It Could Happen Here Weekly 236

Summary

It Could Happen Here Weekly 236 - June 13, 2026

Podcast: It Could Happen Here (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Hosts: Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, James Stout, Andrew Sage, Dana Al Kurd (with guests Andrew Lieber, et al.)

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Episode Overview

This week's compilation brings together several in-depth segments tracking the ongoing collapse of old systems and the emergence of new crises—both in the U.S. and globally. Major themes include the spread and intensification of white nationalist movements within law enforcement, the mechanics of ideological totalism in religious and political movements, the globalization of resistance (and repression), the current state of Gulf geopolitics amidst the war in Iran, updates on U.S. domestic politics, and the brutal realities of anti-immigrant violence and backlash in both America and Europe.

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Main Segment 1: Greg Bevino & the Normalization of White Nationalism in Law Enforcement

[03:14] – [41:55]

Introduction to Greg Bevino

• The hosts introduce Greg Bevino as a notorious former Border Patrol agent, active in law enforcement circles for decades and now making public appearances at explicitly far-right, white nationalist conferences in Europe.
• Mia Wong positions herself as a “higher-tier hater” of Bevino, highlighting his record in Chicago and Minneapolis:
  “I am very familiar with his work in Chicago. I'm familiar with his work in Minneapolis. I am less familiar with his other work. I'm excited to have a higher-tier of hater of one of the worst people we've ever had.” (03:19, Mia Wong)

The ReMigration Summit in Portugal

• Bevino was a speaker at the ReMigration Summit, a conference overtly focused on rolling back migration into Europe not on economic or legal grounds, but on ethnic ones—explicitly advocating for racial purity and the reversal of multiculturalism.
  “This is about race and ethnicity and removing people who do not line up with what you consider to be the national race...” (04:30, Host)

• Bevino rubbed shoulders with prominent European fascists and white nationalist “race science” types, showing clear ideological affinity and lack of concern at their known ties to mass killers (e.g., Martin Sellner).
  “He found they were on the same sheet of music.” (06:19, Host)

• The distinction was made that this movement no longer uses the pretense of legality or ‘illegality’—it is outward, explicit white nationalism.

The VDARE Tendency & the Failure of U.S. Institutions

• Discussion of U.S. anti-immigrant “think tanks” like VDARE, their explicit white nationalist stance, and the lack of a “cordon sanitaire” in American politics.

• Ongoing integration of overt Nazi elements in mainstream nationalist discourse.

  “These are like Nazi Nazis... only separated by quantum thickness from mainstream parties.” (07:50, Mia Wong)

• The inherent connection between U.S. border policies and white nationalism, with Democrats and Republicans both responsible for the border militarization that cultivates such individuals as Bevino. “It is a tool that Democrats built as well as Republicans.” (12:59, Host)

Reform: Is it Possible?

• The hosts emphasize Bevino is not an outlier—he is a product, not a rogue. “This shit is not something we can easily reform. This is not something we can train.” (12:25, Host) “If you are going to train people to tear families apart, then you have to train them to hate.” (16:13, Host)

• Reflections on attempts to reform or “clean up” these agencies, with references to high dropout rates for those with compassion and the active cultivation of a belligerent, militarist mindset.

• Border Patrol is described internally as a “federal law enforcement Marine Corps”—an ethos of rapid, militarized deployment against communities and protesters alike.

Quote Highlights

• “You can't have compassion for the people whose families you're tearing apart.” (15:05, Host)
• “The only way you can get people to do that is by creating a crucible that creates Nazis.” (14:41, Mia Wong)

Media, Numbers, and “The Great Replacement”

• Bevino’s public statements invoke the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, and he uses spurious statistics (“100 million illegal immigrants”) without support, revealing a worldview detached from reality but influential in shaping policy rhetoric.

  “America as a whole has already fallen to the grasps of the foreign global one world hellscape ushered in by Barack Hussein Obama. However, we believe that the Commander can ... cement the continuity of a strong and sovereign United States that will last a millennia. A thousand year Reich, in other words.” (135:04, James Stout reading campaign text) “The grassroots will take care of it for us.” (interview translation; 34:03)

Political Implications

• Bevino now launches a presidential campaign website featuring overt Nazi imagery and rhetoric—demonstrating how radical, eliminationist ideas are being mainstreamed.

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Segment 2: Ideological Totalism and Cult Dynamics

Andrew Sage & Garrison Davis
[45:08] – [73:27]

Overview

• Andrew Sage explores how totalistic ideologies—across organizations as varied as ISIS, Aum Shinrikyo, and Christian Zionism—employ mechanisms of thought reform that suppress doubt and enforce conformity.
• He details Robert J. Lifton's eight-point framework for ideological totalism: milieu control, mystical manipulation, demand for purity, cult of confession, sacred science, loaded language, doctrine over person, and dispensing of existence.

Key Insights

• The “us vs. them” dynamic is essential to these movements, creating a psychology of total conviction and the stripping away of pluralism, autonomy, and nuance.

• The elimination of nuance and othering of dissent enables violence and justifies the group's actions both internally and externally.

  “The destruction of the self has more to do with relinquishing the self's agency and becoming instrumentalized for the sake of God’s plan... the follower is convinced that the destruction of this world... is not a tragedy, but actually a kind of liberation.” (57:42, Andrew Sage)

Contemporary Relevance

• Sage draws parallels between these extreme movements and mainstream tendencies—media bubbles, purity culture, and the dangers of doctrine overriding human reality.
• Practical advice for de-radicalization focuses on connection, safety, and the provision of healthy alternatives, rather than direct confrontation.

Quote Highlights

• “The primary defense against thought reform is the refusal to let any authority religious, political, or otherwise become sacred and beyond questioning.” (57:30, Andrew Sage)
• “The vast majority of people are politically unaffiliated, politically uncommitted, apathetic, disengaged. We can do far more by focusing on those people…” (68:20, Andrew Sage)

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Segment 3: The Globalization of Resistance

Andrew Sage & Garrison Davis
[75:40] – [99:44]

Historical Case Study

• Using Benedict Anderson’s research, they trace the development of global resistance networks in the late 19th century—focusing on anarchist and anti-imperialist organizing as it moved from Europe to colonial possessions like Cuba and the Philippines.
• The infrastructure of empire (railroads, telegraphy, print) was appropriated to foster international solidarity and communicate dissent.

Key Examples & Figures

• Fernando Tereda del Mármol (Cuban Creole anarchist), the Dreyfus Affair in France, Isabello de los Reyes in the Philippines.
• The cross-pollination of radical and anti-colonial ideas, and the role of solidarity between disparate movements.

Quote Highlight

• “The infrastructure that empires use to extend their reach ... is the same infrastructure that radicals can use to fight.” (97:29, Andrew Sage)

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Segment 4: The Persian Gulf, the War in Iran & Arab Politics

Dana Al Kurd with Andrew Lieber
[102:14] – [124:33]

GCC State Positions

• Deep dive into the reactions of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman) to the war in Iran.
• Confronts Western media oversimplification about “the Gulf states” as a monolith; reality is divergent interests, especially between Saudi Arabia (cautious, concerned about domestic stability and investment) and UAE (more hawkish, close to Israel).

Abraham Accords & Influence of the U.S.

• Analysis of the shifting value and perception of the Abraham Accords; the U.S. attempts to wrangle Saudi normalization as a “win” are largely performative.
• Domestic constraints in Saudi Arabia (unemployment, repression, Palestinian solidarity) make normalization complex and risky.
• “The Abraham Accords as a framework for U.S. policy towards the Middle East was pretty bankrupt in every direction.” (111:37, Andrew Lieber)

Prediction

• Expect “second-order” changes in Gulf diplomacy and security, with hedging away from the U.S. but not necessarily toward China—more likely, increased dealings with middle-power states like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan.

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Segment 5: U.S. Political Update & Right-Wing Election Denialism

Garrison Davis, James Stout, Mia Wong, Robert Evans
[127:21] – [147:19]

Notable Political Stories

• Santa Rosa Island fire—another example of crumbling infrastructure and personal misadventure.

• Former Border Patrol agent Greg Bevino appears to be exploring a run for President in 2028, with a campaign launched by Roger Stone-protégé Jacob Engels; the campaign sites are dripping with overtly fascist, Nazi-adjacent language and imagery.

• Passage of $70 billion in border enforcement, ICE, and CBP funding (“Secure America Act”) through reconciliation, along with advance funding to hedge uncertainty after midterms.

Election Drama

• Recap of the California election and the subsequent wave of Republican election denialism—Trump, GOP media, and even the Washington Post stoking conspiracy theories, despite no evidence.
• Commentary on the normalization of perpetual claims of “rigged” or “stolen” elections as a feature of U.S. politics.

Quote Highlight

• “This is going to be every election for the rest of my life.” (146:49, Garrison Davis)

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Segment 6: Pogroms in Belfast & Anti-Immigrant Violence

Mia Wong, James Stout, et al. [147:36] – [158:25]

Events in Northern Ireland

• Widespread, coordinated pogroms against non-white residents in Belfast; homes burned, people driven out, with weak or complicit police response.

• The attacks are primarily enacted by loyalist paramilitary-aligned networks, with long histories of racism, criminality, and connections to British colonialism.

• The violence was catalyzed by viral videos (amplified on social media, notably by Elon Musk), and drew on festering anti-immigrant sentiment inflamed by years of right-wing agitation in the UK and Ireland.

  “It is an extremely bleak and worrying event. The nominal cause of this pogrom was a video of a stabbing in Belfast that has gone viral on social media, amplified by right-wing forces both in Ireland, the UK and across the world. Probably most famously by Elon Musk.” (148:19, Mia Wong)

Historical Context and Media Role

• Discussion around the role of media and demagogues in pogroms/genocides, the parallels and differences with Rwanda's RTLM radio.
• The broader context is colonialism and whiteness as organizing principles, not just isolated “media incitement.”

Quote Highlights

• “This is a very, very old white supremacist project going back ... through the British occupation of Ireland ... a project that's been aligned with ... one of the world's largest and most bloody and ruthless white supremacist organizations.” (157:21, Mia Wong)

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Segment 7: U.S. Immigration and Trans Healthcare Policy Updates

[158:54] – [175:57]

Immigration

• Judicial victory: A broad Trump-era ban on asylum and work permit processing for people from dozens of countries is struck down as illegal and discriminatory. “This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that. They went on to say that the USCIS had used what they called pretextual concerns of national security that mask anti-immigrant sentiment that is forbidden from letting influence its decision making.” (158:54, Host)
• Ongoing surge in denaturalization efforts, targeting not just new arrivals but individuals already long embedded in U.S. society.
• GAO reports extraordinary cruelty and fatal neglect at U.S. immigrant detention centers (e.g., Camp East Montana), where a homicide by asphyxia went unreported, and evidence was destroyed.

Trans Healthcare

• Updates on legal fights over trans military bans (a temporary win for serving members, though challenging new enlistment), increasing settlements targeting hospitals for “sex rejecting” procedures, new restrictions on Medicaid in Oklahoma, and the opening of a pilot low/no-cost gender-affirming clinic in NYC despite federal threats.
• Hospitals targeted with grand jury subpoenas for records on trans youth; lawsuits emerging to protect privacy.

