10/21/25: Trump Worries Bibi Will Break Ceasefire, Two Major Recession Indicators Blink Red

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: 10/21/25 — Trump Worries Bibi Will Break Ceasefire, Two Major Recession Indicators Blink Red
Date: October 21, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into current geopolitical turmoil and domestic economic warning signs. The show opens with a roundtable featuring Krystal Ball, Ryan Grim, and guest Jeremy Scahill (on Israel-Gaza and the US-brokered ceasefire), followed by an analysis of troubling economic indicators suggesting the risk of an impending recession. The episode blends on-the-ground reporting with political insights into the Biden and Trump administrations' roles in Israel-Palestine developments, and closes with a candid look at car loan delinquencies, law school trends, and a growing health insurance crisis.

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Key Segments and Insights

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1. Israel-Gaza Ceasefire: US Pressure, Netanyahu, and Trump’s Role

(05:17–36:58)

Main Discussion Points

• Ceasefire Fragility and US Policy

  • Trump administration, with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, is pressuring Netanyahu not to collapse the Gaza ceasefire deal.
  • There is overt concern among US officials that Netanyahu seeks to undermine the ceasefire ("increasingly worried Netanyahu would dismantle the US-brokered agreement" — Krystal Ball, [12:59]).
  • Vice President Vance is sent to Tel Aviv to shore up the agreement.

• On-the-Ground Reality in Gaza

  • Scahill describes the devastation: “It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area… people are going back onto their plots to pitch tents. It’s very sad because they have nowhere else to go.” ([05:53], Jeremy Scahill recounting)

• Language Shift: Hamas as Negotiators

  • Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil Al Haya, is portrayed as “a seasoned diplomat” compared to Israeli officials. Hamas is publicly conciliatory in this stage—”heaping praise on Trump” and signaling commitment to the ceasefire ([07:28], Jeremy Scahill).
  • Unlike Israel, which continues to violate the ceasefire by limiting food and essentials into Gaza, Hamas is portrayed as largely honoring agreements.

• Disarmament Debate

  • “When Israeli officials talk about disarmament, they’re actually not talking about arms. They’re using that as a proxy for ‘we want a full surrender of the Palestinian people.’” ([10:04], Jeremy Scahill)
  • Both US and Hamas positions are nuanced; sources say Hamas is potentially open to disarmament only in the context of a sovereign Palestinian state and a unified professional armed force.

• Trump vs. Biden: Transactional vs. Ideological Policy

  • Trump’s Middle East policy is portrayed as driven by business and family interests, while Biden’s Israel support is rooted in ideology.
  • “Trump is transactional… Biden was a committed Zionist ideologue.” ([31:41], Jeremy Scahill)
  • Trump gets some rare praise for willingness to negotiate directly with Hamas: “I give them credit for sitting down and talking with Hamas.” ([35:02], Jeremy Scahill)

Notable Quotes

• “The Israelis, Israelis always do this. They violate the ceasefire. They claim that, you know, it was for security reasons.” ([06:42], Jeremy Scahill)
• “A massive modern military that is a killing machine in the region has been unable to militarily defeat guys wearing flip flops and track suits.” ([10:16], Jeremy Scahill)
• “Biden's legacy should be: He was the Butcher of Gaza.” ([34:47], Jeremy Scahill)
• “Any time you speak with people that you're told are the enemy, you're going to learn something about what motivates them, what drives them. If we really want to resolve conflict… you have to speak to people that you claim to be fighting against.” ([35:02–36:15], Jeremy Scahill)

Memorable Moments

• Krystal points out the contradiction at the core of US rhetoric: “The White House is singularly representing Hamas as the problem, but also all of their indications are that Israel is a problem.” ([12:59], Krystal Ball)
• Scahill describes the “serial killer masquerading as a nation state” when discussing the Israeli project ([36:15], Jeremy Scahill).
• The hosts and Scahill reflect on the importance of including a range of Palestinian voices—beyond just Hamas—in any future negotiations ([15:55–19:02]).

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2. Economic Red Flags: Rising Delinquencies and “Law School Surge”

(39:07–48:29)

Main Discussion Points

• Auto Loan Delinquencies at Record High

  • Subprime auto loan delinquencies (60+ days past due) have hit 6.5%. Repo rates are up, and people are increasingly “underwater” on their cars.
  • “If you lose your car, you can't do anything... that means everything else is going really badly as well.” ([41:49], Ryan Grim)

• Surge in Law School Applications: An Ominous Sign

  • The number of people registering for the LSAT nearly doubled year-on-year. This mimics post-2008 Recession trends when young adults went to graduate school to ‘wait out’ economic hardship.
  • “It’s a very good indication about how people are doing. At the lower level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't going get better. And so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it.” ([43:54], Krystal Ball)

• Housing Market Stalemate

  • Home sellers now outnumber buyers by over 500,000, but prices remain high due to mortgage rate lock-in. Sellers enjoy 3% rates; buyers face 7–8% rates.
  • “People are stuck in houses that they don’t even want to be in.” ([51:38], Krystal Ball)
  • “It’s just two people staring at each other.” ([51:10], Ryan Grim)

Notable Quotes

• “Videos of repo men literally go viral all the time… It does feel, maybe it's algorithmic, I'm not sure, but I see them everywhere.” ([39:54], Krystal Ball)
• “If you're already making less than $100,000, like, you're basically not bust, but you're really struggling.” ([40:24], Krystal Ball)

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3. Healthcare Costs Soar: ACA Subsidy Cliff & Political Gamesmanship

(53:11–59:55)

Main Discussion Points

• ACA Subsidies Expire, Premiums Skyrocket

  • Loss of enhanced ACA subsidies will drive up out-of-pocket health insurance costs by “more than 75%” on average; some families face $16,000 increases.
  • The healthiest people are expected to drop coverage, worsening risk pools and raising future costs.

• Democrats' and Republicans' Political Calculus

  • There appears to be little appetite in Congress to fix the subsidies, with both parties waiting for the political fallout.
  • “If Trump wants to hurt 20 million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them, then let him do it, and we'll reap the political wealth.” ([58:39], Ryan Grim)

• Universal Coverage Argument

  • “It shows why you need universal coverage. Because without universal coverage, the healthiest people aren't in it and then everybody else pays more.” ([56:46], Ryan Grim)

Notable Quotes

• “If this is normal Obamacare, this sucks... this is horrible. The only reason people signed up were because of pandemic era subsidies for health insurance.” ([55:20], Krystal Ball)
• “A family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,000 in annual premiums just next year.” ([53:03], Krystal Ball)

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Additional Segments and Timestamps

• Epstein & AIPAC Developments: Briefly teased at [03:09] but not covered in depth in this episode.
• Future Segments: The later portion (not included in the summary above) promises a deeper discussion on marijuana and Second Amendment law, vendor finance risks, and more.

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Episode Tone & Style

The hosts retain a candid, irreverent tone, often breaking the fourth wall and bantering about the “Bro Show” atmosphere. They use sharp critiques of political actors across the spectrum, especially calling out the Biden administration for “ideological” support of Israel and Trump for “transactional” policymaking. The economic segment employs accessible analogies and direct language—fluidly connecting numbers to real-life hardship.

