight First Amendment Institute sued the Trump administration over this policy of arresting and threatening deportation for lawful speech on Palestine. The AAUP is also now a plaintiff in a number of cases challenging the Trump administration on attacks on DEI, attempting to abolish the Department of Education, cuts in federal funding of research, etc. And attacks on students and faculty after October 7, which set off this whole barrage of attacks on universities since then have galvanized people to demand their university administrations uphold academic freedom. In 2024, nearly 40 chapters at the AAUP were founded or re established across the U.S. even professors who don't teach or study the Middle east or Palestine are starting to speak out about the dangers of these moments and these trends. I think people are starting to realize that American universities will have to uphold their ideals of faculty governance, free inquiry, free thought for everyone, or they really will cease to exist. That's all I have for you today. I'll be back soon to talk more about the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong everybody. Thanks for listening.

[Robert Evans]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

[Mia Wong]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Robert Evans]

Get back, everyone.

[David Forbes]

Let's go, Dax.

[Robert Evans]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him.

[Mia Wong]

Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Robert Evans]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and.

[Garrison Davis]

Grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this.

[Robert Evans]

Is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil walks in Abbott's Town. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on Earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discord, discipline, physical training, hard labor and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of your life.

[David Forbes]

That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have.

[Robert Evans]

Big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co president of.

[David Forbes]

This organization, Dr. Leah Tritate. On my new podcast, the Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like and sounds like in real time.

[Robert Evans]

Each week I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and.

[David Forbes]

Are now reshaping the systems that failed us.

[Robert Evans]

We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls mothering as resistance and.

[David Forbes]

The tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards Liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority. New episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Honey German]

Hola, it's honey German.

[Robert Evans]

And my podcast, Gracias Come Again is back.

[Honey German]

This season we're going even deeper into.

[Robert Evans]

The world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of.

[Honey German]

Your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors.

[David Forbes]

Musicians, content creators and culture shifters sharing.

[Honey German]

Their real stories of failure and success.

[David Forbes]

You were destined to be a star.

[Honey German]

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of cheeseme, a lot of laughs and those amazing vivas you've come to expect.

[Robert Evans]

And of course, we'll explore deeper topics.

[Honey German]

Dealing with identity struggles and all the issues affecting our Latin community.

[Robert Evans]

You feel like you get a little.

[Honey German]

Whitewashed because you have to do the code switching.

[Robert Evans]

I won't say whitewashed because at the.

[Honey German]

End of the day, you know, I'm me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Gracias.

[Honey German]

Come again as part of Michael Tura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to a kidnap hero podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about how not to put them back together and how to fail to put them back together. I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we are going to be talking about the place where the anti trans crusade began, North Carolina. And about the recent spate of anti trans bills that have been passed there. And with me to talk about this is David Forbes, an editor and journalist for the Trans News Network and the Asheville Blade. David, welcome to the show.

[David Forbes]

Thank you.

[Mia Wong]

So I think some people, if you're listening to this show, you may remember that North Carolina is the state that passed the first bathroom bills. But what has gotten significantly less attention is A, everything that happened after that and B, a series of two really sweeping and hideous anti trans bills have been passed in the last, like, month or so. And David wrote a really, really good piece for Trends News Network about both these bills and also how Democrats in the state helped pass them. So I want to talk about that. And I guess the place to start is, can you talk about what these two bills, HB805 and SB442, got started?

[David Forbes]

Sure. So of the two, HB805 is the more sweeping, broadly at least, they're both terrible. Anti trans bill. It affects everything from changing your birth certificate to state health plans not covering trans health care to really ominously like what jail or prison you get put into if you're a trans person and you're arrested. Yeah, that one, it's kind of a laundry list of, you know, far right anti trans ideas. The other SB442 is one of those where it takes some digging and here I'm really thankful for that. TNN's policy analyst, who I think y' all have had on here a few times, Karine Green was actually there too. Yes. Was a huge help in reviewing this bill. I've been covering North Carolina politics and its various horrors for a long time, but even still, it's good to have like legislative expertise that. And SC442 changes the definition of child abuse to not include transphobic child abuse. Essentially it was written against the very fictional specter of like, oh, if you have questions about this trans stuff and you get your kids pronouns wrong, DSS could come like snatch them overnight. Which is not a thing that has ever happened.

[Mia Wong]

No, including.

[David Forbes]

And especially in North Carolina, like, yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So.

[David Forbes]

But what it does is just bluntly open the way, especially in the state foster care system for just anti trans bigotry across the board. You know, at this point it's like, okay, well, placement can't be denied based on someone's religion or their race. And being a transphobe.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

You know, it's like that's, that's being added. Let's predict identities. It's also essentially letting the ground work for just even more legal sanctioning of conversion therapy, which is of course torture and abuse.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

I think Karine summed up as that if you, if you don't have a trans kid to abuse, foster care will provide one for you.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Forbes]

Which is, it's really bleak.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

We chuckle, but it's. We chuckle and it's like gallows humor because it's that absurd.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

So SB442 was the one that kind of went through the whole legislative process first. And in some ways it had less of a party line treatment than HB805 eventually did. So, you know, I won't say credit where due, but NC Senate Democrats, of whom there aren't terribly many, but there are some, did universally vote against this bill. They were like, no, we're not approving it. However, the GOP has a 2/3 majority in there. So it's really not as necessary. They can potentially override a veto in there. Where things really came down to was North Carolina House and they are nine Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass this and then it got to the desk of Governor Josh Stein who wanted a landslide last year, like North Carolina Democrats, despite how gerrymandered the state is, which we'll talk about more in a little bit, actually did pretty well. The GOP no longer had a super majority in the House and the Democratic candidate for governor, former Attorney General Josh Stein, won in a, in a rout. So essentially that was supposed to prevent bills like this from becoming law.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

Because okay, if the Dems held the line in the North Carolina House, the Republicans don't want a super majority, then the governor vetoes it, then they can't override the veto. That didn't happen. So not only did nine Democrats side with Republicans, Stein signed the bill.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Which is hideous.

[David Forbes]

Yeah. And it was was bleakly insulting the way he did it too because it was just like he didn't even issue a statement or oh, like well, we still believe in trans rights. This is a bureaucratic thing or even bother to make an excuse. It was just tucked in a list of bills that he signed that day alongside like some other bureaucratic stuff involving like retirement communities and recognizing driver's licenses. So it's, it's definitely kind of insult to injury sort of situation. Interestingly, North Carolina's Gay Inc. Organizations are kind of like the mainline nonprofits and in North Carolina there's like equality in sea. There's the Campaign for Equality which is regional but is. Is based in the state. Here in Asheville, they actually had been very strongly against this bill despite some Democrats supporting it. But they stopped short, as will become a theme with condemning or attacking any of the Democrats who did, which was a giant signal that this is not an issue you're really going to fight Democr on. So the governor then thinks, well, there's no political capital be lost signing this thing. On the same day he did veto HB805 along with a bunch of other bills targeting, you know, in quote marks, DEI measures which are basically just attempts to smash out anything that's not far right and further resegrate the state. He did veto those. The language he used though was definitely what a lot of us have become used to. It's the, oh, this was divisive. No trans people mentioned, no trans healthcare mentioned, no trans rights mentioned. Just vaguely. Well, this is divisive and it's a distraction. So HB805 does actually go back to the legislature. And one Democrat had voted for HB805. So there was a tension turning of okay, is this guy going to still vote for veto override? Representative Dante Pittman because it's a big deal supposedly anyway for a Democrat to defy their own governor. It's one thing when it's like you're just, okay, you know, the bill's going to pass. It's still horrible. But it's supposedly a harder bar to reach. Or at least that's what various, you know, ostensibly pro queer Democrats are telling us. For them to go on the record and be like, no, I'm joining with the other party to override your veto and like give you the middle finger, essentially. But what happened when he got to the House? He actually did, did vote to hold with the veto, but another representative been out on a pretty dubious excused absence. When HB805 was originally their Democratic Rep. Nassif Majid voted in favor.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And that was enough to make it law. So the one thing that among queer and trans North Carolina, who like a lot of their places voted very heavily against the Republicans, you know, for the Democratic candidates and all, that's one reason they did fairly well last year to stop exactly this sort of legislation becoming law. It just became law.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And it did. So thanks to members of the Democratic Party and in one bill, the Democratic governor.

[Mia Wong]

Both of these bills are unbelievably draconian. Like these are things that even like two years ago, like banning state funding for like all trans health care for.

[David Forbes]

The state health plan. We should specify.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. It is like the state health care, but comma, and this is my understanding of it, is that this is a ban on all ages.

[David Forbes]

Yes. For anyone on the state healthcare plan. So if someone is a state employee or a teacher.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Or like your kids are.

[David Forbes]

Exactly. And this kind of actually it's close to home for me because I grew up poor in North Carolina and one of the only reasons we had health care growing up was because my mom, as poorly paid as she was, was a public school teacher. So, you know, it's a trans kid in. In where I was. Now where we know, you know, it's easier for trans kids to know who they are. It's not quite as erased as it was back in the 90s.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

Can't get health care. A trans adult who's a teacher can't have their health care covered anymore.

[Mia Wong]

And that's a thing that like two years ago, Ron DeSantis wasn't calling for this.

[David Forbes]

No.

[Mia Wong]

Right. The Daily Wire at that point, like two years ago is explicitly calling for trans exterminationist things, but they're not specifically proposing adults can't use trans healthcare. That's not a thing.

[Garrison Davis]

Thing.

[Mia Wong]

Like, yeah, that was, that was even on the table. And now you have like, you have a Democrat overriding their own governor's veto to get this through.

[David Forbes]

Yes. A Democrat in a solidly blue district. Masjid's district is in the middle of Charlotte, which for folks who may not be as familiar with the state, like Charlotte's the largest city here. And it is not known for being like, at least on voting wise. It doesn't go for the GOP generally.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And then this is the same point that I want to make about this bill, like redefining what child abuse is like, even by the standards of sort of like far right anti trans bills. Those are really weird and radical.

[David Forbes]

Karine said it was one of the worst that she'd seen in the country as far as like on the childcare front.

[Mia Wong]

From my covering of this too.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

This is one of the worst things I've ever seen. And the Democratic Party passed.

[David Forbes]

It passed with nine Democrats in favor and the governor signed it. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That's unbelievably horrifying. Yeah. And the fact that the queer wargs in the state were unwilling to condemn the Democrats who passed this is just horrifying.

[David Forbes]

It is. And actually goes one further than that because afterwards they didn't even bother to put out perfunctory, oh, we're disappointed in Governor Stein. You know, we'll, we will continue to try to fight this legislation in court or something like that. They did nothing. Yeah, they just, they went silent. So. And you know, their condemnations of SB442, especially before this bill passed, they were all correct. It is horrible. It does sanction child abuse. It is horrific on every single front. It is a catastrophe. It is draconian, all that. It didn't stop being so when Democrats started supporting it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

The kids hurt by this, families hurt by this, aren't going to be any less hurt because a Democrat signed on to it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And before we go to break, the thing I want to sort of close this section with is that like, you know, I think it's a very, very common thing to focus on. Like, okay, why are, why are you focusing on the Democrats right now when the Republicans are doing all of this stuff? And this is a case where very explicitly and this is the dynamic I think you've seen across the board with, for example, like Chuck Schumer, like, helping to get the Republican budget through. Right?