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Segment 8: War with Iran and International Fallout

[176:05] – [181:30]

• Reports of renewed hostilities: a U.S. Apache downed by an Iranian drone, the first deployment of U.S. surface drone rescue, and subsequent “self-defense strikes” by the U.S.—raising fears of further escalation.
• Ongoing violence in Gaza—Israeli bombings continue, with civilian children again killed.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Bevino's extreme self-mythologizing and Nazi-echoing campaign materials: “America as a whole has already fallen to ... one world hellscape ushered in by Barack Hussein Obama. ... The Commander can not only usher in the great restoration of America, but also cement ... a strong and sovereign ... United States that will last a millennia.” (135:04, James Stout reading from campaign site)
• On law enforcement’s role: “We have created an entity which is exempt from the law in order to enforce it.” (39:26, Host)
• On Belfast pogroms: “As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down ... as they stormed the property, some claimed to be liberating it. Graffiti nearby demanded local homes for local people.” (148:21, Reporting quote read by Mia Wong)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:14 — The Greg Bevino Deep Dive (Border Patrol, white nationalism, ReMigration Summit)
• 45:08 — Ideological Totalism (ISIS, Aum Shinrikyo, Christian Zionism)
• 75:40 — Globalization of Resistance (Anti-colonialism, 19th c. revolutions)
• 102:14 — Gulf States & War in Iran (Dana Al Kurd with Andrew Lieber)
• 127:21 — Weekly U.S. Political Update (Election denial, ICE/CBP funding, Bevino's campaign)
• 147:36 — Pogroms in Belfast & Far-Right Incitement (Muse influence, loyalist violence)
• 158:54 — Immigration & Trans Healthcare Policy, Detention Center Abuses
• 176:05 — Iran Conflict and Gaza (War escalation and civilian impact)

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Tone & Style

In classic "It Could Happen Here" fashion, this episode interweaves detailed reporting, historical analysis, dark humor, and systemic critique, while centering voices of those most targeted by authoritarian and white supremacist policies. The hosts’ conversational, often irreverent tone does not detract from the seriousness of the issues, but rather underscores the urgency and normalcy with which collapse and reactionary violence are occurring in real time.

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• The phenomenon of law enforcement’s alignment with white nationalist ideology is not a bug but an entrenched feature, exacerbated by bipartisan policy.
• Totalist ideologies—be they religious or political—erode individuality and pluralism, and thrive in moments of institutional collapse and alienation.
• The infrastructure of empire is always dual-use: it can be—and has been—used to build global solidarity and foster revolution, even as it enables surveillance and repression.
• Decades-old patterns of denialism, exclusion, and vigilantism are escalating amidst state and media complicity; new tools (like AI-generated propaganda) amplify old hatreds.
• Pockets of resistance and solidarity persist, reminders that even amidst collapse, better futures can and must still be built.

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Transcript

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[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Corezone Media.

[James Stout]

Hey everybody. Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Mia, are you excited today to learn about Gregory. Hey, Bovino?

[Mia Wong]

You know, I would describe myself going into this as an amateur but enthusiast. Greg Bovino, hater. I am very familiar with his work in Chicago. I'm familiar with his work in Minneapolis. I am less familiar with his other work. I'm excited to have a higher tier of hater of one of the worst people we've ever had.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, really a gem of the American law enforcement system. We're going to talk mostly today about Greg Bevino's post career pivot, which seems mostly to be asking to have his old career back. But we can talk also a little bit about his previous career work. When he was down here, he was in IB he was in El Centro, he was in Blythe for a while. But last week, Mia, he was in Portugal.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, boy.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Do you want to guess why?

[Mia Wong]

You know. Okay. Going through my history of Portugal. It's country that had a left wing military coup that didn't go far enough by which to say they never quite got rid of all the fascists.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. A country that notably has a long history of fascism.

[Mia Wong]

Yes.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Which is why he was there actually. He was there in a re Migration summit.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Like, so I'm just going to use the conference's own website here. It is a set fiscal, cultural, economic, social, political and logistical policies whose objective is to prevent population replacement through the reversal of migratory flows. There's nothing there about undocumented people. There's nothing there about visas. Right. Like, this isn't about that. This is about race and ethnicity and removing people who do not line up with what you consider to be the national race.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, this is, this is an ethnic cleansing campaign.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I mean, obviously there's like a lot of parallels in the history of all of these countries, but like, yeah, I think if you, if you look at the most immediate one, it's oh, this is like the shit the Nazis were talking about doing while they were building the concentration camps with Like Jewish people. Right. Is that they were going to like deport them all to Israel or whatever.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. We'll keep moving them east.

[Mia Wong]

And at the very least, this is an ethnic cleansing plan.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, that's the explicit goal.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Right. There is not mention in that definition of undocumented people, even the way that, you know, refers to. Refer to it as illegal aliens. A term he uses a lot and I think he sometimes uses it in a quite elastic fashion. But even in this case, that is not what this conference is about.

[Mia Wong]

No.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

This is very much a conference about a white Europe.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It was organized by Martin Sellner. Selner is a neo Nazi who famously exchanged emails with Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, great.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Pavino spoke about this at a conference and he said that they hadn't met in person before, but after talking for a little while, they found they were on the same sheet of music.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, you gotta Google people, man. And like you Google Martin Sellner and the first thing that comes up is that he emailed Brenton Tarrant. Unless, I guess that's not an issue.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Judging by the general company he kept, I don't think that's an issue because he's joined like Spanish Vox Party. Are there afde? Are there afd, the German far right party racists from all over Europe. We also saw the sort of racists in America who I would describe as like fancy racists. The race science guys. Right.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, they're kind of like the Murray people.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Is it those guys or is it the kind of newer gen, like tech fascist people? So there's overlap between them?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

No, it's like the VDA kind of tendency.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

No. Should we, should we explain what, the video? Yeah, a little bit.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Go ahead. Yeah, take it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Well, I was just gonna say at some point we're gonna have Molly on. I. I am a. I am what you would call a. I, I guess technically a professional Nazi identifier or whatever. But I'm like a low level one and everyone else in this network is a very high level one. So we'll probably have molly on at some point to like actually really go into vidair and like that kind of shit.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But yeah, it's broadly speaking. It's Peter Brimelow's anti immigration website. We're not talking about anti immigration in terms of like discussions about what visas we should give. Right. We're talking about like white nationalism.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. These are like Nazi Nazis. These are people that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

You know, like, I don't think the US has ever really had what in Europe is called like the cordon sanitaire, which is supposed to separate out like the. The mainstream right wing parties from like the Nazis. Like we've never had that. So Vitair has been kind of more in anti immigration circles, but it's also like those are people that, you know, even you're kind of like really, really far right, like people on the radio or politicians don't associate with because they are fairly open Nazis.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. There was some stuff that traced back to V. De in Agenda 47. I remember thinking like, this ain't good.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Vida. Just for people who like have lived a blessed life and don't know, refers to Virginia Dare, who is, I believe, the first white child or the first child, first girl. I don't know, maybe there was a boy before, but I think it was the first white child born in the United States to settlers. One of the, One of the Roanoke people.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Which is, I don't know, like maybe you could have made like the Roanoke people and disappeared, but.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, that would be nice. Unfortunately, Mia.

[Mia Wong]

No, unfortunately they didn't. And they didn't unfortunately assimilate into indigenous cultures the way that the Roanoke people almost certainly did.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

And instead decided.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. In fact, quite the opposite.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Half a millennia long campaign of terror and bloodshed.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. It's interesting to see Bevino, I guess, like aligning with these European anti migration discussion is different. It's not really dealing so much in undocumented people. It's dealing with people under various legal statuses. I'm not saying there aren't undocumented people in Europe. There are, but the discussion there has moved past that in a toxic way.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

In a way that is like we need to remove these people even though they do have like legal documentation that allows them to be here. If the state says you're cool or you're not cool, like, that's not my concern.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But it's still alarming to see the, the bigotry move past even that. Right. Like without the pretense of enforcing the law. Yeah. And just simply being about removing people who we don't think we want to live next to because they're not white.

[Mia Wong]

You know, one of the groups that you talked about there, like the AfD in Germany, like this, this has been happening for like a long time, but one of their like slogans was remove kebab.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

And that's just literally like remove all Turkish people from the country.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And the AfD wants to do this there have documents that have leaked from them that are them planning at conferences to, okay, this is how we're going to remove the non white people. This is how we're going to remove the Jewish people. This is not even like the pretense of anything has to do with the law. This is just like we are the original Nazis if we want to do ethnic cleansing against non white people.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Most of the people at the conference are peddling great replacement shit.

[Andrew Lieber]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And they. Yeah, they genuinely believe that that is something that exists and that they can reverse it. At the conference, Pavito gave an interview. I found it on a website called Brazeinfo B R E I Z H. It's. It's a Breton and French language website. It's also published, I saw, in a couple of other substacks. So I wonder if it was a pool interview that he gave that various people translated it. I should note that I translated it from French. I don't think Vivino speaks French, so I'm imagining they translated it from English to French. And there is an editor's note that says the editor was an AI.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, great.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

So any of the quotations here, we can't attribute them directly.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, yeah, we can't assume that those are the words he said in English because it's been through three layers of bullshit.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And so, like, understand that going in. Nonetheless, I think it's a very interesting insight into how Greg Bevino sees the world. And what's interesting about that is, like, Greg Bevino was very popular in Border Patrol. He was, by the standards of the patrol, a good Border Patrol agent.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

He was liked. And I don't think he developed these opinions in the. In the few months since he retired.

[Mia Wong]

No. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And like, a lot of the way he talks is not dissimilar to the way Border Patrol agents talk among themselves. Right. I think that, like, what is interesting about this is not like Greg Bevino is essentially sharing a platform and agreeing with Nazis. It is after 25, 26 years, in more than actually 30 years in the Border Patrol. This is what the Border Patrol formed him into.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Because the point I want to make here is this shit is not something we can easily reform. This is not something we can train. If this country gets through this and in 2028. Yes, we have another election. God, we can't fucking let this keep happening.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

The tool that Bevino was deploying in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Charlotte, and all these other cities in Los Angeles. Right?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Memphis, like New Orleans, like yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like all over the country. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. It is a tool that Democrats built as well as Republicans.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And the place he's at, he got to. With eight years working under Barack Obama, with four years working under Joe Biden, like, we need to understand what we are diverting a fire hose of money towards.

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

With the Border Patrol. Right. And I guess we can just start with where Greg Pavino started, which was comparing himself to Nazi General Erwin Rommel.

[Mia Wong]

Great.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Right out the gate. He also compared himself to Patton and T. Lawrence. You know, like, historically, it makes you wonder. Yeah, I think he probably has some kind of clean vermark thing going on in his head where they're just soldiers and he can respect both of them for their tactical prowess. You know, like he says, quote, they grasp the overall strategy where others in government or in the political class did not see it or refused to see it. Strategic expertise combined with field command, especially in chaotic exposed events, is very rare. I also listened to a couple of podcasts that Bevino did with a former Border Patrol agent who used to work in San Diego sector. And you hear this a lot, Right. Talk about battle, talk about soldiers. But Vino sees himself as like a general Border Patrol, as his soldiers fighting in a. In a war.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

That's not what they do. Oh, clearly they see it as that. I understand why. Because, like, they've. They've gone around the country generating so much ill will that, yeah, everywhere they go, people fucking hate them.

[Mia Wong]

Your actual job and this thing we saw in Chicago is dragging screaming babies out of their fucking homes and putting them in camps.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, I think this is.

[Mia Wong]

This is going back to the thing you were talking about earlier, about this not being something that's reformable.

[Andrew Lieber]

Is that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that task is what Border Patrol was built for. That's what it was doing under all of these administrations. Just fucking dragging people screaming from their homes in the dark of the night. And, like, the only way you can get people to do that is by creating a crucible that creates Nazis.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

You can't have compassion for the people whose families you're tearing apart.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, yeah, people should read Jen Bud's book if they want to know what going through Border Patrol Academy is like. So this will give a trigger warning that Jen was sexually assaulted and writes about that. Border Patrol has a very high rate of sexual assault.

