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Thom Tillis Said He Would Kill Trump’s Slush Fund. What Happened?! | Receipts Live
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- [00:02]
A
Wallet feeling light after the holidays? Recovery starts with TikTok slash and free Pick products, share the link and watch the price drop to zero. Download TikTok, search, slash free and start slashing today.
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B
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and I'm joined by Catherine Rappel, who's the author of Receipts, the must read newsletter on all things in the economy. We're actually not going to talk about your newsletter. Well, we can, we can. I will.
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A
We can.
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B
I mean, yeah, sure, yeah, people like Elon, but today we're going to talk about a couple things. I'll go through them just so people have what we know as a tease for things to stick around for. Going to talk about the bill last night that passed the Senate, which funds ice. A bunch of Republican senators who insisted, insisted that they could not vote for this unless they put the clamps down on Trump's slush fund for the anti weaponization fund, whatever he's calling it. They ended up voting for the thing without any restrictions on that. We're also gonna be talking about the jobs numbers, better than expected, but still some signs that the economy needs a little bit of a boost. And then we're going to be talking about Catherine's favorite topic in the world, which is data deletion. She never stops talking or writing about data deletion. And it's important. There's a whole host of things that are happening on that front. And finally, can you bulldoze the Statue of Liberty if you are the government and get away with it? Our DOJ says yes, we'll get to that at the end. But first, let's talk about what happened last night. So did you follow the Votorama by any chance?
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A
I, I was not following it live, no, but I was catching up this morning. Yeah, but I don't know, I mean, like, on the one hand it's not super surprising, but were you following it as it was happening, blow by blow?
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B
No, absolutely not. Because it happened at like 3am and 4am and I, and I'm, you know, maybe if I were in my early 20s and had nothing else to do, perhaps, but I'm, I'm a sane human being and I can read about it. The next morning I woke up, I was not terribly surprised. But like, still, I think it's worth commenting on what exactly transpired. So backstory here is that a bunch of Republicans who have been jilted by Trump, who've been pushed out of office by Trump, who have been embarrassed by Trump insisted that they were going to use this opportunity, this bill to pass more funding for ICE in order to get some restrictions placed on that 1.8 billion dollar is a trillion dollar. Billion dollar weaponization fund. And then they put a bunch of amendments up for consideration and none of them passed. Now Tim last night did a video on Bill Cassidy who was one of the ones who just sort of buckled under pressure. But the biggest one may be Thom Tillis. And so I want to play Thom Tillis's video in which he insisted this was a red line for him. And then on the other side we will talk about what the hell happened here. So let's watch Thom Tillis weaponization fund. Are you if this does not get added to the bill, could you support passage?
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C
No, I'm not going to, I'm not going to vote to get off that vote to get on it with the goal of potentially getting an amendment done or supporting some other members amendment.
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B
So why is this so important to get this, get the, to target the weaponization fund here when the, when the president is it because the president has kept this option open?
- [03:12]
C
Well, even the AG has said that it's done so I don't know why we just don't codify it. So Democrats are not raising the speculation that it can come back at some point. If the AG has said that then why not codify it? It doesn't seem to be a cross purposes with the admin and it takes that argument away from the Democrats. That's a win win in my opinion.
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B
How do you feel about. Yeah, how do you feel about him?
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C
What about Todd Blanche?
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B
And you know, could he get through the committee? Would he have your support? Could he get through the floor?
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A
Floor?
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C
Well, I think, I actually believe that getting this issue off the table improves Todd's chances of getting through judiciary and getting through the floor. If this is still out there, can you imagine what the Democrats are going to do to that man during a confirmation hearing?
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B
Well, dear viewer, they did not codify. It didn't happen. So why not, Catherine?
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A
I don't know. Because they're a bunch of spineless wimps. I genuinely have no rational explanation for it. This is not the first time that Thom Tillis has talked a big talk and gotten lots of admiring headlines and news coverage about how there's finally a Republican standing up to Trump and maybe he regrew his spine because he's on his way out, he's retiring from the Senate. And then of course he disappointed in the middle of the night. He disappointed or did what he was always bound to do. The other example of this that I'm thinking of, of course, has to do with Jerome Powell. Tillis said that he was not going to allow any Fed nominees, any Trump Fed nominees to move forward until it was very clear that the political investigation, criminal investigation is into Jerome Powell was kaput, over and done with, put to bed without any questions. And the administration dropped it, but then made a bunch of comments about how like, I mean, like, they officially dropped it, but then they said publicly, the president himself, as well as Jeanine Pirro, who had spearheaded this thing, said publicly, oh, but of course we can bring it back. You know, they ceded no ground on, like, this was inappropriate, this is, you know, or, or even like they could have done the, I don't know, the face saving thing and said, oh, we looked into it because it's our due diligence to do so, and we found nothing and we are moving on and we're glad any questions were put to rest. No, that's not what happened. They said, like, we're gonna keep at it. You know, we're and, and basically continue to threaten Powell. And Tillis was like, sure, that seems good enough to me. And, and again, like, he got all of these kudos for standing up to Trump and then in the end did not stand up to Trump and the same thing happened again. I don't. Do you have any theory about. Yeah, no.