[David Forbes]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

The stuff the Republicans are doing, a lot of it can't be implemented without the support of the Democrats. And the Democrats have been willing to support the fascist government implementing this stuff. And that makes them a collaborationist party in a lot of extremely important cases. And when that happens, North Carolina is one of the places at the forefront and has been at the forefront for like a decade.

[David Forbes]

For nearly a decade.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, for nearly a decade. It's like eight years. Seven. Seven. Eight years.

[David Forbes]

Nine.

[Mia Wong]

Nine.

[David Forbes]

As of this year, it's nine years since HB2 came along in the spring of 2016.

[Mia Wong]

Sixteen. Yeah. Oh, that is. Yeah. See, this is do not, do not go to sleep at 5 in the morning and then try to do math live on air. It will come for you too. Really, truly was trying to subtract 16 from 20. Okay, this is. This, this, this, this, this is your one moment of levity and a bunch of extremely bleak is gonna be trying and failing to do math on air. Look, I can drive.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. That's my. I'm sticking to it.

[Mia Wong]

But what we are seeing here is the way in which like resistance to the gop and this is a place like North Carolina is a state where in the midst of a just unbelievable national right wing turn. Right. Queer people turned out to stop this.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And their reward for their resistance was the people that they had put in charge of defending them in. In as staggering of an example of the banality of evil as I've ever seen. Just signed this horrific piece of anti trans legislation that couldn't have been passed without them into effect in the same thing as like, as a bunch of regulatory.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And then gang did nothing.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

The groups they're supposed to lobby at the club. Well, this is the point of their existence. Did nothing.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

At that point they just, they let, they let it go, you know, on the next fundraising cycle, on to the next AI meme to on your page to boost, you know, content generation or whatever. And here we are.

[Mia Wong]

And we are back. Now for the brevity of this show. I am am not going to go into my giant rant about how this is what happened with Midorant and the French Socialists and how Midorant and the Socialist party instituted neoliberalism in France. But comma, we are. Instead of, instead of doing that or me going on another rant about the absorption of social movements by the NIS in Bolivia, or another rant about.

[Garrison Davis]

The.

[Mia Wong]

17 different iterations of this that we've seen over the years. See my episodes on lula, see many, many, many, many, many things I've done. We're going to go back and talk about this in the context of North Carolina because I think there's a really very. A very important thread that David, you have been pulling on in this piece, and in general, that is really not well understood anywhere that is about the structure and function of the Democratic Party in the south. And the way that North Carolina has functioned is it's sort of like the moderate human face of the Greensboro massacre.

[David Forbes]

Oh, my. Yeah, and this is one of those where to start things. There's a quote that I have in the piece by civil rights historian Timothy Tyson that since I read it, I think over a decade ago, really just kind of hit me like a hammer and is kind of simple. All the experience I've seen as a impoverished trans woman living in North Carolina and covering, you know, local state government and how federal government works on the ground here, too, like beneath the green ivy of civility, but a stone wall of coercion.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And that is one of the better summaries, and it applies to other circumstances, too, but it is, it just perfectly sums up kind of the historical reality of the North Carolina Democratic Party. And when, when Tyson was doing that, he was tracing this whole history from the 1898 Wilmington coup d' etat massacre, which is one of the most decisive events in American history, and I'd even say in like, the history of the rise of fascism, too, to the current day. He was writing the late 90s, and it's part of a project of historians. And one of the terms they were using was North Korea has this progressive mystique. While you were having governors on their Southern states during the civil rights era, where, you know, giving angry speeches from courthouses and things like that, and North Carolina was trying to be the moderate example of the South. Oh, you know, we put money into. Look at all these schools and roads. We're building, this college system. We're building. We just built Research Triangle Park. You know, we're. We're attracting, you know, is the too busy to hate kind of myth. And on that note, they generally were more careful about repression, but it still happened. You know, North Carolina doesn't make the headlines in some of the. Like Selma did, for example, but there was a history of riots and a brutal attempts at repression from the 40s all the way to the 70s.

[Mia Wong]

Yep. Yep.

[David Forbes]

In North Carolina. And they happened like in almost every city, major city there is here, you know, and some that weren't so major.

[Mia Wong]

That's the thing that we've talked about a little bit on the show with the Holy Week uprising and the sort of the whole wave of riots kind of culminating in the assassination of Martin Luther King. But like. Yeah, like, like statistically most of the riots that happened in that entire period happened in these small and mid sized cities.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That have just like the historical memory of which has been completely fucking buried.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And North Carolina, as you're saying, like it's one of the critical sites of this.

[David Forbes]

Yeah. Durham was rioting in the 40s.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

Like that. That's how far back it goes. And I think a lot of the time people think, oh well not much happened in this era. And I think it's just a lack of knowledge of history, especially radical history. Did it not happen or was it suppressed and then erased?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Forbes]

And that, that happened with a lot of this. So you had, you know, and figures like Governor Terry Sanford the time, who was, you know, famous North Carolina Democrat. And yeah, if the Klan was like openly marching to murder people, he might say like, okay, look, a massacre is bad news. We are going to like put the state troopers out to deter them from doing that. But a lot of civil rights activists end up dead.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

You know, or there's still, there's like violent crackdowns. You know, during the Greensboro effectively was a site that both of some really well organized like civil rights efforts and sit ins and more radical action too. But also a lot of repression. You know, by 1979 when the state's boosters are portraying, you know, all that upheaval is a thing of the past. This anti racist march or anti clan march specifically organized by this communist group in Greensboro.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

Was massacred. The claimant neo Nazis came in. They just opened fire on people largely. They were acquitted later and in ensuing years a lot of investigations been done into this and various levels of local and state and after the fact federal law enforcement were very complicit and things ranging from just kind of trying to sweep it under the rug to outright especially local level, like cooperating with the Klan.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

A lot of them were either aware this is going on and did nothing to stop it or even actively fed the clan information. There's a book recently called Morningside that goes into a lot of this detail that I encourage folks to take a look at. But that's the reality of North Carolina and that's the reality beneath the progressive mystique. And one of the historians I quote in the piece mentioned that this is an exquisite instrument of social control because you've kind of already framed the discussion as, oh, it's just this genteel civil thing. We'll hear you out. Just be a little more patient. But if stuff ever really escalates. Yeah, there is the option of just flat out smears of violence and massacre. And knowing the history of North Carolina, you know, a lot of this was directed at black North Carolinians, but also it was used to crush labor stuff. A lot of the people killed in the Greensboro massacre were also organizing in the textile mills. And North Carolina under the Democrats, under their moderate period, had and continues to have some of the most draconian anti labor laws in the country, which takes some work. So that's, that's kind of the reality of North Carolina and, and of the Democratic Party here. And they lean on that mystique heavily. And honestly, I think a lot of it is what they evoke. As you know, we're, we're the defenders of the sane, sensible, civil status quo. Even Salt and Mustine's statements about HB805, when he did veto it, it's like, well, this is divisive. It's making too many waves. Yeah, we need to get back to business, which they mean not just the business of government, they literally mean business, you know, as far as hitting the state and making more money and inevitably means making more money for the gentry. So, yeah, that's kind of the reality of North Carolina beneath this kind of, you know, how, how things supposedly are better and more progressive here in the end of the day, you can still get massacred.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I think on a sort of structural level. Right. I think there's going to be people who are being like, well, okay, why the. Do I give. Do I give a. About North Carolina? And one. And this is something that you point out in the piece, something that's really obvious if you spend literally any time in the south, is that. Well, I think it's 36% of the south is like, what's, what's the actual number? I should have looked this up before.

[David Forbes]

So of the national population of queer and trans people, 36% live in the south, which is far more than any other region, like by a wide margin, I think under the same 2023 calculation. And there was another reason sort of came out specifically about trans people. All these have faults.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

It is a general rule that trans people, especially in areas where they are more legally and violently marginalized are wildly undercounted. But it maps to about the same numbers, I think of trans people in the country. The estimated population, about 33 to 36% live in the south and in the, in the 2023 one, the next highest amount live in the Midwest, which is kind of different from how you see things portrayed that, you know, we're just.

[Mia Wong]

This, yeah, this coastal, like these, you.

[David Forbes]

Know, elite bohemians on a few coastal cities. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of trends, trans people in the south and the Midwest. Yeah, we've been here for ages. We're still here.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's North Carolina, it's Texas, it's New Orleans, West.

[David Forbes]

Virginia, Florida, you know.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And, and again, like in terms of like, okay, so I'm not in those places. Like A, like we all have a responsibility to all queer people. Like as queer people. Right. Like we have, we have, we have responsibility to each other and we should fucking fight for each other. And B, you can look at what happened in North Carolina and it was deliberately. This is the place where the right wing's anti trans strategy was born and it was exported from the success that they had in North Carolina to the entire rest of the fucking country.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

With the bathroom bills. And this is something we're gonna get into in a second with the way the Democratic Party like didn't react to those bathroom bills. The last point that I want to make here is that this strategy of control is also very similar to the one that the Democrats use in places like San Francisco where you have this sort of progressive veneer over, you know, that the constellation, well, I guess the constellation of class forces is getting more similar as big tech moves into like that part of the South. But you know, it's this constellation of like, oh, hey, we are the Queer Rights Party. But our actual interests are this combination of housing developers, landlords and tech giants. And so as a method of social control, we're going to do this like, hey, we're extremely pro trans stuff and then we're going to throw a whole bunch of fucking trans homeless people into concentration camps. Yeah, and that's the thing that like, you know, we're gonna, I'm gonna talk more about this on the show another time with the ways that Trump's anti homeless executive orders, some of the models for it are the way that sweeps have been working in places like Oakland. We've talked about this on the show before, but this mechanism of social control is one that's really, really widespread. And the south operates as a laboratory for that, too, in the same way that it operates as a laboratory for the right.

[David Forbes]

Yeah. And I think that's really important because since this is a point, I can't hone this point enough and make it sharp enough. Frankly, folks need to take it really seriously. Whether you care about the south or not. Fascists do. The far right does. And they have for a long, long time viewed it not as a place to ignore, but as a place to consolidate power and try out their tactics. Too often, the left, even the queer left, has not. We have all suffered for it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And this is the whole thing for the historical left, Right. Like, one of the things that broke the American labor movement, like, was the defeat of the CIO in the South. I mean, all the way back to, I mean, defense. You were literally talking about, like, the defeat of Reconstruction. Like, this is. This is why this country is like this. And if you don't want the country to be like this, you have to fucking fight in the South. Yes, that's all we've got time for for today. But tomorrow we will be back to talk about the long and sordid history of the Democratic Party's progressive veneer in North Carolina and what truly lies beneath it. And we will look at how the original response to the 2016 bathroom bills set the stage for both the Democratic Party in North Carolina's passing of anti trans laws today and the future of the rest of the country.

[Robert Evans]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

[Mia Wong]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Robert Evans]

Get back, everyone. Let's go down. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him.

[Mia Wong]

Burn his body and scatter the ashes.