[Andrew Sage]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Border patrol is 95% male.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I have seen people in Border Patrol who do have compassion, and then I have not seen them anymore. Like, it drives those people away. Yeah, they. They have A high dropout rate. And like, I think there are people who genuinely believe that what they will do is keep their community safe and rescue people who get stuck crossing the border in the desert, adjudicate them a fair process, deliver them to a fair process, and. And they will do the best they can. I don't see those people remain in the patrol for very long.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, I interact with, obviously, like, the stance of this podcast is that you should remain silent, not talk to cops. But like I said, I interact with border patrol agents more often than most people do. Right. That is the nature of my job and the place I live and the places I go. And like, I think these days, the recruiting they're doing, they're getting a lot of people who are coming in, starting like this.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But I don't think that's. That's always been the case. Like, I understand that there are people also in communities along the border where there's very little economic opportunity and then this is the only chance they have. But I see those people get spat out. Like you said, Mia, if you are going to train people to tear families apart, then you have to train them to hate. And I think that is what we see in this. Right. Like, yeah, it's really interesting. Vivino tells his own story a little bit. And he tells this his own story on this podcast I listen to as well. He starts with Operation Don't Let Him Ride. Are you familiar with Operation Don't Let Him Ride?

[Mia Wong]

No.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Okay, so you have to go all the way back to 2010.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

In Las Vegas, Nevada.

[Mia Wong]

Little, little tiny baby Mia.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

13 year old Mia.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Oh, God. Me, I feel old. I was in grad school. And Greg Pavino, I think he's Belized at the Blythe station at that time. And they do this operation at a bus station in Nevada. It lasts for 60 minutes. It gets called off. The Nevada senator is pissed off about it. Their goal, they said, was to apprehend traffickers and to rescue people who have been trafficked or smuggled. Right. In a community meeting, which, like, was convened because the whole Latino community in Las Vegas was like, the fuck, right? This Internal enforcement was not a common thing at the time. Paul Beeson, who was chief agent of the Yuma sector at the time, said, quote, in that short period of time, we did not apprehend anybody we felt was actively engaged in alien smuggling. We did not encounter any human trafficking victims. So to me, that doesn't sound like a win.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. So wait, so they were just rounding people up at bus stops.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Correct. They went to a bus depot station.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. Like one of the big bus.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And they just rounded people up.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, exactly. So his interview with this former Border Patrol agent, he said that they apprehended more than one alien per minute of

[Garrison Davis]

the operation that was called Operation Don't Let Them Ride. And that operation was set for about three days. It lasted 60 minutes. But the interesting thing is we caught more aliens than there were minutes in the operation. It was a very successful operation. Very successful. Yes, sir. Harry Reid called Hussein Obama and had that shut down immediately. But we never forgot that. We never forgot the vast amount of criminals that we apprehended in 2010 on those bus checks in Las Vegas. And the pervasive problem even then that we saw A lot of that problem came in under. Under Barack Hussein Obama as well as Bill Ray Clinton.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I want to note, the newspapers at the time reported a number that was more than two dozen. Technically, let's say the operation lasted 60 minutes. That is more than two dozen. It would be unusual to report a number of 60 by saying more than two dozen. Right?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

What is more interesting to me is that this operation was supposed to find people who had been trafficked and people who were trafficking, and it failed. Greg Bevino seems to have seen it as a success because it just found people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

People who were undocumented, people who were otherwise in infraction of immigration laws, but who were not involved in trafficking. Because for him, it seems like the goal was slightly different, and therefore the criteria for success are slightly different. Right. And this kind of fits into this narrative of him. So, like, I can see why he. It is especially in the context of him talking to the Re Migration Conference. For him, it's a win, but for the explicit goals of the Border Patrol at that time, it's not. So he cites this as a beginning of his journey to where he is. Right. As a guy they went to for massive surges of Border Patrol agents into cities tearing families apart. And I think if we see it the way he sees it, then we can see why he sees it as a success. But Vino, in his early career, had worked a lot in the El Centro sector. Right. He eventually became Chief Patrol agent in the El Centro sector. He was in BORTAC for a while. I've read a Defense University paper that interviewed him. He was in Honduras with BORTAC training Border Patrol there.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. I mean, everyone should read Empire of Borders. Everyone should read Border Patrol Nation, but like the DHS has done this for years. Right. Funded, armed and equipped and trained border patrol units all over the Americas. Because that is how America externalizes its border.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. In a very similar way to the way Europe does it with Frentex and, you know, like the deals that go with Gaddafi and then the successive governments in Libya and stuff like that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

And the people they're training there. It's like school. The Americas are just like actual monsters. Like.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. I mean, the. Sally Hayden's book My Third Time We Drowned is one of the more heartbreaking books that's available for a human to read. But, like, if you want to know about the fucked up stuff Europe's doing in Libya, it's a good book.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes. You're this. It moves the violence away from the Metropole.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Right. It moves it further. I've seen it from my own eyes. Right. I've seen what happens in Panama, not necessarily with the actions of any border patrols there, but just by forcing people to take that route. Like, I've seen.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

How the externalization of our borders kills people. And I have seen how the Biden administration funded deportations of people who I can't find any criminal record for. And I have seen, literally, babies taken out of people's hands.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And they. They were deporting young men at that point. But I look at. I've literally watched families torn apart right there just after crossing the Darien Gap, and it's heartbreaking.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Talking of heartbreaking, we haven't done an ad pivot.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, boy. Hopefully these. These products and services will fix your heartbreak.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Here's an advert for whiskey. Okay. We are back. So one of the things Vivino did a lot in this interview is he sought to kind of distinguish himself from what he calls status quo bureaucrats. He's not wrong that, like, one of the roles of a chief in a sector is to speak to the press. Right. He seems to be very upset that Rodney Scott and Tom Homan didn't speak to the press when they started these big operations. He says, quote, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and border czar Tom Homan not only had no experience with full enforcement of migration laws, but refused to speak publicly during operations. Their reluctance triggered the unique situation I mentioned above. I neither sought nor asked become the public face of the operation. But for this type of operation, there can only be one. The responsibility fell to me. When you listen to those interviews he did when he was in the patrol, he wasn't as critical of his leadership as he is now. Yeah, probably fairly obvious reasons, but, like, the let down by leadership thing is a thing. We've seen this on the Right so many times.

[Andrew Lieber]

Right?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

It's the classic backstab myth employed by one Adolf Hitler.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and in many cases thereafter. And he kind of seeks in this to, to differentiate field agents from, from like what, I guess he, what he calls status quo bureaucrats. Right. And he is genuinely very popular among field agents. Like, and he did like, grow through the Border Patrol, Right. Like, he's not a guy who like, came from somewhere else. Like, he has a 30 year career. He's done like mountain interdiction stuff down in the Hukumba wilderness. Like, like he's, he's definitely like, had his boots on the ground, I think. And I think for him that gives him like, like the, he feels like he speaks for the border patrol and that like these people who are like bureaucrats are what is constraining him and his guys from doing what they want to do. And like, it's really interesting to see the terms, how he describes what they want to do. Right. He called the withdrawal from Minneapolis a surrender. He called protesters the opposition. In this podcast I listen to, he calls protesters pro fascist, which is very, given the company he keeps, is ridiculous.

[Mia Wong]

I feel like the other people at that conference can't be happy with that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, that's the thing, right?

[Mia Wong]

Where are the fascists here?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, but they're not hiding it. Like, it's very interesting to see him, like, not willing to kind of surrender that term. You know what I mean? Quite say it at the same time as like, yeah, yeah, there are other people at the conference who are like, no, we're the fascists. What are you talking about? They're not pro fascists.

[James Stout]

They hate us.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

He's still like, one step removed from joining his buddies there. Another thing I found interesting was he says Border Patrol is often referred to as, quote, the federal law enforcement Marine Corps.

[Mia Wong]

What? Does anyone say that?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I've not heard them say that.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, I, I. What?

[Mia Wong]

I've never heard that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's a very strange. I'm guessing what he's referring to is like, the Marine Corps has these expeditionary units which can deploy very quickly to conflict zones like we saw in Iran. Right? Like, yeah, and I'm guessing that's what he means. Like, they're the, the hit squad.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, they're the, they're the, like, oh my God, we found like four children sleeping in a bedroom. We have to go. We have to go send our, like, Tactical squad after them. Yeah, there are, there are first line of defense against. Against tiny babies.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yep. And against like Americans exercising their first amendment rights.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

When people were in the street in Portland, it was Border Patrol, they said. Yep.

[Mia Wong]

It was Sportak. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, right. They do have something of a history of being the federal government's hit squad.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

When they want to stamp on Americans, they do send the Border Patrol. Interestingly, he went on to cite the Ole Miss riot. Are you familiar? The Ole Miss riot?

[Mia Wong]

It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm not sure.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, I mean, you can surmise what's going to happen. Right. It's a university in the South. What happens is that James Meredith, a black man, had attempted to register at the school several times. He had been prevented by racists, including the governor. And at one point JFK sent Border patrol agents along with federal. I think they were cross sworn as marshals, maybe to accompany him to register. They ended up surrounded in the Lyceum. 28 federal agents were shot.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, no, this is like they had a fight about it. Like two of the, the people surrounding the Lyceum were killed.

[Mia Wong]

You know, I'm not sure I've ever in my entire life seen a government deployment and thought, you should have sent the National Guard, but like. Yeah, I guess you should have sent the National Guard. Jesus. Yeah, but the one, the white Southern racist, really, I guess love shooting beds to oppose integration.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Like in this case they sent the regular ass army to come get him out.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I think this was the era when they felt like National Guards in the south were not entirely trustworthy.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, well, yeah, you'd have to do a Trump style, like we're sending the

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

fucking like California National Guard to Mississippi or whatever. Yeah, yeah, they normally send like one of those QRS, like 82nd Airborne or something like that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I, Wow. I can't believe I'm in a position where I support the deployment of US troops against America.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I know it's wild. I know it's a wild scenario.

[Mia Wong]

I guess it's like, because they're trying to do a lynching. So.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, like in that case, yeah, maybe stop the lynching. But it's a really interesting choice because he's talking about how border patrols, you know, like had this long history of doing this and again, he's not wrong. And I guess maybe the Olmis thing plays a part in their mythos because they were fighting against the racists. I can see why they would want to hold on to that. It's interesting to see him doing that at the racist conference.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. It's like, oh, no, no, no. We are a different kind of racist. We are California racist. We are. We are. We are not like the primitive Southern racist. We. We have advanced our level of racism to ethnic cleansing levels. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, and he's very popular amongst the, like, we're a different kind of racist. Racist.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, the VDA tendency is the, like, quote, unquote, scientific racists.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And by the way, I want to clarify before I get screamed at, the thing I just said was, like, his perspective, not mine. Jesus Christ. Fuck these people.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

All of them.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please don't clip me out of context. So, like, he then goes on, after he's explained this, to explain, like, his history of migration. He says that around in the year 2000, quote, unquote, the floodgates opened. His basic thesis is summed up in his statement, From 2000 to 2026, our borders were nothing but speed bumps. Illegals and smugglers knew that once they crossed the border, they were virtually safe from any consequences. A couple things there, that obviously includes Trump's first term and part of his second term. Amnesia about Trump having a first term seems to be quite a common issue on the right.