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B
I mean, it's, that's the Occam's Razor theory. They just are too scared to take a stand. Even the ones who are out of. Are, are their way, on their way out of office or have been humiliated by Trump, they will go through incredible contortions to just be team players. The sort of sequencing of these votes did really suggest that leadership in this case, John Thune, was allowing some members to vote certain ways so that they could at least posture that they cared about this weaponization fund. And, but not enough ever to make sure that any restrictions on the fund actually passed. And, you know, I would argue almost that this is worse than the Powell situation, because in this case, yeah, Todd Blanche has said, we're, we're not going to do this. It's dead, period. But, like, literally within 24 hours, Trump is in the Oval Office saying, I love the fund. Like, we need the fund. And is Todd Blanche going to really just say, action, President, my credibility is on the line. I've said this is dead. You can't bring this back. No, of course not. So the idea that this is dead and dormant is silly to connect this back, though, to the sort of premise of this show and of your newsletter, which is like, what does this mean for the economy? You've written about this idea that corruption, and this is a form of corruption, really. It's just taxpayer dollars and spending it on people who either beat up cops or who are your ostensible allies, or maybe even Republican senators who believe that they were harmed by some of the investigations. Jack Smith, investigations into Trump, how corruption can be corrosive to the economy. Can you sort of elaborate on that here?
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A
Absolutely. And just to double down on the initial premise here, which is that there's a lot of corruption happening here. It's not just with this $1.8 billion fund itself. The Trump administration also said that it's going to maintain this so called immunity agreement, which was part of the settlement to have the IRS never again audit Donald Trump, which means de facto, at least if you read it at face value, that means that Donald Trump himself never has to pay taxes again, or neither he nor his family members or companies have to pay taxes again because of the irs, can never audit it to check if it's right, then maybe zero taxes is correct from here until perpetuity. And all of those kinds of agreements, all of those kinds of actions and weaponization of government, payoffs of friends and allies, punishment of perceived enemies, all of those things are corrosive to the economy, to our fiscal picture, because they undermine trust in rule of law. So just to take, you know, the very, very narrow example of the IRS immunity agreement, there is this idea of something called tax morale, that people pay taxes because, like, they think it's part of their patriotic duty, their obligation. It's, it's part of membership in a civil society. And they pay taxes and they, they believe that everyone who is a good citizen pays taxes as well. This kind of thing erodes that morale, that public trust, and on the margin, probably increases the likelihood that people cheat on their taxes, as do some of the other things that the Trump administration has done to, for example, you know, dismantle enforcement of the tax code for very, very wealthy people or complex partnerships and things like that. All of those things will be bad in the long run, or even the near, for that matter, for our fiscal picture, because it makes it more likely that people cheat on their taxes. That's just the fiscal picture. You asked about the broader economy. So if people think that everyone else is cheating out there or everyone else is getting ahead by calling in favors to the White House, to their buddies, that's how you actually succeed as a business. That degradation of rule of law has massive distortions on the U.S. economy in a few different ways. And actually, don't just take my word for it. There was a, an economics Nobel Memorial Prize awarded, I think it was. Was it last year, I'm pretty sure. I don't know. Time runs together. But basically for this idea that there's a connection between democracy and rule of law and economic outcomes. And it's, it has to do with the fact that, like, businesses should be spending their time thinking about how to develop products people want, how to have more efficient whatever management and processing and manufacturing techniques and things like that. That's how they should be spending their time. That's, that's the invisible hand, right? If instead they are spending their time by thinking about, like, well, how do we govern our business? How do we orient our business so that we either please the president or avoid pissing him off? Just as an example, like, think about how much time Tim Cook spent probably in meetings coming up with that stupid golden glass trophy. Like, that's time that he could have been spending developing the next iPhone. You know, the next.
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B
You think that took, you think that meeting took a long time? I feel like that one was a short one. Let's make a goal.
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A
Well, maybe that particular detail, but I bet they went into a lot of meetings, you know, like, carefully plotting out, like, how do we help this guy? Not just that, but, you know, like his time spent flying to the White House to watch the Milan the Melania documentary. You know, like, that's not a good use of one of the most important CEOs in the world, time. So, like, little things like that.
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B
It was one of the most influential documentaries of all time.