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Summary Table of Key Quotes

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|--------------|-------| | 06:42 | Jeremy Scahill | “The Israelis, Israelis always do this. They violate the ceasefire… not just by killing Palestinians… They're also not shipping in the agreed upon amount of food and other life essentials.” | | 10:04 | Jeremy Scahill | “When Israeli officials talk about disarmament, they’re actually not talking about arms. They're using that as a proxy for we want a full surrender of the Palestinian people." | | 34:47 | Jeremy Scahill | “Biden's legacy should be: He was the Butcher of Gaza.” | | 39:54 | Krystal Ball | “Videos of repo men literally go viral all the time… It does feel, maybe it's algorithmic, I'm not sure, but I see them everywhere.” | | 43:54 | Krystal Ball | “At the lower level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't going get better. And so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it.” | | 53:03 | Krystal Ball | “A family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,000 in annual premiums just next year.” | | 55:20 | Krystal Ball | “If this is normal Obamacare, this sucks... this is horrible.” | | 56:46 | Ryan Grim | “It shows why you need universal coverage. Because without universal coverage, the healthiest people aren't in it and then everybody else pays more.” | | 58:39 | Ryan Grim | “If Trump wants to hurt 20 million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them, then let him do it, and we'll reap the political wealth.” |

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Closing Reflection

This episode of Breaking Points offers a sobering, in-depth exploration of a tenuous Middle East ceasefire and the grinding realities facing American households as economic storm clouds gather. The discussion is unflinching about the motivations and failures on all sides—urging more direct engagement with adversaries and a policy response to a “two-tiered economy.” Listeners leave with fresh context for headlines and a sense of how today’s political theater impacts everyday lives.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Jeremy Scahill]

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[Krystal Ball]

O d o o.com hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access.

[Krystal Ball]

To our full shows unedited ad free.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Krystal Ball]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show people live for the pound. Good to see you Ryan. It is great to see you. To see you. We have a quadruple bro show here. We've got Jeremy Scahill. He's gonna join us in a little bit to break down the Israel Gaza ceasefire. We've got David Dayan in the house. He's gonna break down vendor finance, the dot com era vendors financing sch that actually led to the crash and how it's all happening again. And he's actually legitimate expert on this. I'm excited to talk to him. We're going to break down some of the economy news. Very troubling. Aipac, actually. Very interesting here. Seth Moulton, previously, how would you describe him? Ryan? He's like a national security. He's like a normal Dem. Yeah, right.

[Ryan Grim]

He's a. He's to the right of a normal Dem, even.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, good point. And he is declaring, I will not take a single dollar from aipac. Which just goes to show how much things have changed. The Epstein story, which we ran out of time yesterday because we were interviewing Shoikat Chakrabat, actually, we will break down entirely. There's some new memoir come out from Virginia Giuffre as well as a ton of new stories which has not gotten nearly enough attention about Epstein. His connections with the financial billionaires, with some of the new files that were released in the COVID of Darkness on a Friday. They always release them on a Friday afternoon.

[Ryan Grim]

How about that?

[Krystal Ball]

Interesting, right?

[Ryan Grim]

I used to do a column at Politico called Fishy Friday.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, I love that. I mean, the Friday news dump is a Washington tradition.

[Ryan Grim]

It really is.

[Krystal Ball]

It really is. And sadly, it does kind of work. It really does. Okay, Ukraine, important stuff going on with Ukraine. President Trump now appearing to reverse course now saying Ukraine does need to accept the peace deal. We're gonna break down everything that's going on there. Some fast moving things and a potential summit between. A new summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest sometime on the horizon. And then Ryan and I are gonna weigh in on marijuana. All right, so when crystal's away, the boys will play.

[Ryan Grim]

Right?

[Krystal Ball]

And this is actually, it's a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court where they will rule on whether marijuana users should be allowed to own and possess firearms. You should keep in mind that marijuana remains federally illegal. And so technically it is a violation of the law. And so you will all get to see where I come down on that one. And we can discuss whether marijuana use is in fact addiction and does qualify. And they're really true. I'm excited to get into this.

[Ryan Grim]

They're really jamming me up. Yeah. Are they gonna make me for gun owners?

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, you are. And I will be arguing for common sense. Gun. Why would you want psychotic addicts to have guns? I mean, this is what the left has been begging for. Right? Okay, so let's go ahead and get to Israel. Jeremy Scahill Standing by. Let's get him in here. I'm very excited now to be joined in studio by Jeremy Scahill. Jeremy, we have a tradition here where we do a pound, so we have a triple pound.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Man.

[Krystal Ball]

Too much testosterone going on. Well, we call it the Bro Show.

[Ryan Grim]

That's what we call it.

[Krystal Ball]

So that's what we're fired up, and we are ready to go. All right, so we wanted to go through all of the recent developments with Israel and the ceasefire, the breaking of the ceasefire, the unbreaking of the ceasefire by Donald Trump. Much of it comes down to, at the current moment, a hard position from the President and his team of, no, we're gonna try to do this. And so we had Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner give a joint interview to CBS in 60 Minutes. Let's take a listen to what they said, and then we're gonna get your reaction.

[Ryan Grim]

You decide to go to Gaza, and.

[Jeremy Scahill]

What did you see? It looked almost like a nuclear bomb.

[Krystal Ball]

Had been set off in that area.

[Jeremy Scahill]

And then you see these people moving back. And I asked the idf, where are they going? Like, I'm looking around. These are all ruins. And they said, well, they're going back.

[Krystal Ball]

To the areas where their destroyed home.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Was, onto their plot, and they're going to pitch a tent. And it's very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go.

[Krystal Ball]

Would you say now, having been there.

[Ryan Grim]

That it was genocide?

[Krystal Ball]

No, no, absolutely not.

[Ryan Grim]

No, no.

[Krystal Ball]

There was a war being fought.

[Ryan Grim]

But are you saying publicly right now that Hamas is acting in good faith, seriously looking for the body?

[Krystal Ball]

As far as we've seen from what's.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are, so far, that could break down at any minute. But right now, we have seen them.

[Krystal Ball]

Looking to honor their agreement. So he says they're looking to honor the agreement. Jeremy, what does that fit with some of your reporting and some of the other things that you know about behind the scenes?

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the actions of Israel versus the actions of Hamas since October 10th and the ceasefire going into effect, Israel has continued its pattern of violating the ceasefire, not just by killing Palestinians and saying, oh, they crossed this sort of fictitious line, that the Israelis are now putting these huge yellow concrete blocks in, continuing to kill as many as 100 or more Palestinians. They're also not shipping in the agreed upon amount of food and other life essentials. I don't like the term aid, because what Israel is doing is not just blocking humanitarian aid. They're blocking life essentials because they're in total control of what goes in and out of Gaza. So the Israelis, Israelis always do this. They violate the ceasefire. They claim that, you know, it was for security reasons. On the other hand, Hamas chief negotiator and its political leader, Khalil Al Haya, gave a really interesting interview on Egyptian television yesterday in which he sounded like a seasoned diplomat. When you compare the rhetoric of Hamas officials with that of Israelis, Hamas is going out of its way to be very conciliatory about this. They're heaping praise on Donald Trump. They're saying that they're committed to the ceasefire.