[Mia Wong]

It's really astonishing. And on the left, too, I don't know. I'm seeing it more and more. Certain people who will go unmentioned who were working for Blackwater under the first Trump administration.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. It's very interesting to see this narrative, but again, not an uncommon one.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, he talks about how he wrote a paper called Illegal Aliens and Destruction of Natural Resources. So he has two master's degrees. One is from the National Defense University. And I'm not sure if that's his second master's thesis, which it would be. I'd be interested to read it, but I haven't been able to find it. I'm not sure NDU makes master stuff public. And I think generally how it works is you have to opt to make it public. Like, I'm interested to know, is this kind of eco nativism? Is it, like, carrying capacity shit? Like, what it kind of.

[Mia Wong]

The other thing it kind of reminds me is, like, you get, like. You get this from, like, Scandinavian racists, where they're like. They have this line about the welfare state where, like, the welfare state is a fire and you can only have so many people huddled around the fire.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And it's like, okay, well, God, we see this lean. Like, we saw a lot from Mike Lee, right, when he was attempting another pathetic excuse for selling off our public lands. Like Lee was saying how, like, so much of our wilderness areas are destroyed by migrants, so we have to destroy them and sell them to protect them. The logic of Mike Lee is unknowable. But I'm interested to read that if anyone. If anyone is like a library ninja, get in touch. I would. I'd love to. I'd love to find that out. He spent a great deal of time explaining his 100 million number, and he's. He refers to these people as illegal aliens. Right. That he contrasts this with the number of 20 million. He says that comes from Pew Research, and he says that it hasn't changed since the 1970s.

[Garrison Davis]

What?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

That is not a statistic. Which is played out in Pew's published documents. I'm looking here at a 2023 paper from Pew. The number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. 1990. 3.5 million. 2000. 8.6, 2015, 11.0. Thanks, Obama. And up to 14 million in 2023. He claims it's been 20 since the 1970s. Obviously he's not giving a source here, but he claims Pew has said that. And that's not what I found from Pew. He sort of arrived at his $100 million number first. He said he was looking at some stuff from investment bank Bear Stearns. I don't know what he was looking at.

[Mia Wong]

Why?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, it's very strange. He then goes on to give the only hard statistics he gives. He was talking about Charlotte, North Carolina, here, when they were doing Operation Charlotte's Web estimates indicated that 30% or more of commuters were no longer traveling. This means at least 30% of them were most likely illegal immigrants. This is based on traffic delays. He's getting the amount of time people spend in traffic jets. Like he's going on Google Ma. This is a massive logical leap. He then says that's about a quarter of Charlotte's commuters. 30%, not a quarter. And this figure, you guessed it, fits perfectly with the total of 100 million out of 420 million people in the United States. I estimate that 100 million are illegal immigrants. Same as the observation for children absent from Charlotte schools. More than 30% of students were missing. These were, of course, illegal children or children of illegal immigrants. The category of illegal children. Fascinating choice of words.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I'm guessing he's talking about, like, undocumented kids or kids whose parents are undocumented. Separate categories there. But, like, there are many reasons. I don't think we have to explain this to listeners. Why Some people might not have wanted to be out and about or at school when border patrol are dragging people out of cars and smashing their windows.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. This is an extremely common thing, which

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

is like, yeah, yeah, like not wanting to die.

[Mia Wong]

I want to point this out too. Like, they shot like, American citizens.

[Andrew Lieber]

Not.

[Mia Wong]

Not that it's like wor to shoot an American citizen than a non citizen,

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

but like, no, but it doesn't matter.

[Mia Wong]

Everyone. Everyone knew that they had done that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like they did that in Chicago.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Like, yeah, they did it in Chicago. They were going to go do it again in Minneapolis.

[Mia Wong]

Like, yeah, obviously they shot protesters. They also just shot random people. Like, who they were. Like, oh, you're non white. Fuck you.

[Andrew Lieber]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, it's like that kind of shit.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. People who got in most of the instance we've seen that what they have said is the person tried to ram them with their car. And most of the times we have seen video evidence. It certainly doesn't look like that to me.

[Mia Wong]

No. Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

This idea that 30% of students are therefore undocumented people. Just ludicrous.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

They were in Charlotte, like middle to late November this time when Americans often travel. Don't go to school.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

They have this Thanksgiving thing here and people like to. To enjoy time with their families. He then goes on to talk about the differences between us and Europe. There's a phrase here that I want to read again. I want you to understand that this is translated twice. Uncontrolled immigration to the United States now poses the greatest threat to our culture in our very existence. This goes for you in Europe too. Even when we manage to get past these cumbersome bureaucrats and politicians, the grassroots will take care of it for us. The precise tactics for removing those who need to be removed may take different forms in Europe and the United States. The grassroots will take care of it for us. Is between em dashes. I don't know if he means the grassroots will vote them out. Otherwise that seems like a pogrom. Right?

[Mia Wong]

Like, yeah, that's. That's not. That's not good.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That just seems like an ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by people.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I want to be like, like, but. Because that's a really scary concept. Right?

[Mia Wong]

Like, yeah, but also. Yeah, it's an AI translation that was then translated by you.

[Andrew Lieber]

I don't know.

[Mia Wong]

I don't know how your French is these days.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

My French is fine, but like, yeah,

[Mia Wong]

I forget who said all translation is an act of violence. But yeah, like, humans doing translation is an act of violence. AI Doing translations is like the fucking future Terminator.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, bullshit.

[Mia Wong]

Where the machines have killed everyone.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, yeah, a lot really is lost in translation. In between the EM dashes, the French is la basse populaire sans chartiera pour nous. So, yeah, come at me, French speakers. Let me know if you think there's a better translation for that. He then goes on to try and, like, not blame Trump, which is interesting. Said, I don't believe Trump has abandoned his campaign promise. I believe that his advisors do not bring him back to reality on the ground. And then I've skipped a little here. If I had to do it again, I would have briefed Trump directly several times rather than relying on this inner circle who might have interests elsewhere. Trump is the best president I've ever worked for. I believe he will return to that campaign promise soon. Again, it's kind of a fatty thing, right? Like, it wasn't the leader. It wasn't the dear leader. It was the people who failed to reflect the dear leader's thought.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's very interesting to see him speaking so clearly this way. Like, there's two ways he could be going with this. He could be angling for his job back. To be clear, Right. The reason we don't have noman Buffino anymore, in my opinion, is that after ICE and then cbp both murdered US Citizens in the plain light of day on camera, and then took to the television to lie about those U.S. citizens in the hours after they murdered them. They became too toxic for even the Trump administration to touch.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. They were staggeringly unpopular. Everyone fucking hated them.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. You literally lost, like, the old guys with NRA hats at the gun range who I sometimes talk to, like, yeah, fucking again.

[Mia Wong]

I can't keep coming back to, like, they lost Kurt Warner, who, like, is, like, a quarterback who has never once talked about politics ever, and is, like, like, made, like, a documentary that was, like, a bunch about, like, his, like, faith journey. Right. And they, like, when. When Kurt Warner is being like, hey, what the. Yeah, you've lost your. You're losing the conservative football guys.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. I mean, you shoot a white man on his knees in the street in the back.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

While you're beating him up.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

That's how you lose Americans.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. That's how you lose barstool. Like, it's.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Hideous.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

He kind of has two choices, right? Like, he can. And he can go into the consulting world. He can go into the grifting world. Right. And just become, like, a podcast Grifter, welcome to the club. Or he can go into politics and I wonder which. Like, he's kind of left. Two of those pathways open. Right. Like, he kind of.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Podcast grifter or politics.

[Mia Wong]

Well, and you can do both now, too. I guess that's true.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

See the head of the FBI.

[James Stout]

Too much.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It was too much for Dan Boncino. He retired and retired return.

[Mia Wong]

I guess I. I guess. I guess. I guess it's like our noble, like, Health and Human Services secretary. The. The latest Shitt eating Kennedy or whatever. Like, can still do that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But I. Yeah, but. Serial podcast guest. I just want to come back to. Like, we need to reflect on this now.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, it. We're. We're doing primaries for the midterms right now. The Democrats have doubled down on same old. Almost everywhere across the country. Like, we have seen some better candidates. Right. But like, I understand that, like, the pathway to a beautiful life is not through the Democratic Party, but if they are incapable of seeing that this isn't something that we can reform. If they do what Biden did in 2020, which is like, oh, they just need more money.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

This ratchet will continue to only move in one direction, which is towards the brutalization of more people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Just on a very basic level, like having a massive institutional apparatus that produces Nazis and gives them the authority to do the thing that the Nazis want to do is not a way that any kind of democracy can survive.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And that. That's what we've seen.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

To paraphrase, we have created an entity which is exempt from the law in order to enforce it.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

We can't keep up with that. And like, now is a moment. I guess it demands bravery. And from the Democrats, I've seen cowardice.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And like, if they continue to be cowards right now, we're going to go so far down this path, there's no coming back.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And I don't fucking know. But I think that's something we really need to reflect on.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. We have 20,000 bovinos who we've given guns and training and authority to.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. And who we've allowed to kill people in our streets and not face accountability.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like, I am not a county attorney appreciator generally. But, like, it makes me happy to see that Hennepin County Attorney go after the ICE agent.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Who shot someone through their front door and they lied about it. Like, if liberal democracy can't do any of that kind of stuff, then it's worthless. It doesn't mean anything anymore.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And it won't. And it won't be a democracy afterwards. Right?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Yeah. It'll die. It made its own bed to die on.

[Mia Wong]

There's examples of this fucking everywhere. Right. But, like, the Biden administration was. Tragedy is farce of, like, Allende promoting Pinochet.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like, that's a thing. That's a thing that he did. He promoted Pinochet.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like, if you don't get rid of the people who want to fucking kill you and you instead give them more power, they're going to fucking kill you.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. And like, what Biden. Biden tried to. They tried pretty hard to retire Bavino because he would talk a lot about the situation at the border and Biden administration, but they didn't.

[Mia Wong]

No, they didn't. And then also, like, they made more of them.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. And also they threw as much money. Like, the money that your kid doesn't get for free meals is because border patrol has Blackhawks.