[Robert Evans]

In the furthest corner of this town. As a warning from iHeart podcasts and.

[Garrison Davis]

Grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this.

[Robert Evans]

Is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil walks in Abbostown.

[Honey German]

Hola, it's Honey German.

[Robert Evans]

And my podcast, Gracias, Come Again is back.

[Honey German]

This season we're going even deeper into.

[Robert Evans]

The world of music and entertainment with.

[Honey German]

Raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and Celebrities. You didn't have to audition.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors.

[David Forbes]

Musicians, content creators and culture shifters sharing.

[Honey German]

Their real stories of failure and success.

[David Forbes]

You were destined to be a star.

[Honey German]

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of cheeseme, a lot of laughs and those amazing vivas you've come to expect.

[Robert Evans]

And of course, we'll explore deeper topics.

[Honey German]

Dealing with identity struggles and all the issues affecting our Latin community.

[Robert Evans]

You feel like you get a little.

[Honey German]

Whitewashed because you have to do the code switching.

[Robert Evans]

I won't say whitewash because at the.

[Honey German]

End of the day, you know, I'm me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of grasses.

[Honey German]

Come again as part of Michael Tura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional forces programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and.

[Garrison Davis]

We didn't know what to expect in the morning.

[Robert Evans]

Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Forbes]

A foot washed up, a shoe with.

[Robert Evans]

Some bones in it.

[David Forbes]

They had no idea who it was.

[Robert Evans]

Most everything was burned up pretty good.

[David Forbes]

From the fire, that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases.

[Robert Evans]

But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

[David Forbes]

A small lab in Texas is cracking.

[Garrison Davis]

The code on DNA using new scientific tools.

[Robert Evans]

They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

[David Forbes]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Robert Evans]

And I just looked at my computer.

[Mia Wong]

Screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Robert Evans]

On America's Crime Lab. We'll learn about victims and survivors, and.

[David Forbes]

You'Ll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes.

[Mia Wong]

On the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the.

[David Forbes]

Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to Kid App and Shear, a podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about how claiming that you were going to put things back together and then not doing it makes things fall apart even worse. I am your host Mia Wong, and today we're going to be continuing with part two of my interview with David Forbes, an editor and journalist for the Trans News Network and the Asheville Blade, about the history of the North Carolina Democratic Party's progressive veneer over their agreement with Republican policies and importantly, how the Democratic Party's original response to the anti trans bathroom bills from 2016 paved the way for where we are today. So enjoy. Let's talk about the original bathroom bills because I think there's some knowledge. Well, okay, I don't know. It's been, it's been almost a decade, so I think people may have forgotten how this all started. So let's talk about the first bathroom bills, what happened and then how the Democrats kind of ensured that they would stay in place.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[David Forbes]

So there is the big one everyone knows about is HB2 because it became kind of internationally famous as the North Carolina bathroom bill.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And even I think for folks who memories may have faded, it has come up recently as kind of a benchmark and often a misinterpreted one. Is we're about to get into for how far things have shifted because on paper it looks like this really horribly backfired. And in some ways it did. Initially, HB2 was a bill that was kind of slapped in last minute. It clearly drew from the larger anti trans far right policy circles which North Carolina Republicans are highly connected to. North Carolina Dems often kind of view themselves their own little like institution. Like where the Democratic moderates like North Carolina Democrats have always been at their best people. That situation he's talked about, the Republicans here were like, okay, we're now in power, which they were starting in 2011. Let's try out this stuff from Alec. Let's try out this stuff from some secure right wing think tank. And that meant they were plugged in when in the wake of Obergefell and also North Carolina as well. The year before you'd had equal marriage for that whole swath of the south was, was kind of imposed by a federal court order or recognized by a federal court order. So they were like, okay, this isn't working. There is not just more de jure, There is more de facto on the ground popular acceptance of equal marriage. Now that's not the wedge it was previously. So what do we shift to? Well, we shift to trans people. And so North Carolina legislators very eager to try out far right policies. The North Carolina GOP is far right even by southern standards, which is interesting because the state's very split as far as like, votes and demographics go. So 2016's rolled around four years earlier. The Dems had done the usual thing. They'd run a super conservative, super pro business. This white guy Democrat, he got trounced by Pat McCrory, who was the former mayor of Charlotte. And Rain is like, oh, I'm a moderate, sensible Republican. I'm going to balance out the legislature a little bit. But unlike too many outside the region and the state who kind of wrote, okay, North Carolina is just becoming this red state now like other southern states have, they knew their hold was actually really precarious now. They gerrymandered extensively. Yeah, so extensively that like North Carolina, the same year as HB2 pass stopped being recognized as a democracy. Yeah, by the. By the like policy. As a matter of fact, the District of Carolina, they did a whole commentary later that year that these were the most rigged districts, the most German districts they'd seen, not just in the U.S. but anywhere in the world. So that is. That is where we live. That's where we live for some time. And yeah, but the governor's elected statewide, so he's in a more precarious position. And they wanted a wedge issue, in their view, to drive out conservative votes. They also hate trans people and want to hurt us.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Forbes]

So this HB2 said that trans people can't go into bathrooms unless they use the one matching their birth certificate in any state building in North Carolina. And this technically also includes like local government buildings, includes like social services. It includes like any educational setting pretty much. So this was clearly a slap dash affair. They didn't even have like an enforcement mechanism in there. But it did a few other things too, I think people forget about, which is it also stripped the ability of localities to make their own minimum wage rules. So it was also an attack on labor because those always go together and not unrelated. Trans and queer people are only working class demographics, which I don't think gets set enough. And also, essentially this was in reaction to Charlotte adding gender identity to Its existing non discrimination ordinance. There's always a local one, but in reality, you know, if Charlotte had never done that, they would have done a bill like this pretty shortly anyway. Yeah, it was kind of just the excuse. And they also struck down all non discrimination ordinances across the state, like local non discrimination ordinances. So this is a broad attack with trans people as kind of the point of the spear as it were. Like the ones most in the front lines. It's a familiar pattern. You know, go after trans rights. You're also going after broad rights for any marginalized group because non information stuff is being struck down left and right. And also you're attacking labor.

[Mia Wong]

Yep.

[David Forbes]

So, you know, it really kind of set the model for things to come. HB2 sparks a massive international backlash. I think the end estimate was 400 million. The state lost 400 million. As companies pulled out, events pulled out. There was a boycott, a fairly effective one, honestly, that was started as grassroots though gay ink groups and even like just random nonprofits. And some Democratic party officials later joined in on it. So the money's being hemorrhaged left and right. McCrory is being turned into a national laughingstock. If anything is proving a rallying point for the other side. Because 2016 rolls around and in a year where Trump takes North Carolina and generally the Republicans do fairly well throughout the south, even in swing states. See, McCrory loses. He loses to the Attorney General Roy Cooper. As a Democrat now, I would never say his pro trans. We're about to get into some major betrayals. He did. He was more willing to say at least perfunctory statements about trans rights than mo. Any North Carolina Democratic politician at a statewide level before and honestly since including the current governor. And yeah, he proceeded to win. So he gets an office. North Carolina gentry are historically plenty fine with bigotry, but the Republicans had by this point broken one of their cardinal rules, which was they fucked with the money. Yeah, because like the state was losing money. They were losing business deals, corporate headquarters and stuff. And this is a lot of what the status quo, very anti labor status quo that North Carolina Democrats and Republicans had generally both supported in varying ways was in danger. And you know, some of them personally were losing money. So they basically tell the Republicans in early 2017 to knock it off. Like, okay, you've gone far enough, it didn't work. You lost the election. They still do. The gerrymandering had a lot of power in the, in the, in the state legislature, but they didn't have the governor's office anymore. So you know, repeal this. Like we're getting too much bad publicity. And what really escalated it was basketball was kind of a religion in North Carolina. Yeah, especially college basketball. And the NCAA said, Look, we'll pull the tournament out. HB2 is still in the books. And at that point there became like these back and forth sessions. Earlier in December there was this compromise effort where supposedly Charlotte would strike its non discrimination stuff on its end. It was currently like the source of legal challenge. They'd gone to court to fight to uphold it. And this should have been a warning sign. The governor, Governor elect Cooper at that point brokered kind of this deal where, okay, Charlotte, you take trans people out of your non screen shortenance of your own accord and the state will repeal HB2. Well, that didn't happen. They did the first part and then the state legislators were like, okay, well that's nice. We're not doing anything about this. That should have been a lesson.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

About complying in advance. But it didn't really seem to take, sadly. So HB2 was still in the books by March, you know, March Madness is coming up and all that. And so they finally do a repeal and this is still hailed as, oh look like back in the day, like even Republicans. Some Republicans would like repeal a trans bill. When it got this big backlash. Their federal funding was being threatened as well for the state. That's not like federal education funding and all. That's not what happened though. And what happened I think is actually was a lot more ominous and a lot more revealing. What passed instead was honestly a second bathroom bill called HB142 or HB 2.0 as a lot of activists and queer folks on the ground ground dubbed it. And what this bill did was it technically took out the bathroom ban, but it put in a bunch of byzantine provisions about who could use the bathroom when. So it would still take a court case for a trans woman to go use the woman's bathroom. It kept all the anti labor stuff and it kept all the non discrimination stuff struck down for years. Like you couldn't pass local non creation protections for years. And at this point the pressure is mounting. The Democratic Party, for the first time in most of a decade, their votes in the legislature actually matter because the Republicans are split between kind of the capitalists who are hate trains who were using this as a wedge issue and now the money's being fucked with, they're ready to repeal it. And some of the others were like, no, no, we really are dedicated to hating Trans people the state can burn as long as trans people's lives are made more miserable. So they have the votes in their own caucus to pass this. So for once Dems had a lot of power and they could have easily been like no full appeal or nothing and they probably would have gotten it through. They did not. They sided with the Republicans. They passed this mess that essentially kept the status quo. It was just barely enough for the NCAA who even noted they even know their corporation. Basically they noted it was reluctant that they were, you know, putting the tournament back in nc. But they did. The governor, new governor, Democratic governor signed it. I probably forgot I was mentioned earlier. HB2 passed with two Democratic votes in the first place.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

So this is like not a new trend of this happening. Heck, anti queer stuff even well before that would often pass with Democratic support as well as Republican support often be signed by Democratic governors. So this is not an entirely new thing. And this is also a point where you can see Gay Inc. Splitting a bit because gay incident had actually condemned HB 2.0. But once it became passed, they either offered tepid statements or they backed down. And so the lesson from HB2 wasn't okay back in the day, you know, nine years ago, trans rights used to be more of a consensus even among like moderate conservatives, at least basic protections for it. And a good example was how unpopular HB2 was. And it was repealed under all this backlash. It did get a backlash, but it wasn't really repealed. And as a matter of fact what the far right learned was that when it comes down to it, the Democrats North Carolina turned out elsewhere will fold if trans rights is made an issue.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And you know, and you can watch everything that has happened since with trans rights has just been the Democrats folding over and over and over again, getting weaker and weaker language until we're in this place now. You know, like, and I think the thing that is a little bit different is that like you used to have to like claim you had done something.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

About the anti trans bill and now you can just sign it.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And it becomes law. And this is something that is, that has played out across the country. Like there have been a lot of states where Democratic governors have signed anti trans bills.