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A
So I'm sure it really improved.
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B
Can I ask you a question about this? So, yeah, let me just pick up here, because you, you raised the idea of the IRS settlement component of the fund, of the deal. Sorry, the idea that Trump will never be audited by the IRS in perpetuity and his sons and whatever. And again, that like, component has not really gotten as much press coverage as the slush fund weaponization. And that component, Todd Blanche, has been very clear. We're keeping that one, even if we get rid of, rid of the one billion dollar fund. And it's like, it's kind of shocking to me in a way that they're cool with that. But is it possible? I was just thinking about as you're talking about, I mean, I can imagine a situation in which this becomes sort of a de facto gift that the Trump DOJ starts handing out to people who they like or businesses they like, being like, oh, you know, we're gonna settle this suit with, you know, whatever bioweapon manufacturer that Don Jr. Is sitting on the board of. And by the way, as part of the settlement, we're going to also give you the same arrangement that we gave to the Trump Organization. No more audits, because that's, that's now a thing that we do. And then suddenly you have, like, little handouts from the IRS all over the place that are formalized. It's wild. It's like an inverse of Richard Nix, Richard Nixon, Watergate, where they sic the IRS on people. In this case, it's the inverse of that. They just tell the IRS to never touch them.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think that's possible. I hope it doesn't happen. But we've seen a version of that happen with other enforcement agencies like the sec, dropping lots of investigations into various people who are politically aligned with the President or, I don't know, happen to donate a bunch of money to the President. So it's happening through enforcement, it's happening through pardon power. Like with the cz, you know, crypto guy who gave a ton of money to the President and then. And then got pardoned and now is back in business with the President. So there are a lot of ways in which, yeah, this is not just about punishing enemies a la the Richard Nixon model. It's also about rewarding friends. And again, those kinds of things are distortionary. If the way that you get ahead is by cheating that. Whether that means cheating on your taxes. And so therefore, you have more, you know, capital available to spend. Cheating your customers, defrauding customers. And therefore, that's a good way to, like, get more revenue or reduce your costs if you're like, not. Not actually delivering on your obligations. If you get ahead by cheating, that puts at a disadvantage everyone who is trying to get by. Honestly, that's really the problem here, that you want an economy that is built on rule of law so you have honest competition so that the best products, the best run companies actually rise to the top. You know, it's like survival of the fittest and that they're not advantaged or disadvantaged based on their political standing or their. Their relationship with the President. That, again, like, this is not something I'm making up. This is what happens in, in lots of developing countries that have major problems with trust and with corruption and with tax evasion, that the companies that do well are the ones that cheat, and that ends up with much worse outcomes overall for economic growth and for living standards.
- [15:36]
B
The other thing that you said that sparked another thought bubble for me was about how much time CEOs are going to have to or are spending trying to figure out how to get in Trump's good graces. And I want to talk about this briefly. Then we got to go to break because we got to pay the bills. But. But there was some interesting development on the tariff front, the tariff refund front specifically, which is that the administration is now arguing that, yeah, we'll reward refunds as mandated by the Supreme Court, but you're going to have to file individually for them. And so if you're a company who feels like you've been wronged or you've lost money because of the tariffs, you can bring a claim, but it has to be individual claim, and we're going to adjudicate them individually. And you made the very valid point in the newsletter. That boy, that creates some calculations internally for the, for the board here. Do we want to file a claim against the Trump administration? Like, will we be Persona non grata going forward for this very punitive president? I find, like, that to be just a sort of incredibly chilling complaint.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. And just to clarify, it's not about filing a claim, it's about filing a lawsuit. You have to actually take. Yeah, exactly. There is a system that they set up, like, this portal where you're supposed to be able to go in and enter a bunch of information and receipts or whatever that show I paid these tariffs, and these are tariffs that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional and the government should give that money back. Now. Like, even that to me seemed unfairly onerous. Like, the government has the records of who, who they collected money from. They should be able to automatically refund that money. They're making people go through this rigmarole of this portal. Fine, it was annoying. But you know what's way, way, way more annoying is having to actually take the administration to court and get a ruling from a judge saying, you know, going through, like, even if the judge is ultimately going to say, yeah, obviously this was unconstitutional. My, My, you know, like, superiors at the Supreme Court said this was unconstitutional. You know, you. You are one of the victims. I agree. And then, like, even if the judge actually, you know, goes along with it, which seems, as I understand it, relatively likely, it's still expensive. It is time consuming. And to your point, it's going to put more of a target on the back of these companies. And already there were companies that talked to me about their fears of. About just filing for that through that online portal. They're like, well, if I file, am I going to get audited? Are they going to look through, like, all of the other tariffs that I've paid over the years? There's one company that I, I wrote about, actually, in a recent newsletter a week or so ago about this, where they basically said, like, we think we're in the right, but it's going to be so expensive to, like, go through a potential audit of our tariffs that it's. It's not worth it to us.