[Krystal Ball]

We're.

[Jeremy Scahill]

When allegations of violations happen, they try to address it right away. It was extraordinary to have the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, put out a statement in real time, almost like they have their own kind of PR operation, like a Western government, where they're responding tit for tat, to what Israel is saying, but they're not using belligerent language. When they're asked about the issue of disarmament, they remain firm, and they say that that's a Palestinian issue and that we're not going to disarm. But they also say these are issues to be discussed in a broader Palestinian context. So what? I would say that when you hear Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff saying anything other than Hamas is the obstruction, even when Israel is accusing Hamas being the obstruction, that's a marked change from what we saw under Biden and also what we've seen at different points under the Trump administration.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Ryan Grim]

And we have a two on disarmament. Let's roll through that.

[Krystal Ball]

And yet, as soon as you left.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Hamas executed seven people, and then they went on to execute 30 more.

[Ryan Grim]

Do you believe they really will disarm? Well, they promised they would. They said they would. It's down that they would. Now, they said they were gang members, et cetera, et cetera. You know, but these are very violent people. This is a very violent part of the world. Nobody's seen violence like this. If we have to, we'll disarm the U.S. well, whether it's me or the U.S. or it's, you know, a proxy could be Israel with our back, and we won't have boots on the ground. There's no reason to.

[Krystal Ball]

You gotta love when Trump just says the quiet part out loud, that Israel is a proxy. But, yeah, Israel is a proxy.

[Ryan Grim]

US Are one of our proxies. Now, when Kushner was asked about that by Leslie Stahl he gave a much more nuanced answer. He said, well, you have to wait until this international stabilization Force is up and operative because it's a population of a couple million people and you need some sort of police force. It was like unusually kind of level headed and clear eyed from him. And so he was saying, effectively, we can't ask Hamas to disarm until there's, until we've gotten all the rest of our ducks in a row. So what are you reading from all of the different signals that are being sent about this?

[Jeremy Scahill]

I mean, first of all, let's fly up to 30,000ft. When Israeli officials talk about disarmament, they're actually not talking about arms. They're using that as a proxy for we want a full surrender of the Palestinian people.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Jeremy Scahill]

In a way, if you look at this just on a factual level, this is a total humiliation for Israel. If you actually look at facts, they are demanding that Hamas give up its arms. What arms? Most of it is either repurposed Israeli ordinance, homemade by the engineering corps of Hamas battalions. Sniper rifles, they have rocket propelled grenade launchers that either were bought on the black market from Israelis or that they've manufactured within Gaza. A massive modern military that is a killing machine in the region has been unable to militarily defeat guys wearing flip flops and track suits. So on one level, this issue of disarmament, the world should sort of be saying, wait a minute, Israel's goal from the beginning has been the obliteration of Hamas and the disarmament of Hamas. They've utterly failed to do it, even though they've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the process. Trump himself said that upwards of 20,000 Qassam Brigade soldiers have been killed. The pre war estimates were between 20 and 25,000 of the Qassam Brigades. Now, US officials, I think it's really interesting that when you have Kushner and Witkoff and Trump talking about this issue of the weapons, they seem to understand that there is a game that Israel is playing here and that the issue isn't actually the weapons themselves. It's a political question. And that's why I'll go back to Hamas's position. When they first responded to Trump, they broke his 20 point plan into two basic parts. The first part was we, the resistance holding the Israeli captives. We have the mandate to negotiate an end of the war, the resumption of delivery of life essentials, and the issue of Israeli troop withdrawals. But these other issues are political questions. Now, Trump's people could have taken a hard line and said, no, it's all or nothing. But they haven't. Trump continues to misrepresent, according to Hamas officials, what they actually said about disarmament. I suspect based on what sources within the Palestinian resistance have told me that when these discussions took place with Witkoff and Kushner, and I did speak to a source recently with direct knowledge of that conversation, what Khalil Al Hayy, I'm told, said to Witkoff and Kushner was, we are open to disarmament in the context of the constitution of a Palestinian state and a Palestinian armed force. That is not a new position. But in the same way that Hamas was asking that Trump publicly announce an end to the war without any way of validating that or keeping it accountable, I think that there were those kinds of discussions at play. And so what Trump is representing is a dramatic oversimplification of the position Hamas has taken. But all Palestinian factions have said this clearly. Armed ones, we will disarm in the context of merging our forces into a professional standing army, as has happened through history and these anti colonialist struggles.

[Krystal Ball]

What's fascinating to me, Jeremy, is the White House is singularly representing Hamas as the problem, but also all of their indications are that Israel is a problem. So we have a New York Times article. I asked if we can put it up there on the screen or edit it in post production. There it is. The White House works to preserve Gaza deal amid concerns with Netanyahu. So not only did Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner dispatched to Israel, but Vice President Vance is now wheels down in Tel Aviv. And apparently it's because of this, there are multiple White House officials going on background to the New York Times who say they are, quote, increasingly worried Netanyahu would dismantle the US Broker disagreement. Vice President Vance there now actually trying to back up the two of them to deliver a message from the White House of like, hey, we need this to stay together. But what they see behind the scenes was the immediate jump, let's say, with that unexploded ordinance where Israel immediately lied about what happened. The only reason it got rained in is because the White House said, oh, we know guys, that this wasn't a Hamas attack. We know this was unexploded ordinance, but that was a signal that this is all this is what every single day of this is going to look like. And so with the White House trying to demand this of Netanyahu, how precarious do you see the current framework in the context of everything you Just said.

[Jeremy Scahill]

I think that we should understand Israel's position in this as Netanyahu and others in the government trying to figure out how to exploit this and do a strategic repositioning in the short term. I think what we're seeing is the White House saying to Netanyahu, we are not going to allow you to blow up this deal right now. And they're essentially. I mean, I think Trump was right when he said that effectively he was saving Israel from itself. They were not succeeding militarily at anything except killing enormous numbers of children in tents and starving people. I mean, they were unable to stop the insurgency. So what I think Trump and Vance are saying to Israel right now is, your agenda is still there. Let us go down this path. There's also the wild card we've discussed on this program before. Trump, Kushner, Witkoff's son, all of these people in the inner circle have huge business entanglements with these Gulf states. And I think that the Article 5 like agreement that Trump made with Qatar, this mutual defense pact, now the Saudis, you know, are saying, wait a minute, we've spent so many years kissing the boot, and where's our agreement? But what Trump is doing is quite interesting because I think that on one level, the greed, the business, the family connections, the security for his family businesses going forward, his legacy are causing problems for Netanyahu in the short term. But I would say we're in a perilous situation. Israel is still in pole position with their war of annihilation. Netanyahu, I think they just want to kind of discipline him a little bit. Get the dog to come next to you and stand at your leg. And then when you tell him he can go back and attack whatever you order him to attack, that's essentially what I see happening right now. It's very dangerous for the future of the Palestinians right now.