[David Forbes]

Yes. Or vetoed pro trans bills. Like in California.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And you know, even in states where like Pritzker, the governor of Illinois has been being held up as like the big pro trans people. And I've, I see like even trans leftists doing this. And you know like there are a lot of Things in Illinois that are very good for trans people because of the weird Pritzker corruption. His sister is trans. And also the moment the government was like, oh, hey, we're gonna, like, sort of make a big show of threatening, like, healthcare funding, Pritzker just folded and let all these hospitals stop providing transcare to youth, even though it is literally a violation of Illinois, like Illinois anti discrimination legislation.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

They just backed down and refused to do it. And the way that this starts is that there is a gap between the rhetoric of someone like Pritzker being like, oh, no, we support trans rights. Trans rights are an important civil rights issue. And then you watch them allow a bunch of hospitals in Illinois to stop providing care to trans kids. And the place where that ends is more and more Democrats just straight up voting for this stuff.

[David Forbes]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And the Democrats, as you're Talking about with HP2 is like, you know, there were. There were Democratic votes on that one.

[David Forbes]

Yeah. HP 142 especially.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

The. The compromise bill.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

But even HP 2 itself. Yeah, there were. There were Democrats who support that too.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And so this is. This is. I think the critical part of this is that, like, this stuff only can happen with the support of the Democrats. And that's why it's happening. It's because. Because, like. And this is. This is something that's incredibly important right now where, like, all of the shit that is happening, all the things Republicans are doing, are hideously unpopular. Like, 30% approval ratings across the board for, like, all of this just hideously, hideously hated. The only way it can happen is if the Democrats go collaborationists and side with the Republicans. And that's what they're doing.

[David Forbes]

Nazis always need quiz links.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And they're relying on the image of resistance to distract everyone from the fact that they're helping these policies go through. And if you want to stop them, you have to stop them from collaborating.

[David Forbes]

I think that also brings up kind of the third element in this. You've got the. Are always fascist, increasingly fascist Republican Party. You've got the increasing collaborationist Democratic Party. And especially on queer and trans rights, you have Gay Inc. Which, and I go into some examples in the piece After HB 2.0, they put out some perfunctory statements, but then they turned to gatekeeping. And the ensuing years, they very consistently tried to stifle any activism that was more radical or more principled to try to get this stuff off the books, and especially if it came to holding Democratic officials feet in the fire. I literally have an example in the article that I was physically there for and witnessed where a director of the canvas inequality sees the Microsoft as was being passed to some candidates to answer a stronger question from some trans activists and change the question to something that didn't actually put any pressure on them at all, like just kind of absurd petty stuff like that. But the kumba of effect has been that, you know, they turn to thinking about their political careers and their fundraising and when push comes to shove again and again, they've shown they won't hold Democrats feet to the fire. If anything, they will tell the trans people trying to hold their feet the fire to shut up up. So if you know that the lobby, the official lobby that's supposed to, you know, ostensibly on some level stand up for some mild version of trans and queer rights, will never give someone any for breaking ranks. Not even like we condemn official so and so and their bigotry or whatever or we are sorely disappointed in or any one of the boilerplate things. They won't even go that far. That's too far for them. So you have Democrats collaborating and a gay ink structure that has taken the energy and funding out of a lot of other queer activism, but will absolutely will not fight when Democrats are involved. So if you're fascist, all you have to do is get some Democrats involved.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And that's, that's how you get Vichy France.

[David Forbes]

Like that's. Yeah. And, and honestly this is, it's a question I put to folks because, you know, look, I'm honestly dealing with North Carolina Democrats is one of the things that made me an anarchist. So. Yeah, so it's, you know, I've not had any faith in that them for a very, very long time. But for folks that, you know, kind of do put a little more energy into electoral processes, I just, you know, some questions the piece that I think are worth asking them like what's the point of people who are just going to support your enemies?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

What's the point of people that you elect maybe even like get out, you know, and knock doors or whatever to get elected, who then don't do the one thing they're elected to do? And I'd asked too for some of the folks who support some of these gay incorps. I was like, if they won't fight now, what is point of them?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

Why do they deserve any support from us as a community? Or is it far past time to look to other alternatives? There was no lesson HB2 taught as well, which is if you want even the most die Hard bigot to start losing their nerve. You attack their money and their power.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And then you don't stop. If so say oh, you have to compromise over pragmatic solution. You ignore them, laugh in their faces, do whatever, but you keep pressing them. Because that was the other thing. H2 There was a really effective campaign to boycott.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And it did have a substantial effect. You know the lovely weapon of vicious mockery really came in handy. And even the hocus didn't like becoming a national laughingstock. So there were less about how stuff could be fought as well. And the more radical history of North Carolina, you know there are, there are queer radicals here. You know my city was hit by a massive hurricane last year and, and honestly was a lot of us radicals getting out in the ground that kept things from getting even worse. And you know, and just folks on the ground pitching in outside of government structures, not waiting for the official nonprofits who were either devastated or had not planned for this. So there are other alternatives, you know, and, or heck that the hell. Remember I could curse here the, the fact that, that civil rights were A lot of tensions go on the citizens and there was a lot of organizing in those movements. It's a lot more militant than folks remember. That also went along three decades of riots in cities throughout the state before the old order even began to budge a little bit. And the lesson from that, North Carolina Democrats and North Carolina status quo and I'd see throughout the south and throughout the country it only budges or even starts to move when the cost of continuing the way it is become far too high.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And our job is to impose that cost.

[David Forbes]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Because if we don't impose that cost, they're going to keep pushing and they are going to continue to write us out of existence until they have the guns to do it.

[David Forbes]

Yeah. And honestly that is, that is a mentality I think a lot more people need to. Need to absorb. And I think one of the lessons from you know, fighting the far right at some points for my entire like, like adult life basically and even a little bit before then in North Carolina is that the more you fight them, the weaker they are.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

But also, and this is, this is something one of the more experienced transurans in South I know has emphasized. You won't always win. You can always inflict a cost.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[David Forbes]

And I think a little more like thinking outside of elections, a little more bloody minded determination can really come in handy of the sense of like if our enemies are like okay, court rules against us, we're still pressing the attack. Okay. Election goes against us. We're still pressing the attack. I think we can do way meaner and way better than they. Than they do on that front.

[Mia Wong]

Yep.

[David Forbes]

Something goes against us. That's nice. We're still pressing the attack. You know, there's nothing in this hellscape of an empire we have to abide by, especially not in the South. Yeah, yeah. So if. If something doesn't go our way once. Okay. Learn, regroup, redouble. Make sure you inflicted some costs, go out and inflict more of them.

[Robert Evans]

Them.

[David Forbes]

They're not invincible. Trust me. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Another. Another gender is possible. You just have to go out and fight for it.

[David Forbes]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So I think on that note, David, where can people find your work?

[David Forbes]

You can find my stuff for Trans news [e-mail], including this most recent piece. And you can find some of my local reporting as part of the Asheville Blade co [e-mail] awesome.

[Mia Wong]

And y' all at both the Trans News Network and the actual Blade have been doing a bunch of absolutely incredible work.

[David Forbes]

Thank you.

[Mia Wong]

And I encourage everyone to support both because ideally, the function of journalism is to be the targeting mechanism of the class. And these are two groups of working class trans journalists who do it.

[David Forbes]

And both organizations are worker run, I should add.

[Mia Wong]

Yep. This has been. It could happen here. Go fight them.

[Robert Evans]

There's a vile sickness in Abba's town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

[Mia Wong]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[David Forbes]

Get back, everyone.

[Robert Evans]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him.

[Mia Wong]

Burn his body, and scatter the ashes.

[Robert Evans]

In the furthest corner of this town. As a warning from iHeart podcasts and.

[Garrison Davis]

Grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this.

[Robert Evans]

Is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil walks in Abbostown. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going through something like that is a traumatic experience. But it's also not the end of your life.

[David Forbes]

That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have.

[Robert Evans]

Big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us.

[David Forbes]

I'm your host and co president of this organization.

[Robert Evans]

Dr. Lea Tritate.

[David Forbes]

On my new podcast, the Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back.

[Robert Evans]

Healing and reveal what it actually looks.

[David Forbes]

Like and sounds like.

[Honey German]

Like in real time.

[Robert Evans]

Each week I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and.

[David Forbes]

Are now reshaping the systems that failed us.

[Robert Evans]

We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls mothering as resistance and.

[David Forbes]

The tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority. New episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a.

[David Forbes]

New York state number, and we own you.

[Robert Evans]

Shock incarceration, also known as bootcamp camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed.

[David Forbes]

Everyone say hello Ed.

[Robert Evans]

Hello, Ed.

[Unnamed Co-host (possibly a political analyst or commentator)]

I'm from a very rural background myself.

[Mia Wong]

My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin.

[David Forbes]

So like, it's not like, what do.

[Honey German]

You get when a true crime producer.

[Robert Evans]

Walks into a comedy club?

[Honey German]

I know it sounds like the start.

[Robert Evans]

Of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

[Mia Wong]

I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.

[Robert Evans]

On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear.

[Mia Wong]

On 22 July 2015, a 23 year old man had killed his family. And then he came came to my house.

[Robert Evans]

So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

[Honey German]

A new podcast called Wisecrack where stand.

[Robert Evans]

Up comedy and murder take center stage. Available now listen to Wisecrack on the.

[Honey German]

Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Garrison Davis]

This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis this episode. I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. We're covering the week of August 21st and August 27th.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we sure are.

[Garrison Davis]

I can't believe Cracker Barrel would do that. It's outrageous.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's clearly the biggest news.

[Garrison Davis]

Thankfully, they switched it back. They took the cracker out of the barrel. And thankfully, though, they've reversed course, put.

[Robert Evans]

The cracker back in.

[Garrison Davis]

I really don't understand how it's. How it's woke. I mean, I do understand because I understand how this messaging works, but it doesn't matter.

[Robert Evans]

Anytime anything happens and they can see a backlash forming you after the fact because people were starting to get pissed off about the fucking Cracker Barrel thing in the same way. Like, that happened with fucking Games Workshop earlier this year. Like, they redid their logo in a shitty way, and it's the same, like, minimalist. Yeah, everyone's doing it.

[David Forbes]

It's.

[Garrison Davis]

It's not. It's not woke.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

It's just incentivizing, like, capitalist conformity. This is why they. They've changed all of the buildings of, like, you know, McDonald's, a Pizza Hut to the same structure so you can use the property and resell it over and over and over again without having to do big renovations. It's just all about capitalist efficiency. It's not about woke.

