3/19/25: Trump Call With Putin, Israel Shells UN Building, Media Flips On Schumer & MORE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar Episode: Trump Call With Putin, Israel Shells UN Building, Media Flips On Schumer & MORE! Release Date: March 19, 2025

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1. Introduction and Overview

[02:07] Hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, along with Alvaro Bedoya, kick off the episode by highlighting the significant role of independent media in the current election landscape. They emphasize the importance of providing honest perspectives from both the left and the right, which they believe is lacking in mainstream media.

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2. Trump’s Call with Putin and Ceasefire Negotiations

[02:33] The discussion begins with recent developments in ceasefire negotiations between the U.S. and Russia. Donald Trump engaged in a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, aiming to broker a temporary halt to strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Notable Quote:

• Trump [07:04]: “Russia has the advantage as you know. They have encircled about 2,500 soldiers... We’re doing this. There are no Americans involved. I think we had a great call, it lasted almost two hours.”

Key Points:

• Trump’s Stance: Advocates for an immediate ceasefire, albeit not unconditional, contrasting Ukraine’s earlier agreement.
• Discrepancies: Trump disputes Kremlin reports that Putin demanded an immediate cessation of aid to Ukraine, stating, “We didn’t talk about aid at all” [07:57].
• Economic Leverage: Trump highlights the U.S. trade deficit with China and suggests leveraging economic power to influence Russia.

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3. Chief Justice John Roberts’s Statement and Reactions

[05:57] Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement opposing the impeachment of judges based solely on their rulings, asserting that impeachment should be reserved for cases of corruption.

Notable Quotes:

• Chief Justice Roberts [Unavailable Timestamp]: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision.”
• Mike Cernovich [07:32]: “Trump has the political capital and then some to ignore judges who tell them to allow terrorist gangs to remain in the USA...”
• Alvaro Bedoya [05:57]: “Donald Trump just fired two of the Democrats who were Senate confirmed...”

Key Points:

• Political Backlash: Right-leaning figures criticize Roberts for overstepping, claiming he lives in a “media bubble.”
• Historical Context: References to historical attempts to impeach judges for non-corrupt reasons, such as during Jefferson’s era and FDR’s court-packing plan.
• Trump’s Position: Despite pressure, Trump maintains he has not defied court orders, though contradictions arise regarding migrant deportations.

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4. Shelling of the UN Building in Gaza

[47:14] Guest Abu Bakr Abed reports firsthand on the shelling of a UN building in Gaza by Israeli forces, resulting in casualties among international medical staff.

Notable Quotes:

• Abu Bakr Abed [47:49]: “Israeli tanks have been shelling ceaselessly the eastern parts of Dereg Bada... there were flags of the UN over it.”
• Krystal Ball [52:56]: “India Kobayashi story there from Abu Bakr is unbelievable.”

Key Points:

• Denial by IDF: The Israeli Defense Forces deny targeting the UN building, attributing the attack to arbitrary shelling.
• Humanitarian Impact: Reports indicate multiple casualties, including foreign medical workers, raising concerns about the protection of international humanitarian missions.
• Escalation Signs: Increased shelling suggests preparations for a potential ground invasion, intensifying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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5. Impact on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Alvaro Bedoya’s Firing

[90:44] Alvaro Bedoya, a Democratic commissioner at the FTC, discusses his unexpected firing by President Trump, highlighting concerns about the administration’s intentions to undermine independent regulatory bodies.

Notable Quotes:

• Alvaro Bedoya [95:21]: “I'm responsible for enforcing a privacy consent decree against Elon Musk and X...”
• Trump [07:32]: “China needs us in terms of trade very badly...”

Key Points:

• Legal Battles: Bedoya mentions ongoing lawsuits against major corporations like Amazon and Meta, emphasizing the importance of FTC’s independence.
• Presidential Authority: Raises questions about the legality and motivation behind Trump’s decision to fire Democratic commissioners, suggesting it serves corporate interests over regulatory integrity.
• Future Implications: Bedoya plans to contest his firing legally, asserting that it undermines the FTC’s ability to enforce antitrust laws effectively.

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6. Chuck Schumer’s Media Tour and Democratic Leadership Challenges

[74:40] Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faces criticism over his inability to effectively lead the Democratic Party, particularly after canceling his book tour due to security concerns and being blamed for not resisting Republican strategies effectively.

Notable Quotes:

• Krystal Ball [76:14]: “I think you caved. I think you and nine other Democrats caved...”
• Alvaro Bedoya [79:00]: “This worked in 2017, you say now it's a different government.”

Key Points:

• Leadership Crisis: Schumer is portrayed as out of touch and ineffective, failing to rally the Democratic base or present a strong opposition to Republican agendas.
• Party Strategy: Debate over whether Democrats should adopt a more proactive stance or continue with traditional resistance tactics.
• Electoral Consequences: Concerns that Schumer’s leadership flaws could lead to further losses for Democrats in upcoming elections.

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7. Additional Topics Covered

a. Declassification of JFK Files [117:44] Discussion on the partial release of JFK assassination files, highlighting both progress and remaining obscurities.

b. Media and Public Perception [78:34] Analysis of how media narratives shape public perception of political figures and actions, emphasizing the role of independent media in providing alternative viewpoints.

c. Administrative State and Unitary Executive Theory [112:24] Exploration of the tension between independent regulatory agencies and presidential authority, focusing on the implications of undermining organizations like the FTC.

d. Humanitarian Issues in Gaza [53:20] Sharif Abdelkaddus provides further insights into the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, detailing the severe impact of Israeli strikes and the blockade on civilian life.

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8. Conclusions and Future Outlook

[123:44] The hosts emphasize the importance of holding powerful entities accountable and the role of independent media in uncovering truths overlooked by mainstream channels. They also express concern over the erosion of checks and balances within the U.S. government, particularly regarding the independence of regulatory bodies like the FTC.

Key Takeaways:

• Global Implications: The geopolitical maneuvers between the U.S., Russia, and Israel have far-reaching consequences, influencing both international relations and domestic policies.
• Media’s Role: Independent platforms like Breaking Points are crucial for providing diverse perspectives and challenging mainstream narratives.
• Political Strategy: Democratic leadership faces significant challenges in adapting strategies to effectively counter Republican tactics and maintain party cohesion.

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Notable Quotes Recap

• Trump on Ceasefire [07:04]: “Russia has the advantage as you know. They have encircled about 2,500 soldiers...”
• Chief Justice Roberts [07:32]: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision.”
• Alvaro Bedoya on FTC Firing [95:21]: “I'm responsible for enforcing a privacy consent decree against Elon Musk and X...”

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This episode of "Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar" delves deep into pivotal international events and domestic political struggles, highlighting the intricate interplay between media, political leadership, and regulatory bodies. Through firsthand reports and incisive analysis, the hosts and their guests shed light on the complexities shaping the current socio-political landscape.

Transcript

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Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Krystal Ball]

Independent media just played a truly massive.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Role in this election and we are.

[Krystal Ball]

So excited about what that means for.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

The future of this show.

[Krystal Ball]

This is the only place where you.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Krystal Ball]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put for you every morning in your inbox.

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We need your help to build the.

[Krystal Ball]

Future of independent news media and we.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hope to see [e-mail].

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Good morning and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily Crystal Sagar still in the hallway finishing their two day long argument.

[Krystal Ball]

They've been going.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

We're going to pick it up today though, because we've got more news on the Venezuelan migrants.

[Krystal Ball]

Do I have to play the role of Sagar and Jetty?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Whatever. Whatever works for you.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll see. Stay tuned for that because there's actually some pretty interesting updates and some some interesting reaction to how Chief Justice John Roberts decided to handle the situation yesterday. We will get to that we're going to start first with developments in the cease fire negotiations. Donald Trump obviously spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday and did a big interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News last night where we got more and more information about what a potential cease fire deal could end up looking like. We are then going to move on to how Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Trump and MAGA World's calls to impeach the judge that halted those migrant dep deportation flights. The judge impeachment calls are actually a trend. It's not just this judge. So we're going to break all of that down. We're then going to move to a really, Ryan, a segment I think is going to be really unique to something that you're able to bring to the show via drop site and talk to some people who have witnessed on the ground in Gaza these strikes.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, we're going to have our midi setter Sharif Abdel Kaddus join us. We may also have Abu Bakr Abed, who many of you on the show know he's amazing here. He's scheduled to appear. We'll see if he does. This morning he witnessed an Israeli assault on a convoy, a tank shelling that killed some of his friends that nearly killed him. He is safe. He is obviously shaken up from the last couple days of violence and he'll join us if he can. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully he can. But if not, Sharif will be with us who has been editing him over the last several months.

[Krystal Ball]

How old is Abu Bakr again?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Maybe he's 23 now.

[Krystal Ball]

23. Okay.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Maybe 22.

[Krystal Ball]

He does amazing work.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah. This is a guy who all he wants to do is be a soccer journalist. Yeah, football, we'll call it football for him.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, give him that. So Chuck Schumer is having a hard time selling his new book and man, Ryan, it just keeps getting trying to.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Compete with Ezra Klein. You can't. I mean, what are you doing, Chuck? You can't compete with Ezra Klein.

[Krystal Ball]

I know what he was thinking. Did they know? Did they realize?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Did they not realize? Do not come out the same day as Ezra Klein.

[Krystal Ball]

But Chuck Schumer managed to get booked everywhere yesterday by everywhere, I mean CBS MORNING show and the View and Chris Hayes. So we have some highlights and lowlights to share of Chuck Schumer's media tour in the last 24 hours and some really interesting, I think, discussion points about where the Democratic Party is headed. Not in the long term future. I mean that too. But also just in the near term here and Ryan, we have thanks to you Alvaro Bedoya, the FTC commissioner who was quote unquote fired by Trump yesterday. That is in dispute whether Donald Trump actually has the authority to fire him. Even some people on the right will say he doesn't have the authority because of Humphrey's executor which is a case I know we'll get into. But they're trying to push that into the Supreme Court. Like many of these battles which are intentionally designed to test right there's supposed.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

To be three Republicans and two Democrats on the ftc. Trump just fired two of the Democrats who were Senate confirmed like you said, quote unquote fired. One of them is Commissioner Bedoya. He's a breaking points guy and dropsite and dropsight. And so he's going to be on the show later today talking about what his approach to the FTC was and what it means that now there will be only actually two Republicans cuz they haven't even confirmed the third and why, you know, which faction within the Trump coalition may have, may have driven this move.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. So very happy to have him here. Let's begin with Russia so we can put a zero up on the screen. This is a New York Times headline just about sort of a TikTok everything that we know so far about this deal. As the New York Times says Putin agreed on Tuesday during a phone call with Trump to temporarily halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure according to the Kremlin. That fell short of the unconditional 30 day cease fire that Ukraine had already agreed to at the urging of the Trump administration. They reportedly spoke according to the Kremlin again for more than two hours. Mr. Trump, the Times continues has stated his desire to broker truce as quickly as possible while Putin has seemed to be seeking more concessions. Zelensky replied on Tuesday evening that Putin had quote effectively rejected the proposal for a full cease fire backed by the and Ukraine. Now Trump sat down with an interview, sat down with Laura Ingraham for an interview on Fox News last night where we learned a little bit more about how he saw that call yesterday. This is a one we'll roll Trump on. Laura Ingraham from the White House.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Russia has the advantage as you know. They have encircled about 2,500 soldiers. They are nicely encircled and that's not good and we want to get it over with. Look, we're doing this. There are no Americans involved. There could be if you end up in World War 3 over this which is so ridiculous but know strange things happen And I think we had a great call, it lasted almost two hours. Talked about a lot of things and toward getting it to peace and we talked about other things.

[Krystal Ball]

Also here's an interesting exchange between Ingraham and Trump actually about what the Kremlin said after the call regarding aid to Ukraine. Let's take a Look at this. A2 non negotiables mentioned by Putin. It was reported that I think the Kremlin media actually stated that he demanded an immediate cessation of aid to Ukraine in order to get to this multi step deal.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

No, he didn't. We didn't talk about aid actually we didn't talk about aid at all. We talked about a lot of things but aid was never discussed.