[Mia Wong]

Like. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. That was a heartwarming and inspiring episode of It Could Happen Here podcast about things falling apart.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. But, hey, we beat the Nazis once, We can do it again.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And Minneapolis beat these people. That's the other thing. Right. Like, they won.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

They came out and they stood together as a community. They didn't focus on trivial bullshit that divides them. They looked out for one another. Border Patrol thought they were in a battle. And if they were in a battle, then they did lose it. They surrendered.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And like, that's. That's also not to say that there aren't still, like, horrifying shit happening there.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, there's still raids going on.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

You're absolutely correct. Yeah. And that, like, people aren't dealing with the many other ills for capitalism and existed Sunday the state as it is today. But, like, yeah. They were not able to make those people cower in fear.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And that has shown the rest of the country how brave we can be together. And I just don't think we should forget that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

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[Andrew Sage]

Isis, alm, Shinrikyo, and Christian Sinuso. At first glance, these movements appear to have almost nothing in common. One is a transnational but territorially weakened terror network most active in the 2000s and 2000s. One was a fringe Japanese doomsday cult from the 90s. And one remains a powerful political movement embedded in the heart of the U.S. the world's premier imperialist power. Their ideologies may be irreconcilable, their enemies may be different, and their methods even may vary from guerrilla warfare to political lobbying. And yet they have more in common than meets the eye. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage or Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined today by Garrison Davis. Hello, welcome, welcome. So my goal is to try and understand these movements through the lens of ideological totalism, which was a specific theoretical framework developed by Robert J. Lifton to identify the outcome of a successful thought reform process characterized by Dennis Dirish and Tim Woolforth in On the Edge of as a mood of absolute conviction which embeds ideas so deeply in people's heads that they grow inoculated against doubt, Ideas cease to be provisional theories about the world and instead become sacred convictions dependent on the word of hallowed authorities for their validation rather than evidence. Lifton saw the potential for the emergence of ideological totalism within everyone, but he noted, totalistic convictions are most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious or messianic in their claims, whether religious, political, or scientific. The eight criteria that he identified for thought reform were milieu control, which is the control of communication and information within the environment mystical manipulation, which is the orchestrating of spontaneous events to serve the group's message the demand for purity, which divides the world into black and white, good and evil categories the cult of confession, which pushes members to confess past sins and personal feelings to the group the secret science, which elevates the group's dogma to an unquestionable truth Loading the language, which is using jargon or cliches to minimise critical thinking doctrine over person, which subordinates individual experiences and identity to the group's beliefs and finally the dispensing of existence, declaring that only those in the group have the right to exist. Now, not all of these factors may be at play for each of these specific movements that I would have mentioned, but we still see the outcome of this ideological totalism in each of these movements to varying extents. The systematic erosion of individual autonomy in favor of an unassailable authority. Whether we're speaking about ISIS or Aum Shriek yo or Christian Zionism within the evangelical movement or in any other case, we will see how movements replace individual identity with a collective programmed Persona where loaded language and thought terminating cliches make descent literally unthinkable where the enemy other is manufactured and where power is concentrated so tightly that the leader or the dogma becomes the only source of truth. So the foundation of ideological totalism is the destruction of nuance. To build a cohesive us and them, they must be clearly defined and definitionally polarized. First comes the categorization, where the complexity of human identity is reduced into a single non negotiable trait, be it religion or nationality or ideology. And then comes dehumanisation, which is stripping the other of human qualities, transforming them from a person into a threat, impure, an infidel, an obstacle. And finally there's enclosure which creates social or psychological walls that prevent the US from interacting with them. This ensures that the only information the group receives is that of the other's perceived malice. In the context of groups like isis, the us versus Them engine is expressed both ideologically and and through physical violence. By committing acts of terror, the group forces the rest of the world to recognize their boundary. There's no cross contamination to be had with the infidel world, no middle ground. You're either a part of their struggle for a global caliphate or you're an enemy to be eradicated. Whether you consider yourself a Muslim or anything else with armchair eq. The cult's us versus them engine operated through isolation in communes and the severing of external ties. The them was defined as the corrupted world or the spiritually dead. And the group sought purity and enlightenment. So they targeted the individual's existing social networks, family, friends, mainstream society, labelling them as sources of contamination. By cutting off the member from the outside world, the cult ensured that the only reality that existed was the one provided by the leader. And with the political, religious, Christian, Zionists. The us vs them engine is built through a historical and eschatological narrative that sees the entire secular world as enemies to the apocalyptic ambitions of Christ's return. They are frequently warned to avoid worldly influences, temptations from the devil that might skew them from the righteous path. The other, in all these cases, is successfully stripped of their humanity. The destruction of the them becomes a logical necessity for the survival of the us. And the isolation ensures the group's total control over an individual's interpretation of reality.

[Garrison Davis]

Interesting how all these various cultish elements build on or use the techniques written about by like Carl Schmidt. The friend enemy distinction. And how like creating groups like this, you know, you have to choose like a border point to choose the point that determines what we are and what our enemy is. And then in order to keep your group active or like safe, that border has to be moved. It has to always be like, like pushing. It can't actually stay at the same point. And you see that movement with all these groups, Right. They have this, like, millenarianist, like, apocalyptic focus, but they're still, like, moving towards this, like, larger enemy population.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. I mean, you see it in, like I mentioned, ISIS has erected this barrier that separates them even from Muslims, who may share some of their other religious convictions, but do not share their political ambitions.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You see it with the evangelical movement, which distinguishes themselves from other Christian sects as being heretical or not fully committed to the word or have gone astray in some way.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean, you can see that with the evangelical leaders and, like, the President picking fights with the literal Pope of the Catholic Church.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. I mean, the beef between the Catholics and the Protestants go kind of far back. You supposedly share this scripture or this overarching religious framework, and yet there's still a desire to delineate, to separate, to define an enemy even within that cohort.

[Garrison Davis]

And a lot of those current differences do relate to military action in the Middle east and what's happening in Palestine, like, specifically. And I. I found that to be an interesting connection as you're. As you're talking about, you know, specifically, like, Christian Zionists and how the situation in the Middle east is extremely important for their apocalyptic worldview. And that is, like, one of the key differences between. Between, like, evangelical Christians and, you know, the current stuff like that the Pope is saying, which is, you know, very much opposed to what's happening in the Middle East.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. Because they've constructed this very. A robust eschatological framework, which is the next thing that I want to get into. The language that these movements use helps to control their people. They're controlling people not just through physical barriers, but through psychological barriers.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

If you can control the vocabulary available to a person, how a person understands the meaning of words, how they understand the meaning of their scriptures, you can control the range of thoughts that they're capable of having. You know, that was kind of the point that. And it's cliche at this point is the point that George Orwell was making when he had the Ministry of truth in 1984, that you limit even language available so that even dissent cannot be fully expressed. You don't have to censor anybody because you've already censored their minds.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And you see that in even their own creation of, like, phrases and terms across all these groups. Like, they come up with specific turns of phrase that just get repeated, and that just starts, like, replacing language. It starts filling in the gap of language and communication. So thought Terminating cliches.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. Thought terminating cliches. And also just a broader cognitive enclosure. So in the case of Shinrikyo, you had the group using this dense pseudo scientific and pseudo religious jargon that blended spirituality, quantum physics, biology, and those who were most elevated in that group were able to wield that language and make themselves sound so sophisticated and elevated and on a higher plane of truth and reality that made it very easy for them to swindle people within their circle. It created a linguistic barrier of entry so that you couldn't participate even in the group's truth without committing to their incomprehensible dogma.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And if you don't commit to the incomprehensible dogma, then you just, you don't get it. You're going to be an outsider forever. You are not enlightened. You are outside of the truth.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And this, this is a, a problem across a lot of, a lot of different groups, including groups that are not this, you know, apocalyptic or, or, or fascist or like religiously based, but they even see versions of this among like the contemporary left.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Which creates like, yeah, this like barrier to entry by using certain like phrases like academic language.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. And, and very idiosyncratic definitions of words that have otherwise common definitions.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. No, and how much politics is like the subcultural purpose of like maintaining a certain like subgroup, like a social circle versus actually building like mass politics. And how the idiosyncratic small like purity of groups with their special language and these like barriers to entry makes it very hard to do larger political organizing that actually goes towards like a working class movement.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. Lifton points out that there is a tendency for ideological totalism in a lot of movements, as I mentioned. So it's something we have to be on guard for if we want to avoid falling into these traps. And so we looked at the example of, in this case. But ISIS also has a kind of a total elimination of nuance through polarized, emotionally charged vocabulary. You know, you have the believer and you have the infidel, which again includes fellow Muslims. You have the pure and you have the corrupt. Every dynamic, every binary is zero sum. You know, you're either with the caliphate or you're an enemy of God to be wiped out. And within the eschatological framework of Christian Zionism, opposing their apocalyptic, informed geopolitical ambitions is tantamount to opposing God's plan. You know, it's like, how dare you. They use these thought terminating cliches, as you would have mentioned. Things like it is written.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

It's in revelation, you know, it's God's will. And there's no way to actually challenge their policies or actions in their minds on whether it be humanitarian, legal, or logical grounds. Because it's like you're speaking Greek. I mean, doing something like that is. Is like arguing with God.

[Garrison Davis]

It's.

[Andrew Sage]

It's like attacking their faith. And so we also see these movements stripping individuals of their agency for the sake of a transaction. The exchange of the self, with all its very real vulnerabilities and mortality and earthly limitations for a higher purpose that is eternal and absolute. In the case of Aum Shinrikyo, the destruction of the self was achieved through the redefinition of morality that used a distorted interpretation of Vajrayana Buddhism and placed the master's will above all conventional ethics. To follow the master and achieve spiritual evolution, one had to abandon the ego with its moral compass and its human attachments. And in its place, Aum Shiny Kyo offered the merit of absolute obedience by following their leader's commands, even those of mass violence that would expose the wider world to their threat. The practitioner believed they were performing a ritual act of spiritual cleansing to become an instrument of a higher cosmic order. You see the same thing with the rise of isis. The destruction of the self achieved through the total absorption of the individual into the monolith. The individual stripped of their specific context, whatever nationality or background they may have had, and being reduced to a singular functional component of the struggle, being given a purpose that was compensated with the promise of eternal significance, the promise of martyrdom, of fighting and dying for the caliphate. And with that, the individual could bypass the mundane struggles of earthly life to secure a place in a permanent divine reality. And in the political, theological sphere of Christian Zionism, the destruction of the self has more to do with relinquishing the self's agency and becoming instrumentalized for the sake of God's plan. By framing Israel's ascendance in the Middle east as an essential precursor to the second coming of Christ and doing everything in their power to lobby for and support it, the movement disregards the genocidal costs for the reward being the fulfillment of a divine apocalyptic timeline. And so in all three cases, the follower is convinced that the destruction of this world as they know it and the destruction of the self within it is not a tragedy, but actually a kind of liberation. But all three of these movements have been tragedies for the rest of the world. Arm Shinrikyo deployed chemical weapons in Tokyo's subway system. They killed 13 people and injured over 5,800 others, instilling a long term anxiety for those living in the city that their shared space could be the site of potential terror, and that the person sitting next to you could be the vessel for a hidden lethal ideology. ISIS has forcibly displaced millions, killed tens of thousands, and destroyed ancient heritage sites, all in an effort to erase the other. And the Middle east and Africa in particular, continue to be scarred by its violence. Christian Zionist ideology has introduced a variable to the political equation that is immune to reason and negotiation, that cannot question its theological justifications. Of course, Zionism is not entirely dependent on Christian Zionist support. You know, Jewish colonial settlements would have predated British support, American support and Christian Zionist support. But the political cosign that Christian Zionists provide within the premier superpower does aid in the continued support for the Palestinian genocide. So ideological totalism seeks to eliminate pluralism, to eliminate shared truth, and to literally kill. But we should not view the rise of totalizing ideologies as some freak, isolated phenomenon, because it deprives its strength from the very framework and conditioning embedded in our existing social structures. The mechanisms of milieu control loading the language and other techniques used by cultic tendencies exist in subtle forms within our mainstream institutions. We see the seeds of thought reform in the echo chambers of media ecosystems, we see the loading of language in the polarized rhetoric of politics, we see the demand for purity. In the most aggressive forms of cultural and religious tribalism, the extremist can sometimes be the most honest, uninhibited expression, the natural endpoint of our world's authoritarian tendencies and subtle lifelong conditioning. At home, in the classroom, at work, in civic life, we are trained in the soft versions of the very deference that totalizing leaders eventually demand. We are conditioned to respect authority without question, to prioritize the greater good of the institution over individual agency, and to accept official narratives as the only valid reality. So when a leader arrives who promises to replace the complex, messy uncertainty of our political and social reality with the clarity of absolute truth, the most conditioned minds naturally find the offer at least seductive. And so this disease, caught through social conditioning must be treated by a fundamental reclamation of the individual's capacity for critical thought and autonomy. We have to move beyond the mere consumption of information to the active interrogation of it. This means cultivating the ability to recognize the traps of thought reform, the logical fallacies, the loading of the language to recognize when an ideology is attempting to bypass our reason in favor of our emotions. The primary defense against thought reform is the refusal to let any authority religious Political or otherwise become sacred and beyond questioning.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I think that point that you made towards the end there, but this thing just being the most visible consequence of the contradictions of our current social system is like, really important is because. Yeah, I mean, we're, we're all sorting through the same, the same sorts of causes that, that produce groups like this or produce people that move into groups like this. And we might sort these out in, in, in different ways, but in the way that they do it, it's not, it's not fully alien. It's just, it's just a very visible outward manifestation of, of the same sorts of internal contradictions. And like, fascism feeds on these same things. You can see how much fascism, like, overlaps with a lot of the stuff that you're talking about here.