[Robert Evans]

It's got nothing to do with woke. But there's people whose whole. Like Chris Rufo, whose whole job is sitting around. And as soon as you started to see the backlash forming and realize, like, oh, so there's probably gonna be a spree of these companies coming in with these new minimalist logos because it's clearly a trend in, like, consultancies. Right. Like, it's hap. It started happening. This is not the first one. So I'm just gonna look around until I see one of these that feels like it's got culture war potential. And Cracker Barrel's an obvious one. Like, if I'm looking. If I was looking out there, that's when I would pick. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, I think they're also responding to, like, you know, the. The past few years where we've been removing, like, racist caricatures from logos. Right. With like. Like Aunt Jemima's and, like, Lando Lakes and. And using this in a similar way, except they took away the white guys leaning against the barrel.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So it's part. Part, part of that whole backlash as well. It's funny, though. I have seen, like, I. I Don't. I don't know if it's from Chris Rufo, but, you know, people similar in that orbit talking about how this thing actually is wokeism, because minimalism is based on brutalism, which was invented by communists. So actually turning everything into this minimalist design is actually a plot from the Frankfurt school. The communists are taking over.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, look, it doesn't matter outside of the fact that people, whenever you buy into it, like, you're helping to feed, like, if you like, even dunking on them. That's part of, like, the problem is that, like, just talking about this shit at all fuels the feedback loop, right? And that's what this is, is a feedback loop that they're very good at manipulating for political purposes. And. And I'm not gonna sit here and lecture you and say, like, stop commenting on this. Stop talking about this stuff. But we do need to understand that this is. The olds in the audience will remember the old Simpsons Halloween episode where the different, like, mascots from different companies, like, come alive and start murdering people in town. And the solution that an old ad man gives everyone is like, well, if you want to stop the monsters, just look away. Advertising feeds on attention, you know, and once everyone ignores the monsters, they go away. And unfortunately, that's not how things actually work because there's 350 million people in the country. And so whatever you choose to do about this isn't going to matter. But the feedback loop is going to continue unabated. That much I can say.

[Garrison Davis]

Cracker barrel has fallen and like Christ, after three days, has rose again.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, great. Anyway, speaking of memes, unfortunately, we should talk about this horrible mass shooting that is probably gonna be the big story this week. I mean, I hate to reduce it to that, but.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we're recording this on Wednesday, a few hours after the shooting. Yeah, this is in Minneapolis.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. There was a mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Annunciation Catholic School. This happened earlier the day that we're recording this. So that's going to be Wednesday, Aug. 27. As of right now, at about 2:11pm PST, two children are dead. Seventeen people, mostly children, are wounded. The shooter is also dead. And the shooter has been identified as Robin Westman, who graduated from the school in 2017.

[Garrison Davis]

Their mom also worked at the school until very recently.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. And that's not at all an unusual kind of situation. Mass shooters at schools often are either attending the school or recently graduated. There's been a couple of cases where a family member worked at the school. Like, this stuff is all pretty Standard for somebody shooting up a school. What's different is. One of the things that's different is that the shooter basically followed in Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter's footsteps by covering their firearms and the gear that they were wearing and like, I guess drew or painted on. I'm not sure.

[Garrison Davis]

It looks like with like, a white paint pen.

[Robert Evans]

Like, white out or something like that. A white paint pen. And covered it in the names of other mass shooters. References to racial annihilation memes. Like the remove kebab meme, which is, in short, a meme celebrating the Bosnian genocide. And it was a meme that was specifically Brenton Tarrant had signaled in his, like, manifesto, and I think on his gun he had a removed kebab reference. But it's something he signaled and was on the shooter's firearm as well as the names. I mean, Tarrant. There's references to Tarrant there. Timothy McVeigh, Tim McVeigh's name. Just the word McVeigh is painted on there.

[Garrison Davis]

Ted Kaczynski.

[Robert Evans]

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

[Garrison Davis]

A whole bunch of other more recent mass shooters.

[Robert Evans]

People.

[Garrison Davis]

People who are in, like, the mass shooter fandom.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

As well as just a collection of memes from, like, old memes too.

[Robert Evans]

Utterly unrelated to shooting. Like, there's a loss meme on there. And if you're a lot of people are going, wait, what the fuck? Really? And if you're too young for loss. There used to be a web. Well, I think there still is a webcomic called Control Alt Delete that started in, like, the early 2000s. It might have gotten started in the late 90s. And it was part of, like, this. There's this boom in webcomics in the late 90s when suddenly people are able to make their own comics online and make livings off of them. A whole bunch of guys made gaming comics after Penny Arcade, which is like, the big one that blew up of them was Tim Buckley, who did a comic called Control Alt Delete that was not good. And he tried to have a serious storyline where his character's girlfriend has a miscarriage. And the strip in which he finds her having a miscarriage is called Loss. And it's gotten to the point where people are abstracting the four panels into, like, a minimalist line representation of how the blocking looked. Like it's a bit. People have done everything, like, put lost memes on everything. Like, that's the joke at this point. More than a reference to the show is like, look at this new Crazy place. Somebody put a loss meme. And so, yeah, it's a game. And a lot of what we're seeing with the shooter is like, oh, this is the natural extent of a bunch of things. And a fucking mass shooter putting a loss meme on the barrel or on the side of their gun before shooting up a school is the. The natural, furthest craziest extent of the lost meme. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

If this is anything, it is like a memetic shooting. It is based on a whole bunch of memes about other mass shootings as well, specifically in the way that engages in, like, antisemitism and racism and includes slurs and catchphrases. It's not in the way that the shooter actually believes these things ideologically. It is just to gesture to them as they exist in the lineage of other mass shootings. It is like, it's a perfunctory use of slurs and of messaging that just kind of wraps around this whole, like, nihilistic fandom culture around other mass shooters. And, like, that is. That's what this shooting is. I've watched now, like, 17 minutes of video of the shooter, like, showing off their weapons, going through their, like, diaries and journals, inspired by a whole bunch of, like, Eastern European mass shooters as well. And this shooter reminds me of participants of what's called the true crime community, or tcc. Not as in, like, the genre of true crime podcasts or documentaries, but it's more of an online fandom based on a personal obsession with mass killers themselves and specifically school shooters. And this community encourages reenactments and tries to get some people to do their own mass shootings.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And this is not the first one of these we've had in this past year.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Garrison Davis]

The shooting in Wisconsin last December by Samantha Rucknow, which we reported on. On it could happen here, was also in this, like, variant of, like, columbiner true crime community shootings. Rupnow's name is on one of this shooter's rifles.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

God.

[Garrison Davis]

There was a shooting in Tennessee a few months later which also referenced rep. Now done by a black white supremacist incel, whose manifesto was full of, like, plagiarized memes and other manifestos. It's about this, like. Yeah, this complete lack of meaning. Like, they scattershot all of these memes and references and, like, bits of manifestos and, like, images to just. To make this whole, like, mess of stuff to look at, but none of it actually, like, means anything.

[Robert Evans]

Well, and the draining of meaning, the flattening of meaning is part of the point. That's the point is taking a man who shot fucking 50 people to death and turning that into the same thing as a 20 year old joke about a comic strip in terms of its impact and severity. Because if that's no more serious or meaningful or painful than a joke about Tim Buckley's dumbass cartoon. Yeah, like once you get someone in a mind state where they accept that, they're willing to accept a lot of terrible things. Right? And the goal here is creating content in the form of mass shootings, right? Yeah, like that. That is the goal and that is also what people are consciously. A lot of people want to be a part of themselves. You mentioned the last year shooting that committed by Samantha Rupp. Now, but there's also I found a December 30, 2024 article in Wisconsin Public Radio, wpr.org, their website. It talks about RUB now, but it also gives the story of 13 year old Jamie Seitz, who killed herself in 2024 and was a member of the true crime community. The police went through her phone and they found a bunch of memes and reference and like her contributing to online discussions and telegrams and stuff.

[Garrison Davis]

Pcc.

[Robert Evans]

She was obsessed with the Columbine kids, right? She like engaged in a lot of those conversations and she was posting about her plan to kill herself, but she was not interested in carrying out like a mass shooting or killing other people. And that fit in fine within the discourse like people encourage basically, right? Like yeah, I think part of the thrill here is just wanting to feel like you sitting on your ass on the computer, you are impacting the world in part because like you feel like that's the only chunk of the world that you've got, right? Like, and that's, you know, tied into like the hopelessness and the nihilism of all of this. I found a just random poster on Reddit in a discussion of the TCC community. I actually really liked this person's summary of it. And this is like 7 years old. Interestingly enough, it's not a new phenomenon. It dates back to interwar period Germany. There were many Germans at the time who were fascinated with the topic of extremely grisly murder and torture, especially such instances where sexual arousal was involved. The German language even has a word for it, lustmord or lust murder. Serial killers were on the rise at the time and many of them claimed to get extreme amounts of carnal pleasure from the act of killing or maiming. And there is this weird vein. I found another study as I was looking into this that uses the true crime community term. It's from 2015 by Naomi Barnes of Utah State University. And it was like looking into fandoms that had grown up around serial killers and around spree killers online. And Naomi is using the word true crime community for just a general term of people who are interested in true crime, not in the way that you and I have been using it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, because we're using this. This term to refer to, like, a specific fandom around, like, around these shootings, not the general milieu of, like, true crime podcasts and, like, documentaries and people who are into that sort of content. We're referring to a much more niche group of people online who operate on, like, Telegram, Discord, Tumblr, other social media accounts.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

It's based around, like, specifically, like, like an obsession over actually doing these acts. And like, and. And like, they, like, cosplay as these people. This isn't like your, you know, average white woman who likes listening to true crime podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is.

[Garrison Davis]

This is something very different.

[Robert Evans]

No, and that's. That's important. But it's also important to note that, like, what you've been talking about, this, this need to recreate and not just prior to actually carrying out a shooting, because most of them don't ever do that. There's this obsession with the aesthetics to want to own clothing and objects and whatnot that, like, look like Erica Dillon or whatever.

[Garrison Davis]

Right, The Columbine band shirt.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Right. And this does extend to the shootings. Like, there's a number of shooters who have, like, worn that KMFDM shirt because one of the Columbine guys wore it.

[Garrison Davis]

Samantha Rupp now. And I believe this recent shooter also had a KMDF shirt picked out.

[Robert Evans]

And what's interesting about that 2015 study is that it is looking at the true crime community because Columbiners were already a thing. There'd been a number of copycat attacks. But the kind of social fandom around, like, that aspect of it had not really taken hold at a mass level in a way that the Internet and virality could really make use of.

[Garrison Davis]

It evolved on Tumblr in, like, in that era.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

It's more like an infant compared to, like, the fully grown version that it is now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And what's interesting to me is this. This paper kind of catches the communities that's starting to calve off. And so there's a chunk of the paper where she's quoting from a couple of different people who went and visited. In one case, they visited Like Adam Lanza's house and the Sandy Hook Elementary School. And it's people visiting places like that, sites associated with, like, mass shootings and the like. And she gives this mix of people being like, oh, like the first person she quotes who went to Lanza's house is like, I was actually just really sad and I just wish none of it had ever taken place. Like, it was all really horrible and it made me feel bad. But then a bit later, she. She gives you responses from people who have the opposite reaction. Like, there's this fella, Paul, who does not specify which murder site they visited, but specified that it was a place where a murder victim's body was found. And Paul responded, honestly, I felt ecstatic, like, wow, I'm going to a place someone was killed. What if there are ghosts? The murderer, him or herself? I was absolutely off my kid. We dug up some dirt and we keep it in a little glass bottle.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like a religious pilgrimage.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right. And that's the ecstatic. And that's what this starts to document. And that's where I'm like, oh, this study is mostly about an unrelated. Just a normal fandom. But you can see the bits, like, already popping up in 2015. These people who are having these ecstatic again, like, almost like psychosexual experiences being at the site of a mass shooting.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And the further extension then is then doing one yourself. And obviously this also is like, like a part of like a suicidal drive, a suicidal intention. A lot of these people kill themselves in the course of the act.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

It's a way of making your suicide not just be about yourself.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And there's more to say about like, the culture of fame in this country and like how. Yeah, how. How virality and whatnot has made it so that like, these people tend to get what they want or at least they know they've got a good chance of getting what they want. Right. They're obviously not around to experience it. But, like, as long as you do something sufficiently like weird and bloody, you're likely to get a good amount of attention for a while.