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B
Right.
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A
And that was when, like, again, this is the relatively lower friction process of just this online portal. There were companies that were afraid of doing it. Now you have to take the administration to court. And Donald Trump himself has explicitly said he is paying attention to who files for a refund and who doesn't, even though everybody who paid these taxes, who's paid, well, tariffs, yes, taxes, is legally, constitutionally entitled to a refund. Donald Trump said he will pay attention. So, yeah, this is about. This is a chilling effect. They're dragging their feet. They don't want to give the money back. And they are going to basically weaponize confusion or fear about whether people are entitled to that money.
- [19:25]
B
It's a lot. It sucks. But if you're out there and you're thinking of filing, hit up Catherine to talk about it. Yeah, good fodder for our future user. All right, we got to take a quick break. As I mentioned, we paid the bills here. This ain't free, folks. A lot of production value and pro, you know, goes into this. A lot of people are working on the show, as you can tell by our hair and makeup in the sets that we're on. So we're gonna be playing an ad, and on the flip side, we will turn to talk about the jobs numbers. You know, finding a doctor you actually like feels like discovering a diamond in the rough. And, yeah, you want someone who's in network, you want someone who's nearby, you want someone with open time slots. You want someone who's kind of nice and cool and easy to get along with and doesn't scare the hell out of you. But let's be honest, that's just the start. You also deserve someone who really listens, who makes you feel comfortable, who calms your nerves. Your diamond, the rough doctor. Thankfully, they do exist, and finding them is easy. You just got to go to zocdoc. Zocdoc is a free app, and A website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone who you love. Take this as someone who has grown up with two parents who were doctors. I love them. They're great. Finding people like that, it's a life changer. So stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to zocdoc.com bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor who you love. Today may not be my parents, but it could be close. That's Z O c d o c.com bulwarktakes zocdoc.com bulwarktakes Thanks. Okay. You know, I, I kind of threw my parents under the bus a little bit there. But they're good doctors. They're good doctors. They under prescribed me when I was young. I felt like, you know, I don't know if you ever know about this, but when your parents are doctors basically and they see an ailment in their child, they're like, you'll be all right. I've seen so much worse. And so you end up never getting properly medicated. And that probably explains a lot of my neuroses right now. But Zach.
- [21:24]
A
Doctor. I have the opposite experience with my parents. My parents are not in medicine, but my mother is a bit of a hypochondriac on behalf of her children. So yes, I, I got taken to the doctor constantly as a child, which, I don't know, was it great for my immune system? Who knows.
- [21:45]
B
Sometimes you just gotta let them ride it out. Well, anyways, I love my parents. I love Zoc. Doc. People go to Zocdoc. It's great product. All right, Jobs numbers came out today. Look, let's just be straight. Definitely beat expectations. We got 172000 non farm payroll jobs in the month of May, as you can see there. After a few kind of bleak months over the past year, year and a half. No, yeah, year. We are now looking at what looks like a rebound here. The expectations were roughly about 88 000. The thing that stood out to me was two things. One was good and one was not so good. One was that the sectors that we saw some hiring in weren't just health care. And health care has been basically like propping up the entire economy. There were more sectors there now. It wasn't like they were service sectors primarily. Which means people are spending a lot of money and we're having to satisfy so like restaurants and things like that. But whatever. It's not just health care. The bad thing is that wage growth is not keeping up with inflation still. And I forget I don't have the numbers right in front of me. I think it was like 3.4% on wage growth, and we're about 3.8% on inflation. People can correct me if I'm wrong on that. But overall, this was steadying. I felt like. It felt like this was kind of a relief to see. But we obviously have a lot of progress that we need to have. And looming over all of it, of course, is just what's happening with the. With the oil market.
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A
Yeah. So a few things that I would point out here. You're right. It's not just healthcare that's good. The big growth in leisure and hospitality that may be related to the World cup, you know, some hiring ahead of that. Those are real jobs. Yeah. So those are real jobs. So I'm not. I'm not saying, like, that doesn't matter, but there is a question about, like, how sustainable is that? Is it just about this expected surge in customers that'll eventually fade? Who knows? Local hiring. Local. Excuse me, local government hiring was up. I'm not totally sure what that's about. And then.
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B
That's interesting.
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A
Yeah, Yeah. I don't. I haven't looked into that yet. So I don't know exactly if that's some weird seasonality thing or what. But, you know, there are some losses as well. You know, you saw, like, a big decline in transportation employment probably related to the collapse of Spirit Airlines, may it rest in peace. As much as we make fun of Spirit Airlines and we have, there are real people whose jobs were lost. And I am not celebrating that, to be clear. I mean, the other things that are interesting in here are like, what does this mean for the Fed?