[Andrew Sage]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

And it seemed kind of like suicidal tendencies, this destruction of the self, Right. That is, that is dealing with those with those same sorts of like, social tensions and internal contradictions that produce like outbursts of antisocial behavior like this, or in some cases like genocidal behavior.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. I think it's very much resultant of this, the structure of our world system, you know, the stresses, the anxieties, the pains and pressure points. And, you know, we are all different as individuals. And I think that some people respond to these conditions in ways that are very much either self destructive, externally destructive, or both.

[Garrison Davis]

I think a part of our task in like a general sense is providing some alternative to this. Right. Like, look at the way the really like on like a global level, like the left has really receded a lot in the past 50, 60, 70 years. And that, that leaves a lot of, you know, people who are, who are trying to look for this, for this sort of purpose, right. They're trying to understand the contradictions of the world. And there may not be a humanistic option for that. So it gets directed into much more destructive ways. Sometimes you can see like what happened in Rojava with like democratic Confederalism as like, right. They, they actually did that, right. They, they saw what was needed and they did it. And it's directly opposing the sort of alternative version, which ISIS, which is ISIS, which is like super interesting, right? But I think we have, we have the same problem here and, but we don't really have like a strong, a strong like, alternative to that, right? Like a healthy, a healthy and growing like working class movement which attempts to actually solve the sort of, sort of problems that are in the world that these sorts of other things like, feed on, right. They, they grab onto these, onto these very, very present problems and apply an emotionally soothing response to it, even if it is self destructive.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. The. The work of building an alternative and demonstrating it and showing people living it, I think is very, very important.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I also think that when you consider the fact that the hallmark of totalizing systems is the elimination of the other and the criminalization of dissent, our antidote, our alternative has to embrace, it has to be committed to diversity of thought and expression. And I also think that it has to be willing to sit with conflict, to sit with tensions, to allow them to engage with each other without trying to just override it with some false unity.

[Garrison Davis]

Those tensions and conflict are like, important. And that is how we will develop our thought and develop our movement forward. You have to. You have to have those tensions. You have to have that conflict and disagreement which will, you know, hopefully produce more positive outcomes.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, hopefully it's generative conflict and destructive conflict.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And I mean, and some conflicts can be generative if we accept that they can't be resolved.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I think part of what makes some conflicts destructive is this effort to kind of just paint over them with some kumbaya sense of, oh, well, just we'll just unify. Like that's not consequential or we'll figure it out or that's just how it is. And I think we. Yeah, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable with not having the answers and maybe never having the answers in some cases. There are those who I think will have the capacity to engage into de radicalization of ideological totalists. I don't think I'm among them. And I think that there are others that we can gear our outreach towards.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Andrew Sage]

I get irritated sometimes when I see people who believe that the focus of our attention right now as people trying to build an alternative, trying to build a better tomorrow, that our focus should be on trying to de radicalize right wingers.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

The vast majority of people are politically unaffiliated, politically uncommitted, apathetic, disengaged. And I think that we can do far more if we were to focus on reaching those people and helping those people see the problems of the system and the solutions that we have on offer than engaging in fruitless debate with right winger and zo.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And I think that's actually the most effective form of de radicalization.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly.

[Garrison Davis]

There is a lot of problems with the sort of like de radicalization framework that emerged in like 2018 to kind of meet the rise of like the alt right, a Lot of it doesn't work. A lot of it can be fruitless, but there is, like a noble intention behind it. And I think the best way to actually do that is by just providing a healthy alternative.

[Andrew Lieber]

That.

[Garrison Davis]

That does appeal to most people. It doesn't. It doesn't need to be catered towards someone who's on, like, the right or like the far right, because in a lot of cases, those people are suffering from the same sorts of problems that the rest of people are. They've just found a false solution for it. And so if you're able to provide a better solution, a lot of them will move over. There's really very few that are, like, true and tried, like, ideologically committed. Right. There's some, and they're maybe very vocal on the Internet, but that's. That's not actually like most.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. And also the Internet is at least half bots at this point. So, yeah, you know, you take some of those Internet discussions with a grain of salt in terms of being representative of any population, significantly. But I did have some tips with regard to outreach for those who may have a special interest in it or maybe have a loved one that they really want to help, where they see being immersed in an ideologically totalistic environment. For one, directly attacking a person's core beliefs are going to trigger something called the backfire effect, which is where contradictory evidence actually strengthens their conviction because their identity is now fused to their ideology. So an attack on the idea is perceived as a mortal attack on the self. Debating them is not going to help. It's better to think of yourself more as a connecting force rather than a correcting force.

[Garrison Davis]

You're a lifeline. Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

To gently guide them out of their radical mindset rather than trying to instruct them out of it, to berate them out of it. And when you notice that they are experiencing doubt in their ideas, it can be very exciting to try and rush in and show them the way. But you don't want to overwhelm them. Doubt, especially for people immersed in that mindset, might literally collapse their entire social and cognitive world. So your focus, I think, needs to be on providing a safe harbor where their doubts can be expressed freely, without judgment or any pressure to immediately betray all that they've ever known. You also need to consider the conditions that led the person into that situation in the first place. If you know what they were like and what their situation was like prior to indoctrination, whether they had certain relationship issues, financial issues, systemic abuses, traumas, isolation, some kind of yearning for meaning or purpose that can help you contextualise the situation. And while you can always fundamentally disagree with their conclusions, it's good to recognize the needs that drove them to those conclusions. But in addition to that, you can try to find out what their passions and hobbies were or are outside of that doctrine. So they have some kind of psychological landing pad if they were to escape the environment. So they're not without a sense of self, so they're not floundering for some form of identity. These movements and this tendency for ideological totalism derived from hierarchy will not be overcome in one fell swoop. It is a continuous daily struggle within the human mind and the social fabric. It is a struggle to remain unconditioned by the temptations of certainty, to hold on to the messy, the diverse, the complex, to create a social foundation of individuals who are capable of saying no. And that's it for me. All power to all the people. Peace.

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[Karen and Georgia (My Favorite Murder)]

We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.

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[Karen and Georgia (My Favorite Murder)]

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[Andrew Sage]

when we think of globalization, we often think of Trade and late 20th century technological interconnection and the movement of capital. But there was another kind of globalization emerging in the late 19th century, and that was the globalization of resistance. In the closing decades of the 1800s, a network of ideas, outlaws and revolutionaries would emerge to challenge the empires of the time. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Andrew sage Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined again by Garrison Davis.

[Garrison Davis]

Hello.

[Andrew Sage]

Welcome again. And in this episode, using the research of historian Benedict Anderson in Chapter 5 of the Age of Globalization, I want to look at this period in history where the tools of empire were appropriated by the very people the empire sought to suppress, to link anarchist prisoners in Montrich to intellectuals in Paris, to agitators in Cuba, to nationalists in the Philippines. Now, the story doesn't actually begin in Montrish Prison in Barcelona, Spain, but our narrative begins there. Following the June 7, 1896, bombing in Corpus Christi, 300 people were imprisoned in a wave of Spanish state repression. Among those caught in the crackdown was Fernando Cerrida del Marmol, a Cuban creole whose background connected him to both Metropol and Colony. His imprisonment was a direct consequence of the state's attempt to suppress the burgeoning anarchist movement in Catalonia, but it would only end up fuelling the movement thanks to the efforts of the radical international press. Teredo was a maths teacher, which actually helped him out when he got arrested because a young lieutenant warden recognized his former teacher and managed to sound the alarm of his incarceration. Teredo also happened to be the cousin of a conservative senator who used his influence to ensure Teredo's release. But Teredo didn't let these privileges cause him to forget his less privileged fellow prisoners, because he immediately upon release, went to Paris, the City of Duality, a city that was both the central capital of colonial power and a premier global hub for political dissent. So there in Paris, Terita gained access to La Revue Blanche, a very popular periodical of the era. He'd been a recognised writer from before his imprisonment, as he'd popularly advocated for anarchism without adjectives. And he had gotten into a back and forth about workers, associations and bureaucracy and propaganda of the deed with a certain Jean Grave, who was another popular French anarchist of the period. So in La Revue Blanche, Tereda published his personal, brutal experience of imprisonment and contextualised it as a broader political indictment by connecting the gruesome suppression of dissent in Barcelona to the exact same mechanisms being deployed in the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Thus he demonstrated that repression in the Spanish provinces was not an isolated domestic issue, but a fundamental characteristic of Spanish colonial policy. And this narrative was taken up and amplified by the efforts of Feli Fignon and Georges Clementiao. Philippe Fignon was an influential art critic and prominent anarchist intellectual who helped frame this struggle against Spanish repression as a significant moral crisis. He also wrote strongly against French imperialism and revangist nationalism. And Georges Clementiao was a radical journalist and politician, considered a formidable figure in the defence of political prisoners, as he had the capacity to mobilise public opinion around issues of justice and state authority. So together these figures helped ensure that the grievances of Tereda and the Spanish prisoners were integrated into the global conversation. Now, historian Benedict Anderson situates these events within the long 19th century, which had a lot of high profile political violence, specifically anarchist bombings and targeted assassinations, which prompted a corresponding escalation in state power through much more stringent legal frameworks and surveillance apparatuses. Parallel to the rise of anti terror legislation was the emergence of a new structured infrastructure of dissent, consisting of labour organisations and radical press, which served as a vital node in the global network, capable of circulating revolutionary ideas and coordinating resistance across borders. In addition to the Montjuich affair, the Dreyfus affair would also be amplified by this network. The Dreyfus affair was an incident in French history where in 1894 a certain Alfred Dreyfus, who was a Jewish captain in the French army, was accused of treason, alleged to have passed sensitive military documents to the German intelligence services. The evidence against him was largely based on forged documents and a high degree of anti Semitic prejudice. Sidrafus was convicted, stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. But the radical press began calling this out, especially when evidence surfaced suggesting that the actual spy was another officer, Ferdinand Walston. Esterhazy. But the French military high command had covered it up, suppressing evidence, manipulating court proceedings and intimidating witnesses to ensure that Dreyfus remained convicted. A pivotal moment in the affair was the publication of non radical Emile Zola's open letter Jacuz in the newspaper le Roi in 1898, as Zola used the power of the press to directly challenge the military high command after the real culprit was acquitted the day after his trial began. This landed Zola in jail for libel, where he eventually got out on a plea deal. But it also earned him the tenuous respect of some critical left wing intellectuals. Meanwhile, Tarida had already left Paris for Belgium, then London, where he made use of his contacts around the world to create a coalition of liberals, Freemasons, socialists, anarchists, anti imperialists and anti clericals against the Spanish government and especially against Prime Minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo, the conservative who was the chief architect of the brutal repression of Spanish anarchists, socialists and labour activists. Domestically, his aim was to ensure the stability of the Spanish monarchy amidst growing pressures of anarchism, labor unrest, colonial rebellion and American aggression. On August 9, 1897, the Italian anarchist Michel Angiolillo assassinated Canovas. Angiolillo was a real monarchy hater. He had travelled to Barcelona under a fake name and was working as a freelance printer when the Corpus Christi bombing occurred. The city was put under martial law and his anarchist friends were incarcerated in Montreich. After hearing about how they were being tortured, he fled for Paris, was expelled to Belgium, then moved to London where Tereda's agitation against the Canovas regime was at full strength. He continued to work as a printer and engaged in activism in London for some time, where people asked who would avenge those tortured and murdered by the Spanish state, including the recently executed Jose Rizal, who was a Filipino nationalist. So after hearing this, Angelillo was like okay, bet. And he makes his way back to continental Europe with a pistol in his pocket. In France he meets Dr. Ramon Betances, who is a Puerto Rican physician revolutionary who sought the independence of Puerto Rico and the dismantling of Spanish colonial authority in the Antilles. He spent his life country hopping, helping the sick and fleeing Spanish spies. And although he wasn't an anarchist, he was connected with a lot of anarchists, particularly French and Italian anarchists. Through the heterogeneous front against the Spanish state against imperialism and monarchical tyranny, the European anarchists and socialists found a natural ally in the anti colonial movement he was part of as the liberation of Puerto Rico and Cuba. Would represent a vital blow against the same imperialist structures they were fighting to dismantle in Europe. Now, Betantis claims he redirected the target of Angiolillo's planned assassination from the Spanish queen regent and infant son to the prime minister. But Benedict Anderson calls this narrative into question because there doesn't seem to be any corroborating evidence. Anyway, so Angiolillo gets to Madrid, he learns Canovas location, he stalks him for a bit, and then he shoots him dead with the pistol he brought from London. In his trial, Angiolilo defends himself with reference to Montjuich and Cuba and the Philippines, and says Canovas personified in their most repugnant forms religious ferocity, military cruelty, the implacability of the judiciary, the tyranny of power and the greed of the possessing classes. I have rid Spain, Europe and the entire world of him. That is why I am no assassin, but rather an executioner. End quote.