[Krystal Ball]

So that's Trump directly disputing the Kremlin's report of what happened on the call. And just lastly let's roll this clip of Donald Trump talking about Russia and economic power. This is the, this should be a three next clip here.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

China needs us in terms of trade very badly but we have to straighten out the deficit. We have now more than a trillion dollar deficit with China, it's not even believable and we're going to be doing something about that. And with Russia they would like to have some of our economic power.

[Krystal Ball]

Finally Ryan, let's put how Donald Trump reported untruth social about the call on the screen. This is the next element. He says, quote, my phone conversation today with President Putin of Russia was a very productive one. We agreed to an immediate cease fire on all energy and infrastructure with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and ultimately an end to this very horrible war. Continues to say it never would have started if he were president. Many elements of a contract for peace were discussed including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed and both Putin and Zelenskyy would like to see it end. The process is now in full force and effect. But Ryan, interestingly, while the process does clearly seem to be unfolding, full force might not be the best descriptor if you're. That's one way to spin it. But might not be the best descriptor given the way that Zelenskyy responded to news from the call yesterday.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Well, you can tell Trump felt pretty good about how it went because he, if you notice there was only one word in all caps in that truth, social and it was end. He's gonna end the war. Obviously lots of exclamation points but that's what you're gonna get. Of course you can Kind of check his emotional register by mapping it to the number of all caps statements. If it's shot through with all caps. Like, he is feeling besieged and angry and how dare people be doing these things to him when all he wants is peace for the world. So in that sense, it seems like he feels like he's getting somewhere. He also talked about something that he understands, which is sports and entertainment through the bilateral cultural exchange of joint hockey games.

[Krystal Ball]

This is a five.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Put this one up. A five. In March 2022, the NHL told the KHL, forget it. We're not partnering with you guys. You can't invade Ukraine and they've been kicked out of the Olympics. Russian agents weren't allowed to work with the NHL teams anymore. You may or may not know ice hockey is a rather big deal over in Russia. And so Trump here is floating the possibility of thawing that, to use a terrible pun, wow, I didn't do that on purpose. But after I got there, I'm like, look, that's what we gotta go.

[Krystal Ball]

It's dad joke Wednesday, I guess.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Accidental dad joke.

[Krystal Ball]

That's actually more like bad news anchor joke.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Bad news anchor joke.

[Krystal Ball]

Someone's writing the teleprompter script.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I just kind of slipped onto that one. So the problem here that the US Is facing, as Trump clearly articulated to Zelensky in the White House, is that we don't have any cards. He says he doesn't. You know, he told Zelensky, doesn't have any cards. The US really doesn't have any cards either, except for the economic power.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Which, by the way, can we just underscore the irony here that Trump wants to destroy our trade relations with Canada, Mexico, Europe, everyone else around the world except for Russia.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Kind of hilarious.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it was funny.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Okay, whatever. So the problem is.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, especially because he doesn't he blame the lifting of sanctions of Nord Stream 2, and many people on the right do, myself included. The Biden administration's lifting of sanctions on Nord Stream 2 is one of the key factors that pushed Putin to invade Ukraine when he did.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, one of the many incoherent, I think, approach is where Trump is both uber hawkish towards Russia and also then a dove when it comes to war. Like he wants confrontation right up until the edge.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That he doesn't want war. But then he says that Putin was justified in the invasion because of the hawkishness of US Foreign policy. It's like, wait a minute, you're one of the most hawkish. Nevermind. So Putin has a bunch of demands that are rooted in the fact that they are winning. And that is the fundamental structural problem that Trump is facing in trying to wrap this up immediately so we can put this up on the screen. The conditions that Putin is insisting on, the key condition is the one that Trump says they didn't even talk about complete cessation of foreign military aid and sharing intelligence information with Kyiv. You know, hopefully they're recording these conversations, because if historians are going to rely on the competing words of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to get an accurate rendition of how the conversation went, God help us.

[Krystal Ball]

He said.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

He said, God help the historians. So then the second one, Putin says he wants to stop the forced mobilization in Ukraine and the rearmament of armed forces. So stop drafting Putin people and stop arming Ukraine with pretty huge demand. And then any settlement should be complex, stable and long term in nature and must take into account the absolute need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis. It must also consider the legitimate interests of Russia in the area of security. So the easy part of that is, you know, that means kind of no NATO. What it's subtly suggesting is that they don't just want the area that they currently hold, but they want deeper into eastern Ukraine, which their argument is, you can either give it to us or we're going to take it. And if we take it, it's going to be bloody and we're going to take a lot, we're going to take a lot more with it. And so basically he is saying that if you're going to give up, we're turning Ukraine into a complete vassal state that will, that we can basically manipulate politically from Russia, which is, in other words, it would be like a country in our sphere of influence. That's how roughly we would handle Guatemala or something along those lines. So how much Trump cares about this versus how much the US Deep state cares about this, I think, I guess, would indicate whether or not the US is going to be willing to capitulate to this. On the other hand, the encirclement that he talked about is very real. And this is the other thing that Putin is talking about. He's like, what about these guys? So we're like encircling these guys, we're about to capture them. So if we do a ceasefire, they can just walk out. And that is a legitimate question. Like, how does that work? Like, they invaded in that part, they invaded the Kursk region of Russia, they just walk out. I don't know. What do you think?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, let's even put this last element back up to keep this conversation going about Trump and economic power. This is an interesting juxtaposition here where you have Scott Besant on April 2. Each country will get a tariff number and then White House future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals. That's, you know, we have all kinds of sanctions on Russia and who knows what Russia's tariff would be potentially, if this economic relationship is blossoming under Donald Trump. But. Right. It's kind of, I think it's interesting from the perspective of like what Donald Trump's foreign policy is, because it's very like we talk all the time. He's not a John Bolton type neoconservative ideologue, but he does believe in economic power as his source of creating world peace, which is not an insane, I mean, it's obviously not an insane idea that when you have economic ties to different countries, it deters violence, but it's also sort of not where the right is anymore. And if that's Gaza Riviera in Russia, if that's part of, I mean, I think maybe that's being hyperbolic. But if Putindoes Putin respond to that in a way that Donald Trump actually wants him to, does he respond to the prospect of economic opportunities with the United States the same way that Donald Trump wants Vladimir Putin to? I think Putin has ambitions beyond, I guess, the economic ties with the United States in that he wants regional power. And I'm not saying he wants, I don't think he.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Which he already has by virtue of being powerful.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, yeah, but I mean, I'm not saying that to say he has this design set on Western Europe, but his ambitions are not purely economic.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Sure. And yeah, they clearly want influence in Western Europe. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. But yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Hence Nordstrom, too.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah. And we, you know, potentially there was an opportunity to try to end this in March of 2022. The US decided not to do that. Whether they could have actually ended it or not is an open question which will never be answered because we didn't pursue it. And now it has not gone well. The US put whatever it could up against Russia here, 100 plus billion dollars. Europe put in 100 plus billion worth of weapons. They drafted everybody they could find and they're losing badly. And they hoped that they would weaken Russia. Russia came out stronger.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, Russia has been weakened. Absolutely.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I guess if, I mean, certainly they have, they've lost a lot of men.

[Krystal Ball]

They've lost a lot of men. Their economy is not incredible.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Their economy is not incredible. But geo politically, are they weaker today than they were February 22nd? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I think they're probably in a better position.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, okay. I mean I think that I guess that's fair. But there has been a cost to. There's been a cost to them.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Right, but. But I think they sanction proofed their economy in a substantial way. They did not get the collapse that MSNBC promised its audience.

[Jorgem]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

There was no real split with China. Tighter than ever, maybe I was gonna say.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that is a great point.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Joe Biden does not have a PhD in foreign affairs. He's just that good.

[Krystal Ball]

He's so his just crushed it. We learn more about Joe Biden's successes with each passing day. All right, well, let's go.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

He showed up for St. Patty's Day. It was like his first comment on anything.

[Krystal Ball]

I didn't see that when he just put out a tweet something.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Celebrate St. Patty's Day.

[Krystal Ball]

He just put out a social media post. But nobody saw him in the wild.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I don't think so.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, okay. So that would be.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Maybe he was at some bar in Lewis, Delaware.

[Krystal Ball]

What'd you do?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I wore my O Kelly's shirt from Guantanamo Bay. There's an Irish bar on Guantanamo Bay.

[Krystal Ball]

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Glow, let's move on to the raging battle over whether it is a good strategy or not a good strategy for Republicans to start impeaching judges who block or obstruct Trump's attempts openly to exert the unitary executive theory of power. Meaning, you know, trying to take some power back as the right would argue from the, quote, administrative state. This is a really interesting exchange between Laura Ingraham on Fox News and Donald Trump on Fox News just last night, Tuesday night, where Ingraham pressed Donald Trump on whether he would defy court orders. That's obviously at the center. And Crystal and Sager have covered this of the debate over what happened with that migrant flight that was ordered by a judge to be turned around landed in El Salvador. This was Venezuelan migrants alleged to be members of the gang Trend Aragua, designated by the Trump administration as a foreign terrorist organization. So Laura Ingraham pushed Trump on whether he would defy court orders. Let's take a look. This is leading people to wonder whether there are court orders that you will defy because you believe that the judge has no jurisdiction or there are political questions and not justiciable at all.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And what would you say to that?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Are there circumstances where you would defy a court order? Well, I think that, number one, nobody's been through more courts than I have. I think nobody knows the courts any better than I have. I would say the chief judge does. But nobody knows them better than I have and what they've done to me. I've had the worst judges. I've had crooked judges. I have judges that valued Mar? A Lago at $18 million because that benefited his case, because he wanted to see me convicted of something. I have judges that were had relatives making millions and millions of dollars on the election, ruling on the election going forward. I have judges.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Would you defy a court order? We all know that was outright.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I never did defy a court order.

[Jorgem]

And you wouldn't in the future?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

No, you can't do that. However, we have bad judges. We have very bad judges that shouldn't be allowed. I think they, I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge. The judge that we're talking about, he's, you look at his other rulings, I mean, rulings unrelated, but having to do with me. He's a lunatic.

[Krystal Ball]

Ingrid, by the way, was a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. She's has a good bit of interest in some of these legal questions. But a lot of people, as a lot of people on the right now do. Justice John Roberts, Chief Justice John Roberts, I should say reacted. He released a statement, a very, very rare thing. We can put the next element up on the screen yesterday, midday, he says, quote, for more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. Now here's how some people on the right reacted to John Roberts deciding to take that leap and actually issue a statement. This is Mike Cernovich who said Trump has the political capital and then some to ignore judges who tell them to allow terrorist gangs to remain in the usa. It's not a close call. John Roberts lives in his D.C. media bubble and overestimates his power. It's all made up. Trump can take it away easily. Jeremy Carl, he replied, this is actually a pretty funny one. John Roberts is George Bush's worst mistake outside of the Iraq war and he's still got time to take the lead. So. So this was a pretty common argument, Ryan on X yesterday that the Cernovich point about impeachment should be pursued by Congress who obviously Congress really doesn't have the votes right now. There's no way to imagine that you could go get some of these impeachments through Congress. But Trump sort of throwing cold water on it in that primetime interview with Laura Ingraham was quite interesting as well. Because this was some of his loyal MAGA media defenders who spent the day saying, impeachment is a perfectly reasonable, rational response. Here you have Trump instead saying, nope, not gonna do it. You can't do it.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And, yeah, there is history on this. And that's why he's saying for more than 200 years and not for the entire history of our country. Think it was under Jefferson should have looked this up before we started the show. But there was a judge that. I think it was a Federalist judge that was ticking Jefferson off, and his party tried to get rid of him and tried to impeach him. And I think he was saved by, like, one vote. And that set the precedent where Congress decided, look, we're not. We're only going to impeach judges for corruption. Like we are. We're not. If we don't like your ruling, we're going to appeal it and we're gonna push it to a higher level. And so since then, basically, no political party has ever tried to impeach a judge because they didn't like the ruling. I heard the Cernovichs of the world complaining. Where was John Roberts when AOC and the rest of the Democrats were saying that they were gonna pack the courts?