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B
Right.
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A
Because as we talked about ad nauseum, Donald Trump is obsessed with cutting interest rates, with making sure that his guy, his new guy over at the Federal Reserve delivers on that promise to cut interest rates. And this jobs report makes it increasingly unlikely that happens. Well, you cut interest rates when the economy is weakening, when you're less worried about inflation per se. There. Those are sort of the conditions on which the Federal Reserve would be stepping on the gas. Cutting interest rates basically means stepping on the gas, sort of stimulating the economy a little bit more, injecting more liquidity into the economy. Instead, what we have happening right now is inflation picking up again, partly because of oil prices. But even if you strip out what's happening with energy and food, as the Fed usually does when it's trying to look at like, what's the underlying trend in inflation? Inflation is still much hotter. It's still north of 3%. I forget what the exact number was in the most recent number in recent reports. So inflation is still hot. And if inflation were hot but the job market were weakening, maybe the Fed would be like, okay, like, we'll err on the side of cutting rates because we're really worried or keeping rates steady anyway, because we're really worried about the job market. And the Fed is supposed to pay attention to both jobs and inflation. This report suggests actually the job market may be kind of okay, you know, you know, knock on a little while. Inflation is. It's really the problem. Inflation and kind of inflation alone. And so maybe that's more motivation to raise rates. And I think that's the question right now. It's not when is the next move going to. It's. Well, it is when is the next move going to happen, but it's not when is the next cut going to happen? It's when is the next rate hike going to happen? So this is probably bad news for that very narrow thing that.
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B
Well, there's a couple other questions. Yeah, I have a couple other questions for you. One is, and this is from the comments. I'm just pulling this up because I'm reading the comments here. People want to know, can we trust these numbers? I. Obviously, yes, I trust these numbers. They're still professionals there. Eg. Antoni is not the head of BLS or whatever, you know, but just why don't you walk through why these numbers should be trusted?
- [26:55]
A
So to be clear, there are a lot of reasons to be nervous about data coming out of this administration, and we can talk through some of those, including.
- [27:04]
B
We'll get to that in a second.
- [27:05]
A
But for this, yeah, for this, I am not worried. The people who work at the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be crying bloody murder, and we would know if they were messing with the data. Um, you know, these are people who are like, very devoted civil servants. I've talked with many of them over the years. They're like very committed nerds with integrity is kind of how I would put it. And so they would. They would tell us if the. The numbers were being messed with. Now, that doesn't mean that the numbers don't have problems there. There's always some margin of error. There are major revisions. They're noisy. And the thing that I'm actually worried about is not like deliberate manipulation of the numbers, but cutting the resources for. With which these kinds of numbers are Produced because the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I forget what the number is, but they've lost like 10 to 20% of their staff since Donald Trump took office. And so when you cut staff, that means that, like, just the resources available to produce the data, to crunch the data go down. The resources available to collect the data, you know, to administer surveys, that goes down. And, and survey response rates have been declining, not just for this survey, but like, for surveys in general because, like, nobody answers the phone anymore. Those have been declining over time. So, like, that means that there's a lot more noise that goes into these surveys. And like, you don't know if the people who are answering the phone are somehow different from people who don't answer the phone. Again, this is, this is like a methodological issue with surveys in general, but for surveys that are market moving, like this one, and for which we, we no longer have like the same number of these dedicated civil servants to, to try to like, knock on doors and, and get people to, to answer these questions. If they're not answering, yeah, it becomes a lot harder. So I'm, I'm worried about them being less accurate, but not because somebody's manipulating the numbers, but just because, like, there are these challenges.
- [29:07]
B
The other question I have is, can we put up Trump's tweet or bleat about this? Can you make sense of this? I'm going to read it for those who are listening. This is Trump with a great jobs report, like just announced. Stocks should go up, not down. That's the way it was for 200 years. Growth does not mean inflation. Exclamation point. How else can a country attain greatness? Question mark, Question mark. Question mark. President DJT I've looked at this, you know, five to six different times, and I'm having trouble understanding. So I'm hoping you can make sense of this.
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A
Okay, so I'm looking at the, the stock prices today.
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B
They're down. Yeah, a fair bit.
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A
Yes. S p is down 1.68. Okay, so this has to do with what I was saying earlier about the Fed. So if the jobs report is pretty good, and so we're no longer super worried about job losses, but inflation is still very, very high. That means. Exactly. They're pricing in a rate hike. And higher rates tend to mean bad things for the stock market. So that's what's going on here. Trump doesn't understand any of it. And look, this stuff is not super intuitive like he's used to.