[Krystal Ball]

That makes sense.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So how does this unfold from here?

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah, you know, I was talking recently with some Palestinians who are very close to the negotiations. And I think. I think from the Palestinian perspective, they want to widen the team that's negotiating this. There's some advantage to Netanyahu having Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad be the negotiators at the other end of the table. I've heard people mention, for instance, that Mustafa Barghouti, who is well known to Western audiences, a physician who speaks fluent English, goes on cnn, does not control an armed force, but has widespread recognition in Palestine and increasing popularity. He's never kicked the armed resistance under the bus from the moment October 7th started, but he also is someone that can deal with the European Union and other Western diplomats. I think what the Palestinians want now is to widen the circle of who's negotiating. They also have to navigate the fact that Mahmoud Abbas, the extremely elderly, decrepit and corrupt head of the Palestinian Authority, is not representative of the Palestinian people. While he was blocked from coming into the US to go to the United Nations General assembly, he was allowed to be on the sidelines of the Sharm El Sheikh, you know, scam summit, but he wasn't a full participant. And I think that there's a way in which Israel, even though they say, oh, we don't want the Palestinian Authority, they would prefer it because they've always gotten what they've wanted there. So from the Palestinian perspective, I think they want as many different interests represented at the table because they feel like it is an existential question now for the future of Palestine from Netanyahu's perspective. He wants to have Hamas and Islamic Jihad be the representatives of Palestine. And yes, Hamas is a very popular political entity within the fabric of Palestinian society, but they're not the only one. It's a pluralistic society with a diversity of views. So who's gonna be on this technocratic committee is a big question. Is it going to just be a kind of discussion group that's overseen by the United States? For all practical purposes, the Tony Blair thing, I don't know that that's actually gonna happen. But it does seem Trump's intent on this questions about who's gonna constitute this so called international security force. There was a piece in the New York Times this morning. I think a lot of nations are really concerned about that, especially Arab nations. The populations of all of these Arab Gulf nations in the broader Islamic world, they're furious that their governments did nothing about this. So then they're gonna go and deploy. And I think that the concern, yeah, I agree with your skepticism. We've talked about this before. But like they're gonna deploy and then either they're gonna get killed in so called friendly fire incidents by Israel, raising questions about how their nations respond, or they essentially get co opted into becoming agents of Israeli repression. So the question of whether this is tenable is not just one for like what are the Palestinians gonna agree to? Trump is in bed with all of these Arab Gulf countries on multiple levels, personal and business of the government. And you have a very vicious, insidious Netanyahu and his team on the sidelines trying to poke at whatever Trump is doing. And then you have the Palestinians who should be the most central voice and yet they don't allow any Palestinians to participate in a so called peace summit about Palestine.

[Krystal Ball]

It's crazy.

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Krystal Ball]

I can't move away from everything you're talking about, which is, and I brought this up every day. Civilian administration. So Hamas, you know, the war temporarily pauses. Yes. You know, they're imposing some law and order. We may not like how it looks, but that's, you know, that's how they wanna do it. Yeah, they brought it in and they shot people who they accused of being collaborators. I was like, yeah, that's what happens when you have a security vacuum. You literally blew this place and made it look like in the words a nuclear bomb went off. I didn't say that. Jared Kushner said that. And so what do you think is going to happen? And so the post civil administration, I believe all three of us are in this business literally because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. What did we all witness? We collapsed the government, the centralized authority. They broke into warlord factions. Civil wars happened. We bore the responsibility. We're asking Hamas disarmament. How is that possible? Who is going to administer this? You guys had a story recently just highlighting the issue. You guys estimate that nearly 1 million of Gaza's 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed. A long time sector of their economy, not to mention just their tradition. So what is, you know, the Arab nations are going to come in and do some coin counterinsurgency. It's not gonna happen. Like you said, they're gonna get blown up in crossfire, not to mention unexploded ordinance. This is a war zone. How is anybody able to govern this if it is not the Palestinian Gazans themselves, which of course the Israelis don't want to see happen.

[Jeremy Scahill]

And remember, even up right up until the closing hours prior to the ceasefire, Israeli forces were going on a systematic arson campaign and attacking basic infrastructure, water treatment, as well as a further flattening of residential buildings, saying that they're terrorist infrastructure. We're talking about apartment buildings that they're knocking down. So Israel still has its eye on the goal of annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. But the law and order, so to speak, that you're raising is a really vital question. Remember what happened when Bush and Cheney decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government. The most disastrous decision they made on a counterinsurgency level was de Ba'. Athification. They fired 250,000 Iraqi soldiers. And I remember so clearly the late great journalist Anthony Shadid quoted an Iraqi official who had been in the Baath Party as saying it was the day that a quarter of a million Iraqis joined the insurgency against the Americans and you saw a massive uptick in the number of American bodies coming back. I predict that if they try to dehomasify Gaza's institutions, which are largely civil institutions, including the police, including domestic intelligence, including the governance of courts and jails, et cetera, they're gonna be begging for those people to come back to work.

[Krystal Ball]

Of course they will.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Of course they will. And so it was interesting to hear Trump, although he contradicts himself, you know, the next day, but he does seem to get it. And that's why he said at the beginning, oh, we told them that they could do this for a period. I think that they're going to realize that there are multiple faces to Hamas and one of them is governance. They were the only governing authority that any Palestinians in Gaza knew for two decades. And under incredibly difficult circumstances, they managed to keep basic civilian infrastructure going. Hamas officials have told me it became an albatross around our neck. We're under siege. The whole place is locked down. Our popularity was dropping because of governance issues. It's not because of the armed resistance that remains the number one most popular issue along with statehood for Palestinians, but on a governance level. So if they think they're just going to blow it all up, impose some foreign force, say, oh, here's a new committee, but it's not really in charge. Who's in charge is this peace board that Trump said it's gonna be a disaster and they're gonna come begging. Those technical experts that ran the government in Gaza and also won the last Democratic election say come back in. So I think we're gonna see that. If they try to impose it, one thing is clear of Palestine's history. They are not going to accept foreign occupation. It's just not going to happen. The question is, how does it get resisted? Do we have actual recognition of Palestinian rights or not? The world has never been more clear on what the Israeli project represents than now. And I think that was a key factor in why the Palestinian negotiators took this deal, even though it's a bad deal. Because they recognize that the world is on their side. And that's why in a way, it's more important for journalists and others to pay much more attention now than at any point in the past.

[Krystal Ball]

I totally agree with you.

[Jeremy Scahill]

The future is up for grabs.

[Krystal Ball]

I completely agree. Because this is the post project of, you know, immediate term was hostages, negotiation, ceasefire. Now it's the hard part. Yeah. Did we win the war in Iraq after Mission Accomplished? That's actually when we lost the war in Iraq. That's what so many people failed to grasp. It's gonna be a decade long project.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Can I make one last point, just something that you said there. On this issue of the exchange of captives. You look at the Israelis that have been released from Hamas's captivity and they were held during scorched earth bombings during a starvation campaign. And I think many of them, their physical appearance did not look like what people thought it was going to look like when they came out. You look then at the images of Palestinians where medical officials are saying that organs were surgically removed, where Their bodies are charred, where there's ropes around their necks, where some of them have their hands tied behind their backs.