[Garrison Davis]

That does go pretty hard.

[Andrew Sage]

It does go hard.

[Garrison Davis]

When is this? Is this late 1800s? Early early 1900s.

[Andrew Sage]

Late 1800s.

[Garrison Davis]

Late 1800s. Okay, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So after his rousing speech, he was then himself executed at just 26 years old. Now, beyond being a symptom of imperial crisis, Canovas assassination functioned as an accelerant by removing such a central figure of the political machinery of Spain in the midst of its war against the US Angiolilo's act triggered the volatility that would culminate in the loss of Spain's final colonial possessions. In 1898, Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico were in the hands of the United States, and the bullets that killed Canovas just kept going well into the decades to come. Now, speaking of the Philippines, we can turn now to that pacific node of the movement network. Isabello de los Reyes was a moderate liberal of his time, somewhat privileged as a businessman, publisher and journalist. But he wasn't afraid to advocate strongly against Spanish colonial rule and was arrested in connection to the Philippine Revolution of 1896 as part of a broader repression against rebels, intellectuals and activists. The revolution had begun prematurely after the Spanish authorities discovered their plot, and so many of the revolutionaries were imprisoned as a result. Now, while imprisoned, Isabello had to deal with the death of his wife and was unable to attend her funeral or do anything for their children. Naturally, after an experience like that, he would be pissed at the colonial injustices that he and his people suffered at the hands of the government and at the hands of the religious orders. He demanded political reform and was met with relocation, first to a Barcelona Municipal Jail, and then to the infamous Montuish. While in Spain, he met several brave anarchists who had been imprisoned for various crimes, crimes including advocating for Cuban independence, protesting trials by military courts, and opening secular schools. Gasp. For children, which, I mean, it was. It was Catholic Spain at that point in time. Yeah, so that was like, the worst thing you could possibly do. There was some anarchists who were in jail for assassinations. But I mean, come on, what's. What's a little assassination between friends?

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, the assassination and opening a school, I think, is the same level of danger to the state at this point.

[Andrew Sage]

Indeed. And these dangerous criminals demonstrated a level of solidarity that really inspired Isabella. And while in prison, he also got access to anarchist literature and was able to take part in discussions with anarchists where he learned about their rejection of state authority, colonial domination, and class hierarchy. Now, in this exile period, I don't think he ever became an anarchist. And I mean, later in his life, he even served as a senator. But he was profoundly influenced by the anarchists and did come to admire them for decades to come. Eventually, following the assassination of Canovas and the change in government, in 1898, Isabello was freed. He then moved to Madrid and started a fortnightly publication, Filipinas Ante Europa, an anti imperialist critique with particular focus on the growing American empire. And it's funny, because after Spain lost their colonies to the U.S. all of a sudden, public opinion in Spain started to become sympathetic to the Filipino fight. It was like, oh, now we could start to feel bad for y'.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

All.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, the Americans embarrassed us, so now we. We have some sympathy for your plight. And so Isabello criticized America's claim to be liberating the Philippines and Cuba as hypocrisy by pointing to the regular occurrence of lynchings and racist institutions within the US and he also criticized the Filipino elite for their willingness to collaborate with the new colonial rulers. The Philippine Revolution was basically over by 1901, as a key leader named Emilio Aguinaldo was captured and had to swear allegiance to the U.S. by the way, Aguinaldo would also prove to be a collaborator later in his life as he worked with the Japanese occupiers of the Philippines during World War II. So it's a pattern of behavior for that guy. Anyway, so after the end of the revolution, Isabella decided to finally return to the Philippines to reunite with the six children he had with his first wife, who he hadn't seen in years, and to continue the struggle. Also, when he was in Spain, he got Married, Isabella, arrived in Manila with the works of Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Pier Joseph Proudhon, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, and Ericko Malatesta. He might have been the first person to bring the works of some of these thinkers to the Philippines. And I think we kind of understate that. Luck of the draw, I suppose, when we talk about the movement of ideas in the 19th and 20th centuries. You know, they didn't have the Internet. They didn't have the anarchist library.

[Garrison Davis]

It takes a lot of work. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

They didn't have all these accessible means of learning about these ideas. So if you didn't happen to know somebody who could bring in that kind of literature for you. Well, first of all, you wouldn't even know that literature existed unless somebody told you about it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

The access to information was severely limited. And so, fortunately, Isabella brought these ideas to Philippines, and he was the first to do so in his time. But as we'll soon see, the history of the Philippines could have gone on a slightly different trajectory if he had not brought in that literature, learned about those ideas, started engaging and agitating on that basis based on, you know, his experiences. I mean, he. He ended up in a Spanish prison, of all places. So the Spanish empire that imprisoned him ended up sowing the seeds for rebellion in their former territory later on, as

[Garrison Davis]

it happens, a not uncommon turn of events, actually.

[Andrew Sage]

Indeed. So Isabella pulls up in Manila, and his reputation as an anti imperialist preceded him. He was labeled a dangerous anarchist. And it really didn't help that the US President McKinley had literally been shot to death by an anarchist just a month prior.

[Garrison Davis]

This. This whole period of time is just while every time that I've done an episode with you about, like, the late 1800s to early to early 1900s, it's always. It's always stuff like this. It's like.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

An unbelievable collection of happenings. Like. Like history really has such a momentum during this period. Like, it's. It's. It's unbelievable.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, I just. I really enjoy drawing those connections because, I mean, he came to Manila with all these organizational plans. He was gonna start a party, he was gonna launch a newspaper. But as he pulls up and he. He realizes he's literally on a list.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, he kind of had to scrap those ideas and pull back a bit.

[Garrison Davis]

And, like, Lenin's doing the same stuff, like in Germany and Russia during the same time. Like, everyone.

[James Stout]

Everyone.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, everyone understands the mission.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Everyone knows what has to happen.

[Andrew Sage]

And this is like, before the standardization of Passports.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

This is before the global visa system. And so people are literally just moving around.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I mean, I always marvel at the fact that Erica Malatesta was like, he was getting active in Egypt. At one point he pulled up in Brazil. You know, everybody has to come to Brazil eventually. He was everywhere. Right. And these ideas were everywhere too, as a result of the movement of people bringing these books, bringing these ideas, get involved in conversation. It also helped, of course, that a lot of anarchists were printmakers.

[Garrison Davis]

Still are still.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, many such cases. So Isabello switched strategies. In his words, he took advantage of the occasion to put into practice the good ideas that he had learned from the anarchists of Barcelona who were imprisoned with him in the infamous fortress of Montjuich. So he started organizing the working class in Manila. He had the benefit of actually being able to speak the language of the swathes of workers in Manila, because he happened to come from the same region of the vastly linguistically diverse Philippines that they did. He was from the Ilocos region of the island of Luzon and he natively spoke the Ilocano language. Like many of the workers that had migrated to Milan. Though he was technically part of the intelligentsia, Isabello had a connection to the roots, you know, to the people, the streets. And so he began by organizing the printers, of course, and helping them with their strikes. And from there, the efforts very quickly snowballed, far quicker than the elites could have anticipated, into a cross industry worker federation called the Union Obrera Democratica. The first of its kind in the entire country. The federation was flexible and loosely structured, which made it quite suited to undertaking various strike actions. But beyond demonstrations and strikes, Isabella also incorporated a little local flavour because the union was also involved in festivals and theatre and music events. So it was a combination of worker and non worker based organisation. You get a little bit of everybody involved when you do that, rather than strictly focusing on just one plane of struggle and connection. Eventually, however, the Americans got their act together and met this movement with surveillance, arrest and trials. And though they couldn't legally justify keeping him in jail for very long, they did throw Isabelo back into jail for a short period. Now the worker federation would eventually collapse, but the ideas remain. And those ideas fed directly into various labour organisations, socialist parties and guerrilla movements going forward. As for Isabello, his second wife, the one he married in Spain, died and two years later he married again to an 18 year old. Isabello married and was widowed three times. He actually outlived all of his wives and had a grand total of 27 children.

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus Christ.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. I have no comments on what kind of father he may have been, but

[Garrison Davis]

that's just, I mean, yeah, you can, you can kind of assume based on those numbers, but yeah, that is what it is.

[Andrew Sage]

And the fact that he was, he was in Spain, got married in Spain, had six children back home who had lost their mother. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't in Spain by choice. Right. But yeah, you know, he was middle class. He may have had family back at home taking care of his children, but still. That's rough. Yeah, that is rough. So later on in his life, like I mentioned before, he got into electoral politics on the municipal level and the senate level. And he also in his life got to work in religious reform. Eventually found in the Agrippayan Church, which was the first ever Filipino independent Catholic Christian church.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I was, I was wondering because like you, you mentioned he brought over Thomas Aquinas.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah, he was very critical of the religious orders, the, the Spanish Catholic religious orders. But yeah, he ended up forming an independent Catholic church, so a Catholic church that is not associated with Rome.

[Garrison Davis]

You, you said he didn't identify as an anarchist. Did he identify as like a socialist? Like what, what, what, what kind of was his like self defined politics, like around, around this point? And like when he started running for office on the municipal level, I didn't

[Andrew Sage]

see how he defined himself. I think he considered himself to be a patriot. You know, a patriot, somebody who was pro labor. I don't know that he assigned himself necessarily the title of socialist or anarchist or liberal or anything like that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

He has, however, been called the father of the Philippine labor movement and the father of Filipino socialism. But what do we take from all of this? You know, the empire might globalize trade, might globalize capital, might globalize various forms of suppression, but it inadvertently globalizes resistance. The same infrastructure that empires use to extend their reach across their claimed territories is the same infrastructure that radicals can use to fight. You know, even prison was used as a site of connection. A literal place of repression became a place that connected people across multiple countries. I think the lesson that I take away from this kind of narrative I've spun here between the Cuban Creole Fernando Tereda, the Puerto Rican doctor Ramon Betances, the Italian Michelangelo, and the Filipino Isabella de los Reyes, is that the globalization was not a one way imposition. We could potentially adopt the empire's tools to fight back and to network our resistance.