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B
Well, I mean, he's been in this world for decades. Obviously he should know at this point, but I think he's well, and maybe
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A
not ostensibly, he has economic advisors who can explain these things to him.
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B
Yeah, but. And he has Kevin Hassett who's going to tell him what he wants to hear, sir.
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A
Exactly.
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B
Stock should be going up. Okay, let's talk about data deletion because I was kind of, I was mildly joking about trying to decipher what Trump was reading. You mentioned this idea of data deletion and like, what data should we trust? And we all trust the BLS numbers, I mean, for all the reasons you articulated. But there are clearly cases where the data that the administration is putting out, easy, they're manipulated or altogether removed. And one of the most alarming things that more alarming stories that came across the transit overnight was from the Post, the Washington Post, which was this idea that Trump administration was planning to kind of, I guess mark or categorize about 2.7 million living people in this country illegally as dead.
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A
Yeah, they were going to like bureaucratically execute them. Not, not literally kill them, but kill them on paper by saying, yeah, yeah, they are no longer alive. Exactly.
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B
And what was the reason for them doing to do this?
- [31:46]
A
The idea was if you are unpersoned, if you are no longer existing in government data, you know, in this Social Security database, it becomes a lot harder for you to exist in the real world because you use your Social Security information for lots and lots of things for applying for jobs, for, you know, proving your identity. Not. It's not only about applying for Social Security benefits.
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B
Right.
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A
Think about how often you get asked about. At least I get asked, you know, my Social Security information to go to the doctor and for all sorts of other record keeping. So if that no longer exists, then it makes it much harder to exist as a human in the United States. And the idea was to encourage more immigrants, including, including lawful immigrants, probably mostly lawful immigrants because they're the ones who actually have Social Security numbers to self deport to leave the United States. So you know, again, this is, this is not the only example of this. This is why, like I'm so hot on this issue. This is this very insidious bureaucratic way of distorting how people see the world by messing these kinds of records and data as well as distorting how we experience and live in the world. You know, it's like some of the examples that have happened.
- [33:12]
B
Yeah, give us some, the other examples that we have here. Well, let's go through them. One is ICE reporting death. So basically in the Biden administration, they instructed ICE to start reporting the deaths of people in detention up to 30 days after they left detention. Now, the reason the Biden administration did this is, as I understand, is that they were worried or there was some evidence that ICE was letting people out who were very gravely ill because of the treatment in facilities. And then they were letting them out right before they, you know, suffered a medical lapse of some sort so that they wouldn't have to register that these people died on the facility. So the way to get around doing that is to say ICE now has to monitor and categorize and keep track of deaths that happened 30 days after they leave the facilities. The Trump administration is now saying, basically, we're not going to, we're going to rescind that rule where once you leave the facility, we're not going to monitor you, we're not going to keep track of you. If you die, that's on you. And so that way they get to decrease the number of people who may or may not be, may or may not have fatalities related to their incarceration. So that's one. And then the other one is this ocean monitoring, which you flagged for me, which I hadn't even seen, which. Why don't you just explain that one? Because this one's wild.
- [34:27]
A
Yeah. So this is an existing ocean monitoring system that we have, that we have, I guess, funded the equipment and networks around the world for, to collect data in the Atlantic, the Pacific, that's related to ocean temperatures and to, I don't know, other like geological, climatological, oceanographic. What? I don't, I don't know enough about the science here to know the right terminology, but like to collect data on what's happening in the oceans around the world. And this is partly about climate research, right? To monitor what's happening as a result of global warming and how warm the oceans are getting. But it also has like pretty near term real world functions to understand storms brewing and sea conditions that presumably have other applications beyond saving the planet. But more practical things like is it okay to send a navy somewhere or whatever, you know, like there, there are other forms of applications here that we are now eliminating because, I don't know, I guess it's like too woke to, to pay attention to what happens in the ocean here. So they are dismantling this.
- [35:49]
B
The oceans are so woke. Yeah, that's the problem.