[Ryan Grim]

Blindfolded.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Blindfolded.

[Ryan Grim]

In the photos, the, the bodies are like, decayed, but you can see the blindfolds around the eyes.

[Jeremy Scahill]

As we sit here in this studio in Washington, D.C. palestinians are gathered in tents in Gaza watching monitors where medical examiners are putting pictures of the bodies of Palestinians that have been returned. And they're doing close ups of the teeth or of the hands or of the clothing that was on these people. And they're gathering intents to try to say, see, is that my son whose body part I'm looking at? You know, the sadistic nature of this. You know, Israel is holding at least 720 Palestinian bodies that we know of. One Palestinian political prisoner who died on hunger strike. His body's been held for 45 years. They still haven't released it. But there are current indications that there are as many as 1,500 bodies in addition to that that are being held in the context of October 7th and the aftermath. Palestinian bodies, Trump talks about the sickness of what kind of sick people hold dead bodies. It's a matter of state doctrine in Israel since 1967 to hold Palestinian bodies. So the whole narrative, whether you are a MAGA person in this country or you're a Democrat, or you're a leftist or you're a rightist, all of us should recognize there are two standards that are being broadcast here right now. And it's a question of, like, what are our values we're denouncing? I mean, the Palestinians are desperate to get the bodies of these Israeli captives back. This is a total liability for them. The Israelis are holding them in coolers and freezers in some cases for 45 years. Why don't we talk about that?

[Ryan Grim]

And real quickly, since we have you here, I want to ask you about the west bank, because actually there was a video just this week of a man was killed in the west bank, and it was his wife or some family member kind of battled IDF soldiers there to like, grab his body. And Palestinians successfully prevented the Israelis from taking the body out of ambulance and back into Israel. 48. But on Monday, we also saw this viral video filmed by Jasper Nathaniel Great in the.

[Krystal Ball]

We had him on our show yesterday.

[Ryan Grim]

Reporter who captured an image that is becoming kind of the masked face of Israel, which is this like, thug settler with a giant stick over his head beating an elderly woman. And today, Hen Mazig. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right. One of the Israeli propagandists out there, he reports Israeli Deputy Commissioner Moshe Pinche sent a message to other commanders ordering them to find and stop an Israeli man who had attacked and seriously injured an elderly Palestinian woman in the west bank who had been out harvesting olives. He added, quote, an image that kept me from sleeping. We will not be like our cruel enemies, unquote. And then Hen adds, this is the kind of moral clarity we need to maintain even through the darkest times. This is accountability. So Israel actually responding to these images of this violence, which is highly unusual, but what do you make of them getting off their tukas here and saying they're going to actually do something about this? What would you say about the moral clarity that's, that's alleged here?

[Jeremy Scahill]

The last two years of Israeli conduct has dramatically given lie to this mantra repeated by Democrats and Republicans, that it's the only democracy in the Middle East. There's actually nothing democratic at all about Israeli society. When you have, on the one hand, the stealing of people's land, the brutal beating and killing of Palestinians as you try to steal their land, the denial of full rights to people even that you say are your citizens who happen to be Palestinian. So, you know, the entire project has been exposed as a lie. But what I would say is even when Israel gets caught on camera and caught on film, the actual accountability when it happens is minimal. You had people who were filmed raping Palestinian prisoners and their defense in court that their lawyer offered was that it was, they needed to rape him because it was self defense, you know, and you know, the Biden administration repeatedly got played on this. They would stand there at the State Department, oh, well, Israel's doing an investigation. It never goes anywhere. There's never any actual consequences. What I would say about this beating video, though, the Palestinian woman who was getting, you know, beaten with a club for committing the crime of farming while Palestinian. Is that what happens when we don't have video there? Yeah, that's actually what matters. Because when you hear, if you listen to Palestinians and what happens to them at the hands of the government enforced and backed settlers, it's an astonishing crime that has played out for decades. And this is why so many Arab and Islamic states wanted this term in the Trump plan, saying that there won't be any annexation of the West Bank. And then it was taken out the night before by Dermer and others meeting with Witkoff, because I think that is the agenda moving forward. That speech in the Knesset of Trump was like watching a reverse Nuremberg trial, where instead of facing justice, the criminals gather together and they congratulate each other. The guest of honor who should have been there was Joe Biden, who. You know, the difference between Biden and Trump is Biden was a committed Zionist ideologue.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Trump is transactional. You know, Trump will pay lip service to Mariam Adelson and the agenda of Zionism.

[Ryan Grim]

It's, you know, it's almost funny to him. Yeah.

[Jeremy Scahill]

It's almost like he's saying, like, can you believe these fools? Believe me, it's sort of like the famous quote about Karl Rove talking about the evangelical right, you know, where it's basically, they recognized that they could get them as a voting bloc with the rise of the radical religious right. In a way, I think that's kind of how Trump is toward Israel. I don't think he cares one way or the other. I don't think he's actually like a committed Zionist in a political sense. Biden's entire career was that. So Trump's like, okay, well, we'll let them burn the place down after they blow up the ceasefire. But it had to do with his own transactional political real estate, all of these other things. Oh, well, yeah. Mary Madison is telling me I need to do this. Oh, yeah, well, she's got 60 billion in the bank. Okay, fine. We'll let Netanyahu do. Biden, though. Committed Zionist his whole career, defending Israel at its worst, constantly.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. He said a Jew in the world would not be safe if Israel didn't exist, which is a slap in the face to our country. That still enrages me.

[Ryan Grim]

So you're the president to this day.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I know. I mean, what? That's such an insane thing to say.

[Ryan Grim]

8 million people in the country are not saved. Literally.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, we're not saving. Exactly. And now we have Anthony Blinken. I'm not sure. I'm sure you saw this. John Kirby is now at David Axelrod's Institute for Politics. Jake Sherman's at Harvard. These people had no consequence. It's Iraq. Sorry.

[Ryan Grim]

Not Jake Sherman's catching.

[Krystal Ball]

I apologize.

[Ryan Grim]

Jake Sherman.

[Krystal Ball]

Jake Sullivan is over at Harvard. I mean, these people paid no price. And I think that's what's so personally black pilling is I saw that happen with Iraq and I said, okay, it won't happen again.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Like in my own lifetime. But it did happen again and again.