[Garrison Davis]

So that's the actual, like, background of what this shooting was. I think now we should probably mention how the shooting's being talked about more broadly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Because it takes a very different angle from the actual, like, nihilistic, like, TCC fandom aspect. It is. Is making this more about like, woke contemporary politics, I suppose.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Kash Patel has announced that he's investigating this as an. As an anti Catholic hate crime.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Which is just not true.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, it's almost certainly by a Catholic or somebody who was raised Catholic. Yeah, all the people who hate Catholics most are often lapsed Catholics.

[Garrison Davis]

Very early on, people started claiming that this shooter was trans. Now a few years ago, they did change their name to Robin. And the name change petition stated that at the time they identified as female. At this point we still know very little about the actual shooter beyond like the videos they posted on YouTube of their weapons and a journal written in Cyrillic. And a note that they left to their parents discussing their fear of dying of cancer due to vaping. I've not been able to look at their Internet presence or activities in the intervening years since changing their name and their current gender identity is still not very clear. In a translation of their Cyrillic journal, they discussed detransition. I don't want to dress girly all the time, but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman, but I definitely don't feel like a man. I regret being transformed. I wish I was a girl. I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can't afford that. I only keep my long hair because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I wish I never brainwashed myself. I can't cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack, unquote. Now, discussion of gender takes up a very small percentage of the journal. Most of their writing is about admiration for previous mass shooters and fantasizing about killing children from a very young age. On the COVID of their journal alongside a bunch of other like, gun stickers, they do have a Defend Equality Progress flag sticker with an AK47.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

From my perspective, this is just another one of those memes that they're wrapping into everything. On one of their magazines they wrote, I am the Wokler. Why so queerious?

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

And the other side of the magazine had an anti queer slur. So I, I view this type of stuff in the same way I view the inclusion of like the lost meme or like Ted Kaczynski or all this other stuff. This, this like memeified version of trying to throw everything at the wall just to make everything mean nothing.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

And it's extremely obnoxious and annoying, but it works. But yeah, it works. And I don't know what else I want to say on the trans angle.

[Robert Evans]

We don't want to deny that this is going to cause a problem, that this is going to be used by the right. There will certainly be rhetoric and I've already seen rhetoric from Jack Posobic and.

[Garrison Davis]

That crowd around and about trans people targeting Catholics.

[Robert Evans]

Well, this is why these people shouldn't have weapons or whatever. This is what, why we should put them all in. And I, I, I don't, I'm not going to minimize that. That didn't start with this, that, that kind of rhetoric, that conversation and this is useful to that crowd. And you know, that is, that is bad. I don't, we don't know what's going to happen or to what extent. This is like we're talking right now that they clearly would like to use this and are trying to use this. One thing that I would point out, and I don't know if this is certainly not an on balance optimistic thing but, but making Americans focus on a mass shooting for more than a day or two. Not as easy as it used to be.

[Garrison Davis]

No. Yeah. Which is really devastating.

[Robert Evans]

It's not good that we're there, but like two people dead. I'm just saying, like Americans ignore way bigger numbers all the time now. The right, you know, there's not always a media campaign like there's going to be with this beyond trying to make this huge. But also they've done that before war. Right. They did that with the rupnow shooting. Right. Like there were attempts to make that. And, and it didn't.

[Garrison Davis]

Every mass shooting, Right. They have tried to paint, it's been done by a trans person. And I think in some ways that is de powered this rhetoric as a tactic.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

By claiming every shooter is trans. Most Republicans already believe that to be the case. So whether this person either was trans or used to be trans, it may not matter that much to the right because they already think every shooter is trans. Like, right, Trump's already targeting queer people. The right doesn't need an excuse to go after queer people. I don't think an event like this will make the hammer come down much harder. This could be a boy who cried wolf situation for the anti trans right since their base already thinks that every mass shooter from the past three years is trans. I did a whole episode on this last year called Fake trans terrorists. The gun violence archive says that there have been 286 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2025. If one or two trans people do a mass Shooting that would still mean trans people at 1% of the population are less likely to do a shooting compared to CIS people. There was like one legitimate trans mass shooting targeting a school a few years ago in Nashville. And if this happens to be the second, and I don't think that this new brain rot Columbine true crime community shooting will make much of an impact on trans people nationwide, think of how quick conservatives moved on from the Zizians. And certainly being trans is not a motivating factor of this shooting. If you look at their writing and videos posted on YouTube before they did this, this nihilistic meme maximalism has no trans causation. It has nothing to do with being trans. There's no coherent or ideological leftist screed. There's no pronoun pins. Their journal talks both about, quote, unquote, hating fascism and inequality, while also hating Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, calling Somalis subhuman and criminal, writing that, quote, white people should rule the world, unquote, but that minorities should, quote, unquote, have rights. While talking about ideological Nazi killers, they remarked quite quote, I don't often find myself aligning with these killers specific ideologies, unquote. They said that they disliked racism, but also were racist. They wrote about killing, quote, unquote fags while also calling themselves one on one of their weapons. This shooter and all the memes and rhetoric they use is most similar to the Repnau shooting last December in Wisconsin in terms of the neo columbiner school shooter obsession, as well as the white supremacist memetic black incel shooting in Enoch, Tennessee last January. All these shootings are heavily referential, contradictory, and intentionally incoherent.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Every single extremist political faction is represented there because that is the point is combining all of these references to two previous mass shootings. So they're incorporating everything they can and things that they just think are funny. Like just a whole bunch of, like, meaningless memes.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

And that's vastly more important than whatever gender identity the shooter happens to have right now at this point in 2025.

[Robert Evans]

All right, well, anyway, folks, there's going to be a lot of people going. The sky is falling over what this is going to mean for people and how this is going to be used. And obviously, this is terrible. I'm not telling you not to feel terrible about a mass shooting.

[Garrison Davis]

You should feel bad about the actual mass shooting.

[Robert Evans]

You should feel bad about the mass shooting. The sky, I mean, this guy's been falling, right? Yeah, let's. Let's Give this one a little bit to see if it makes this guy fall any faster or if in a week we're like, no, this guy's still falling at about the same rate, which isn't good. It's just what happens. It's where we are. All right, ads. And we're back.

[Garrison Davis]

We can safely leave the brain rot in the previous section and now talk about something totally real. The economy.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, the economy, which never kills people.

[Mia Wong]

Okay? So speaking of things that have never killed anyone, that's so not true. The Volcker shock killed so many people. But a very, very critical Rubicon was crossed on Monday of this week when Trump attempted to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. Now, Lisa Cook is refusing to step down under the fairly obvious justification that the president does not have the power to do this. Trump has been cooking a very weird thing accusing her of mortgage fraud as a way to remove her from the Federal Reserve Board. But Trump does not have the power to do this. So we are in the midst, effectively of a confrontation over this, where Lisa Cook has continued to just not actually leave her position at the Federal Reserve and is going to court. This is an extremely significant escalation of what up until this point had largely been a series of attacks on the Federal Reserve's governor, Jerome Powell. There are, there are a few factors here that one of the most important things is Trump's anger over continuing high interest rates or sort of high interest rates. Trump wants to slash interest rates because he thinks this will make the economy grow more. Now, when I said this was the crossing of the Rubicon, what this is, is this is the beginning of the fight over whether the Federal Reserve is going to be an independent entity.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Trump has been attempting to, as we've talked about on this show, appoint Stefan Mirren as another one of the governors on the Federal Reserve's board. Mirren very explicitly wants to eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve. We're going to talk about exactly what that means in a second. But I want to read this quote from Fortune magazine's report on it describing a JP Morgan analysis of the situation. Because this has reached really spooked a bunch of major financial institutions for very obvious reasons.

[Robert Evans]

Quote.

[Mia Wong]

In a note on Friday, JP Morgan analysts led by chief economist Bruce Kasman highlighted key proposals such as giving at will power to the president to fire Fed board members and Fed bank presidents, giving Congress control of the Fed's operating budget, and shifting the Fed's regulatory responsibility over banks and markets to the Treasury. So this is What Stefan Mirren has been proposing. This is what looks to be the long term plan of Trump and the people around him. Eliminating the Federal Reserve is a long, long time goal of the far right for a extremely convoluted variety of reasons. The Fed in and of itself is an extremely confusing entity. Its creation has spawned a full century of academic arguments about what the state even is. And it's complicated to describe also because most of the information, well, not most, but a significant portion of the information about it is just anti Semitic conspiracy. Because this is eliminating the Federal Reserve and the return to quote, unquote, sound money is one of the key elements of a massive network of sort of right wing, very old right wing conspiracy theories. But I think that the thing that's best understood by people kind of is just about the Federal Reserve is the Fed printer meme. And the Federal Reserve is the body that creates money, that is authorized to create the US Dollar. That is why it's the Federal Reserve Bank. It is critical on a level that is difficult to express to the entire functioning of the world economy. Now, the Federal Reserve Board is technically a government entity, but it was set up explicitly to be, quote, unquote, non political. Now, the extent to which that's true is fuzzy, obviously, but the point of it was so that there would be a large scale financial institution that controls the money supply effectively, that controls enormous portions of US sort of, of macroeconomics policy through its, through its control of interest rates, would not be able to be like, directly interfered with by the President or Congress. That is, that is the whole point of this. You know, it is effectively a measure to instill confidence that the US Isn't going to just like turn the printers on and print a bunch of money from every other capitalist in the world.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And like so much when that promise goes away, what happens? I don't know.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, well, and this is something that I think is not understood very well. Right. The current conflict is largely over Trump wanting to be able to control the Federal Reserve's interest rates. Right. So he wants to lower federal interest rates to make it cheaper to borrow money because he thinks this will pump more money back into the economy and this will make the economy grow. And he thinks that he's being like, sabotaged by the Fed. The Fed's worried about inflation. But I actually think that focusing just on that part of the Federal Reserve is significantly underestimating how important the Federal Reserve is to the entire structure of the economy. There are so many just sort of random things that it does that are not particularly well understood. I was talking about this earlier in a meeting. But a significant portion of the gold held by countries around the world is literally just kept in a vault under the New York Federal Reserve building. And that's just a sort of seemingly random thing that it does. I was reading about its payment system for reasons that I'll talk about in the episode do about this next week. Just in a footnote about the payment system, there is a part where it says that the Federal Reserve runs the payment system for the World Bank. So this is something that is a critical, critical and extremely complicated center of the entire capitalist world. Right. Its payment infrastructure has trillions of dollars a year moving through it. If this infrastructure stops working or breaks a little bit, a lot of the very subtle management of the economy at the Federal Reserve does can stop working. And again, we've been talking mostly about interest rates and its ability to sort of print money, which is oversimplification. But, you know, for example, the Fed also does these things, like carries out these, like, massive overnight repo agreements, like inject liquidity into the market. There's all of these massive. We are talking billions and billions of dollars of financial interventions that you basically never even hear about that have been stabilizing the economy since 2008. And this apparatus, if it is dismantled, if it is directly seized control of by Trump. And part of what's going on with this board is that Trump is trying to get a majority of the people on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to be his appointment so that he can control it directly, and so they can start bringing it directly under the control of, I mean, the president effectively. Right. This is something where if you unleash the Doge people on the Federal Reserve and the payment systems, the settlement and clearance systems stop working. We are talking about a catastrophe that it's unclear to me whether it's even been modeled. There are so many different complicated things that this institution does that these people do not understand particularly well at all and think that they can use to just sort of permanently create a bubble economy that they can ride. And this is the first sort of shot over the bowel isn't even the right word. This is. This is the first engagement over the fight for that. There's also been a lot of sort of taco analysis of this, arguing that this is actually Trump backing down from trying to fire Jerome Powell. She just tried to fire one of the Reserve Board members that's not backing down. There's also a chance that he'll that if this works, he's going to try to fire Powell too. So we're gonna, we're gonna keep watching the situation. I'm gonna talk more about it next week when we know more and also talk about what the Federal Reserve is as an institution. And we're going to continue monitoring the situation because it is extremely important. And handing the keys over to these people is something that is dangerous enough that it is creating significant pushback among the actual people in finance and in the banking system who matter.