- [35:51]
A
Totally woke. Exactly. You know, a bunch of pinko commies. And in the ocean right there. Anyway. So, like, this is insane to me. And again, this is part of this theme that I keep coming back to that the administration just wants to say, like, well, if we don't measure it, if we don't report it, if we don't collect data on it, it must not be happening. Happening. Like the iconic example of this was of course, when Donald Trump in 2020 said, if we just stop testing people for Covid, we'll stop having cases. Right? This is, right. This is the example that everybody remembers and points to whenever I, you know, draw attention to another one of these kinds of cases. But it is consistent. They do this, they, you know, I have like this massive thread on blue sky, which for better or for worse is like the way that I keep track of all of these kinds of deletions of data or manipulations of data or manipulations of administrative records where I've been tracking like all of the different surveys and records and things that they've been purging or disappearing because it is politically inconvenient to keep track of like suicide, you know, suicidality for gay teenagers. You know, this isn't, this is one of the things like we've stopped tracking or attacks of violence on people who are trans, like things, you know, we don't really want to draw attention to that. Lots of deletions of data related to climate, lots of deletions of data related to hunger. We, we ended this, whatever. It was like 40 year old survey
- [37:31]
B
that, Yes, I remember that one
- [37:34]
A
that, that measures food insecurity. We decided to, you know, abruptly stop collecting that information at exactly the same time that we're kicking off millions of people or soon we'll be kicking off millions of people from food stamps and food prices are going up. So like lots of things we don't want to know the answer to. We stop asking the question or we stop reporting the answers when we do have them available.
- [37:58]
B
And I just want to draw the distinction. There's that which you're talking about, which is pernicious and bad. And then you know, some of this is just silly stupid budget cutting that they're doing indiscriminately with like very little knowledge. So like there's a, there's obviously the screw worm issue. And you, I, I think you did a video with cone on this. I don't know if it's live.
- [38:19]
A
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if it's out yet. But yeah, we talked about this morning.
- [38:22]
B
We're going to tease this for the, for the masses, but I mean that was, there were some doge cuts to the USDA and, and in our monitoring system for this exact type of thing. And you know, that wasn't data deletion. That was just preemptively getting rid of people who track data. And yeah, you know, you think, oh well, we'll save some costs here, but boy, that's going to cost us tremendously down the road. So there's two types of very pernicious developments here. We're at the fun portion of this conversation. I don't know if we can call it fun. The more, the more.
- [38:56]
A
Are you saying you have not been having fun thus far?
- [38:59]
B
No, I've been having fun. It's not that I'm not going to have fun. I just want to make sure that people elevated and serious and we're dealing with very weighty issues. Now we're going to deal with stupid issues. Still waiting though. This is a headline from Idaho. I'm going to put up. Can we put it up on the screen? Let's hope we can do it. Nearly 60 Idahoans are sick after drinking raw milk in past two weeks. Officials say the, the Idaho officials, they said Idaho officials are investigating how near. This is the lead. Idaho officials are investigating how nearly 60 people got sick after drinking raw milk in the past two weeks. Look, I don't know if you need like, you know, real long investigations here. Seems pretty obvious how they got sick. The lead answers itself. They drank raw milk. Like, yeah, I can tell you that when you don't have to spend much money on that one. I can tell you don't drink raw milk people. So that's, that's one. Do you have any, any, any thoughts on raw milk?
- [39:59]
A
I mean I know that our HHS secretary is really into, He's a fan. He's a fan. He's into encouraging other bad habits that like probably would have been discredited. I don't know. Essentially when was Louis Pasteur, I don't know when that, when we started pasteurizing milk. But like we've known for a while. It's probably a good idea to.
- [40:23]
B
Yeah, it's definitely a good idea. Yeah. Fluoride in your toothpaste also helps with your dental stuff.
- [40:29]
A
You know, like you don't even need to get to like the most breaking tech, you know, like break cutting edge vaccines to, to be like, oh, like we're, we're maybe getting bad advice from our agency. He's, he's turning us back to like 100 years or so and encouraging people to do lots of things that are
- [40:48]
B
bad for their bodies, and he's out there shooting videos, or he's picking up rattlesnakes and, like, trying to, like, make out with them. And it's just like, this guy. I can't believe he's running our health. All right, that was one.
- [40:56]
A
And know. I know. Yeah.
- [40:58]
B
The snakes videos drive me crazy. All right, the other one was this tweet from my. My buddy Kyle Cheney at Politico, who has been following the ballroom stuff. This apparently happened in the courtroom, where the judge in this one of these cases says the following. If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors. That was the first thing they saw coming to this country. But the government moved too fast. Nothing can be done. This is a question that she poses to the doj, and the DOJ replies, I think that's right. Yes. So the government's position here is that there is literally no one who has standing in the court of law to stop the government from bulldozing the Statue of Liberty. And, boy, like, I don't know, maybe they're right on legal grounds, but the idea that they're just gonna float, like, hey, you know, if I were the lawyer, I would have been like, you know, we have no plans to do that whatsoever. But, like, they're like, yeah, I think that's right. We could do that.
- [41:53]
A
Yeah.
- [41:53]
B
Yeah.
- [41:53]
A
I mean, and. And, like, I don't know. Is this a Kinsley gaff? I'm not really sure where they, like, accidentally admitted the thing.