[Jeremy Scahill]

I think that that on these questions, we cannot let the Biden people off the hook.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Jeremy Scahill]

There's a huge yes. Trump allowed the Israelis to put forward a narrative of lies to blow up that January ceasefire deal. March 2, they reimpose the siege, and then March 18, they begin the terror bombings again. Now they've brought it back to the so called ceasefire. But Biden's people, including Matt Miller, the former State Department spokesperson, have acknowledged that they allowed Israel to blow up ceasefire deals because they were afraid if they were too hard on them, that it would ruin their chances to get a ceasefire deal. I mean, if you think about the logic there. But I would, again, I would draw a difference between the Kushners and the Witkoffs of the world, who I think, in their own way, are sort of cold, callous, vicious characters when it comes to how they're approaching Palestine and the Biden people. There was ideology at the center of the Biden people regarding Israel with Trump's people, it's kind of like a Walmart, you know, like, they're really. This is just about like. Like, how much crap can we sell to get what we want to get those profits? And I think, again, we should never forget that it was the Biden people that let this go on, that facilitated the entire thing. There never would have been that January deal had it not been for Trump's intervention. No matter how much the Matt Iglesiases or others of the world want to try to pretend Biden's people sealed that deal, they didn't. What Biden brought, he should be remembered as the Butcher of Gaza.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely.

[Jeremy Scahill]

But Biden's legacy should be. He was the Butcher of Gaza.

[Krystal Ball]

And it was this simple the whole time. Jeremy, how did the ceasefire happen, this final one? They met with Hamas in a room. It's not difficult meet with them.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Kushner said he brought it up in the first Trump term.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly.

[Jeremy Scahill]

It's one thing that I do give the Trump administration credit for. Although they kind of. They screwed the Palestinians on the Edan Alexander exchange, the American Israeli soldier who was released, and there were supposed to be Trump calling for an end of the war and resumption of aid. But I give them credit for sitting down and talking with Hamas. And this is the dangerous thing, and it's the broader lesson we can end on, I guess, anytime. And it's why at Dropsite, we believe in speaking to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It's because anytime you speak with people that you're told are the enemy, you're gonna learn something about what motivates them, what drives them. And if we really want to resolve conflict or we want to end these wars, it is imperative that you Be willing to hear the perspective of the other side. Otherwise, you have what Israel is, which is just an annihilationist agenda, a serial killer masquerading as a nation state. But if we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, it means you talk to everybody. So that strand of Trump's policy, I think, is something that should become part of the US perspective on resolving conflict and war. You have to speak to people that you claim to be fighting against or that are being characterized as terrorists, particularly when it's in the service of another country.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, especially those are the people you need to talk to.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely right. Don't let anybody shame you. You talk to whoever you want to, even if they're literal terrorists.

[Jeremy Scahill]

I mean, look, I talk to you.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. You're right. You know, I'll end on this note. Similarly, I remember I ate all the propaganda about North Korea. Then I met some of the people who are analysts who had met with the North Koreans and they explained their perspective. I go, yeah, I'm not giving my nukes up either. I'm like, what? Of course.

[Ryan Grim]

Still standing.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

It was like, I'm not trusting these people for one second. I heard what they said at the negotiation table about Gaddafi to Mike Pompeo's face, and I was like, yeah, I'm on Pyongyang side here, man. Like, you know, I've never given these up. So that's a perfect example of what you're talking about. Jeremy, thank you so much for dropping by. Always love talking to you, man. Thank you very much.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Always an honor to be with you guys. Thank you.

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[Krystal Ball]

Turning now to the economy. We've been trying to stick to this as much as we can. The two tiered economy where people, yes, the S&P 500 record high just yesterday, gold record high. So if you have some of those assets, you're doing well. But beneath the surface and behind the scenes, a lot of stuff happening for people who are making less than $100,000. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Lower income Americans are missing car payments. So more Americans are struggling to make monthly car loan payments, a sign that the lower income consumers are under growing financial pressure. The share of subprime auto loans that are 60 days or more pass has nearly a high of 6.5% and has lingered near that level. Repos have swelled. More drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than they owe, meaning that they're upside down. And lenders such as CarMax and Ally Financial have warned investors about auto loan performance. Quote despite stubborn inflation and punishing tariffs, the US Economy on its surface appeared to hold up relatively well. The stock market has climbed. Company executives for the most part remain upbeat and consumers overall are still spending. But it's largely those top 10% consumers which are. The weakness is that the auto market is one of the clearest indications that lower and middle class income families could be starting to buckle because many Americans need cars to get around. Auto loan delinquency is a telling gauge of financial hardship. Essentially a good proxy, right? It's like one of the last things that you're gonna go bust on is repossessions. I'm not sure I'm not the only one. But videos of repo men literally go viral all the time. And it does, it does feel. Maybe it's algorithmic, I'm not sure. My own personal bias, but I do certainly see them go everywhere. And I think you combine that with some of the other stuff, particularly with the segment we're gonna do later on with David Dayan. The real risk to our economy right now, Ryan, is that, that, you know, if you're already making less than 100,000, like, you're basically not bust, but you're really struggling. And if 50% of all consumer spending is just from the top 10%, a slight pullback in that is just enough to send us into a recession.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, and what you said is exactly right. If you lose your car and you can't do anything, like, you know.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Small.

[Ryan Grim]

Percentage of people live walkable enough that they can get to work, etc. That's not. That's not the situation for like, like a massive portion of Americans. And so if so, when you start struggling, yeah, your rent is the thing. You stop paying first, maybe because it's much harder to get evicted. Then your credit card, your student loans, definitely you're not paying those. What are they going to do? Take your degree back eventually. But you keep paying the things that you need and you need your car. And then when you stop paying for that now you're dodging the repo man. And if you lose your car, then you're bumming rides to work, you might lose your job.

[Krystal Ball]

It's a very downward spiral.

[Ryan Grim]

That's why the bean counters look at this number. Because through all of that, pain and suffering is an economic indicator, which is that if people are falling behind on their car payments, that means everything else is going really badly as well.

[Krystal Ball]

That's exactly right. There's another metric I track very closely. Let's go and put here up on the screen. When I saw this, I said, sell everything, because this is the. The biggest indicator of impending economic disaster. The number of people who registered to take The LSAT in September 2024 was 18,811. The number of people who registered to take it in September 2025 is 32,170. So let's explain, shall we? What it is is that anybody who is my age is just old enough to remember this. This is back in the Great Recession. You lived through this, Ryan. You were entering the job market at that time. If you entered the job market between 09 and 2012, you were dead right. You're basically entering one of the worst wage job markets of all time. So what a lot of people did, especially those who graduated, let's say, in 09, is they said, okay, screw it, I'm just going to have to go to law school. I'm going to have to business school. Yes. I'm going to have to leverage myself with some debt, but hopefully things will have cleaned up. I'll have gained a credential in the meantime. It's kind of a stopgap measure for a lot of people. It's nice if you can afford it, but it's definitely bad if you're taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in.

[Ryan Grim]

Loans just to add to that. And then you go on, let's say you graduated in 05, you've been working for two, three years, you just got laid off, and you're staring at now years of unemployment. Like there was this whole thing back then what they called the 99ers, people who would exhaust 99 weeks of unemployment. And so you're like, well, I could sit around and just suffer because, like, there's not, you know, it's an extraordinary amount of suffering.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

To be looking for work. It's an assault on your dignity as well as your finances. And so you're like, well, if I'm going to be sitting around for three years anyway, might as well at least try to come out with a credential that can make me more employable down the line. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

And actually what we saw is that the number of people who took the LSAT actually dropped after the economy started to get better. So it is one of those, like, very good indications about how people are doing. And eventually, as the economy got better, let's say to 2012, it fell even more precipitously. But the fact that it has such a large spike is genuinely one of those, like, 2009. It's the exact same thing. I'm looking right here at the statistics. Substantial jump of some 20 to 40% in law school applications just in the 2009-2010 school year. So this is the same number, if you look at what that is, almost double, actually. So very similar metric. It just goes to show you, at the lower level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't going get better. And so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it. I will also add, though, this may be one of the worst times to do it, because not only do we have AI, which is on the horizon, but also, you know, for people who are out there Please pay very attention to the law. So there's something called a Grad plus loan. Are you aware of what that is? Right, so previously. Exactly. So previously this Grad plus loan was one of the most used student loan federal program for medical students and for law students. Now the United States Congress in their recent legislation has capped that at 50,000. And so there are some schools. I recently saw statistics that for the very first year ever, I think it's Santa Clara. I need to check pulling it back which law school. They had their tuition at 70,000, but then the law changed and they changed it to 50. I was like, oh, interesting, interesting.

[Ryan Grim]

Because the 70 was kind of a fake sticker price.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, so there are two options that are right now. Is that one is that yes, maybe law school prices will drop. I am deeply hopeful for that. Personally, I think we should make the Grad plus zone zero and then we'll really see what the market rate for law school is. My guess is a couple thousand dollars. But the real like change here could be the Yales, the Harvards, let's say any in a T15 top 25 law school. Any of those, they're not going to change. People are going to get leveraged no matter what, whether it's Grad plus or not. That's where I get scared, you know, for people is that they'll not only even have access to the Grad plus one, they have to get a private loan. Private loan is going to have a user's interest rate right now and you could really get stuck in a deep hole and you're basically banking on an entire career. That works out when you have a technology environment right now where you just don't know. I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer. I know a lot from what I know, AI has not come yet. There's still a lot of Guild checks in the system. But I can't be the only person who says hey, especially the lawyers who I grew up with, their first two, three years in the industry. It was bullshit. It was like, you know, document review, doc review. It was, you know, working. They would. When the partners went to bed, that's when you started to work. And you have to do your research and make sure that the footnotes are. I mean, it's like investment banking. It's just pure scut work. And that's one of those where that I'm fairly certain ChatGPT could do, or at the very least you could use it to check your work and then come. But the workload is going to be much, much less. So that' I really start to worry.

[Ryan Grim]

You know, for some, especially with the Docker view. Oh, yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, the definition of automated.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ryan Grim]

The hopefully. I mean, I put a value judgment on it. There are so many, like, fake cases that seem to have been seeded into the world. I don't know if like a Thomson Reuters or like some other of these companies that you have to pay to get access to their cases are like, genuinely, like, seeding the world with like, fake cases the way that like, hippies would put like a spike in a tree.

[Krystal Ball]

Interesting. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Something's going on that is putting in all of these made up, completely hallucinated cases that then AIs are then writing into their memos that they're writing and judges are coming down hard on them saying, like, oh, this is like, this is clearly AI. You're sanctioned, you're fined. So at least you will need humans to like, read the AI briefs and then actually go and check the cases to see if it's not hallucinating.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, you should be checking it anyways. I can't tell you the number of times I'll use ChatGPT for research. And I'm like, wait, that's wrong. I'm like, I know that that's wrong. Right. It's one of those where. And then I'll say, hey, that's wrong. And they're like, oh, you're right, it is wrong.

[Ryan Grim]

But if you work at like, Thomson Reuters or one of these other places, reach out to me because.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, yeah, I actually, that would be a great story.

[Ryan Grim]

And if I were them, I would do it.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, why not protect your business?

[Ryan Grim]

And Jetty vs. Grimm is a powerful Supreme Court case. And you can put it somewhere where the AIs will crawl it, but nobody else can find it. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

My dream is to get my name attached to a landmark case on marijuana. Injetti versus the United States. Injetti versus the State of Colorado. So my name can live forever. All right, let's go and put this one up here. My Injetti rights.

[Ryan Grim]

I need my Injetti rights.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, the Miranda rights. Injetti rights. The Injetti rights. There was actually a huge case here in Washington D.C. where a woman sued her neighbor for smoking weed. And won, actually. And won. She is my. My personal hero right now. So the home sellers now outnumber buyers by more than 500,000. That is the largest gap ever recorded. So, yeah, you know, things are scary. And the reason why this Scares me is the price still has not adjusted.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

So even though the sellers are outnumbering the buyers, the law of elasticity would tell you that the price should come down. Price is not going down, all right? It's actually staying flat. And in some cases in the big metro areas, they're going up, up, which I just don't understand. I don't know how it's possible. But there's something where I have said now this entire time, it feels like it has to crack, but it doesn't. And I think that's what scares me the most, is we've lived through these crazy times. Now Since June of 2020, it's been five years, more than five years of an insane housing market. Doesn't sound that long. Let's say if you're 60, if you're my age and you're 33, that's a long time. I wasn't even married with a child five years ago. Right. Your life can change rapidly in five years. Let's say you're 28 years old. You're right around that time where you're like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about it. Oh, 7% interest rate, terrible housing market. I can't afford it. I don't have the savings. Let's say I'm either getting laid off or I'm not getting the raise that I thought I was going to get. Inflation is eating away at my bottom line. Those are the people I think about the most right now.

[Ryan Grim]

And I think what you're looking at there is a standoff. And I think, and this is the reason that you're not seeing the prices crash yet. You have, most of those sellers there have some type of 3% interest rate that they're sitting on. And so their monthly payment, very low, is something that they can afford as long as they're staying employed. And so they can. They can wait out the buyers. Buyers are looking at a 7, 8% interest rate which sends your monthly mortgage costs, you know, absolutely through the roof, which changes the amount of house that you can then buy. So if you're a seller and you're selling on your 3% mortgage, now when you go to buy a new home, you're going to have to take out this 8% loan, right? So there's that huge gap. And so people are staring at that and saying, you know what? I need a lot more money to be able to get an equal house. And the person's like, well, why would I give you that much money when.

[Krystal Ball]

No, I mean, it Makes perfect sense.

[Ryan Grim]

It's two people just staring at each other. And I think the only way this breaks, I guess eventually the force of, like, economic decline could do it, because enough people just can't make their payments anymore. But really, interest rates have to move.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, that's right. That's the thing.

[Ryan Grim]

This crazy world of where you have three and eight, like, the buyers at eight and then the seller's at three, trying to find a place where they can meet in the middle is proving to be impossible. Like, that's why you're seeing this record gap.

[Krystal Ball]

That's such a good point.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

And a lot of people are stuck in houses that they don't even want to be in. I know a lot of them, they have, like, three children, and they're like, I'm not moving. I can't afford to move. I literally cannot afford to move. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. This is. We wanted to bring it back to the shutdown. There is, in fact, a shutdown happening, by the way, if anybody's forgotten. It's actually the fourth week of the shutdown. Not that anybody cares, apparently. And so these Obamacare prices were the things that the Democrats really were zeroing in on. And there's been new public reporting now of these higher prices that are now actually revealed in over a dozen states. It says consumers are now facing greater costs for their 2026 ACA health coverage as Congress continues to debate whether to extend subsidies that help people afford their premium. So health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care act now available. The annual enrollment period for Obamacare start starts on November 1st. The costs are becoming publicly available piecemeal through state marketplaces. People shopping for coverage can now preview the costs they face from potentially expiring subsidies. Sharply rising premiums in many markets, including California, New York, Nevada, Maryland, and Idaho. Man. California, New York, what? That's a huge portion of the entire US population. Based on newly published information, a family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,000 in annual premiums just next year because they would no longer qualify for generous subsidies. And that is from the center for Budget and Policy priorities. That's devastating. $16,000. That's after tax income.

[Ryan Grim]

That's one of those where you read and you're like, that can't be right. Right. That has to be wrong.

[Krystal Ball]

That's huge.

[Ryan Grim]

An increase of $16,000. And like you said, after tax income. So the family four making 130.

[Krystal Ball]

135, I guess tech tax, technically, tax deduct, whatever.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm not an accountant, but yeah, still. Yeah, yeah, yes, you can write that off, that's true. But your income is not, you know, your actual income is going to be more like 100, even though you can write a lot of that off. But that's brutal. And so what, people? So what's interesting here, let me read something from a related report which says. So the expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out of pocket premiums for ACA Marketplace enrollees increasing by an average of more than 75%. This is the doubling that you keep hearing about. So they're guessing that won't be a complete and total doubling. Which insurers. With insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage, that in turn increases underlying premiums. So just to make sure everyone's clear on what's going on here, we're going to double the price almost of these exchange. A lot of people are going to look at that $16,000 price tag that they're facing for next year and they're going to say, I can't afford that. It's not even a choice of whether or not I want to buy this. I don't have the money for it, so I'm just dropping. Health insurance insurers have already gamed that out. They know that they're estimating 2 million for next year and then increasing as it goes on. Okay, so it's the healthiest people who are the most likely to, to say, you know what, I just, I'm not. Family's gonna have to go. No insurance this year. And so if you lose the healthy people from the pool, you then have to charge everybody else more. So not only are you losing the subsidy, which is driving the price up 75%, they're estimating, then they're already forecasting to regulators that they're going to raise the underlying price by 20%. That is a year over year increase. That is, is utterly unsustainable and insane.

[Krystal Ball]

Right?

[Ryan Grim]

20% in one year.

[Krystal Ball]

It's horrible. But you know, I keep coming back to what Crystal said with Corbin Trent.

[Ryan Grim]

Which is, this is a devastating point.

[Krystal Ball]

This is the devastating point. The whole fight is we can't afford to go back to normal Obamacare. Well, if this is normal Obamacare, this sucks. It's like I said it at the time. Yeah, it's like, this is horrible. This is horrible. The only reason people signed up were because of pandemic era subsidies for health insurance. And now that it's reverting back to people. Whoa, whoa. I'm like, I didn't know that this is what the normal program was. And that's actually kind of a Republican talking point which is not incorrect. It's like if this was the normal marketplace, then what the hell are we doing here? 100. I mean I got some of these older figures I got in Kentucky. A 60 year old couple making 85,000 will face an increase of 23,700.

[Ryan Grim]

They make 80 some thousand and their.

[Krystal Ball]

Increases quarter of their 23,700. I'm rolling the dice till I get Medicare. I mean personally, right? If you're healthy, healthy. I'm like let's, let's roll the dice, right? Don't take any buses, don't go in a cross.

[Ryan Grim]

And that's what they, that's what they expect people will do. So and so costs are going to go through the roof. The best thing that people said about the ACA at the time was well, this is the first step and they'll fill it in with subsidies. And then they did and now they let them go. Now you have to fight to get them back. Yes, it's utterly absurd, it's outrageous and it shows why you need universal coverage coverage because without universal coverage the healthiest people aren't in it and then everybody else, everybody else pays more. So yeah, the politics play an interesting role here.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, this is really what I want your opinion on because it does look like the Senate Democrats are going to cave, right?

[Ryan Grim]

Because so think so. If you're just listening to this, this is Andrew Destorio, health reporter, saying, are Senate Dems eyeing November 1st as a shutdown off ramp Dems that think they can argue it's no longer feasible to address the expiring ACA subsidies legislatively and make GOP own the resulting premium hikes. No decision yet. But this idea is picking up steam. So in other words saying, okay, well the exchanges open up for business on November 1st and this is what we're fighting for. So if we get past November 1, we can then save face and say, okay look, we tried, we tried to save Republicans from themselves. We tried to stop Republicans from doubling your health insurance insurance costs. They refused. Now they're doubled, it's done, let's open the government up. And then you've had was it Thune yesterday saying I will negotiate. And what Republicans have been saying is we will negotiate around these subsidies, but we won't do it with a gun to our head. Which is hilarious because it's like the exact reverse of what the party said during the last shutdown. There is no principle in process ever. If anybody claims that they believe in a process, they're lying. They don't. They just believe in outcomes. So in the previous case, it was Democrats who said, why can't you negotiate with the government? Open. Because Biden was president.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Now it's Republicans saying, why can't you negotiate with the government? Because Trump President. Because Trump is present, and that's all that matters. So Democrats can say, all right, look, we tried. And also from a cynical perspective, Schumer. I'm not Schumer personally, but Democrats in general, they're personally. You know what? If Trump wants to hurt 20 million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them, then.

[Krystal Ball]

Let him do it.

[Ryan Grim]

Then let him do it, and we'll reap the political wealth.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, but then why'd you shut the government down for a month?

[Ryan Grim]

Because nobody would have known otherwise. Like, they would have gotten their increase and been like, oh, this is terrible. But, like, life sucks. Now they can say, look, we told you Trump was doing this. We fought for you. Trump fights against you. That check you're writing, remember Donald Trump's name while you're writing it? So that. I mean, that's their theory.

[Krystal Ball]

I could see it. It's just a little weak to me. It's like, if that's the political calculus, then keep the government shut down. Okay. I mean, because again, and Crystal's made this point. I'm sure you agree with it. If you ask those no Kings people. Yeah. There are gonna be some signs about Obamacare. That's not what they're mad about. Right. They're mad about ice. They're mad about all this other stuff going on. Right. So for them, they're like, screw you. Why should I fund you? You think these ICE agents aren't getting paid? Fine. For a lot of them, they're saying there's no reason to fund this government, make their life a little bit more difficult, force them to do stupid shit like, I don't know, firing an artillery shell that explodes over the city of Los Angeles. I mean, if I'm a Dem, I'm gonna take that all day long. Right. Yes, it's very painful for a lot of the. For the federal workers, et cetera. But, you know, pawns have to be played in the field of battle.

[Ryan Grim]

Drama. Democrats is the. That Republicans only have to peel off a few, and they're good. So it's. It. Democrats as a leadership can want whatever they want. But if Republicans can get a couple, I don't know, we'll see. Like, but November 1st is, you know, it's still a ways away. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, well, we'll see. We'll see. Ryan, I'm very curious.

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[Krystal Ball]

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