[Robert Evans]

Great.

[Mia Wong]

Well, it's so good.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, we'll see if this means anything other than more suffering for, you know, people. I guess that that's where I am is like, is there even a level of fucking with the money that Trump can do that that's enough to seriously cause consequences for him? And there must be, but it's just hard to imagine if there was.

[Mia Wong]

It's this.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we'll see. I mean that's, that's the fun thing with the big stories we've got this week is they're all like, well, could get a lot worse. Could just stay as bad as it is right now. Well, we'll continue to wait to see what's gonna happen with all of that. Speaking of something that we don't have to just wait and wonder what's going to go on because the news changes every single week. Here's the tariff. Sorry, don't like it.

[David Forbes]

Rocking chasm.

[Robert Evans]

Rocking chasm.

[Mia Wong]

Oh boy. So in yet another instance of the whole Trump backing down thing not happening, the tariffs on India that Trump had been threatening for the purchases of Russian oil have in fact taken effect. The tariff rate on India is now 50%. This is a significant barrier to any trade between India and the U.S. it is again, sort of unclear whether India is going to bow to the political pressure here because as with many of these tariffs, we've talked about this situation with Brazil fairly extensively on this show. The thing about imposing tariffs on a country to get them to fall in line with American policy is that it pisses off everyone in the country, regardless of whether or not they would traditionally be U.S. allies. And so there's, you know, it creates a massive countervailing pressure against the financial incentive to fall in line and stop buying Russian oil. I also very briefly want to talk about something that I think is sort of part and parcel of the tariff policy that Garrison, you have mentioned, wanted to talk about, which is like the US purchasing 10% of Intel.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes. Socialism's been achieved. We did it. Uh huh. Now you can finally call Trump a national socialist.

[Mia Wong]

That's right, yeah. And this is sort of a intensification, I guess, of an agreement we talked about a while back where intel was talking about giving part of its profits to the US this is just the US Government is just buying a stake in these companies. And this is actually a very, very weird maneuver by the US because the US has obviously bought companies before. Right. This is how a lot of the bailout worked. But the thing about, if you look at the bailout from 2008 and you look at the US like purchasing the automakers, the US got these really weird specific shares that don't give any kind of controlling interest. And here the direct rationale for this is that the US should just own part of the chip manufacturers because they're effectively like domestic national security resources. Significant portions of the market think that this is going to be a continuing trend and the US Is going to continue buying stakes in these companies. There is a sort of symbiotic relationship here in the sense that, like, on the one hand, it's obviously not great to have sort of stakes in U bots by the U.S. governments and have U.S. government federal policy directly dictating what these companies do. But on the other hand, it creates for these actual companies themselves. It creates a sort of symbiosis, right, where these people now have effectively guaranteed state backing that can bail them out of all of their unbelievably terrible business decisions around basing all of their production around AI. So, yeah, and this, this is all sort of part of the same hyper nationalist direct national socialism, if you will. Yes, kind of national socialism.

[Garrison Davis]

But the most stupid form we've ever seen.

[Mia Wong]

I don't know. There's going to be a lot of hype about this being like American state capitalism or something. And just ignore that. Just, just ignore it. It's bad. I think it's. It's in the same category as a lot of the things here, which is the Trump administration is trying to consolidate as much power over the economy as they can, both the Federal Reserve and through just straight up taking controlling parts of companies. This is a trend that's going to continue and it's not good.

[Garrison Davis]

Do you know what is good, though?

[David Forbes]

You beat me to that exact pivot.

[Garrison Davis]

That's right. The fact that we get a nice 90 to, I don't know, 122nd break to listen to these ads. All right, we are back. There has just been so much news this week, it's kind of outrageous. Trump is continuing his attacks against The Smithsonian. For going woke, he's promised a Department of justice lawsuit against California for their new redistricting map. A GOP House probe has begun to investigate if the D.C. crime stats have been faked this whole time, making it look like crime is low even though it's obviously super high. As we all know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

That, as Mia said, we have socialism now with 10% of intel. And Trump and Hagseth announced that they want to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War because it, quote, unquote, sounds stronger. All right, guys, this is.

[David Forbes]

This is the only one of those that.

[Mia Wong]

That I actually agree with. They should do this. Like, calling it anything other than the Department of War is incredibly dishonest.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I wonder. That'll make it harder to get people on board. Incre funding. So it used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything. Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders. I don't know if you. If you people want to. Standing behind me. If you take a little vote, if you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that's okay with me.

[Honey German]

All right, that's coming soon.

[Robert Evans]

You got. You let me know if you want to do it. I think Department of War, it just sounded bad. He said, sir, on behalf of the Department of Defense. Defense. I don't want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense, too, if that's okay. So you'll make a decision. But, you know, as Department of War, we won everything.

[Garrison Davis]

We won everything.

[Robert Evans]

And I think we're going to have to go back to that. All right, man.

[Garrison Davis]

Cool stuff happening in the Oval Office.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I do like that when he starts that speech, he has to go like, we won World War I. Like, he's like, there's a question at the end there where he's like. He's almost. He's like. He's like, double check that one for me. Just make sure. I don't really. I don't really remember if we won that one or not, but we definitely won the second one. And others.

[Garrison Davis]

When asked how he would go about change the name as it requires an act of Congress, Trump replied, quote, we're just going to do it. I'm sure Congress would go along if we need that. I don't think we even need that, but if we need that, I'm sure Congress will go along.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know that we do. We need. I don't know if what you need to change the name of the Department of Defense.

[Garrison Davis]

You do.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You do need that make you.

[Garrison Davis]

That makes sense to do that on a macro sense.

[Mia Wong]

Right. What Trump is suggesting here is, wouldn't it simply be more efficient if there were simply a. Fewer a single person to make all the decisions?

[Garrison Davis]

He said a lot of things in that vein recently is like Congress being a more of a symbolic, symbolic branch of government that if, if we need them, they'll probably just agree with me. But, like, we don't really.

[Robert Evans]

That's your standard dictator stuff.

[Garrison Davis]

That's how he's been talking about it recently.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Now, earlier this week, a redacted transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell's meeting with Trump's DOJ has been released where she denied that she ever witnessed President Trump engage in inappropriate behavior, saying, quote, I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. And at the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects, unquote. She also denied allegations that Prince Andrew ever had sex with a minor in her home, saying that a substantiating photograph is, quote, unquote, fake.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I can't imagine why she'd lie.

[Garrison Davis]

And also claimed that there is no Epstein, quote, unquote, client list.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So, yeah, that all about wraps that up. I think we got to the bottom of the. Of the whole Epstein case. We don't need to worry about this anymore.

[Robert Evans]

I would say of all of those, the one of those that I might have believed before she denied it was that there wasn't an additional client list outside of what we've already seen, like his black. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't keep all of that many notes on a criminal conspiracy. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't think he has a list of being like, here's all of my pedophile friends in one place.

[Robert Evans]

Here's. Here's what does make me wonder now, and this really is the first time I. Which is that they clearly came to her with a list of. Here is all of the things you need to say you didn't see. Like, maybe.

[Garrison Davis]

Or she's just savvy enough to. To know what to say. Like, I don't even think. Yeah, we don't even need to allege a larger conspiracy here. I think everyone involved in this is quite savvy and knows what they should say and shouldn't say.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, I think the conspiracy is obvious.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, that's, that's all there is. There doesn't need to be an explicit quid pro quo here.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I don't know. I, I, it's interesting to me that she brings up Prince Andrew if, if nobody brought that up to her, know.

[Garrison Davis]

She was asked about it.

[Robert Evans]

That's what I'm saying is I believe there's a conversation we're not privy here to where she got marching orders in exchange for getting, you know, she's basically out on work release. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't need to jump to such outrageous conspiratorial beliefs such as that.

[Robert Evans]

I'm okay with it at this point. Yeah. I, I don't know what, to what extent it was, but, yeah, I don't know. This is, this is pointless. Like you.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know if this helps with his base. I don't know that his base is going to be like. Well, if Gillan Maxwell says it.

[Garrison Davis]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, people have responded positively. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was previously going on a slight offensive on the Epstein thing, has, has now fully come around being like, well, there you go. It's it, it turns out Trump isn't a pedophile after all. Thank goodness. That was a close call there.

[Robert Evans]

I, I know this is being disseminated to his influencer network. Right. And, and to the, the network of people that he, like, uses for st. Wondering about the actual, like, voter base, fan base, like, time will tell, I guess. And the folks who are a step or two further than Marjorie Taylor Greene, like, the, like the people who are more like on the Rogan side of things, like, does this really move the needle for them?

[Mia Wong]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

I hate having to care is like, is Joe Rogan gonna buy this schlop? But this does seem like shameful, even for him.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, I think a lot of people can see that there's an incentive for Ghislaine to say certain things, and I think people are smart enough to understand that. I don't think she's gonna tell the Trump's own DOJ about, like a smoking gun involving Trump. Why would that help her try to get a pardon from the President?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I think the important thing for this is that, like, the people who are going to believe this are the people who just don't want to believe that Trump did this. And this is, this is a reinforcing thing that you can feed them, but the question is, what happens with everyone else? And it's not particularly compelling for them.