- [42:00]
B
Let me just. Let me just push this on you, because I was talking with something about this, and we can end on this one, because. But I am curious. I. I asked someone, what's, like, the craziest thing you think Trump has done well enough? It's not, like, the most damaging and the most pernicious. Right? Just, like, it blows your mind that he did it. And without skipping a beat, this person was like, bulldoze the East Wing. Like, when you think about it, when you just think about it, this is not his house. He doesn't live there. And he just was like, you know what? We're gonna knock down a third of it, and I'm not even gonna wait for permission. I'm just gonna do it, and, you know, we'll figure out what happens after that. It's not his house. Like, I can't even imagine your family's house.
- [42:43]
A
Yeah, Yeah. I don't know that that's the answer I would have given to that question.
- [42:47]
B
But what's.
- [42:50]
A
I don't Know, I'm not talking about damaging.
- [42:52]
B
I'm talking crazy.
- [42:54]
A
Talking crazy. I don't know. I mean, like, if you're in the comments.
- [43:01]
B
I want your. I want your.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah, I. I feel like there are, like, much more impactful things, like bombing a girl's school in Iran and do it or whatever, but horrifying. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. There's a lot of, like, death and destruction that I guess I would think of as more upsetting. But maybe crazy is not the right word. In any event, I think one of the things that's, like, shocking and very personally affecting about both the East Wing bulldozing and this hypothetical destruction of the Statue of Liberty is that it's like, the physical manifestation of things that they are doing more symbolically every day. Like, the idea that they would bulldoze the Statue of Liberty is shocking, but it's also, like, kind of what they are doing in spirit every day, by destroying the lives of immigrants, by turning away immigrants, by slashing legal immigration. You know, the Statue of Liberty is it. It's supposed to be a beacon of welcome, you know, the. The tempest tossed who are coming to our shores or whatever the lines are in the Great Colossus, the Emma Lazarus poem. That's. That's at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. It's supposed to be huddled masses and all of that. You know, that's supposed to be the beacon of welcome to those who are coming here, to those who came here legally in particular. We are destroying the lives of legal immigrants as well as those who are here without authorization. We are turning them away. So in a way, like, is it more upsetting if they tear down the physical statue when they're already destroying everything that it stands for? I don't know. I mean, I think there are people who would be more upset by that than the more abstract problems related to destroying our immigration system and everything that the Statue of Liberty is supposed to signify. But I think it's like. It's just. It. You're seeing it happen in real time. And I think that was what was, at least for me, much more upsetting about the destruction of the East Wing than I realized, because it. Like, it felt like, oh, they're. This. This is it. This is like this concrete symbol of all of the things they're doing. They're just doing it, and they're doing it literally, not just symbolically.
- [45:26]
B
So Catherine had to bring this to an emotionally elevated level when I was just trying to have fun here. So I'm going to Go through the comments. It's okay. I'm gonna read.
- [45:34]
A
Yeah. What do the commenters say is the craziest stuff?
- [45:37]
B
Okay, so we got. We got pardoning the Honduran president coke trafficker. That was pretty crazy. Yeah. East wing, someone says the UFC ring on the south. That was. That is crazy. If you walk by, it's pretty.
- [45:54]
A
But that's. But maybe that's. Look at that Eiffel Tower, right? Like, didn't Trump say.
- [45:59]
B
He said he might just leave it up? Yeah, he might just leave it because
- [46:03]
A
it's the new Eiffel Tower. Like, who needs the Statue of Liberty when you have the UFC ring? Yeah.
- [46:09]
B
We got name on the Kennedy center as being pretty brazen. Although that is apparently coming down right now. Judge has turned that around. Putting his face on the passport and money bill pulls. He has dni. That is legitimately crazy. Driving his motorcade on the reflecting pool. That was a good one. Yeah.
- [46:30]
A
The craziest thing he's done, like.
- [46:32]
B
No, definitely not.
- [46:32]
A
Really? I don't know.
- [46:34]
B
No, no, that was definitely not the craziest. I mean, there's a lot in here. Look, maybe we'll do a video where we sort of rate these things and we can.
- [46:41]
A
We can have a good idea.
- [46:43]
B
Yeah. Alligator, Alcatraz. Now, that wasn't crazy. That was. That was demented. All right, enough of the comments. We love you guys. We love you guys. Appreciate it. All right, Catherine, thank you so much for doing this. I'm glad I could film for jvl. I hope it wasn't too painful for you. For those who watched and contributed, thank you for your contributions and your suggestions here. Oh, Trump Bibles is coming in. That's pretty good. Subscribe to the feed. We have great conversations like this. You get to contribute. We read the comment section. We make you part of the community, and we'll talk to you on next Friday for the next Receipts Live. Take care, everyone.