[Jorgem]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And I would say, okay, fair question. The answer is that's not out of the realm of American historical precedent. Like fdr. That's right there in the law. Like, the number of Supreme Court justices is not set by the Constitution. It's set by Congress. Fdr, when he had a political fight with the Supreme Court, threatened to pack the court. There was public outrage at him. He backed down. And the court, kind of intimidated by his move, started letting a bunch of the green new deals, New Deal, the blue New Deal stuff through.

[Krystal Ball]

Freudian slip.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah. So they let that stuff go through. And so then, all right, fine. But it was a push and pull of politics. It is also true that there was an effort to impeach a judge in whatever, 1802 or whatever for something they disagreed with so Republicans could try again if they won, which is what gets me to Trump. I think he's like, why are you talking about this?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Because you don't have 67 votes to do this.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

It's like this Elon. It all came from Elon Musk, or it was probably a reply.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, he started echoing Bukele, like, get.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Out of here, Bukele.

[Krystal Ball]

We're not taking constitutional advice from Seriously, Seriously. But Musk was, quote, tweeting approvingly, the Bukele plan to crack down and restore democracy.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But Bukele allegedly. Bukele certainly did not invent an executive or getting rid of his independent judiciary. That's like, textbook. And yes, obviously if you want to set up a dictatorship or some type of extremely powerful executive, you get rid of the judiciary. That doesn't take a constitutional scholar to figure out. But, yeah, they don't have the votes. So to me, the almost more interesting answer there was about would you ignore one? Would you ignore a ruling? And he says, well, I never have.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But he doesn't say he wouldn't. On the other hand, bro, yes, you did. You just ignored one. Like yesterday, are you acting or Monday, are you acting like you were not told to not deport these guys to the El Salvadoran torture chambers and told the judge to F off?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I was gonna say that was actually another interesting part of what he said is he's maintaining and a lot of people in Megaworld maintaining that I shouldn't say maga world, in this case in the White House are actually maintaining that that was not done intentionally, that it just was happenstance.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And so what's that, huh? You're breaking up, Breaking up. Can't hear this ruling. Also, it is.

[Krystal Ball]

I hope that's what actually happened. He's like on Air Force One also.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

It is important to point out Trump has named at the Gulf of America. So therefore not international waters. Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Interesting.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Lawyers fact check that for me.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, things can be called America.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

If it was the Gulf of Mexico, then he might have an argument. But it's not the Gulf of Mexico anymore. It's Gulf of America. Go look up of.

[Krystal Ball]

They're also. But even on that, they're disputing whether or not the verbal order, I mean, it gets into insane, arcane legal questions, whether the verbal order, the time that the verbal order came out versus the time the written order came out. Compare that to the flight logs. And when all of the process was able to. We don't need to get into it, but.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Right. And also we have learned that as suspected, they made some mistakes. Somebody who came in legally was seeking asylum. Just an artist has nothing to do with this gang. So on the flight, and who knows if Bukele has tortured them since then, has killed them. To me, the people involved in this, when Bush used to do what they would call an extraordinary rendition, we have rules against torture. And so what Bush would do is he would send people mostly to Egypt and elsewhere and say, you torture them, therefore we're not torturing them. We now understand that. No, that doesn't count. That doesn't get around the constitutional prohibition on torture.

[Krystal Ball]

What you're referring to is these reports. This is one from the Miami Herald. That is the Venezuelans alleged to have been gang members trunda Aragua. Their families who have seen them in the. Actually, the Bukele video. Speaking of Bukele, the video that Bukele released of them getting off of the plane in El Salvador, they sort of spotted their family members and have said they're denying actually that these family members have any ties whatsoever to Tren de Aragua. We can put B7 on the screen. This is getting back into the tattoo debate. This says, quote, relatives said he had several tattoos that are testaments to his love of family. One bears the name of their daughter. Another on his arm reads Fuerte Coma, Mama strong like mom. A third shows two clasped hands representing him and his partner next to the date they began dating. But it gets into that question again, Ryan, of whether people are being swept up into these deportations because they have tattoos that are identified with trend Narago, which is something we do repeatedly hear cited by the administration as reasons for those reasons for the deportations.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Now, you've done some reporting down on the border. You've met ICE agents, right. Would you want your fate in the hands of the. Think about the ICE agents you've met, all right? And it's the meritocracy.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

These are the people who wound up up as ICE agents, right. Would you want your fate in there? Just turning hands. And the question that they have to answer, this ICE agent who's working down in southern Texas or wherever they are, has to look at a tattoo on a Venezuelan person's back, and they have to distinguish whether that tattoo is a Trende OAGUA gang affiliate affiliated tattoo or it is some other ink that the person found to be attractive the day they went. Or like, for many people, the artist just drew it because, like, this is, you know, you go in, you're like, you're an artist. Give me what you got. So the question of whether or not you will be hooded, have your head shaved, tortured and potentially killed in an El Salvadoran prison is going to be answered by one ICE agent looking at your tattoo and deciding whether or not that. Like, is that. Is that enough due process, do you think?

[Krystal Ball]

I hate that.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

How confident would you be that that ICE agent is gonna get it right 100% of the time?

[Krystal Ball]

I hate the Salvadorian involvement here, obviously hate that there are any allegations of torture. If I were concerned about due process. I would not enter a country illegally or stay in the country illegally. And that's one of the questions that I have right now is whether these hundreds of migrants are people who were.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

What if you were told, here's the process?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, that's what I'm wondering.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Asylum.

[Krystal Ball]

That's what I'm wondering.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

You report to this particular spot, you get a number, then you show up for court.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That's the process. You're told that's the process. That's the legal process.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And then some ICE agent says, actually, I kind of think that tattoo might mean you're in a gang. I'm gonna send you to Bukele to check out.

[Krystal Ball]

We were talking about this months ago. I think one of the biggest challenges or tensions in the Trump administration's deportation policy is that the United States of America under Joe Biden, unfortunately opened up an actual legal asylum process. And that's where you end up having some. Roughly 8 million, according to the New York Times, new people, a net of migrants coming into the country just under the Biden administration. A huge, huge chunk of that. Close to half, I would say. It's hard to actually know exactly how many were people who came in and legally applied for the asylum process. You cross the border, you claim asylum. And Joe Biden had opened up people's ability initially, when he was president. This is one of the things he cracked down on over the last year that brought immigration numbers down dramatically. So that's what I'm actually genuinely interested about with this number, these hundreds of migrants is whether any of them were here because the Biden administration said, claim asylum. And coming out of Venezuela, the American.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Government, temporary protected status.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, yeah, the American government, the communist government.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That's like torturing and killing, and it's the most awful government ever. Like, come to the United States, we'll protect you.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Literally give you temporary protected status.

[Krystal Ball]

Right? Yes. So I would say the administration. I don't think this matters to most voters. From my perspective, someone who's like, in media, I don't think the administration has done a very good job explaining exactly what these migrants are accused of, because that distinction, to me, is really, really important. Whether they crossed the border illegally, stayed illegally, and then committed various crimes, didn't even show up for asylum hearings, that could be reason enough in my book to deport people. If you're obstructing the process that you are benefiting from all of those things. That's what I'm curious About. So I don't think the administration has done a particularly good job. It's very, there's a hubris because they know the public is completely on their side about deporting military aged men who came to the country and are tatted up and, and likely. You know, I think Crystal mentioned this the other day. If there's several hundred, as her estimate, the estimate she cited said several hundred trend Nicaragua members in the United States. That's a significant gang sell spread out throughout the country. It's not millions, but that's a significant gang sale spread throughout the country that people want to get the hell out of the United States of America. So I think because the administration knows the American people are rightfully supportive of that, but they aren't really eager to pony up the evidence.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And the problem for me is that on the right there's this recognition that the government is inherently incompetent and fallible.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Anybody who's gone to the dmv, you show up at a Social Security office, if it's still open. It sucks dealing with the government. They're. They lose stuff. They lose stuff on purpose. They say they're open and they're not open. There's a lot of legitimate criticisms that people have of the government from their immediate interactions with them. Yet, and this is why I'm making fun of the intellectual capacity of these ICE agents, yet we expect then the government to be infallible when it's picking up a Venezuelan off the street. And to be certain that they are not grabbing a citizen, not grabbing a green card holder, they're not grabbing somebody who legitimately and legally applied for asylum and has a case that is still being adjudicated. We know that in Chicago they picked up a brown guy who turned out to be an American citizen and he spent the entire night in detention.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, they botched the Khalilah arrest.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Clearly they showed up, arrested Khalil, thinking that he had a student visa, telling him they were revoking. This is a Columbia protesters thing, that they were telling him that they were revoking his student visa. And his lawyer's like, bro, he has a green card. And they're like, well, we're revoking that too. Like they didn't even know.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

So you want to enable these morons with this unchecked power. Like the point of due process from the right is you don't trust the government. Like you don't you think they might make mistakes. And so you want to check because sometimes you can't get A do over. Like if you accidentally, as they appear to have done, I'm using accident very generously to them.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Accidentally send people who are here legally and going through the correct process, and you send them to a torture chamber and they're tortured, there's no do over. You can't undo that. You've destroyed that person. And maybe they get killed and maybe.

[Krystal Ball]

There are actually legal avenues they can pursue. Depends. But we'll.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I don't know. If they didn't have jurisdiction over the Gulf of America, how do they have jurisdiction from this dungeon?

[Krystal Ball]

The due process question is an interesting one because as long as you've established people are not in the country legally.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But that's the thing. Do we trust that they even establish.

[Krystal Ball]

That to establish that? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I haven't seen enough, frankly, from the White House to just trust that they established that. Especially frankly, after the Khalil arrest where they did not know. There's the report of them on the phone. This is a report from his wife who can hear them on the phone being like, oh, we'll take them in anyway. Like, that's the exact word anyway. So, no. I mean, I don't have a ton of trust in the government. That's why I always say the most hillbilly thing that JD Vance has ever said is that he hates. He apologized for it, but it was like an old post of his.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

And. Yeah, it's. Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree with that. I also think it's fairly important to get a hold of the 8 million people, and that's gonna make for some really unfortunate and sad and heart wrenching stories. But, you know, these. If people are legitimately members of Trend Naragua, the government should make that very clear. They should show what their evidence is. Otherwise, it's like you're just throwing people to El Salvador. So. Yeah, I don't.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, that was a very real moment from J.D. vance, because that is one of the key divides is of where you are in basically a social class is when you see a cop.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Do you get scared?

[Krystal Ball]

No.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Do you not care or do you feel more comfortable? Yep. And the immediate feeling that you get puts you in a very particular place. And for J.D. vance to understand that he should then understand that when you see that cop, that cop should not have the unilateral power to pick you up, hood you, and send you to El Salvador to be tortured and then figure out later whether or not they did it.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. I think Sager was Getting at this the other day. But I think one of the tough things here is I care significantly more about the fact that Joe Biden let in 8 million migrants than I do about. And that's not to say I don't care about both. I think you can care about both.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That point too, I don't understand that point. It's like, okay, you can hate that, but like, it is what it is. Like, now here we are, do we have, are we a country of civil liberties and constitutional protections or not? The part that kills me, like, it's all the problems I have with the United States, at least we have these civil liberties. That's always the thing that has separated us from the rest of the world. The First Amendment, the fifth Amendment, the fourth Amendment, all of these different protections that we have against tyranny. We don't get universal health care, we don't get a decent minimum wage. We have complete, total economic precarity. But at least we have these other things. If we don't get that, then just give us China, like, just give us some economic security. Then if we're gonna live in a totalitarian government without any individual freedoms.