[Garrison Davis]

All right, we have Four executive orders to get through before we close this episode, starting off with cashless bail. On Monday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting cashless bail, one specific to Washington, D.C. which directs law enforcement to charge people federally and hold them in federal custody and to use federal funding and services as leverage to pressure DC to change its cashless bail policies. The other executive order targets cashless bail nationwide and asks the Attorney General to make a list of, quote, states and local jurisdictions that have, in the Attorney General's opinion, substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pre trial release from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent sexual or indecent acts or burglary, looting or vandalism. The Attorney General shall update this list as necessary, unquote. So using that list, Trump's cabinet will then, quote, identify federal funds, including grants and contracts currently provided to cashless bail jurisdictions that may be suspended or terminated, unquote. So it's trying to bribe states and local municipalities to cease cashless bail policies using federal funds the same way that they've tried to do for a whole bunch of other like anti woke policies Trump has tried to force onto unwilling states. Second executive order from August 25th titled Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag. Let's start with a clip from Trump. I don't want to just play super long Trump clips because I know that can be annoying, but the way that he talks about disorder is kind of more interesting than the way the order is written. But we will talk about some of those smaller details included in the actual text. But here's a clip from C Span.

[Robert Evans]

Flag burning all over the country. They're burning flags all over the world. They burn the American flag. And as you know, through a very sad court, I guess it was a 5 to 4 decision, they called it freedom of speech. But there's another reason which is perhaps much more important. It's called death. Because what happens when you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things. You can burn this piece of paper, you can and it's. But when you burn the American flag.

[David Forbes]

It incites riots at levels that we've never seen before.

[Robert Evans]

People go crazy in a way, both ways. There are some that are going crazy for doing it. There are others that are angry, angry about them doing it. Do you want to discuss them?

[David Forbes]

Sure, sir. What the executive order does, sir, it charges your Department of Justice with investigating.

[Robert Evans]

Instances of flag burning.

[David Forbes]

And then where there's evidence of criminal Activity that where prosecution wouldn't fall afoul of the First Amendment and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute those who.

[Mia Wong]

Are engaged in these instances of flag.

[Robert Evans]

Burning and what the penalty is going to be. If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early, early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail. If you burn a flag, you get. And what it does is incite to riot. I hope they use that language, by the way. Did they incite to riot?

[Garrison Davis]

I love that he has to check.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Because God forbid him actually read what he's citing.

[Mia Wong]

Trump. Trump auto pen.

[Garrison Davis]

That's right. So included in, in the order, it says, quote, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's ruling on First Amendment protection, the Court has never held that American flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action, or that is an action amounting to, quote, unquote, fighting words, is constitutionally protected. C. Texas v. Johnson, unquote. The order directs the Attorney General to enforce criminal and civil laws against acts of American flag discretion that cause harm unrelated to First Amendment expression, which could include charging people with violent crimes, hate crimes, illegal discrimination against American citizens, what violations of American civil rights, crimes against property and peace, as well as conspiracies and attempts to violate and aiding and abetting others to violate such laws. So it's like an anti rioting thing. The DOJ will also look for cases where American flag discretion could violate applicable state or local laws, such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction of property laws, and will refer such matters to state and local authorities for potential action. And finally, the Secretary of State shall deny, prohibit, terminate or revoke visas, residence permits, naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek to deport any foreign national that has engaged in American flag desecration activity. So that's how they're going to go after it. Robert, do you have anything to say on this flag burning thing?

[Robert Evans]

I mean, they're waiting. I mean, and they didn't wind up waiting long. Someone did it immediately, as they knew they would, so that they can get a case that they can take up to the Supreme Court. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. They want to prosecute one of these things and appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court to maybe change that ruling so they can apply it more broadly.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

So it's, it's part of the same test that they've done with a number of other things that seems unconstitutional. It seems to violate Supreme Court court rulings.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

But the point is to test that and see if they can change it, just like they did with abortion.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Can we go further and if this works, if we feel like we made progress on this, can we start pushing and saying other things? Our incitement to write, you know, can we start going after people who aren't even present, who write something that is like, well, this was incitement to riot because they wrote about the police murdering this guy. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, you know, party of free speech strikes again.

[Robert Evans]

This is the kind of thing, where can I war game out? Would they try this? If they can get that far? Yeah, they will. If they can get that far. Will they get that far? You know, is the Supreme Court going to give them everything they want on this? I don't actually know. Like, I really don't know. So I'm going to try not to doom spiral too much. Just, you know, let's see. None of us have any choice in the matter at this stage.

[Garrison Davis]

Finally, let's address the, quote, additional measures to address the crime emergency in the District of Columbia. So this is another executive order from Aug. 25. Trump wants to establish an online portal for Americans with law enforcement experience, quote, or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join federal law enforcement entities to support the policy goals described in Executive Order 1433. That's the making a DC safe and beautiful order from a few weeks ago.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

The Secretary of Defense is instructed to create and begin training Manning, hiring and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard who will be deputized to enforce federal law. To quote the order, quote, the Secretary of Defense shall immediately begin ensuring that each state's National Army, Guard and Air National Guard are resource trained, organized and available to assist federal, state and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law, in coordination with respective adjuncts, General, the Secretary of Defense shall designate an appropriate number of each state's trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition, the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resource trained and available for rapid nationwide deployment, unquote. National Guard walking The streets of D.C. are now carrying firearms after first being deployed without their service weapon. And since the operation in D.C. began on August 7, there have now been over a thousand arrests, including dozens of undocumented immigration. Currently, the Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands of National Guard to Chicago to continue Trump's alleged crime crackdown.

[Robert Evans]

I would have much more respect for Pritzker if he'd call me up and say, I have a problem, can you help me fix it? I would be so happy to do it. I don't love. Not that I don't have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the President of the United States. If I think our country's in danger and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it. No problem going in and solving, you know, his difficulties. But it would be nice if they'd call and they'd say, would you do it? He's hurt, poor guy. They want to ask him for help.

[Garrison Davis]

His, his widow feelings. He's going to have to, he's going to have to deploy the National Guard without Pritzkel's approval.

[Robert Evans]

You know, gang. In all of this focus on the people being killed and persecuted by the government. I don't think any of us is about talking stopped and spent enough time thinking, how does Donald Trump feel? And shame on us, you know, shame on us.

[Garrison Davis]

But it's not just Chicago. On Friday, the Pentagon told Fox News that upwards of 1700 National Guard troops will be mobilized in 19 states to be deployed across the country to assist ICE in the nationwide hunt for undocumented immigrants. The Guard will be activated in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming, with effective status ranging from August through mid November and operations expected to start in early September. Importantly, as we saw in dc, National Guard from other states might deploy to other states. Specifically, in the case where Trump doesn't get cooperation from the governor who is in control of the National Guard of each state, he can deploy National Guard from somewhere else, like what he did in D.C. pulling National Guard from, from other red states, being deployed to D.C. but mobilized in those red states. So National Guard from all of these states could be deployed in a town near you, no matter where you live. And this operation specifically with these like 1700 National Guard troops is specifically to assist ICE. His plan to do this, like anti crime deployment in Chicago is a separate yet similar plan which also pulling from National Guard, but these things are two separate operations, according to White House officials.

[Mia Wong]

And I think one of the important things about this is that, you know, obviously there's, there's the part of this where it's like, yeah, they want to at the very least look like they're just occupying cities and they are arresting huge numbers of people, but they also just don't have the manpower to do this kind of stuff, which is why they're pulling the National Guards, why they're trying to expand the number of people in ice. This is why they're pulling National Guard out to do this kind of stuff, which that like they they don't actually have the repressive capacity to just occupy cities and they're trying to find the manpower to be able to do it.

[Garrison Davis]

So we will keep an eye out in September for these possible military deployments around the country.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

Hey everyone, this is Garrison recording a short update on Thursday since we have a little bit more information about the Minneapolis, Minnesota school shooting. So right after we recorded, rumors started circulating that this shooter was linked to Neo Nazi Satanic pedophile groups 09A and 764. Someone on Twitter found a Neo Nazi forum account that they alleged belonged to the school shooter. This account used an 09A symbol and an affiliated Twitter account made other 09A references. These claims gained a lot of traction from leftist accounts and armchair experts on Twitter and Blue Sky. Lots of people were very eager to talk about something else besides that this shooter was trans and many pinned the blame on 764, the Child Exploitation Group that operates on Discord and Telegram that blackmails children and encourages some to commit acts of violence like school shooting shootings. I talked about 764 on my nihilist Violent Extremism episode from earlier this year. As these claims spread online, I remained skeptical because this shooter did not seem to really fit the profile of a 09A or 764 grooming victim. This shooter did not really seem like an 09A acolyte, they more closely resembled the True Crime Community fandom. And while sometimes True Crime Community or TCC may use 09A references because other mass shooters have or because previous mass shooters have been affiliated with 09A and related groups. I do not see much evidence linking this shooter to 09A based on the videos they posted to YouTube. And while some Nazi Satanist types have helped facilitate the Columbiner or TCC fandom, there was no solid evidence linking a group like 764 to this latest shooting. The shooter was in their mid-20s. They weren't a 14 year old being groomed into doing a mass shooting. And then on Thursday morning, the forum account alleged to be the Minneapolis shooter and the source of claims calling them a 09A or 764grooming victim started posting again on the forum. It wasn't the shooter's account, the shooter did not fit that profile. While they weren't an occult Nazi Satanist, they were obsessed with mass killers and translations of their Cyrillic journal have helped to substantiate this. A journal entry discussed taking pleasure in dressing up as a school shooter. Quote Today I assembled a school shooter cosplay, unquote and in translations of their journal they made explicit references to true crime community tcc, saying that they might cringe if they joined an online TCC community and it could make them not want to follow through on doing an attack. Viewing online TCC fandom as mostly full of posers, I think joining a community would alienate my future and quote, I feel a very small portion of TCC feels, as I do, harbors admiration of intent, unquote. One more update before I close the episode. Earlier Today on Thursday, RFK Jr. Was asked if he would now be looking into to if gender transition drugs cause violence. He responded by saying that they were already doing studies looking into that, and then quickly pivoted to talking about launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence. This lines up with RFK Jr's general focus on psychiatrists, pediatric drugs, SSRIs, depression medication, as he has previously stated. That's all for us today on It Could Happen Here. We Reported the News.

[David Forbes]

We reported the news.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Honey German]

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.

[Robert Evans]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Honey German]

Or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excis dig into the deep earth and cut it out from iHeart.

[Garrison Davis]

Podcasts and grim and Mild from Aaron Manke.

[Robert Evans]

This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

[Garrison Davis]

Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Robert Evans]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Gracias. Come again.

[Honey German]

We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment, with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G talk right there. Oh, yeah.

[Honey German]

We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of Cheeseman and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great beas you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dashes. Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Robert Evans]

Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mia Wong]

I just normally do straight standup, but.

[Robert Evans]

This is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

[Honey German]

Answer A new podcast called Wisecrack, where.

[Robert Evans]

A comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story.

[Garrison Davis]

Does anyone know what show they've come to see?

[Robert Evans]

It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life.

[Mia Wong]

This is Wisecrack, available now.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app.

[Honey German]

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Check out behind the Flow, a podcast.

[David Forbes]

Documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club.

[Garrison Davis]

San Diego coming to MLS is gonna.

[David Forbes]

Be a game changer because this region has been hungry for a men's professional soccer team.

[Mia Wong]

We need to embrace this community.

[David Forbes]

Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast.