2/17/26: Randy Fine Islamophobia, Israel West Bank Annexation, Lindsey Graham Pushes Iran War, James Talarico Censored By CBS

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: "2/17/26: Randy Fine Islamophobia, Israel West Bank Annexation, Lindsey Graham Pushes Iran War, James Talarico Censored By CBS"
Date: February 17, 2026
Hosts: Krystal Ball, (sub) Crystal Ball
Guests: Jasper Nathaniel (Independent Journalist), Will Creeley (FIRE)

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Episode Overview

In this edition, Krystal Ball leads a wide-ranging, hard-hitting discussion on recent controversies involving Islamophobia in US politics, the accelerating annexation of the West Bank by Israel, escalating pro-war rhetoric by Senator Lindsey Graham, and alarming censorship developments surrounding a Texas Senate candidate and CBS.

The episode is marked by its signature "Breaking Points" tone—direct, unfiltered, often acerbic—and features deep-dive reporting, notable guest insights, and a strong appeal to free speech and human rights.

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Key Segments and Discussion Points

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1. Randy Fine's Islamophobic Comments and GOP Silence

(Starts ~02:12)

• Rep. Randy Fine (Florida) tweeted: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
• The comment was in response to a post about cultural attitudes toward dogs among Muslims and spiraled into a larger right-wing outrage based on misrepresentation.
• Krystal and Crystal break down both the context and distortion of the original "joke," noting Fine's history of Islamophobic and dehumanizing rhetoric.

Notable Points:

• The original controversy was artificially whipped up, framing a Muslim community member as a top adviser to a NYC official, which is untrue.
• Fine’s language is compared to Nazi propaganda, specifically for its dehumanizing tropes:

  "This is just like, to me, Emily, this was perfectly emblematic of Trump 2.0… fake outrage fest, by the way, based on lies."
  —Krystal Ball (03:21)

• Fine's prior statements: Calling Palestinians “animals,” “filthy Arab,” “there is no such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians.”
• Krystal points out the absence of any condemnation from elected Republicans, contrasted with Democratic censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib for far milder statements.
• Conservative figures (including Milo Yiannopoulos) roasted Fine:

  "You are a man of low moral character unfit to hold public office… when Milo Yiannopoulos is lecturing you about your moral character, you’ve done fucked up."
  —Krystal Ball (08:44)

• The double standard if a progressive said anything similar about Jews:

  “Imagine if Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib had said, ‘if they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Jews is not a difficult one.’ …She would be censured, very possibly kicked down of Congress.”
  —Krystal Ball (09:08)

• GOP primary challenger Aaron Baker is highlighted for directly opposing Fine’s bigotry.

Key Quotes:

• “This is not a Jewish country or a Christian country. This is a country where we have the First Amendment. Thank God we have the First Amendment.”
  —Crystal Ball (07:55)
• “If you are trying to show people you believe that everyone is created equal and in the dignified image of God, this is not an acceptable piece of rhetoric.”
  —Crystal Ball (13:28)

Timestamp Highlights:

• [02:12] – Introduction and initial context of Randy Fine tweet
• [04:49] – Reading Fine’s other Islamophobic posts
• [07:01 & 10:26] – Further dehumanizing statements and their implications
• [12:12] – Mention of Aaron Baker’s primary challenge

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2. Israel’s West Bank Annexation with Jasper Nathaniel

(Starts ~16:43)

Jasper Nathaniel reports on:

• The structural and bureaucratic mechanisms accelerating de facto annexation of the West Bank by Israel.
• How right-wing ministers (notably finance minister Bezalel Smotrich) have shifted control of the West Bank from military occupation to settler-dominated civilian authority, breaking Oslo Accords-era arrangements.
• New policies facilitate:
  • Israeli takeover of administrative authority even in nominally Palestinian-controlled Areas A and B.
  • Legal pathways for settlers to directly purchase Palestinian land, with military protection.
  • Growing “voluntary transfer”—Palestinians pressured by poverty and violence to sell their land.
• Settler violence and government coordination:

  “The most extremist, far right, ambitious, frankly racist of the entire political bloc in Israel are controlling all of the policy decisions in the West Bank by just doing whatever they want to do and knowing the government will follow close behind…”
  —Jasper Nathaniel (27:54)

• The formalization of Jewish prayer rights and administrative control over sacred Muslim spaces (Temple Mount, Hebron, Rachel’s Tomb).
• Convergence of approaches in Gaza and the West Bank—subjugation, land seizure, and encouraging “voluntary” Palestinian exodus.

Timestamps/Segments:

• [16:43] – Jasper joins, overview of recent policy "package" and annexation acceleration
• [17:48] – Detailed breakdown of Area A, B, C legalities and new Israeli cabinet decisions
• [24:01] – Discussion on the surge of Jewish prayer on Temple Mount, religious right’s growing influence
• [27:54] – Settler violence and its strategic use

Standout Explanations:

• "Now the government has passed these laws that make it easy for settlers to identify, okay, this Palestinian owns this piece of land. You can go and terrorize them and threaten them until they agree to sell it to you... It's not exactly free and fair sale."
  —Krystal Ball (27:54)

• Jasper on settler power:

  “What started as a couple of settlers going and terrorizing and wreaking havoc on a Palestinian village, over time the government comes in and authorizes it as a formal settlement...”
  —Jasper Nathaniel (25:19)

Big Picture:

• Federal policies and settler violence are designed to produce one outcome: the removal of Palestinians, de facto annexation, and a one-state reality.
• “All these different methods… all of it is working to one end, which is to get the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza.”
  —Jasper Nathaniel (31:26)

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3. Lindsey Graham’s Iran War Rhetoric

(Starts ~34:02)

• Clips played of Sen. Lindsey Graham talking up Israel’s military innovation and warning of Iranian threat, open to US involvement in escalation.
• Jasper Nathaniel contextualizes Graham’s remarks:
  • US and Israel test weaponry in Gaza, with lessons filtering back to the US military.
  • "Genocide in Gaza has sort of stripped away the last pretenses of a rules-based order... The stronger country can do whatever it wants."
    —Jasper Nathaniel (35:23)
• Critical concern that Israel’s actions are setting a global precedent for “empire” going forward.

Trump, the West Bank, and Realpolitik

• Trump sometimes rhetorically opposes open annexation but is “transactional”—more interested in legacy than principle.
• Unless outside pressure (e.g., from Arab states threatening the Abraham Accords) emerges, US policy unlikely to restrain Israeli annexation.
• “I don't even think he knows where the West Bank is. I don't think he could point to it on a map.”
  —Jasper Nathaniel (38:01)

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4. Censorship: CBS, Talarico, and the FCC's Growing Authority

(Starts ~47:15)

Guest: Will Creeley, legal director at Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

Main Story:

• CBS prevented an already-recorded segment with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico from airing on “The Late Show,” citing the FCC’s equal time rule.
• This fits a rising trend of aggressive FCC intervention in political broadcast content, chilling media willing to host certain candidates.
• Increased legal pressure even on non-traditional platforms (late-night shows, SNL, etc.).
• “The FCC does not have the power to be the nation's editor in chief or the nation's censor in chief. But that's what they're increasingly acting like.”
  —Will Creeley (48:22)

Broader Concerns:

• Self-censorship among media companies is actively encouraged by this regulatory aggression, curbing political speech.
• FCC rules designed for a “scarcity” era, out of step with today's fragmented digital ecosystem, now leveraged for political mischief.
• “They provide the federal government with a cudgel to swing at folks they don't like.”
  —Will Creeley (53:12)

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5. Free Speech, ICE Tracking, and Government Jawboning

(Starts ~54:02)

• Lawsuit by FIRE against officials over government pressuring Facebook and Apple to remove community resources tracking ICE activities.
• Creeley explains the constitutional bright lines:
  • "You have the right to comment on law enforcement movements. You've got the right to record police, including ICE. Those are public servants. They work for us." (54:08)
• Difference between “impeding” law enforcement (illegal) and simply tracking or protesting (protected speech).
• Government now seeks not only content removal but personal info about dissidents—aimed to “chill” criticism by making people fear identification and reprisals.
• “The intention is to chill speech. They want you to think twice before you say, you know, to hell with ICE on social media, because you don't want to get that knock on the door. That's not a free society.”
  —Will Creeley (57:22)

Legal Precedent & Tactics:

• Cites Supreme Court ruling (Hill v. City of Houston) upholding protestors’ rights.
• If pushed legally, government usually walks back demands rather than risk precedent.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “When Milo Yiannopoulos is lecturing you about your moral character, you've done fucked up.”
  —Krystal Ball, on Randy Fine (08:44)
• “This is a country where we have the First Amendment. Thank God we have the First Amendment.”
  —Crystal Ball (07:55)
• “All these different methods of getting the Palestinians off the land … all of it is working to one end, which is to get the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza.”
  —Jasper Nathaniel (31:26)
• “We have a right to criticize police without worrying that you're gonna get some knock on the door… this is crazy.”
  —Will Creeley (57:22)

---

Segment Timestamps

• Randy Fine/Islamophobia: 02:12–14:07
• West Bank Annexation w/ Jasper Nathaniel: 16:43–44:31
• Lindsey Graham/Iran War & Trump Policy: 34:02–44:31
• CBS/Talarico, FCC Censorship w/ Will Creeley: 47:15–62:50
• ICE, Free Speech Lawsuit, Digital Doxing: 54:08–62:50

---

Conclusion

This episode captures Breaking Points at its most incisive—delivering sharp critique of rising right-wing bigotry (Randy Fine), deep investigative analysis of Israeli policies in Palestine (via Jasper Nathaniel), exposing dangerous war-mongering rhetoric in Washington, and delivering expert analysis of escalating government encroachments on press and protest freedoms. The episode stands out for its thoroughness, original reporting, and unrelenting defense of democracy and civil rights.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

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Guaranteed Human 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

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[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi.

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Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Fourteen years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15 year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. Twelve and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories, all caused by marijuana impaired drivers. No matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

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[Krystal Ball]

So Randy Fine, you know, was out doing his randy fine thing, Florida 6 being a disgusting genocidal racist. And he tweeted this. Let's put this up on the screen. If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.

[Crystal Ball]

So this was in response. We can put this up. He had to respond to his own tweet by saying for context, this is the leader of one of the key mainstream Muslim groups that supported MAMDANI and it was a post on X from Nardine Keswani, who said earlier this month, finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we've said all along. They are unclean. A joke that I think was also probably a little bit rooted in some sincere feelings. There are cultural differences with dogs, Crystal. There are some people who do find it to be unclean culturally, that folks keep dogs in their house. Not you, though. You. You're a dog lover.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I have a dog. I would also say she does make my house less unclean. Center.

[Crystal Ball]

We agree.

[Krystal Ball]

But yeah, I mean, this is just like, to me, Emily, this was sort of perfectly emblematic of Trump, the Trump regime and Trump 2.0 in particular. You have a dumb, fake outrage fest, by the way, based on lies. Number one lie they're framing this woman is she's like some top Zoran Mamdani visor. She's not an advisor to him whatsoever that we know.

[Crystal Ball]

She supported a group that supported him.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, of course.

[Crystal Ball]

To Randy Fine, that's what her role.

[Krystal Ball]

They frame her. Like, she's like, you know, in the mayor's office every day, guiding him on policy with regard to dogs and other things.

[Crystal Ball]

She's not exactly Seal Weaver. While we're on the scale of Zoran context, she's.

[Krystal Ball]

She's on the, you know, she's on the council that's going to impose Sharia law in New York City. That's her. She's the head of that task force for Zoran Mandani. So anyway, the framing of her relationship that I saw from a bunch of conservatives, Totally incomplete lie. This is a joke, right? It's clear. Like. And then the New York Post, which is obsessed with Zorin, I think they're the ones that write this up. Like, my God, like it's some newsworthy scandal that someone put a joke on Twitter about this. And then so you've got something that's rooted in idiocy and lies, and then you have this total, like, genocide. I mean, Randy Fine is a disgusting, disgusting person. And this is not the first incident.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Whatsoever. And we've got some of that as well that we could put up on the screen.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, I was gonna say let's just go to D7 here.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, go to D7.

[Crystal Ball]

Let's revisit some of what Randy Fine is for.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's remind what this man is all about here. This is a brand new one. This also just came out this week. He says Palestinian is a synonym for evil. Okay, got that one. The anti Muslim bigotry with this guy is through the roof. Absolutely disgusting. He says Jihadi Mandani is to blame for the rise in Muslim terror happening across New York City. Denaturalize and deport him now. Okay, so deport Mamdani. Deport Mamdani, who is a US Citizen. May the streets of Gaza overflow with the blood of these animals. Talking about Palestinians, these animals live in Florida. Hopefully not for long. There is no suffering adequate for these animals. May the streets of Gaza overflow with blood and tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, starve away. Talking about.

[Crystal Ball]

That's October 8th.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Talking about the fact that you've got that Israel's imposing a siege on the entirety of the Gaza Strip, including women and children. So just an overt, undeniable, racist, anti Muslim bigot whose rhetoric about Muslims very much echoes the rhetoric about Jews leading up to the Holocaust. So now he's embraced this style of Nazi propaganda to completely dehumanize a group of people. So you've got the combination of something, fake outrage based on idiocy and lies combined with just overtly evil, dehumanizing sentiments from Randy Fine. And there were some conservatives like you. Megyn Kelly said something. There were a few, not that many, but a few conservative influencers who had something to say about this. As of this morning, there is not a single elected Republican official who has said anything about this at all. And this is the same group in Congress who censured Rashida Tlaib because she said from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free. A rally chant that she explains in her view means equal rights for all. That is what she's calling for. She gets censured and this disgusting, vile, racist bigot just gets off scot free and gets to go on cable news and be treated like he's a normal human being.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, I mean, he's used the term quote filthy Arab. He has said, I believe he said there's no such thing as an innocent Palestinian child. Something to that effect. I'll find the exact quote while we're talking about this. But yeah, I'm. My response to him was simple. It wasn't even to get into an argument. It was just D3 because he's purportedly conservative. So as a conservative, I just responded, all human beings are created in the image of God. For that I got piled on. There was, this is D4. Joel Berry from the Babylon Bee responded. Doesn't mean we have to let all of them in our country. And so people were also like, hey, it was a joke, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I don't think anything justifies a sitting congressman playing fast and loose with language that dehumanizes citizens. This is not a Jewish country or a Christian country. This is a country where we have the First Amendment. Thank God we have the First Amendment. And that is dehumanizing his citizens. Even if it's a joke. He's a congressman. And I know we're in the Trump era, but he's a congressman.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

And to dehumanize other people, whether you're joking, you're responding to a joke. He tweeted this without any context. First of all, this guy is way too online. He's like just randomly posting stuff as.

[Krystal Ball]

A congressman as if we're all supposed to even know what this context. Right.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly. Which is reckless. If you're going to say, quote, if they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one. So it's obviously dehumanizing language. It should obviously be something that people say is not. Okay, I guess we have a Milo Yiannopoulos response. Oh, he roasted him.

[Krystal Ball]

Milo was outraged. You are a man of low moral character unfit to hold public office. Now, when Milo Yiannopoulos is lecturing you about your moral character, you've done fucked up. Although you're in your. You gotta read the next line. He says, although in your case, quote, unfit falls woefully.

[Crystal Ball]

Sh.

[Krystal Ball]

He's a little bit. We support fat shaming in the context of Randy Fine. Always.

[Crystal Ball]

He was. He was getting roasted badly and rightfully so. Rightfully so.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Well, and here's the thing. I mean, it's like cliche and trite to say at this point, but imagine if Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib had said, if they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Jews is not a difficult one. You think that they would. That everyone. Oh, it's just a joke. It's just a joke, you know, about cultural differences. It's just a joke because we, you know, that doesn't mean we have to let all the Jews in our country to the Babylon bees point, you know, it would be a. And rightfully so, in my opinion. It would be a national scandal. She would be censured, very possibly kicked down of Congress. There would be national news cycles about this. Every Democrat would be asked what they think about those comments and would, you know, and would condemn them, by the way. And instead, this is just you know, I do think Democrats are especially. Progressives are gonna try to push on this because Republicans should have to answer. Republican elected Republicans should have to answer what they think about these comments and these sentiments. They should be forced to go on the record about whether they agree that Muslims are lower than dogs and that dogs should be chosen over Muslims. They should be forced to answer for all of his rhetoric and explain whether or not they agree with it and why.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, he said, yeah, I found the quote, there's no such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians. And so to Crystal's point, that is the type of language that is dehumanizing an entire group of people, whereas categorizing literally every single person who considers themselves Palestinian to be a combatant, essentially, that's how you end up slaughtering innocent people, because you are engaged in a process of categorizing people as worthy of combat deaths. And that is disgusting. It's a problem for the United States, a problem for our foreign policy, obviously. And it should be an easy thing to just. I mean, this is something he said long ago. So when you then also see him posting this, this wasn't posted in a vacuum. And one of the reasons that, like, I felt compelled to respond is because he has a history of saying this kind of stuff. That's.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly.

[Crystal Ball]

And so it's not like you can just say, oh, well, Randy Fine. Oh, he's just making a joke about dogs. Ha ha. He's just talking about whether you should let people have massive cultural differences with us into the country. No, he's been doing this over and over again. He. Obviously, when you're saying things like filthy Arab, and you're saying there's no such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians, and then you dehumanize people and say you'd rather have dogs in the United States than Muslims, I mean, it's not acceptable from a congressman. Again, I know that we're in a post Trump era and our standards have been lowered. They were already low. I get it. But it's just an easy thing to say, like, dude, cut it out. I think Megan responded. We can put that. She just said, what the fuck is this? Basically, wtf Is this the next element?

[Krystal Ball]

This is Randy Fine. This is Randy Fine Things Big Randy.

[Crystal Ball]

We should mention that Ryan and I interviewed a man running in a primary against Randy Fine, whose name is Aaron Baker. I think he's like, a roofer in Florida 6, and he's running against this. He's not just running a primary campaign against Randy Fine on, like, all the issues he specifically has called out Randy Fine for talking about people in this way over and over again. So if you happen to live in Florida, six, go check out the Baker campaign.

[Krystal Ball]

And he's running as a Republican.

[Crystal Ball]

He's running as Republican.

[Krystal Ball]

It's a very Republican district. And Randy Fine, when he got elected here, dramatically underperformed. You know, I've. It's like a Republican. I don't know. I'm making up the numbers. It was like a Republican plus 25 district, probably at least. He won it by, like, single digits, you know, and it's because he's just like, people are revolted by him that he's so much that couldn't overcome this partisan of a lean of a district. But, you know, I'm glad this guy's running against him in the Republican primary because that's where the next congressperson will be chosen in that primary. It's very unlikely that a Democrat would be able to unseat him. So go check him out and see if he is to your taste. If you are in that district or if you want to support someone who wants to get this man out of Congress because he is just a disgrace.

[Crystal Ball]

And wants to stand against this. From a conservative perspective, it's unacceptable, obviously, especially if you're trying to make the point that your belief or if you're trying to show people you believe that everyone is created equal and in the dignified image of God. This is not an acceptable piece of rhetoric, and it's not an acceptable position to pretend you have the moral high ground while also having Randy Fine in the coalition. So check out Aaron Baker. All right, Crystal, let's. Speaking of Palestine, Middle east, let's talk about the West Bank.

[Hans Charles]

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles.

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I'm inalek Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated, and black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an.

[Hans Charles]

Unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia. At Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, people were dying.

[Hans Charles]

1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

[Ryan Grim]

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

[Hans Charles]

Listen to the A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

And I'm Matt Rogers.

[Bowen Yang]

During this season of the Two Guys five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Corte at 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.

[Matt Rogers]

Hi, Ben.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi, Matt.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, Elmo.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

[Crystal Ball]

Hi, Cookie.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi.

[Matt Rogers]

Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryder Strong]

This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the Red Weather.

[Krystal Ball]

It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.

[Ryder Strong]

In 1995, my neighbor Anna Traynor disappeared from a commune.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

It was hard to wrap your head around.

[Ryder Strong]

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

So, no, I am not your guru.

[Ryder Strong]

And back then I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody.

[Crystal Ball]

There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name.

[Ryder Strong]

I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

[Will Creeley]

Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I'll teach you sons of come around here with my wife. Boom, boom.

[Ryder Strong]

This is the red weather. Listen to the red weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

There has been a massive acceleration in the process of stealing land in the occupied west bank. And there's one reporter who has been covering the story extensively that we're very happy to join us this morning. Jasper Nathaniel is an independent journalist covering the occupied west bank and writes over at his substack Infinite Jazz. Great to see you, Jasper.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

[Krystal Ball]

Our pleasure. So let's go ahead and put your latest tear sheet up on the screen headlined here Annexation breaks containment. Where you talk about, of course, this has been a multi decade process of stealing land from Palestinians executed by the Israeli government. But there's been such an acceleration in recent days and weeks that has actually broken through in some mainstream media coverage. You say here with a new package of cabinet decisions, Israel's message to Palestinians in the west bank is clear. Take the money and run. Just bring us up to speed on some of the latest decisions that have been made that have led you to this conclusion and led to some actual outbreak of coverage from the mainstream press.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah. So just to take a quick step back, Bezel Smotrich, who's the finance minister of Israel, he's this far right settler, he, in early 2023, pulled off what was effectively a sort of bureaucratic coup where he took control of the. Of governance of the West Bank. And just a reminder, the west bank is technically and legally a military occupation, which means that it cannot be governed by the state, by the Israeli government. It has to be overseen by the military. And the military has to adhere to the laws of the occupied country or of the occupied people. So what that means is that the laws from Jordanian times, Pre occupation in 1967, are still supposed to be in effect, but those laws have been steadily eroded. And what happened in 2023 was Smoterich installed himself in the Defense Ministry, put in basically a chain of command of settlers, and stripped all the bureaucratic guardrails away from the settlement movement, who is determined to take over the entire West Bank. So over the last three years or so, there's been all these new policy initiatives meant to both strip authority away from the Palestinian Authority, but also from the Israeli military, who does not necessarily have the same political or ideological, ideological agenda of the settlers. And so what the latest cabinet decisions did, the first one that I think is the reason this story sort of broke into mainstream coverage was basically took out what was left of the Oslo Accords. So the OSLO, the Oslo 2 accords, I should say, in 92, what it did was it divided the west bank into areas A, B and C. And there's this misconception that Area A, B and C means who owns the land. But to be clear, the land was still Palestinian land. It never became part of Israel. The occupation was always legally, technically supposed to be temporary. So what Oslo did was it said that in Area A, the Palestinian Authority has full control. In Area B, Israel, the Israeli military, I should say, and the Palestinian Authority have joint security control and the PA has administrative control. And then in Area C, Israel has full control. But again, that land, despite who had administrative control, still belongs to the Palestinians. So what the first cabinet decision did was it said that now, in addition to having administrative control in Area C, the Israeli military is now allowed to go into Areas A and B to take control of things like housing development, demolitions, all sorts of sort of municipal activities. And the way the law is phrased or the cabinet decision is phrased is typical of how they do things. It doesn't just say Israel now has control of Area A and B, what it says is in instances where there is an environmental hazard or there is risk to a Jewish Heritage Site, or there is, you know, water theft or something like that, then Israel has the ability to go in and take control, to remedy it. But, but these are, are essentially, essentially pretenses that Israel uses to go into these places and take control. So, for example, Israel makes it impossible for most Palestinian cities to have a true waste management system. They sabotage their dumping grounds, they steal their routes, they. They take over garbage trucks. Now they can go into these places where the Palestinians have been left with no choice but to burn their waste. They can then accuse them of creating air pollution and take control of that whole area. So, so that is just basically the last remnants of where Palestinians actually theoretically had administrative control in Area A. Israel has now taken that away from them. So, so that was the first thing. The, the next thing. And the reason I said in that, in that subhead, take the money and run was what they done is made it really easy for Israelis to now go directly to Palestinian landowners and buy their land in the West Bank. And, you know, they have made conditions so bad for Palestinians in the west bank, both in terms of, like, the checkpoints and the, the, you know, increased violence. But they've also really suffocated the economy. They've prevented 100,000 Palestinians from going into Israel to work where they were working before, and they've basically caused unemployment and poverty to soar. And now they're saying, no problem, you can just, you know, we'll buy you out. You can take the money and go somewhere else. And, you know, that is a problem for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that for a long time, the Israeli military actually had veto power over settlers purchasing Palestinian land. And again, the reason for this is, is because while the settlers want all of the west bank, the Israeli military historically has been concerned with maintaining some sort of stability or at the very least, you know, ruling with an iron fist. And the settlers are not interested in that. What they would like is to cause chaos and to, you know, draw the military in, lead to, you know, an event where they end up with the land. So now, where settlers used to try to, you know, go and buy Palestinian land in, like, in the deep in Area A, in the middle of a Palestinian city, the military would say, no chance that's going to cause a war. Now they can just go and do it. They can buy land wherever they want, wherever Palestinians willing to sell it to them. And then the military is obligated to go protect them wherever they are. So what it means is that the settlers are now going to be effectively dictating settlement policy by going wherever they want. They're already doing that in the sense of, you know, building these illegal outposts, but now they have a formal legal route to go wherever they want in Palestinian territory, bring the military with them, start a fight, and, you know, ultimately end up with that land. So those are just two of. You know, I could. I could go on.

[Crystal Ball]

I wanted to ask actually about some of the big picture politics that maybe even what you could go on here. Jasper. There's a Jerusalem Post headline that didn't get a lot of attention, at least that I saw. Jews pray on Jerusalem's Temple Mount as decades old status quo begins to shift. This is one of the most important questions in the entire conflict. And just reading from the piece, they mention here that in the past few weeks, and what amounts to a dramatic change to the status quo that has prevailed since 1967, police have begun to allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount under certain conditions. That is a very big change, especially relative to the amount of news coverage that it's gotten. The Jerusalem Post also mentions that in the past few years, the number of Jews ascending to the Temple Mount has increased dramatically to more than 68,000 in the Hebrew year that ended in September 2025, in an increase of 22% over the previous year, according to an activist group. So the big picture politics, I mean, the landscape here is mounting pressure from the Israeli religious right to completely take over the land and to undo a lot of the norms or the legal standards, actually more powerful, even the norms that have governed the area in decades. Is that a correct reading of some of this? Jasper?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, to be honest, it's hard to sort of say how much of it is driven by an actual, you know, religious fervor and how much of it is purely sort of territorial ambition. I mean, I think with the settlers, that line is impossible to find. But, you know, what you're talking about is Jews increasingly going to the Temple Mount to pray. But in these new cabinet decisions, Israel has again sort of formalized this in two other sacred areas. So in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron and in the Rachel's Tomb area near Bethlehem. These are areas that are deeply sacred to Muslims and to Palestinians in particular. And in these new cabinet decisions, Israel has seized administrative control away from the Palestinians, given it to Israel, which will make it more and more difficult for Palestinians to be able to, you know, Go to these sacred places in peace. Israel will now be expanding settlements into these areas, demolishing buildings. So, you know, what you just described is one of these sort of informal things that the settlers have been doing to take control and cause chaos. And, you know, to be blunt about it, like the tail is wagging the dog, because it always starts with the settlers just going rogue and, you know, going somewhere where they shouldn't be bringing the military with them. And then months later, a new policy initiative comes through or a cabinet decision or some sort of actual legislation in the Knesset that formalizes it. And so, you know, the same thing is happening with the settler violence. You know, you hear occasionally that the Israeli government or the military condemns, you know, one of these settler attacks, usually when the settlers attack the military, but every once in a while, when they actually attack a Palestinian village, and every once in a while, they actually arrest somebody. But then what they do is they give money and defense and. And funds and weapons to the settlers who are out on the front line building these outposts. Like I said before, the military has to follow them wherever they go. And so what started as a couple of settlers going and terrorizing and wreaking havoc on a Palestinian village, over time, the government comes in and authorizes it as a formal settlement. And so it is this really sort of nefarious system where the most extremist, far right, ambitious, frankly racist of the entire political bloc in Israel are controlling all of the policy decisions in the west bank by just doing whatever they want to do and knowing that the government will follow close behind to formalize, to legalize what they've been doing.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's put E3 up on the screen. This is some of the recent west bank attacks by violent settlers. And I think the reporting that you have done here, Jasper, not just on the bureaucratic moves that have been made, but also on this horrific and escalating settler violence, is you show how the two work together. Because as you said, if you are not only having your life made extremely difficult by the checkpoints and by the dehumanizing apartheid nature of the system in the occupied west bank, but then you also live under the direct threat of settler violence. And now the government has passed these laws that make it easy for settlers to identify, okay, this Palestinian owns this piece of land. You can go and terrorize them and threaten them until they agree to sell it to you. It's not exactly free and fair sale. And then they frame the whole thing as, oh, it's voluntary migration. They're ready to Move and explore a new part of the country. You can see how the settler attacks work hand in glove with the aims and the goals of the government.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Exactly. I mean, if you live in a. Like the clip you just showed was in Masvir Yatta. This is a Bedouin community in the South Hebron hills. If you live there, I mean, whole area was, was designated a military training zone decades ago. And that is, you know, what gives the Israeli military sort of a sensible authority to go in and demolish buildings and prevent them from, from building their own structures. Now you have settlers coming in. They are building outposts right next to these villages, terrorizing them on a regular basis. Over 60 of these communities have just gotten up and left on their own in the last. Just since October. You have another option. Just take the money and leave. And it's, it's not, you know, in my mind, like, the strategy is sort of converging with what's happening in Gaza where, you know, sure, they are still, you know, of course, bombing and killing people on a daily basis, but they are also, you know, trying to describe what they're doing as sort of a humanitarian situation where they want to help the people of Gaza go and, you know, find a better place to live, find a better way to live outside of Gaza. And then Israel will come in and, you know, build industrial cities and factories and, you know, perhaps settlements too. So it's, you know, this is actually, this was in the playbook. This is in the smoteric blueprint that he wrote in 2017, where he doesn't say we're going to genocide the Palestinians in the West Bank. He doesn't even say we're going to run them off the land. He says, look, let's just be practical here. There's not room for both of us here. There's not room for two countries, for two states. So let's give them some options. Option one is they can live as colonial subjects under Israel. Option two is they can leave and maybe we'll even give them money to leave. And, and they probably will because they want a better life somewhere. And option three, if they don't do that is we'll fight to the death and, you know, we'll probably kill them. And so all of these different methods of getting the Palestinians off the land, from the brute force to suffocating policies, to now just saying, look, it's really bad here. Don't you want to just have a better life somewhere? Take this money and go? I mean, all of it is working to one end, which is to get the Palestinians out of the west bank and Gaza.

[Hans Charles]

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm in Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated. And black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an.

[Hans Charles]

Unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia. At Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

[Ryan Grim]

To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying.

[Hans Charles]

1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

[Ryan Grim]

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

[Hans Charles]

Listen to the A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

And I'm Matt Rogers.

[Bowen Yang]

During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan at 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.

[Matt Rogers]

Hi, Bowen.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi, Matt.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, Elmo.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

[Crystal Ball]

Hi, Cookie.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi.

[Matt Rogers]

Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ryder Strong]

This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the Red Weather.

[Krystal Ball]

It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.

[Ryder Strong]

In 1995, my neighbor Anna Trainor disappeared from a commune.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

It was hard to wrap your head around.

[Ryder Strong]

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

So, no, I am not your guru.

[Ryder Strong]

And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody.

[Crystal Ball]

There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name.

[Ryder Strong]

I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

[Will Creeley]

Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I'll teach you sons of come around here. And my wife, boom, boom.

[Ryder Strong]

This is the red weather. Listen to the red weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Crystal Ball]

Jasper, want to get your reaction to a couple of recent clips of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina? Let's roll this first one where Lindsey.

[Krystal Ball]

South Carolina, slash Tel Aviv.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, slash, slash Tel Aviv.

[Krystal Ball]

He says he goes there every two weeks.

[Crystal Ball]

Every two weeks.

[Hans Charles]

Not bad.

[Crystal Ball]

Probably more often than he's in South Carolina. All right, here's Lindsey Graham talking about the future of wars.

[Lindsey Graham]

The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel because if you're not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel because they have to be to survive. So what we're looking at is that Israel is advancing down the road of new weaponry far beyond us. And it would be nice to have a, a process where we could be partners.

[Crystal Ball]

We have one more clip, Jasper, that's a great clip to get your take on because you've done so much work in the space. But let's roll E5 first. More of Senator Lindsey Graham.

[Lindsey Graham]

Could our soldiers be hit in the region? Absolutely they could. Can Iran respond if we have an all out attack? Absolutely they can. I think the risk associated with that is far less and the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people as you promised.

[Crystal Ball]

So the future of war in Israel, Jasper, you know all about that. Tell us what. Lindsey Graham would actually probably agree with you that he's talking about.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, I saw that clip and I mean it was one of these moments of like, I don't know if he let, if he could take it back, if he could, or if he just, you know, wants to be saying the quiet part out loud. I mean, there's a number of things he could be talking about. One of them is, you know, the fact that Israel is actually, you know, testing out new weaponry. In many cases a weapon, American weapons, that will then, you know, go straight to the American military after it's been tested out there, I think. You know, of course the US many, many hawks in the government, including our Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have long wanted war with Iran. You know, Israel is of course wants more than anything, or Netanyahu certainly wants more than anything to take out the regime in Iran. And so, so they're a good sort of proxy to get that war going. But also, I mean, I think it should be said that like many people have noted that the genocide in Gaza has sort of stripped away the last pretenses of a rules based order. It's shown that the stronger country can do whatever it wants. Not just to Gaza where they use October 7th as a pretense, but in Lebanon and in Syria and in the west bank and anywhere they want the stronger country can just go in and dominate with force, as the US has done in Venezuela and potentially in Cuba. And so I think Lindsey Graham is. He's sort of projecting his fantasies of empire onto this situation. And he's saying that, yes, they're going to help us out with the war on Iran, with everything we want to do. They're helping test our weapons, but also, like, Israel is setting the new standard. This is how warfare is going to work. This is how empire is going to work going forward. And just watch.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, and speak a little bit to the Trump administration context here as well. I saw Trump made some throwaway comment, I believe it was last week, about like, oh, we don't want to see them taking over the West Bank. But we also know that, of course, one of his top contributors, Miriam Adelson, reportedly gave him some hundred million dollars plus in exchange for, hey, you're going to let them annex the West Bank. And it reminded me also very much of the many reports of how upset Biden was about Netanyahu doing blah, blah, blah, but it never amounts to any sort of action. Do you think there's any possibility that he would see this brazen land grab as a threat to some of the things he wants? I mean, mostly he just wants bragging rights about his quote, unquote, peace deal and his peace board, et cetera. How do you see those pieces fitting in?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Well, the annexation of the west bank is even before Trump. It's been done in a way that is deliberately meant to provide plausible deniability to Israel. So they haven't just come out and said, we've annexed the west bank or we have declared sovereignty over the West Bank. They are putting in place all these policies that, like I said, are stripping control away from the military occupation and from the Palestinian Authority and giving it to Israel, to the basically to the settlers, one step at a time, which amounts to a de facto annexation. But I think that, you know, beyond that, like, Trump obviously acts in his own self interest. He, I don't even think he knows where the west bank is. I don't think he could point to it on a map. There are two things that could potentially cause him to speak up, which he actually has done in the past. The first one would be if the Abraham Accords or, you know, the normalization deal is threatened. So in 2020, the UAE actually threatened to pull out of normalization if Israel, if Netanyahu pushed forward an annexation effort that he was making. Trump immediately came out and said, told Netanyahu he couldn't do it. And obviously it's because it was going to cause him to lose his, you know, big foreign policy achievement, the Abraham Accords. From the first term so far, there's no indication that the UAE is threatening that time around. Qatar has, has, you know, a lot of these Arab states who are either already normalizing with Israel or who are considering it have issued these completely toothless threats. So I don't see that as a factor right now. The other thing which I have even less hope for is that somebody points out to Trump that, you know, I think point 19 in your 20 point peace plan says that the Palestinians have to have a path to statehood, to self determination. And what they're doing in the west bank, which would be, in theory, in a parallel universe where the settlement movement was forced out, the west bank would be the bulk of the Palestinian state in terms of land and population. And if somebody points out to Trump that, you know, all of these new policies in the west bank are making it completely physically impossible, legally impossible for the Palestinians to have a state, there goes your whole peace plan. And again, you know, it's a legacy play for him. So I think that in theory he could say, oh, wait a minute, these guys are screwing up my plan. But it doesn't look like that's happening.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, final point on that from me, Jasper. Jeremy Scahole at Dropsite is now reporting. A senior Hamas official has told him that Hamas will not accede to the sweeping demands, as Jeremy writes from Trump and Netanyahu, that the Palestinian resistance disarm, nor will it submit to a total demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, end quote, unquote. What's your reaction hearing that, Jasper? Actually, in light of everything you just said.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not going to get into the details of the 20 point plan and what is and is impossible, but I'll just say that if I was a Palestinian living in Gaza right now, I would be very concerned about the idea of completely disarming, knowing what's been done to us not just over the course of two years, but also in, theoretically, in times of peace. You know, during the March of Great Return, hundreds of people were killed, thousands were maimed by Israeli snipers during a peaceful protest. And so, you know, the position that they want the Palestinians to be put in, you know, just at 100% complete mercy of the state and this military that has been massacring them for years and for decades. Really. Yeah. I don't know why they would trust that that would then finally lead to them being able to live in peace. And so, look, I think that the peace plan was, you know, it was designed to fail. Maybe not by Trump himself, but I think everybody in Israel knew it was going to fail. I mean, Netanyahu was saying one thing to the US Press and another thing to the Israeli press about, don't worry, we're not going to actually, you know, we're not going to actually stop trying to destroy Hamas. We're not going to actually let them have a state. And so to me, this is just like the completely predictable outcome of what was always a sham peace process. And I don't know what's going to happen. But with guys like Kushner and Wyckoff and Trump and Tony Blair and Netanyahu in control, I mean, it looks pretty bleak.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I mean, that really is kind of. My last question is, you said earlier that the plan for Gaza and the plan for the west bank have effectively converged with that plan being make people so miserable that they leave or that we just, you know, completely subjugate them or if they, you know, step out a line, we kill them. I mean, do you think that plan is going to work?

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Well, it's working in the sense that they are getting more and more land literally every day. I mean, yesterday or two days ago on Sunday, the Israeli government approved land registration drive in the west bank in Area C, which means that they will now go through all of the land in Area C, which is like 60% of the west bank, forced Palestinians to prove that they own the land, which is impossible for many of them to do because they've not been able to get titles since 1967. And anything that they can't prove becomes theirs. And so, you know, that is just one of any number of policies that will never get any coverage in the Western press. That is just, you know, tightening Israel's grip on the West Bank. It will drive Palestinians off the land. So in one sense, yes, it's going to work. In another sense, I mean, I know lots of Palestinian people. I've spent a lot of time in the west bank, and a lot of them are just not going to leave. They're just not going to leave. And I think the same is probably true of a lot of people in Gaza, to be clear. I think a lot of people would leave. And I mean, I'm certainly not in a position to judge somebody for wanting to have a more peaceful life for them and their family, but a lot of people just will not. And so I don't see, I certainly don't see a sort of neat resolution that, you know, Israel just gains control of everything anytime soon. I think it's going to be bloody and messy and, you know, the only thing that could really stop Israel is a weapons ban from the US in my opinion.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Jasper, thank you so much for your reporting and for spending some time with us this morning. We're very grateful.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

My pleasure. Thanks, both.

[Hans Charles]

Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm in Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated, and black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an.

[Hans Charles]

Unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia. At Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

[Ryan Grim]

To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying.

[Hans Charles]

1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

[Ryan Grim]

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

[Hans Charles]

Listen to the A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

And I'm Matt Rogers.

[Bowen Yang]

During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by by some of our friends.

[Matt Rogers]

Hi, Bowen.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi, Matt.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, Elmo.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

[Crystal Ball]

Hi, Cookie.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi.

[Matt Rogers]

Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryder Strong]

This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the Red Weather.

[Krystal Ball]

It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.

[Ryder Strong]

In 1995, my neighbor Anna Traynor disappeared from a commune.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

It was hard to wrap your head around.

[Ryder Strong]

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

So, no, I am not your guru.

[Ryder Strong]

And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police. I lied to everybody.

[Crystal Ball]

There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name.

[Ryder Strong]

I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

[Will Creeley]

Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend. They have had this case for 30 years.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

I'll teach you sons of come around here in my white boom boom.

[Ryder Strong]

This is the red weather. Listen to the red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Crystal Ball]

We're happy to be joined right now by Will Creely, who is the legal director over at the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Will, thanks for joining us.

[Will Creeley]

It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[Crystal Ball]

Of course, there's a lot of news on the free expression front to get to, actually starting with something that broke overnight. We can put the deadline tare sheet up on the screen. This is F3. Stephen Colbert is saying that that CBS told him he could not interview an interview he had already recorded with Democratic Senate primary candidate James Talarico of Texas on the Late Show. Now, Talarico posted the clip anyway, but people in the FCC camp are saying actually it was because CBS would need to or CBS should feel in some sense responsible to then quote, unquote, platform Jasmine Crockett for the equal time rule. So this is starting to really get traction as we're talking right now. Will, could you give us your legal perspective, having followed a lot of these cases and particularly the FCCC and Trump 2.0, what's going on here?

[Will Creeley]

Yeah, there's a lot to get to. First of all, I think it's of a piece with what we've seen from the FCC over the past year, a very aggressive, very expansive understanding of their legal authority to frankly bully broadcasters into taking political lines that the FCC would like them to take. I think that there's an equal time rule that requires broadcasters generally to provide equal time on what are called bona fide news broadcasts, news programs to candidates running for the same office. For a long time, the FCC has understood this to mean really news broadcasts, not things like Saturday Night Live or other kind of comedy talk shows. But recently, over the past year and a half, we've seen a push to expand the equal time rule to things like Saturday Night Live. We had Kamala Harris when she was running appear on Saturday Night Live and NBC then offered Donald Trump time on a NASCAR broadcast. A couple points here, though. The candidate has to request that equal time. I'm not clear that that's happened here. And between what happened last week with the View and FCC Commissioner Brennan Carr pushing for the View to provide equal time, seems like this is of a piece with that. Again, it's just part of a very aggressive, very expansive understanding of the FCC's authority. And I think it should make all of us a little bit nervous. The FCC does not have the power to be the nation's editor in chief or the nation's censor in chief. But that's, that's what they're increasingly acting like.

[Krystal Ball]

I think the piece about the View is really important for people to understand. And for those who don't know, the FCC launched a probe last week into ABC's the View after an interview with James Tallarigo. And so part of the reason why they launched these probes or threatened these lawsuits is not just about that one media outlet or media property. It's so that other places like CBS and like Stephen Colbert and the executives there say, oh, maybe this is too hot to touch. We are going to self censor without even the FCC potentially even getting involved here because we see what happened over there on the View.

[Will Creeley]

That's exactly right. It's designed to send a message to, if you will, chill expression on our airwaves. You know, I am old enough to remember two years ago when Brendan Carr said it's not the job of the FCC to be intruding itself making political decisions for our nation's broadcasters. But that brand of car is long gone. And what we have now is something else. We have a FCC that's willing to push its authority to make broadcasters think twice about the areas that they view on their show. I just want to note that all this is wildly unsuccessful. I logged on to the Stephen Colbert YouTube channel just before hopping on here, and it has something like 650,000 views overnight. They should ask Barbra Streisand how well it goes when you try and shut people up.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's such a great point.

[Crystal Ball]

Last thought on this before we get to Bondi, Will, is I've interviewed Brendan Carr before and I think one point he makes a persuasive case on is the underlying law here that does actually say broadcasters who are acting or broadcasters have a duty to act in the public interest. And that's where all of this stems from. He says, you know, and this is obviously, I don't want to say tongue in cheek, but because he would say it's totally sincere, he says he has the duty, responsibility to enforce that. He's not making the rules, he's just enforcing them. He has, you know, said before might be time to think whether or not that's just completely outdated. Is it, do you think? Well, that's a fair case that even having this rule on the books seems like it's already putting the government in a precarious position?

[Will Creeley]

Absolutely I do. And even if we take Chair McCarthy's word as to just calling balls and strikes per his existing legal authority, again, I want to make two points. First of all, that's different than what he said as commissioner when he said that the FCC should and has to, per law, abide by its First Amendment responsibilities before any federal statutory authority. And second of all, FIRE just submitted a comment just last year arguing that the FCC should really go back and delete a number of its content based regulations. They're outdated. They provide the opportunity for political mischief like we've seen in the past year with leveraging political messaging for merger approval. And they really reflect in an era where we had scarcity. Right. We had only a couple broadcasters in town. You know, I'm old enough to remember seeing just what I had on the three major networks in fox. And those days are long gone as I'm referenced. Right. You can go to YouTube and, you know, see whatever political candidate you want as much as you want. Those rules no longer make sense and they provide the federal government with a cudgel to swing at folks they don't like.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. Because we don't see this uniformly enforced. Just happens in certain instances, you know, with candidates that they don't want to get a higher profile file or with certain commentary that they then pull out the hammer that they can wield here. All right, let's talk about this lawsuit that you that your organization Fire has filed. Let's put F1 up on the screen. I think this is really significant. Fire sues Bondi and Noam for censoring Facebook group and app reporting ICE activity. So in this release you say the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is suing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on behalf of Kay Rosado and Mark Hodges, who respectively created a Facebook group and an app that hosted video footage of ICE operations to inform the public and hold our government accountable. Talk to us about what happened here and what you are alleging the government did to pressure these tech companies to censor these accounts.

[Will Creeley]

Sure thing. Well, Rosado had a Facebook group that allowed community members to report to each other on what was happening when ICE surged in Chicago. The idea was to let neighbors talk to each other about what they were seeing. So, you know, not just to, quote, unquote, evade ice, but also just to give a heads up, you know, maybe, maybe your, your commute is going to be crazy or maybe, you know, you don't want your kids walking Past masked, armed federal agents. You know, all kinds of reasons that you might want to be aware of what ICE is doing. And I should note right at the outset that is fully protected by the First Amendment. You have the right to comment on law enforcement movements. You've got the right to record police, including ice. Those are public servants. They work for us. You have the First Amendment right to criticize them. You have the First Amendment right to protest. You have the First Amendment right to record. I just wanna be very clear. A lot of debate on Twitter about those points. A lot of Twitter lawyers telling me that that's actually impeding law enforcement. No, it's not.

[Crystal Ball]

Can you break that down? Actually, Will, what is the legal background of the definition of impede in that context?

[Will Creeley]

Right, right. If I'm impeding somebody, I'm going in and obstructing them. Usually there's some kind of physical aspect. If I'm recording them across the street, I'm not impeding law enforcement operations. There's a Supreme Court case called Hill vs City of Houston where a man is watching a Houston Police Department officer arresting another man. And he says something like, why don't you pick on someone your own size? And then he gets arrested for obstructing and interfering with that arrest. The court says, no, this is the difference between the United States and. And a police state. We have the right to comment and criticize law enforcement even while they're in the process of administering an arrest. In other words, kind of impede means what it says it means, right? It's more than just words. It's more than just recording. If a law enforcement officer tells you to back up, should probably back up. But if you're recording, or certainly if you're on a Facebook group talking about what ICE is doing, that's fully protected by the First Amendment. We're not talking about some kind of secret police state yet. And that's what we're fighting to prevent.

[Krystal Ball]

There was also some reporting I wanted to get your reaction to in the New York Times. We can put F2 up on the screen about how often the government is pressuring social media companies not only to take down content, but to reveal the identities of some of the people who are trying to remain anonymous for understandable reasons, frankly. Behind accounts that are posting anti ICE content, the part of this reads, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose ICE by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency. One of the things that we have really appreciated here about fire is that you have stood for free speech, regardless of partisanship. So under the Biden administration, where there were abuses, you all were right there. And now under the Trump administration, with extraordinary abuses, you continue to be on the side of the First Amendment. Can you put this in context in terms of what is happening here, how extensive it is, and what sort of a threat to free speech this ultimately represents?

[Will Creeley]

Yeah, this feels like a full court press from the administration to go after anybody who dares criticize. Report upon track what's happening with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. So in our lawsuit, we're pushing back against pressure brought by the Attorney General and Secretary Noem on Facebook and Apple to remove the apps and the Facebook groups that report on ice. That's unconstitutional. That's jawboning, as you say. We opposed it under the Biden administration, and we're sure as hell oppose it here when it's being used by the Trump administration as a kind of indirect coercive censorship, trying to put the screws on a private actor to remove speech that's protected, but that the administration doesn't like. And here with this latest reporting from the New York Times and also a couple weeks before from the Washington Post, we're again seeing this very aggressive, very expansive understanding of what constitutes some kind of criminal activity or some kind of suspicious activity that the federal government can track. So they're issuing these administrative subpoenas to social media companies and asking them to provide all the details about those users. And really, what I think anybody can see, just from a common sense standpoint, is the intention is to chill speech. They want you to think twice before you say, you know, to hell with ICE on social media, because you don't want to get that knock on the door. That's not a free society. That's not the United States of America that we love. And I don't care what administration is doing that. That should outrage everybody in this country. We have a right to criticize police without worrying that you're gonna get some knock on the door, as folks have been getting, because your social media company turned over all your information to the feds. I mean, what the hell are we even talking about? This is crazy.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah. And in the broader question of the anti ICE activism, the legal. I'm genuinely curious. Well, for the legal perspective on publicly available information, if you have people following ICE agents in public and then communicating, coordinating in a signal group, saying, they're here, they're there, these These license plates are in the public domain. So using them for one reason or the other. Is there any legal standard that coordination constitutes impeding or obstructing? Because that's the argument that gets made. But it seems like there aren't a lot of. There maybe isn't a lot of precedent on what that actually is or what it could be, but you probably know the existing precedent will so explain.

[Will Creeley]

Well, I appreciate the question because it's an important one, right? There is speech integral to criminal conduct. If you are, you know, coordinating a bank robbery and then you go ahead and, you know, you try and execute the plan at that point, the coordination, you know, is part of the eventual criminality. But the really important threshold is that there has to be that criminality. Just talking with each other about where ICE is or where your next protest is going to be, that's all protected. You have to have the step from just protected protests and protected speech to some kind of criminal activity. And that's a high bar, and it should be a high bar in our free society. And that's not what I'm not seeing here. The federal government is pushing a very broad interpretation of doxxing. Doxxing is not a legal term of art. There's no crime against doxxing. Just as you say, if the information is in the public, if law enforcement is walking around in public, you can report on them. You can, you know, call up your friend and, you know, text them on signal, whatever, and say, hey, they're over here. That's protected activity. If you say, hey, they're over here, let's jump them. Okay, now we're. Now we're talking about something else, but we haven't seen any evidence of that. And you gotta be really wary of the government blurring the lines between just talking about somebody and actually doing something. There's a big difference between speech and action, and we need to keep that sacrosanct.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I think the administration themselves are not very confident in their legal standing here, because according to this New York Times piece, they say in September they sent Meta these administrative subpoenas, which are just basically like pieces of paper that they're like, yeah, we think we should be able to do this. To identify the people behind Instagram accounts that posted about ICE raids in California. According to the aclu, the subpoenas were challenged in court. DHS withdrew the request for information before a judge could rule. And I think there's another instance where they document the same tactic where when there's pushback and they say, you can't do this. We're going to court. They're. Oh, nevermind, we're good. Because they don't feel that they are on solid legal ground here and they don't want an actual judge's ruling because now they can live in this sort of, you know, amorphous like, well, we think we have this power. But if you get an actual legal decision, then you can no longer live in that state of ambiguity. And you have to decide whether you're going to listen to the courts or whether you're going to flagrantly violate their orders, which, of course, they've done thousands of times as well.

[Will Creeley]

That's exactly right. They seem like habitual line steppers. You got to push back a little bit and then maybe we'll get some space to operate. Let me plug right now. If any of your viewers are dealing with one of these administrative subpoenas or think you might be, please get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you. Because just as you say, the only way to really win here is to fight back. You have a first man. Right. But it doesn't mean much if you don't fight to exercise it. That's why we're so proud of our brave plaintiffs in our ICE cases, in our lawsuit against Nome and Bondi. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and fight, and that's what we're here to help you do.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And that's why we're so grateful for the work that you guys do, because a lot of people out there on their own, as individuals would have. It would be terrifying to go up against the federal government. I'm sure it's still terrifying to go up against the federal government, but at least they have some great allies. And people like yourself will, thank you so much for joining us today. We're really grateful for your time.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, thank you.

[Will Creeley]

Been my pleasure. Thank you both.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, guys, that does it for us. Make sure to check out Sager's episode with Andrew Schultz. I believe that will come out tomorrow. And Emily and Ryan will be in for the show previously known as Counterpoints tomorrow.

[Crystal Ball]

Oh, is it not a Bro Show? Oh, I don't know. We should check and see if it's a Bro Show. Okay, I'll check and see.

[Krystal Ball]

It doesn't matter if you're Mystery Show.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, Mystery show would be like those.

[Krystal Ball]

You know, little packages that kids get and they unbox and you won't know until you unbox the episode.

[Crystal Ball]

Remember the candy, like the Wonder Ball. It was like, what's in the wonder Ball?

[Krystal Ball]

No, I don't. But that sounds fun.

[Crystal Ball]

This might be a younger millennial.

[Krystal Ball]

My daughter's very into these unboxing and the mystery stuffy plushies that are inside the boxes or whatever. So that's where my brain.

[Crystal Ball]

Oh, so this is the version of that. Yes, I love it. All right.

[Krystal Ball]

In any case, someone will see you here tomorrow and have a great day.

[Crystal Ball]

See everyone.

[Ryan Grim]

1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis, and at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

[Hans Charles]

These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson locked up the members of the board of trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles.

[Ryan Grim]

Our menelik Lumumba.

[Hans Charles]

Listen to the a Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

And I'm Matt Rogers.

[Bowen Yang]

During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast in the to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.

[Matt Rogers]

Hi, bud.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi, Matt.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey, Elmo.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

[Crystal Ball]

Hi, Cookie.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Hi.

[Matt Rogers]

Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard.

[Bowen Yang]

Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

So here's some drama you could share with your kid.

[Hans Charles]

Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake?

[Will Creeley]

No.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

But did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development?

[Ryan Grim]

Nuh.

[Jasper Nathaniel]

You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit talkaboutvaping.org brought to you by the American Lung association and the Ad Council.

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.