[Krystal Ball]

I think the point stagger was making, we're getting neither about the left broadly, not about you and Crystal, is that sometimes it feels like concern trolling that after 8 million plus people come in illegally, you have case studies like Lake and Riley and the left is most angry. I'm not saying this about you, but that's what I think people are reacting to. The left is furious about potential likely illegal immersion, not getting due process.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Right. The left gets angry about different things than the right. Like that shouldn't be news to people.

[Krystal Ball]

But part of our civil liberties are based on having the rule of law. And as soon as you start eroding the rule of law and letting people hide out in sanctuary cities over the course of years, that's a significant. I mean, that's a significant threat to civil liberties of Americans, a significant threat to Lake and Riley and to other people who have found themselves in the crosshairs of this. So, I mean, that is legitimately tough for me. I think it is possible to care about both. I do care about, like, genuinely care about not disappearing people into a Salvadorian prison.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I also, I mean, you can't put these guys in front of a judge and be like, here's how we know they're part of a gang.

[Krystal Ball]

Or at least put the evidence out, like, let the public know how you know that.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, I mean, I would, I mean, preferably before you send them to the dungeon.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, just don't send them to El Salvador for anything. It's a stupid political stunt.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Straight up. Can't do that.

[Krystal Ball]

It's a stupid stunt.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

It's just.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, I don't disagree with that at all. Well, I guess we found some common ground there. We go against Bukele.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

No extraordinary renditions to torture chambers.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, so let's stop fueling the Bukele PR stunts. That would be great. Let's move on to this. This Brian Dropsite reporting out of Gaza over the past couple of days and we have some incredible guests. Hopefully two guests, but at least one guest lined up.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

This is Jenny Garth from I do part two.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Emily Crystal]

All right, I want you to use this tip to find moments of self care time in your busy day. Brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano. The colors we wear can impact our mood, like a quick little rundown of how different colors affect us. Yellow equals optimism and focus. Orange, energy and confidence. Blue, calm and productivity. Red, excitement and boldness. Green, balance and good decision making. Green is also positive vibes. So if you wake up one morning, you're trying to get ready for work or your day and you're just feeling kind of blah. Maybe throw on a color that lifts your mood. Or try a different outfit that you know you feel your best in. Who cares if you even wore it the other day? If it's an awesome outfit, give it a go again. Listen to four Things with Amy Brown wherever you get your podcasts for more of this episode. Brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano.

[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Jorgem]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

But scheduling's always a Nightmare.

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[Krystal Ball]

Hmm.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

I just might have to do more.

[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

Okay, then.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

For today's segment, we're fortunate enough to be joined by Abu Bakr Abed joining us from Gaza, and Sharif Abdelk Cadous, editor at Dropsite News, often edits pieces by Abu Bakr Abed. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us.

[Jorgem]

You're welcome. Thank you.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And so, Abu Bakr, we had an entire segment planned out where we want to talk about all the different updates that have been happening in the last couple of days. But then this morning, you witnessed news that is now kind of trickling into the international consciousness, which was this shelling of a UN building. So can you describe for us where you were, why you were there, and what you saw?

[Jorgem]

Yeah, the first thing that you have to know is that Israeli tanks have been shelling ceaselessly the eastern parts of Dereg Bada. So very expectedly, we know that the buildings along the eastern outskirts will be hit by those shells. 11:30, I was out for an emergency exactly 11:30 in the morning, Gaza time. And I was along Saladin Road on the eastern outskirts of Darul Balah. Then I heard a massive shell which is like a boo in sound, a very, very horrifying sound. And it flew over the car which I was in, and then it hit the compound. And we saw the smoke, the cloud of smoke that emanated or went out from the building itself. And after that, we went all the way along the Salahuddin Road and we saw one or two convoys, two vehicles of the World Health Organization, along with the UN convoy, One of the vehicles of them, so three vehicles and another ambulance which had a uk, our UK logo on it. So it was after. It was for a medical organization based in UK which is queued us and foreigners. The foreigners, the medical staffers from outside Gaza, they've come in to take the casualties and they've rushed to Alex Matus Hospital in Der Elah and they surrounded the place and they took the casualties. So we understand that what we saw is that one of the foreign workers was killed five were injured. But we have another report that another one was killed as well. But so far we understand that one was killed, four were injured and this is what happened until the place for one hour, for one complete hour. I saw the vents myself and I saw everything. So it was very clear it was a shell by Israeli tanks in the the arbitrary shelling has even caused many casualties over the past two days. So it's very expected.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And the IDF is firmly and plainly denying that they struck this UN building. How can you be sure that it was a UN building that you saw get hit? And how could you be sure that it was an IDF shell?

[Jorgem]

There were flags of the UN over it. And we know since the UN got into Gaza they have marked their places with with either fences or flags over the place and with their vehicles parking in front of those buildings. And we understand that this is not the only building inside Dar El Bella because since the start of the war in Gaza as Gaza as we wrote to drop sign news with Sharif the first story we produced together that the last standing city in the beast territory so the UN and the other international humanitarian organizations make sure that they are going to be stationed in the most or in the safest place inside Gaza. That is Teir El Bala which has been the least head over the course of the genocide. That's why it's not the only building. We have Abu Hussni street which is in the middle of Teir El Bella that has several organizations like WFB and UNRWA as well as UN but the fact is that this was along in Al Birkah area along the eastern outskirts of the El Bala, the eastern part and it was marked clearly with flags and there were cars parked outside the parked outside the building with clear logo like implies and with logos of the U. N. And at the same time the building itself has many flags over it. So it was clear that you are building. And I know by the way from the before this attack and before this head I was very aware of all buildings that are working inside the Bella because I'm in the city and have been observing that over time. And you know where the buildings are, the organizations that work. That's why you live. Yeah, that's why I left. That's why I'm telling you that it was clearly a UN building and Israel hit it. But I think Israel is making the point based on the arbitrary shelling that they did not deliberately hit it. And this is something I might agree with because it's been arbitrary. As I'm telling you, it's been random. So that's why they are claiming right now that they haven't hit the place. But already in the end, even if you purposefully or, or not purposefully hit the place, it is you, it's a tank from your side. So it's not going to be on the other side. Because Hamas again fight back. A single bullet in Israel, despite all Israel, despite the fact that they have killed more than 420 people in Gaza over the course of the past two days, this is far from the fact that they have killed 150 during the ceasefire. So it's very clear that they hit this place. They are, they must be held accountable for it and they really must. I don't know what they have to do. But of course Israel is responsible for that and they can make sure that of that, because I was in the place and I saw that myself. So there is not way that this can be debunked at all because it's in the place and it survived it very, very miraculously.

[Krystal Ball]

And Sharif, what can you tell us about the. I guess what we're hearing from Israel, what we're hearing from other involved parties, you know, the first person story there from Abu Bakr is unbelievable. And having that reporting from him, what else do we know about how other people are reacting or other entities are reacting to what happened?

[F]

Well, to this story, the news is just coming out. So far, the only official statement we have is from the Ministry of Health saying that one person was killed and four were injured in an attack on what they described as UN facility and the Israeli military denying that. But we have to say that this comes in context of this renewed genocide within a genocide that began yesterday with Israel, you know, unleashing one of the deadliest wave of bombardment since this began 17 months ago. The Ministry of Health just put out the latest figures. Over the past two days, 430 people have been killed, including over 180 children, which is one of the highest death tolls of children in a single wave of airstrikes ever. And once again, our timelines were filled with the images of dead children, of dead babies, of families being wiped out of the wails and shrieks of parents. And it came without warning. And it came across all areas of Gaza very heavily in the north of Gaza, where the Ministry of Health has also put out the kind of numbers of where people were killed. And it was 156 people were killed in Gaza, the governorate of Gaza, which is where Gaza City is, in Jebelia. This was an area that was already completely devastated by the Israeli military assault. And it's also the area where over half a million Palestinians had returned to following the ceasefire, many of them returning and with no like creating makeshift shelters or putting tents on the rubble of their homes. And that's where they're living. And this is the area that was heavily bombed yesterday. And, you know, I was. Abu Bakr called me when all of this began and we spoke and he was seeing helicopters flying low outside of his window, relentless strikes and so forth. The next morning, I contacted another contributor, Hossam Shabbat, who's in Beit Hanun, which is all the way in the northeastern edge of Gaza. He replied with one word, death. That's what he wrote. Another dropside contributor, journalist Rasha Abujalal, who is among those people who went from Dir El Balak to Gaza City after the ceasefire went into effect. An airstrike hit right next to her home, collapsed onto her home. She somehow miraculously survived with her husband and five children. And she wrote a dispatch for that on dropsite that you can read. And I think it's important to understand when we're talking about context, this seems to have been Israel's plan all along. The ceasefire that went into effect, that was agreed on and went into effect on January 19, this was supposed to be a three phase deal, the first phase being 42 days. But we know that Israel was really only intending for this to be a phase one deal. As Abu Bakr mentioned, we saw them violate the ceasefire nearly every single day since January 19th, killing Palestinians in Gaza on a regular basis. Over 150 have been killed. Even before this massive aerial assault on Tuesday morning. They refused to allow in the agreed upon number of tents into Gaza. They did not allow in a single mobile home as agreed upon in the deal. They didn't allow bulldozers and other forms of reconstruction equipment. And during all of this, they also refused to hold negotiations on phase two. And phase two, the negotiations were supposed to start on February 3rd, and it was supposed to entail the release of all the remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a substantive number of Palestinians being held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the beginning of a permanent ceasefire. And this is something Netanyahu has said plainly that they do not want. Hamas spent weeks calling for serious talks on the second phase to begin. Israel simply did not allow the negotiations to go forward after the first phase ended. In early March, Netanyahu said Israel agreed to what has been described as a new US Proposal in which Hamas would Release half the remaining captives that it has in return for a seven week extension and kind of that's it. Nothing in return. And of course, this was not part of the agreement that was set. Hamas rejected that. And then Israel reinforced a total blockade on March 2nd. Not a single truck has been allowed into Gaza for the past 17 days. No food, no medicine, no fuel. They cut electricity, which affected a desalination plant which severely limited the availability of water to hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in Tirbalach and Khan Yunus. Prices are skyrocketing. People can't afford. So this is a policy of forced starvation that is being reimposed. And we reported a drop site. They also started denying doctors and international humanitarian aid workers entry into Gaza on relief missions at unprecedented rates. And then, you know, on Tuesday, we saw this deadliest wave of bombardments. And we've also seen that the Israeli military has sent out, ordering people to evacuate, mostly along eastern Gaza near the border in places like Beit Hanun, places like Khaza and Khan Younis, forcing people into the center of the territory. And this indicates that Israel is renewing plans for ground operations, because this is what we saw last time. And today we have the Wall Street Journal reporting, citing, you know, Israeli security sources that they are planning to escalate a major ground operation using an even bigger force that they used last time because much of the manpower that they needed on the northern border with Lebanon, they don't need that there anymore because the attacks with Hezbollah have seen. So, you know, this is where it stands now and it's very ominous.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And Abu Bakr, you were telling me just before you came on that your indications were as well, that it looks like another ground invasion is underway. What are you seeing that makes you believe that what the Israelis are telling the Wall Street Journal is accurate?

[Jorgem]

Yeah, because I think the shelling has intensified over the past 12 hours, particularly during the night towers, as we've been hearing that it's not all about this, because when we see like the plumes of smoke from the skyline view that we're seeing at the moment, because I have a highest point, I have one of the highest points that I can really climb up and see the sky from where I am at the moment. So there is some parts of Derebella we need to remind people that they have been utterly obliterated during the genocide, in the Israeli incursion of Easter Ebella last August 2024. Every place, every inch, every in the eastern part of Derebala was totally annihilated. And flattened to the ground. And at the same time, when you see this, you know, when you see this increase of attacks and this increase of shells across those regions, you feel that there is going to be a military ground operation, not necessarily in the rail Bela, because in the eastern parts and at the same time, Sharif told you that the eastern parts and the northern border regions of Gaza and Khan Younis, when we talk about Khan Younis, we talk about three areas in east Khan Younis, which is, which are near the borders, like Abbasan and Ben Isla. So they have ordered all people living there to evacuate. That means they are preparing for a military ground operation. The same has happened in Beit Hanun, Beit Lahiya and here in Deir El Balah in central Gaza, the northern regions, in Al Barash camp. And in fact, the fact is that during the ceasefire, when we talk about the ceasefire, the so called ceasefire, Israel has killed many people, over 20 people in Alabari camps, northern regions. And I went one time to those places and I saw military forces there myself in Albraj camp, northern.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Which is a violation of the ceasefire agreement, right? Yeah.

[Jorgem]

During the violations of the ceasefire. This is absolutely a big, big indicator of an intent to military, for military ground operations. Let me just because I wanted to make sure that I remember this or I mentioned this because we talked about the incident of attacking the UN convoy. Now the Israeli military has given approval for the entry of one of the ambulance from outside Gaza, the Egyptian border to help treat the patient, the foreign patients inside Gaza and take them outside Gaza for treatment. When the attacks happened, the convoys that were taking children, injured children, women who have been waiting desperately for evacuation, for medical evacuation during the past 15 months has halted. And the WHO, the humanitarian organizations haven't done any, haven't really exerted any efforts to make sure that this process can be resumed. So when you talk about this, the lives of foreigners are much better or more important than the Palestinian children and women who have been suffering every single day. And people are trying to keep that comparison up. So why the WHO and the humanitarian organizations have worked so hard to make sure that they are going to take the patients, the foreign patients, or the war wanted from their workers, their foreign workers outside Gaza. But when it comes to Palestinians, we're Talking about that 12,000 patients inside Gaza, they are in desperate need of evacuating right now. 40% of them have died and many of them, 5 to 10 have died when they reach the hospitals outside Gaza, like Egypt and Jordan, because of the continuous procrastination by the Israeli military. And the delays and the restrictions. This is a very, very important point. And we talk about another point this Sharif mentioned and quite elaborated on the overpricing. Right now. They are completely different prices. We talk about.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Can you talk a little bit about what the effect has been of the blockade going back into place on March 2? What was it like before and what's it like now?

[Jorgem]

Before the prices were quite reasonable for the entirety of the population people could really afford. But right now we talk about an onion for two for $5. Sorry, an eggplant for $3, a tomato for $2. We're talking about one of each type. How can people really afford. People are fast in here. They are spending almost 12 hours without a single, without a single plate. And at the same time they don't have anything for suhoo. So the both meals that you should have very peacefully now, they don't have them. A lot of families cannot really afford. Not all families do have the ability to bring their, to bring their kids. Kids and food every single day. The insanity of these surprises. Now, right now, as I was roaming around and going inside Gaza's market here in Darabar Khan, unison talking to people from northern Gaza, there is not a single bag of flour in the territory. There is not a single cooking oil inside the territory. So how can people really cope with that when there is this cursive? There is no single type, one single type of fruit. Fruits is not found inside Gaza. Discursive vegetables is insane. We're talking about just very sparse quantities of vegetables like zucchini, like tomatoes, potatoes, and they're not even available. And their prices are extremely exorbitant. Like you talk about one potato for five dollars. Oh my God. How can people really do that in the United States? It's not the same thing. I think you can buy a kilo for $5. So. So if people in the United States cannot really afford that, how can people of Gaza whom 80% of them, 80% of them have lost their work since the genocide started. And they have tried to get back to a sense of normality when the ceasefire started. But now their hopes are dented, their lives are shattered yet again. I know people, one very important point about this, I know people personally, that they were searching for their loved ones under the rubble before the part of the series of attacks, they were killed yesterday. So instead having retrieving the bodies of their loved ones and their families from under the rubble after they have been there and stuck there under the rubble for months, they are now killed and they are now both buried in the same graveyard. This barbarity that we're trying to tell you and trying to tell the world is what we need to talk about. There's nothing about Hamas here. There's nothing about the ongoing violations and the ongoing escalation that we are living through. Most of the population here like, sorry, what Israel does want to is destroying Gaza. I drove in northern Gaza, I drove in Khan Younis and I drove in central Gaza. What else Israel wants to destroy in Gaza? There is nothing like utter devastation, utter obliteration of every means of life. There are no buildings. People live in the wreckage of their homes. People are trying to salvage the ruins of their homes. How? How? What do you want to destroy? Really? Really? What do you want to destroy? What do you want to. Whom do you want to kill? You want to kill the entire population? Do it with a nuclear bomb. That's what people want. Because they cannot really take any more seconds of this brutality and this barbarism. It can't really go on like this. But the world has allowed us, the Arab world has allowed us in the United States because I told you, I need to remind you both Ryan and Emily, we talked about Trump last November. I told you that he's not good. He's not going to get to. He's not going to be good for Palestine. He's not going to do anything. He's not someone who wants to stop wars. He wants, wants to break out was. And that's what we are seeing right now. And we talk about his plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza. So this is absolutely sheer hypocrisy and sheer barbarism that we haven't seen before. And he's much, much worse than Joe Biden. That's my thought.

[Krystal Ball]

Sharif, I actually wanted to ask you about that because as people try to maybe find or think about where there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, that would turn to politics. And I'm curious what you make about, about how a potential ground invasion, it sounds like from both of your reporting, and as Ryan mentioned, that does seem to be on the horizon. How does that affect the Trump administration, which Donald Trump has been unorthodox in some ways, criticizing Netanyahu for a, quote, public relations crisis. He's obviously sensitive to seeing the awful images and stories like Abu Bakr's just there, people being pulled from the rubble and being killed while they're trying to pull their own deceased loved ones from the rubble. At the same time, he has Mike Huckabee and Tom Cotton surrounding him. So it's just so very hard to predict. But you followed this closely. What could happen, I guess, politically if Israel does move back into a ground invasion?

[F]

Well, as you mentioned, Trump is very hard to read. He says things kind of shoots off the cuff, says we're going to ethnically cleanse Gaza and then kind of seems bored about it and doesn't mention it again. It's hard to know where he stands. I think we do have to acknowledge that the initial ceasefire phase that did go into effect, I don't think it would have happened unless Trump was president. He wanted, sometimes he does the right things for the wrong reasons and he wanted some kind of obstacle optics for the day before his inauguration. And, you know, him and his envoy, Steven Wytkoff did kind of force this through where the Biden administration completely failed in that and just allowed Israel to continue.

[Krystal Ball]

And Witkoff went to Gaza, talked to Hamas, people didn't want him to do that. He's sort of willing to push the envelope, I guess, a little bit more than a conventional.

[F]

And the US Is negotiating directly with Hamas now, although apparently the Biden administration did that briefly as well. But, you know, after these attacks, on Tuesday, Israel said that they had received the green light from the White House. The White House has voiced its approval of this new stage of Israel's assault on Gaza. Netanyahu took to the airwaves and said that this attack was only the beginning, those are his words. And that all further negotiations about the ceasefire was will take place under fire. So this is all happening with the approval of the White House. So it does seem that we're entering kind of this new normal phase where Israel is going to attack in these different ways. We may be seeing the beginnings of a major ground operation and that's where the negotiations are going to be. There isn't going to be the second stage of a ceasefire. Any talk of a permanent, permanent halt to the conflict, any talk of permanent withdrawal? As I said, at the same time, Steven Wytkoff in his comments over these past few weeks seemed much more reasonable than Antony Blinken was as Secretary of State under the Biden administration. He was saying things that seemed reasonable about Palestinians will be allowed to return to Gaza, that we will get to a permanent ceasefire that we do need to rebuild. However, none of this, this seems to have all broken down and basically Israel has completely, it violated the ceasefire, made very clear that it was never going to get past this first phase. And now we're seeing what everyone predicted, a massive re engagement of this violence and trying to force Hamas to release all of the captives, which I don't think Hamas would do if there's nothing in return. And so we're in a moment now of just increased violence and death. They were just as Abu Bakr is describing these attacks. There was this incredible wave the other day, but they're continuing all throughout today. They bombed tents in Moesi Khan Younis, killing a family there. And yeah, it's quite frightening to see where this could go.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

We'll put Abu Bakr's dispatch down in the notes, as well as some of the other pieces, including Sharif's recent piece about doctors and nurses being kept out of Gaza. But Sharif, thank you so much for joining us. And Abu Bakr, please stay safe and thank you for all you're doing for us. This is Jenny Garth from I do part two.

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[Emily Crystal]

All right, I want you to use this tip to find moments of self care time in your busy day. Brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano. The colors we wear can impact our mood, like a quick little rundown of how different colors affect us. Yellow equals optimism and focus Orange energy and confidence Blue calm and productivity Red excitement and boldness Green balance and good decision making. Green is also positive vibes. So if you wake up one morning, you're trying to get ready for work or your day and you're just feeling kind of blah. Maybe throw on a color that lifts your mood or try a different outfit that you know you feel your best in. Who cares if you even wore it the other day? If it's an awesome outfit, give it a go again. Listen to four Things with Amy Brown wherever you get your podcasts for more of this episode brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Jorgem]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

From selecting the perfect window treatment to.

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

But scheduling is always a Nightmare.

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

Hmm.

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

Oh, okay. Whatever you need. How about you tell me what you had in mind? Okay, then.

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

After Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer caved to Republicans allowing the spending bill to go through, blocking Democrats from their effort to force a government shutdown, things have gone from bad to worse for him as he has canceled his book tour, citing security concerns. But citing. Actually, there would have been a bunch of protesters yelling at him from the left, from the Democratic Party at his events. And now Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi is clowning him for his failure to do his job. Let's roll the former House speaker here.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I'm concerned about the next town. I'm concerned about the future. What happened last week was last week we're going into the future. And this morning, ha King Jeffries and Chuck Schumer joined in this kind of.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

An event in New York where Hakeem.

[Krystal Ball]

Said that he had come. So we're to the next stage on this now. But your question and yours, it is about what comes next. I myself don't give away anything for nothing. I think that's what happened the other day. We could have, in my view, perhaps gotten them to agree to a third way, which was a bipartisan CR for.

[Jorgem]

Two week, two four weeks in which.

[Krystal Ball]

We could have had bipartisan legislation to go forward. I'm an appropriator.

[Jorgem]

Mr. Schiff is an appropriator with the Appropriations Committee.

[Krystal Ball]

They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they're not agreeing to it.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

The plan she laid out there, by the way, is precisely what Republicans did with Biden and a Democratic controlled Congress in 2021. Democrats try to do a partisan in CR. Republicans said, no way, we're not participating in that. And they forced Democrats to do clean. Sorry, cr. So it's not a radical strategy that she's laying out there. Schumer has avoided politics and prose and Other bookstores. But he hasn't avoided the cable circuit or the network circuit. Here he is on cbs.

[Krystal Ball]

In your own party, they're saying, look, it's time for you to go. They no longer trust your leadership. They want somebody else in there. What do you say about that?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Here's what I said.

[Krystal Ball]

Your own party saying that's to go.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Here's I'm saying I'm the best leader for the Senate. We have a lot of leaders. You know, when you don't have a president, there's not one leader of the party. There are lots of them.

[Krystal Ball]

We have a lot of good people.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But we I am the best at keep winning Senate seats. I've done it in 2005, just in 2020. No one thought we'd take back the Senate under my leadership. We took it. So we now are executing. We have, we have a great. We're moving forward. Hakeem and I have a plan. Here he is on the View also getting confronted.

[Krystal Ball]

And it gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends, but I think you caved. I think you and nine other Democrats caved. I don't think you showed the fight that this party needs right now because you're playing with by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rulebook away.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

True.

[Krystal Ball]

And so in my view, what you did really was in supporting that GOP partisan bill that Democrats had no input in, you cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to gut Medicare, to gut Medicaid. Why did you lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by?

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Okay, first I'd say, sonny, no one wants to fight more than me, and no one fights more than me. You gotta fight smart. And then. Jen Psaki, former Joe Biden White House.

[Krystal Ball]

Spokesperson, experience is a good thing. It's important. But seniority and keeping people in charge simply because they have done it before should not be the only thing. Chuck Schumer was a hell of a majority leader in his prime. I grew up in politics when he was majority leader, when he was the aggressive senator, when he was the aggressive member of Congress who was dominating media coverage, arm twisting Republicans and members of his own party and raising an absolute boatload of money for Democrats. But he is not in his prime. The Republican Party is not the party of McCain or Romney or even George W. Bush. Feels to me like instead of just making tweaks to the margins of the message, which, by the way, is important, too, maybe it's time to spend more time to throwing out the hard copy of the old playbook.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And a pretty fascinating exchange here with MSNBC's Chris Hayes. All of those things you enumerated, which all sound like good politics to me. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Are the kinds of things that you'd.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Be doing if Mitt Romney were president.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That, like there's this weird asymmetry right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Now, which is that they are acting.

[Jorgem]

In this totally new way.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. In which they are ambitiously trying to seize all power and create a presidential.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Dictatorship in the United States of America.

[Krystal Ball]

And the Democratic opposition is acting like, well, if we can get their pool.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Rate down a few points, then what? Then what happens? Well, what happens is, look, first we get it way down.

[Krystal Ball]

He's gonna have much less.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

This worked in 2017, you say now it's a different government.

[Krystal Ball]

It's different though.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Oh, it is different. But health care. We beat him. Taxes, we beat him. And guess what we did? Guess what we did, Chris? We took back the House and won in the Senate and that got. And then we were allowed to do all those good things. This is not the only tactic. We have to stand strong in certain instances and not give them the votes at all. Let me give. But there are instances where this, the two work together. First of all, I don't know what he means by we beat them on taxes.

[Krystal Ball]

I truly have no idea what he's.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Talking about through his like $6 trillion tax cut.

[Krystal Ball]

He might be talking about some small ball thing that we don't even remember.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Or maybe he means cuz he doesn't care about policy. Maybe he means they let them pass the tax cut bill and it hurt them in the midterms and so we beat them.

[Krystal Ball]

If that's what he means. Wow.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

On the issue of taxes, if that's.

[Krystal Ball]

What he means, we're at another level of meta.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah. So the reigning critique, as you saw from all of these different mainstream media, you know, center left anchors, is that he's out of his prime, he's out of time, he's an anachronism. He was very good from 2005 to 2020. That's a really good run. He was good at raising money and he kept Democrats competitive. And in a Senate that is unbalanced and unified and kept him unified. And it's unbalanced in the sense that smaller states, small rural states get the same number of senators as like California and New York get. And so you have, as the Democratic Party, you have to significantly over perform in order to just stay even to his credit. Yeah. 2006, 2008, 2020. Yeah, great. But it's now 2025. And to me, the most revealing exchange there was with Hayes, where he said it worked in 2017. So, like, he's going back to his 2017 playbook. I don't know. What did you think? And how are Republicans seeing this? Like, how do they see his resistance?

[Krystal Ball]

That's a really smart point because I think one of the central divides among Democrats last week was whether or not to recycle the 2017 playbook, which, which is you look like from their perspective to voters. The adults in the room. Do everything you can to look like the adults in the room, the people who are not, the obstructionists, the people who are serious about doing business. So that you can frame Republicans as the unserious teenagers, to quote Alyssa Slotkin, kind of should probably quibble with my characterization there. But they're the ones who look like the wild rabble rousers. That's another quote, actually sort. So I think that was the playbook in 2017, when Democrats were confident that Trump was going to sort of hoist himself by Zimpatard and would inevitably crumble and melt into like a puddle of just political inviability. And that never happened, partially because Democrats never bothered to muster a serious response. The response was just, Trump is really bad. And now the question is, okay, so, so what are you proactively? What do you want? What do you want from Republicans in a spending bill? You weren't going to get it. But the opportunity to shut down the government was an opportunity to fundamentally tell the American people what you think should be in the damn bill. What do you want Republicans to come to the table on? So, to me, that's a great point that it really was the split. Do we throw out the quote, unquote resistance playbook that really banks itself on just resisting not being sort of proactive about that resistance? And, you know, we talked about this last week. I think it was an insane, insane failure to learn from the lessons of the Tea Party about shutdowns and about populism and just a complete wasted opportunity for Democrats. But I think part of it is because Schumer, even invoking the year 2017 there, tells me they are still stuck on this idea of just being the smart resistance. And not even MSNBC is interested in that anymore.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, and it's certainly true that going into a government shutdown is not without risk, of course, for Democrats, although I've spoken to a ton of federal workers, you and I live here in Washington D.C. a lot of the people we meet, our federal workers, all of them wanted a government shutdown, even though it meant there was a possibility they might not even get back pay. You could imagine Republicans saying, no, our line in the sand is we're not even going to, we're not even going to do back pay, even though we've done that for every shutdown before. And despite the fact that, that there was so much uncertainty around what would happen in a government shutdown, all of them were like, do it. Just put up a fight. Because the second he passed that CR through the Senate that night, Trump put forward the plans for this massive reduction in force, put out memos saying it's time to absolutely, completely guide the federal government to the greatest extent possible by the law. And the law that they had just passed made it that much more, that much easier for them for Trump to accomplish because it included some provisions that would allow them to sequester even more money. And because people like Russ Vogt were telegraphing, we don't see this, this spending figure as a mandate. We see it as a ceiling. We're not going to spend this, and we're going to use the authority that you grant us through this CR to destroy the administrative state. And they did it, and Democrats did it anyway. And now whatever is coming at the federal government from Trump in the next couple weeks is going to be very, very, very bad for federal workers. Now, maybe people will, maybe you love it as a member of the public, but from the perspective of federal workers who really do believe that the federal government should work, they think it's going to destroy all of these different agencies that do have actual, do have actual roles to play in a functioning government, functioning public. And now they've just kind of ceded all that until September.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

To Trump.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Where they could have had a fairly easy. I don't mean this pejoratively, but a political prop to trot out from now until then. And I actually think they would have gotten something small from Republicans out of this. And small victories are victorious.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Get a clean crowd.

[Krystal Ball]

Even, even that. And Schumer is out now saying, I don't know if you saw him say this. Republicans were telling him it would have been a six to nine month shutdown. What the hell are you talking about, bro? I don't know what Republicans are genuinely telling you that, but they're messing with you, Chuck. It would have been a Saturday, Sunday shutdown, because you could have controlled that. What are you talking about? A weekend shutdown was like, like the lowest Risk. It was absolutely a risk. There's no question about it. But for risk averse Democrats, this was like the warmest pool for them to dip their toe into being like actually a party of taking risks. And they couldn't even do that. Even when you have MSNBC and Nancy Pelosi, Jen Psaki, all of these people saying, maybe our strategy needs an update. Maybe we actually need to give the base a shot in the arm here, that we can rally hundreds of people at protests over the weekend. We can tell people that we fought, we can get some small concession. They had leverage. They didn't have a lot of leverage, but they had a tiny amount of leverage. And you should use your tiny amount of leverage when you have it. Otherwise you're gonna make your base more and more angry. And that's Brendan Buck.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

A lot of money. Check out.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, we were talking about this. Brendan Buck, who is a Paul Ryan strategist, wrote not bad for the New York Times Times agreeing with Chuck Schumer because he was saying that was the successful. He said Republicans actually ended up giving too much to the Tea Party, like Republican leadership. Paul Ryan, John Boehner were too nice, too indulgent of the Tea Party. And so again, no, the reason you ended up with Trump is because you guys were trying to block the Tea Party, which was representative of your own party's base, your voters. It reminded me of the Sam Gadaldig research paper that we covered about a year ago where you showed the people from the poorest districts are represented by the Freedom Caucus and they're represented by Justice Democrats, and that's bipartisan. And these are the people that Washington is trying to treat as unserious, quote, rabble rousers is how Brendan Buck refers to them. So if you want to, if you want to judge the wisdom of the Schumer strategy, look no further than the fact that establishing Republicans who now have zero influence in Washington are saying he made the right move.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Right? Yeah. I mean, it goes back to that calculation that some establishment figures in both parties make. Would they rather win but empower their left or right flank, or would they rather lose and disempower them? And for Brennan Buck, he'd have rather lost, but maintained the cohesion of the kind of chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican Party. Maybe Schumer's trying to make that calculation. On the other hand, Schumer's also taking the bullets for his entire caucus. It's not as if Schumer pushed his caucus to cave like they all wanted to cave. No I mean, not all, not all of them. A lot of them wanted to fight. More than 10 wanted to cave and more than voted to cave. Wanted to cave. And so Schumer here is being a kind of good soldier for his own cowardly caucus that wants to cave but wants to pretend that they don't. Now they can be mad and they tend to be mad at Schumer over it.

[Krystal Ball]

Democrats should be furious with the way leadership has handled the entire Trump era. And I feel like that hasn't broken into the main discourse until now.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

It's pretty bad. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

They have no idea what's coming for them.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

They lost to this guy so badly.

[Krystal Ball]

Republicans lost to him badly first. And it was a years long lesson in what not to do with your party's populists for Democrats. Like it was handed to them on a silver platter. By the way. Republican leadership treated mostly not just Trump, but Trump's voters, because Trump's voters took that as a message that they were being rejected. It's the same thing with AOC's voters now. It's the same thing with the voters of people who were like, you're doing nothing, you're laying down, what are you doing? They take that as an affront to them and they're not wrong to do it. So good luck with that, Chuck Schumer.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah. All right, up next, Donald Trump fired both Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission. One of them, Alvaro Bedoya, joins us now next. Stick around for that.

[Krystal Ball]

This is Ashley Aetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost famous podcast. You could have lost 10 pounds already if you already started one month ago. So are you ready to start today? Find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just 3 minutes at try fh.com try fh.com try fH.com results vary based on start weight and adherence to diet, exercise and program goals. Database on independent studies sponsored by Future Health. Future Health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at providers discretion.

[Emily Crystal]

All right, I want you to use this tip to find moments of self care time in your busy day. Brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano. The colors we wear can impact our mood like a quick little rundown of how different colors affect us. Yellow equals optimism and focus. Orange, energy and confidence. Blue, calm and productivity. Red, excitement and boldness. Green, balance and good decision making. Green is also positive vibes. So if you wake up one morning, you're trying to get ready for work or your day and you're just feeling kind of blah, maybe Throw on a color that lifts your mood or try a different outfit that you know you feel your best in. Who cares if you even wore it the other day? If it's an awesome outfit, give it a go again. Listen to four Things with Amy Brown wherever you get your podcasts for more of this episode brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano Know let's be honest.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Most of us have a love hate relationship with wired bras. We love the lift, but hate the digging. We love the support, but hate feeling trapped. Well, Nyx just changed everything with Free Flex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Free Flex features a revolutionary flexible wire that moves when you move, bends when you bend, and keeps everything exactly where you want it. No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses. And because it's from Nyx, it's available in sizes for every body. Experience the first wired bra you'll actually want to wear all day. Visit nyx.com for 15% off your order with Free Flex 15. That's K-N-I x.com code freeflex15 for 15% off nix.com all right, seemingly out of nowhere, President Donald Trump fired both Democratic commissioners on the ftc. That's the Federal Trade Commission. Lina Khan is no longer there. So that means that there are just now two Republicans because the third has yet to be appointed. Among them are Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Badoy. You can put up the second element here. Former commissioner. I'm just going to call him commissioner because I don't recognize the commissioner. That's right. I don't recognize the validity of these firings. His statement that he put out last night can move on to E3 as well. Lina Khan standing up for the former Democratic commissioner as well. She said the administration's illegal attempt to fire Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya is a disturbing sign that this FTC enforce the law without fear of favor. It's a gift to corporate lawbreakers that squeeze American consumers, workers and honest businesses. Joining us today for his first interview since this illegal firing is Commissioner Bedoya. Commissioner, thanks for joining us.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Thanks for having me.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

So this was always considered to be a possibility.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But on the other hand, they could easily have three Republicans. All they have to do is hold a vote and they can get the third one they scheduled for Monday. Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

So then they three to two. You know, you guys can Complain. And also, you know Andrew Ferguson, the FTC chair, you guys work with him fairly well. Like when he was named the chair over Holyoke and over other possibilities, it was seen in the anti monopoly circles as kind of a win for the Vance wing because he's closer to you guys and Lina Khan than anybody else. And, oh, this bipartisan antitrust thing where we're actually gonna go after corporate power might actually be gaining some steam here. And they don't need to fire you because like I said, they can just outvote you every single time if they don't like where you come from. So did you expect that they would do this? And how did you learn? Did you learn from Fox News?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I thought it might happen. I was surprised at the moment it happened because, well, when did I learn? I just left work and I was at my daughter's gymnastics practice when Commissioner Slaughter called me and said, have you checked your email? And there was some guy at the White House claiming that the President was firing me. Look, I think. I think timing is important because if this were just a unitary executive thing, we would have been on that checklist week one or week two, along with Gwen Wilcox at the nlrb. I think instead you gotta ask who this is helping and why they did it when they did. Because this doesn't help maga. This helps Musk. I think you gotta think about the billionaires over the President's shoulder at the inauguration. Three examples. I am currently suing Amazon in not one, but two lawsuits. I am responsible for enforcing a privacy consent decree against Elon Musk and X. And I am a judge in a matter where FTC staff is trying to ramp up the privacy protections that apply to its users. Who else have we been investigating pharmacy middlemen who allegedly sent send kids with cancer home and say, no, no, no, you can't get your cancer medicine at that independent pharmacy. You gotta get it in the mail, in the pharmacy we own.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Can we pause for two seconds on the pharmacy middlemen? Sorry. Absolutely. In the lame duck between the election and the inauguration of Donald Trump, there was pharmacy middleman reform included in that legislation that was about to pass. Yeah. When Elon Musk jumped in and stopped it from passing and a new bill passed. I understand since then something like 300 plus pharmacies closed as a result.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That I've heard as well.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Can you tell people just very briefly, like, who are the.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Absolutely.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

What's going on here?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Absolutely. So it used to be that there were multiple health insurers and lots of independent pharmacies. And over time there grew to be this middle layer of these entities called PBMs, pharmacy benefit managers. And frankly, when they're all independent, it's great because they cut good deals for the insurers from the manufacturers. All right, but what happened? It started to be that each of the big three insurers bought or got their own pharmacy middlemen. And then those pharmacy middlemen have their own pharmacies, often mail order, sometimes not. So what happens? A lot of those multi billion dollar companies don't consider it profitable to serve rural America, urban America. It's the independents that serve those folks. My first trip as an FTC commissioner was to Charleston, West Virginia. Met in a strip mall with a bunch of pharmacists who took care of a lot of folks during COVID when no one else did. And what those folks say is, yeah, I got people showing up at my pharmacy with prescriptions for cancer medicine and they're told, go home. Wait for because the PBM says I can't give it to you, you need to get it from their pharmacy. I met with pharmacists in Louisiana who said after IDA came through, there were about 24 pharmacies served, two parishes. People were showing up at the four pharmacies that were open, including like three or four independents. And they got a screen that said, you cannot give this person their insulin prescription. They need to go to the pharmacy we own down the street which is under of 3ft of water. That is who we're talking about here.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Right? And you guys are coming. We're coming. After that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We have been in the middle of a, I think more than year long market study into the pharmacy benefit managers. What's more, me and Commissioner Slaughter are sitting as judges in a case in which FTC staff alleges that these middlemen are competing not to lower the price of insulin, but to raise it. And if our lawsuit to make clear that we are still commissioners fails, I don't know what happens to that lawsuit.

[Krystal Ball]

So I'm curious about this timing question as well. That is very interesting. And Ryan mentioned some of the common ground between you and Andrew Ferguson and common ground that Andrew Ferguson had found with Lina Khan. But you guys had a dust up recently over, I think it was diversity, equity, inclusion stuff at the FTC which Andrew Ferguson said he would strip out. And I'm curious also if maybe because it strikes me as Sundar Pichai is trying to have a great relationship with Trump despite the Trump DOJ originally filing the Google antitrust suit and all of that. So they had to have known. I mean, Ferguson has been no friend of Amazon and Jeff Bezos. They had to have known some of this was coming. I wonder what you make of the case that maybe they realize you would. Wouldn't be cooperative with them at all, that there wouldn't be.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And who was they?

[Krystal Ball]

Just people like whoever was pushing for you to be, quote, unquote, fired. They said, well, he's not getting along with Andrew Perdisa.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, look, I don't know who the they is, but I can tell you how I spent the last couple weeks. About a week and a half ago, I called out Jeff Bezos by name for his blithe statement that the Post editorial page would focus on free markets and personal liberties. And I said, hey, man, when I think about free markets and personal liberties, I don't think about the Post editorial page. I think about the vending machines in Amazon warehouses that dole out painkillers and not potato chips. Bernie Sanders put out a report showing that people are literally working so fast, so hard, their hands stop working, their shoulders stop working, the discs in their back bulge and break. And I called them out. I got 2.5 million views on it. That was the last thing I did. A little before that, I pressed Chairman Ferguson, who, you're right, did a great thing in ratifying the merger guidelines, which had special protections for labor in them. That was a good move, and I respect them for it. But my beef with him, as it were, has been that he is in a position to do extraordinary things for affordability in this country. And I was disappointed. He'd spent the first four months, weeks, not saying anything about the price of eggs, about the price of milk, about grocery prices. And I was pressing him to investigate the price of eggs and calling out the fact that eggs in this country, our ability to get them, is controlled in part by what appears to be a duopoly in Europe that controls the supply of layer breeder hens. Since then, DOJ said they're investigating. I think it's a great move. But I think it's pretty notable that the firing comes now after I've been calling out duopolies in agriculture and the way Mr. Bezos treats his employees on the warehouse floor and not in week one or two. Along with Gwen Wilcox at nlrb, I.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Think your point about the timing, which Emily picked up on, is really important because I can easily be persuaded that a president should actually be able to control the various agencies within the executive. Like, if Bernie Sanders had magically won the White House, I wouldn't want some retrograde commissioners on the NLRB and FTC thwarting the Bernie Sanders agenda that the people had elected. So, on a level of principle, and I bet most of our viewers would probably agree, on a level of principle, fine. But. So your point about the timing is right, because if that's the principle, then he just, like, day one, he would fire you on day one. But the MAGA world, of which J.D. vance is a strong element, has liked your work, has liked Lena Khan's work, has liked Jonathan Kantor's work over at doj, Doha Meki's work. And so therefore, you stuck around for a while. The fact that you're now getting booted, I think, has some political implications, raises the question that Emily was asking, like, well, where did this come from? From? Because let's say, what is. And it goes back to my original question, what does getting rid of you accomplish? And I'm curious. So on the commission, let's say you're reappointed. You're back there. I would imagine that you would, you know, you might disagree and might agree with Ferguson and some of the others. They can then move to vote 3, 2 and move something forward. But you would be party to deliberations. You'd be able to come on this program and talk about what's going on. And you might also hear, oh, hey, by the way, we got a call from the White House that said that these deliberations are out the window. We actually want you to drop this case. Right, Right. So having you there is kind of intel for the public. Because you'd be able to say, actually, actually, Ferguson is for this enforcement action against Amazon or whatever, or Facebook or Elon Musk. But Elon Musk called. Precisely. So what would be the role of a minority commissioner? Are you a potted plant or is there some reason for you to be there?

[Sagar Enjeti]

No, I think there's two elements that need to be looked at here. The first is our ability to keep suing the folks we're suing in the face of this claim by the president that he can give us the boot anytime for any reason.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Because like you said, Chairman Ferguson has said, I'm gonna keep on suing Amazon, I'm gonna keep on suing Meta. Excellent. What happens if he gets the phone call that says, well, actually, you know, we just nominated Jeff's guy for osha. And the other thing he said is, you got a pesky lawsuit because literally, they just. Literally, they nominated the guy to run osha, the one agency that's consistently called out out the horrors on Amazon warehouse floors. The guy is a former Amazon executive.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, that's right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And so, hey, Jeff is also saying he wants this lawsuit to go away. And by the way, what's that lawsuit about? That's about small business sellers. If you're a small business seller, you have to be on Amazon. It's a monopolist. It is forcing them to pay up to 50 cents on every dollar they sell on the site and making it impossible to offer lower prices. And so whether or not Chairman Ferguson wants to bring the lawsuit, if he get fired for just saying no, what's the point? Right. And so it's more. It is both calling out misconduct, but it is also about laying the groundwork for overt corporate pardons and corruption. You know, I saw Rohit Chopra. He talked about this when he was on earlier.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And I'm actually surprised, Ryan, you mentioned you could see the sort of unitary executive theory about control over some of these independent agencies from the President. I'm surprised that you say that. I'm really curious what you make of that because that to me seems like maybe the biggest ideological difference between me and you guys is that, you know, Eric Schmidt, who's been very good on antitrust from a kind of populist perspective, did a thread agreeing with Andrew Ferguson yesterday where he goes back to Humphrey's executor, says it's bad law. It undermines the President's centralized authority, is granted under Article 2 and creates very power unaccountable federal agencies. That is the key to the entire fight against the administrative state, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But that is the project of the conservative movement and saying this is the growth under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt that has created, as they we say, unaccountable bureaucrats, whatever. And so by firing you, for example, the President is reasserting whether or not he has any quibbles with you. This is a matter of taking Humphrey's executor to the Supreme Court.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm curious what your defense of these independent agencies is. I think it's a good one. I disagree with it. I think it's a reasonable one. But these agencies existing as independent from presidential power.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Who is Eric Adams? Pardon me? Who is Eric Schmidt?

[Krystal Ball]

Senator Eric Schmidt.

[Jorgem]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

What does he care about? Right. I'm pretty sure he doesn't care about the small businesses we're trying to defend. Defend in the Amazon case. I'm pretty sure, you know, a world where a merger goes through, if A billionaire donor has the President's ear is a great world for the magnificent Seven. It's a shitty world for startups and small businesses. But I have some news for Mr. Schmidt, which is if the President can fire me for any reason at any time, he can also fire Jerome Powell for any reason reason at any time. And so I frankly don't care about Mr. Schmidt. Not one bit. I do care about a bunch of retirees who have their 401ks loaded up with a bunch of stocks in the stock market. And I am deeply sympathetic to the chaos they're experiencing right now. And so I agree with you. Look, I understand folks who want the President to be empowered to have their agenda be made law. Understood. But this is about corruption, it's about chaos and it is about having happen. My worry is that what happened with Eric Adams at DOJ happens at ftc. Let me make one concrete example. So you guys know about the Kroger Albertsons merger?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So we had one of the largest grocery chains in the country try to.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Merge with so Wisconsin native here.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

One of the third or fourth largest grocery market chains and most thousands of small towns that have taken the biggest chain merge it with the next biggest chain. We had an executive under oath say they're jacking up the price of milk and eggs above inflation. We had union leaders saying I can't negotiate higher wages if I can't point to the guy down the street paying higher wages. You would not believe the amount of political pressure that was sent to us in the form of letters. Some folks saying yeah, block it. Other folks saying, including prominent Democrats, let this thing go right ahead. Right. But we still blocked it because we can call balls and strikes without fear that some mega donor is going to give us the boot via the White House.

[Krystal Ball]

And this was under Biden?

[Sagar Enjeti]

It was under Biden. Yeah. And what happens with the next mega grocery store merger? I'm worried that it's not going to matter if it jacks up prices. It's not going to matter if it pulls down wages. What's going to matter is what billionaire donor has the President's ear. And I'm glad you raised Joe Biden because I think this problem of money and policy politics is not limited to the Republicans. I think a lot about what happened during Vice President Harris's campaign when what Chair Khan did for the American people was wildly popular. Who likes not being able to cancel a subscription unless they call on Tuesday mornings, you know, between 10:00am and noon. Right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That's the breaking point's. Premium policy, though. You have to get Sager on the phone.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's right. You have to tweet at him and he has to follow you back. Who likes non competes? Who likes cancer companies trying to corner the market on cancer tests or companies trying to monopolize treatments for Pompey's disease? Nobody. And yet Vice President Kamala Harris would not say, I will keep Lina Khan on as the chair of my ftc. What's that about? It's about money.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. She had Reid Hoffman.

[Sagar Enjeti]

She did indeed.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, read Hoffman out there. Said. So where does this go now? Are you, have you filed suit?

[Krystal Ball]

What are you doing today? Are you going to try to go back in? Is it like a USAID situation?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Good question. So I'm not going to put the security guard at the front desk in the position of having to listen to me or listen to the White House. Right. I'm not going to do it to that guy. And so what I'm doing is calling out the fact this opens the door to corporate pardons, that this was not an effective legal firing, that I remain an FT commissioner and we'll soon be filing suit to make that clear for everyone involved.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

And what's the legal argument?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So much as people are trying to overrule Humphrey's executor in their heads, Humphrey's executor is still good law. And the day the Supreme Court says it's not, and the President says you're gone, I'm gone. No problem. Right. But until that day, I am still there. I will say something about Chairman Ferguson, who I do agree on and I think genuinely cares about working people. When he was nominated to the Senate, he was asked, do you think Humphrey's executor is good law? He said it is. And he also said the only people who can change Supreme Court law is the Supreme Court.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So I believe in that. And that's what I'm gonna go to court to try to reinforce.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

You think this was Trump kind of pushing back on Roberts statement? Like Roberts came out with a statement saying, saying you can't stop all this tweeting about impeaching judges. And then Trump kind of ramps it up. I mean, who knows? Cuz Trump, it's whoever he talks to last.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. I mean, Jeffrey's executor is such a. It is seen in the conservative movement as such a foundational ruling for the creation of everything that Elon Musk right now says he opposes. I mean, he's a crony capitalist. He's not you know, we don't have to get into any of that. But you know, it's, it's just to me, I imagine they always, you know, Russ Vogt and Stephen Miller always envisioned somehow finding a way to get Humphreys executive, which is why Ferguson was asked about it, because it was. I mean, this is a target of the conservative legal movement and the greater conservative movement and has been for decades.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, I guess. Last point. I'm curious for your take on this. I agree with the principle that a president should be able to be the president and execute his vision within the law. My concern from the right's attack on the administrative state is they're not worried about more efficiently creating an executive that can enact legislation and the will of the people. They want to destroy the administrative state. They want to end the capacity of the government to be able to govern so that even if there is a will from the public to go after corporate power, all of a sudden they don't have the capacity anymore to do that. Right. What from your perspective inside the government, what would it take to denude the FTC of the capacity to actually take on corporate power even if Ferguson wanted to?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, look, this is a great first step in that effort. I watched the Republican party, you know, as closely as, maybe not as closely as you do, but quite closely. And you're right, there is an element of rural pharmacists, rural grocers, working people, people in unions who voted for the President because they wanted to make sure they could pay the rent. Right. That is not the wing that won here. You're right. There's folks who want to have a unitary executive, but there's also folks who want to marry that executive with corporate.

[Krystal Ball]

Corporate power, yes, that's important.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And just look at the numbers here. They are grotesque. You have ELON Musk donating $280 million to the president. Again, I'm the guy who enforces the privacy rules against Elon Musk. You have Jeff Bezos million bucks to the inauguration, $20 million for the first lady. At least that was the cut documentary and just licensed episodes for the Apprentice. You think he's not going to place a phone call to the White House saying, saying, look, I got two lawsuits against me from the ftc. Would be great if that was one. You think it's not going to happen. And if you look at the law, because we've been talking about Supreme Court precedents, corruption isn't just about the actual act Eric Adams style of quid pro quo. It is also about avoiding the appearance of corruption. And that is what's being defeated today. The ability for us to have the appearance of independence and not be fair minded. People trying to promote a fair market and call balls and strikes. That's what's happening here if we lose. But we will contest this and I think we'll win.

[Krystal Ball]

Super, super interesting. Thank you for giving us your first interview. Thank you. Eager to see where this goes.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Catch him tonight on Aaron Burnett and then later, Chris Hayes. Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Tonight I'll be on with Chris.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Oh, okay.

[Krystal Ball]

Looking forward to that.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Alvaro Bedoya]

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[Emily Crystal]

All right, I want you to use this tip to find moments of self care time in your busy day. Brought to you by the all new Nissan Murano. The colors we wear can impact our mood, like a quick little rundown of how different colors affect us. Yellow equals optimism and focus Orange energy and confidence Blue calm and productivity Red excitement and boldness Green balance and good decision making. Green is also positive vibes. So if you wake up one morning, you're trying to get ready for work or your day and you're just feeling kind of blah. Maybe throw on a color that lifts your mood. Or try a different outfit that you know you feel your best in. Who cares if you even wore it the other day? If it's an awesome outfit, give it a go again. Listen to four Things with Amy Brown wherever you get your podcasts for more of this episode brought to you by the all new Nissan Mirage.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Know let's be honest, most of us have a love hate relationship with wired bras. We love the lift, but hate the digging. We love the support, but hate feeling trapped. Well, Nyx just changed everything with Freeflex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Free Flex features a revolutionary flexible wire that moves when you move, bends when you bend, and keeps everything exactly where you want it. No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses. And because it's from Nyx, it's available in sizes for every body. Experience the first wired bra you'll actually want to wear all day. Visit nyx.com for 15% off your order with Free Flex 15. That's kn ix.com code freeflex15 for 15% off nix.com all right, that was Alvaro Bedoya. That's it for us.

[Krystal Ball]

Still going through those JFK files. That's right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

We forgot to cover that.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, we were.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Didn't forget.

[Krystal Ball]

We didn't forget. Right. But we planned to cover it. But the volume of documents and the ostensible lack of redactions is fairly impressive. It doesn't mean we're going to get significant new information out of it. But we did want to read the Jefferson Morley statement Ren you sent this morning and I think it's helpful. Jefferson Morley is probably just say it's fair to describe him as the preeminent living Kennedy assassination researcher. He wrote, quote, the first JFK files released of 2025 is an encouraging start. We now have complete versions of approximately a third of the redacted JFK documents held by the National Arch Archives. Rampant over classification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions. Though we have not viewed every document, seven to 10 JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record. These long secret records shed new light on JFK's mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald. The release does not include 2/3 of the promised files, nor any of the 5/ IRS record, nor any of the 2,400 recently discovered FBI files. Nonetheless, this is the most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the 1990s. And that is a better sort of report from the trenches. I'm sure Jefferson Morley was up all night. This one was Last edited at 9:42pm Put that statement out on X with the Mary Farrell Foundation.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

He told me CNN finally reached out to him.

[Krystal Ball]

Fabulous. Wow. Interesting, but kind of a mix. It sounds like a mixed bag, but one that's mixed enough to be positive. So it's a crazy volume of things to go through. There is all kinds of like armchair quarterbacking happening on X right now. People are that old Ramparts magazine excerpt that people have been circulating thinking that it's some new evidence of CIA connections to I think Israel in that case. So there's a lot of stuff floating around, but I think it's valuable to.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

So much of this was already released like you said, though a third of the remaining documents that we know of we can get into what we don't know of. So that's good and keep it coming. Jeff was telling me after this is over, he wants to get back to broader reporting like he was doing in the 1980s before spending 40 years dedicated to this. Great to have him back in the.

[Krystal Ball]

Game, I mean, and I'm just looking forward to seeing more and more from him on this. The last thing I wanted to recommend was I meant to mention this in the block when we were talking about the courts, but over at the Volok conspiracy, Josh Blackmon had, I thought, a very interesting case. He said the constitutional crisis is a coin with two sides. Trump causes judges to overact and the judges caused Trump to overreact. And any resolution must be bilateral, not unilateral. Roberts could deescalate the situation by promptly reversing some of these out of control lower court rulings, but instead he would rather sit on his hands and pontificate. I've long said that the Chief justice is living in a different reality than the rest of us. This episode proves it. There are three co equal branches of government. The judiciary is not supreme. The only reason I wanted to point that out is it's true. In conservative circles, especially conservative legal circles, people are increasingly very frustrated with John Roberts and see him as somebody who's like would maybe be described as like a, I don't know, a Dispatch or Bulwark reader, somebody who's kind of doesn't understand what time it is, to borrow the phrase from a lot of people on the right. And I don't think Volok Blackmon writing in the Volok conspiracies is either entirely wrong just or be frustrated by Roberts jumping in here and not jumping in when there are efforts to impeach Clarence Thomas or whomever else. If you're Republican appointed justice, seems like those concerns would maybe prompt equal responses. But anyway, this is a huge trend.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

However, okay, last however, let's do it. The effort to impeach Clarence Thomas was over corruption. And so from Robert's perspective, where he's saying we do know not impeach judges over rulings, that actually stands outside the scope of that.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, I see what you're saying.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Yeah, they were going after Clarence Thomas and I'm sure Roberts was actually very upset with Clarence Thomas for constantly getting caught taking all of these trips with billionaires who had business before the court and they didn't just have business before the court were central to the entire political strategy of revamping the court, buying his neighbor's house. This is old school corruption. And so it is not out of the norms or the precedents of American jurisprudence to impeach judges over corruption. So I think that that's why Roberts could be forgiven for not not jumping out and saying, hey, we don't impeach judges for corruption. Because actually we do.

[Krystal Ball]

No, we're not going to blackmail addresses that in the pieces by saying that the AOC wasn't the aoc one wasn't like, I don't know if he would use this word, but good faith because it was just Thomas and we could have an entire argument about this. It was just Thomas and Alito and not Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Ketanji, Brown Jackson, who had had similar disclosure lapses that I think they corrected. Yeah. So anyway, right.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

But there's a disclosure lapse and then there's taking a bunch of gifts from people. Like there's an effort to like shoehorn it into a paperwork violation or. But it's like the problem was robbing the bank. The problem was not filing paperwork saying that you robbed the bank.

[Krystal Ball]

Read the piece. Yeah, right. And I will argue about it later. Maybe we can argue about that in the future. There you go. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. That was a long addendum. Sorry everyone for taking us down the rabbit hole. But you know, right. Sometimes it's fun to tag things on a little bit.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

That's right. And we'll see you on Friday.

[Krystal Ball]

Sounds.

[Jorgem]

Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you, why is.

[Krystal Ball]

My cat not here and I go in and she's eating my lunch? Or if hypnotism is real, you will.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

[Jorgem]

But what's inside a black hole?

[Krystal Ball]

Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in.

[Jorgem]

The new I Heart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorgem, as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or.

[F]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

Reality TV and social media have love all wrong. So what really makes relationships last? On this episode of Dope Labs, poet and relationship expert Young Pueblo breaks down.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The psychology of love and provides eye.

[Krystal Ball]

Opening insights and advice we all love need.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

You should not be postponing your happiness.

[Krystal Ball]

Your greatest happiness is not necessarily going.

[Sagar Enjeti]

To, like, come from a relationship.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Your partner should add to your happiness, but your happiness is really coming from within you.

[Krystal Ball]

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

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Hey, what's up, y'all?

[Krystal Ball]

This is Eric Andre, but I made.

[Sagar Enjeti]

A podcast called Bombing about absolutely tanking on stage.

[Krystal Ball]

I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Bombing on stage, bombing in public, Bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she jumped on stage and threw a big haymaker.

[Krystal Ball]

Punch to my nose.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

Listen to Bombing with Eric Andre on.

[Krystal Ball]

Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on.

[Alvaro Bedoya]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Krystal Ball]

You get your podcasts.