[Garrison Davis]

People who are doing resistance, but on the other side of the political spectrum do this same thing, like the formation of ISIS in prisons because of how we imprisoned Al Qaeda members is a pretty key example of this. Yeah, this is a very common thing. Like it turns out very, very often the master's tools actually are used to dismantle the master's house. That that phrase still has some like, I think metaphorical uses, but in, in, in a sort of like literalist sense. I occasionally push back on it because yeah, it does view movement as a one way thing. It has no dialectical analysis. And I think part of our job is adapting and moving as empire and capital adapts and moves to the flow of history 100%.

[Andrew Sage]

And with that, as always, all power, all to all the people. Peace.

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[Dana Al Kurd]

Hello everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. And today I have with me Andrew Lieber. Andrew Lieber is a non resident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Program and an assistant professor professor in Tulane University's Department of Political Science and their Middle east and North Africa Studies Program. His research and teaching focuses on the domestic politics and international relations of the Middle east and North Africa region, with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.

[Andrew Lieber]

Thanks for having me.

[Dana Al Kurd]

So I wanted to have you on today because, well, the war in Iran, but also because I think there's been a lot of reporting and some that's not very well sourced in mainstream media like the New York Times about the GCC states, GCC Gulf Cooperation Council so the Arab Gulf states about their motivations and the actions of the Gulf states during this war. I think that there's been a lot of obfuscation for variety of reasons. So I wanted to bring you on, given your expertise, to kind of clarify fact from fiction on some of that. We're recording May 28th. So maybe people have seen this. Trump also recently threatened to bomb Amen who were acting as mediators initially. So yeah, I wanted to go through all the main GCC actors and get your analysis of their behavior during this war, what they want to happen when it's over.

[Andrew Lieber]

Sure.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Andrew Lieber]

Happy to do so. I think one thing that has been a little hard for people to follow maybe has been the tendency for US And English language media outlets talk about the Gulf states or the G states or what they want from this conflict. But even heading into this war, there were already key differences among these countries. There was a diplomatic and increasingly potentially a military rift between Saudi Arabia and the neighboring United Arab Emirates. There have been past disputes between different Gulf countries as well. And even though initially the Iran war seemed like it would taper over the cracks in these divisions, in many ways it's also deepened the divides as different countries have interpreted the threats posed by Iran and by Israel and potentially even the United States in different ways. So at present we can maybe think of three broad camps within the gcc. So there's Saudi Arabia, the largest by land mass of these countries, and to a lesser extent, Kuwait. And also Qatar have taken the approach of trying to just get things back to, quote, unquote, normal or like a new normal, supporting mediation efforts by other countries like Pakistan, and now, at least for Qatar, increasingly engaged in direct mediation to try to lock in some kind of agreement that restores flows of energy and other goods in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, the key body of water that allows things in and out of the Persian Gulf. In one direction, you have the United Arab Emirates, which has presented itself as kind of much more hawkish in terms of its willingness to potentially use military force against Iran or to join the United States in a military effort to open the Strait of Hormuz. In the past few days, it's been quietly walking back some of those positions, but it has tried to draw contrast between its more assertive stance towards Iranian actions in the region and Saudi Arabia. And then the other direction, as discussed, we have the Sultanate of Oman, which leaned much further in the other direction during the war, being the only country that criticized openly from the start both the US And Israeli led attacks on Iran and Iran's reprisals. On the other side of the Gulf, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Bou Saidi went on US Television prior to the war to make the case that these was the possible ongoing talks between the US And Iran could bear fruit that was unsuccessful as an intervention. But also Omani diplomats at various points have offered much more critical commentary of the United States, but they have likewise kind of walked that back, or at least not emphasized it as much in recent weeks. But clearly there is a narrative critical of their role that circulates in some parts of D.C. which percolated its way up into the president saying, well, if Oman is not going to cooperate with certain things, then we'll just bomb them until they do. Which is not the nicest way to ask for the cooperation of other countries in a sensitive geopolitical issue. But so it goes, right?

[Dana Al Kurd]

We're not the most effective these days, let's say. Yeah. So thank you for kind of laying that out. There are so many questions I have. I want to talk about kind of how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, you've already mentioned, differ on this issue, but also like how their differences speak to different visions for the region, especially vis a vis Israel. But also, just like before we get to that, there's been a lot of reporting about how Saudi Arabia is like secretly really gung ho about the war and is encouraging the Trump administration to be more aggressive. What weight do you put on those reports?

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah, I mean, those have been around since the start of the conflict. I'll preface this by giving a major caveat, which is that every week that goes by, we learn more about what we didn't know earlier in the war. Like, you know, we know now that both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have carried out airstrikes on Iran at certain points. So they didn't publicize that. But I'm broadly skeptical of accounts that Saudi Arabia and specifically Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman advocated for this war, pushed for the war. Saudi Arabia and Iran have not always had very great relations, but they nominally re established diplomatic ties in 2023. And generally, I think Saudi Arabia's view is they want to keep the geopolitical peace in the surrounding neighborhood because otherwise Saudi Arabia can't get the kind of foreign investment or the kind of economic partnerships it needs to generate economic growth and employ its citizen population, a major political concern. And I think even the United Arab Emirates prior to this war was not pushing for it actively. I think these countries also don't want to tell, with the possible exception of Oman, don't want to tell President Trump no directly. So my understanding of things is that everything prior to the war was phrased in a kind of conditional we would recommend you don't do this, but just make sure, if you just think this is a good idea, that you can militarily defeat Iran in a rather quick and decisive fashion. Of course, that bank on the United States, current policymakers having an accurate view of their own capabilities, which seem to be not a correct assumption. But I think that also during the war, you had kind of a panic in different directions, like a belief that, well, I guess if the United States has gone to war, clearly they could solve this militarily. Right. So I think you had some leaders, especially the United Arab Emirates, pushing the United States to like, finish the job. Don't leave the conflict in a state where it's very clear that the United States can militarily force Iran to do certain things, but you also haven't kind of secured meaningful concessions from Iran. And that, I think is, I guess, one thing that unites the DCC states. Now, again, with the possible exception of Oman, is concern about where they get left if there is any kind of deal. It's very clear that they do not have a seat at the table in terms of these negotiations. And there's certainly A lot of complaints online or in media outlets in the Gulf about that fact, but it doesn't change the reality that these are US Iran negotiations with maybe some consultation with Israel, you know, maybe some communication with Saudi Arabia, with the uae, but not a ton of consultation of them.

[Dana Al Kurd]

And just to be clear, they've paid the brunt of the price here. And Iran has attacked civilian infrastructure and desalination plants and all those things.

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah, no, I mean, Iran calculated, I think, well, we could attack Israel, but most of the rockets and missiles be shot down. Israel's farther away. It's harder to hit them with a larger payload, whereas you can hit a lot of infrastructure in the Gulf. It's been very clear that Iraq, Iran targeted not only US Military bases, but also civilian infrastructure in an attempt to put a lot of economic pressure on these countries, especially the uae. And even countries that had sought to mediate between the conflict or had been more openly critical of any US Military adventurism, like Qatar, basically have their entire economy frozen right now because they can get very little of the liquid natural gas they produce in or out. Same thing with Kuwait, same thing with Bahrain. One interesting, maybe unintended consequence of this, though, is that some of the Gulf states are doing better than others economically from this. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made up a significant portion of the ground lost from lost oil exports because they can export some oil over land. And Oman is exporting about as much oil as before, but at a much higher price. So economically, or even doing perhaps better. But, yeah, these are the countries that have primarily paid the price in direct terms. And then by extension, every country that relies on their energy supplies is also also paying a price in terms of higher costs for cooking gas, diesel, fertilizer, and so on.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Right. Really, this is an American Israeli war, even if the United States kind of holds the final say. But, you know, recently on social media and in a number of repeated statements, President Trump himself and his administration have talked about the Abraham Accords and normalization with Israel, tying it into possible outcomes for this war. How do you explain that?

[Andrew Lieber]

I'm sure your audience is familiar with the Abraham Accords, but the diplomatic normalization between the UAE, Bahrain and some other countries and Israel back in 2020. I think for President Trump, this is motive. Talking about this now is motivated by a sense of, you know, there's a real loss of face and status by having talked up how he was going to have this decisive victory against Iran and then it being a disaster on every single front. So I think there's now going to be a hunt for some other kind of quick win that he can show. But I think also the lead up to this war demonstrated that the Abraham Accords as a framework for US Policy towards the Middle east was pretty bankrupt in every direction. On the one hand, all of the carrots that the United States was supposed to offer to encourage countries to normalize ties with Israel had effectively already been given out. So for Saudi Arabia, it was like, here are all the concessions that we were going to use in order to encourage you to normalize ties with Israel. We can just give those two, as long as you promise to invest money in the United States. So that's already been allowed to happen. At the same time, the downside for these countries in normalizing ties with Israel is pretty high. There's nothing that Israeli leaders at present can do to guarantee that there won't be another catastrophic and genocidal war against the Palestinian population. That's something that a Saudi leadership that is dealing with potentially rising unemployment, that other countries dealing with ethnic or sectarian divides within their borders, not something they really want to take on as well. And I think that the war has kind of created divergent perceptions of Israel as well. I think for countries like Saudi Arabia and especially Oman, there's a view of Israel, even for a newer generation of leadership like Mohammed bin Salman, who were not particularly opposed to a greater role for Israel in the region, greater ties with Israel are just now concerned about Israel as a chaotic and unreliable partner in the region that will throw the security interests of its allies to the wind at a moment's notice. Their interpretation of the Abraham Accords is that it did nothing to protect the UAE and Bahrain from attacks by Iran or from getting dragged into an Israeli led or partly Israeli led war. In the other direction, however, the UAE itself kind of views its ties with Israel as more important than ever. Their view is like, well, this is a region of unreliable actors. Israel has a capable military, even if they don't admit it openly. Israel is the only nuclear armed actor in the region. And Israel did send, what's it called, the Iron Dome defense technology to the UAE during the conflict. On the one hand, I think we're just as we saw during the Biden administration, the Abraham Accords remains this kind of like cargo cult for American foreign policymakers. This idea that we'll just say the Abraham Accords and it'll magically make countries kind of change their foreign policy orientation. But I think the Abraham Accords as a uae, Israeli security, economic, political alliance in the region is stronger than ever and will continue to be the case into the future.

[Dana Al Kurd]

But that Saudi Arabia will not participate in the way that the Trump administration assumes?

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah, I think that Saudi Arabia will continue their policy. They've had ever since October 7, or at least since roughly thereafter, of saying, like, well, we're not ruling out, we just have some conditions in order to move on that. And then I don't think those are unreasonable conditions of making progress towards a Palestinian state. But they are not anything that Netanyahu or even probably any other political coalition that comes to power in Israel is willing to even think about. So I don't really see it happening soon. I suppose the thing is Trump is so unpredictable that he could just lash out and declare that he's going to do something to Saudi Arabia if they don't normalize. But then it's a real question of, well, how long is he going to sustain that and what does he do if Saudi Arabia or Mohammed bin Salman himself, like, snaps back. Over this past winter, we saw, for example, as part of that diplomatic rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, we saw Emirati backed forces in Yemen make gains. A lot of commentary online about, like, oh, Mohammed bin Salman is willing to do anything about this and then ultimately wind up the Saudi Foreign ministry condemned the UAE's role in Yemen and Saudi forces bombed like, like an Emirati shipment coming into Yemen. So there's also the potential here as well. Like these are two political systems where power is highly personalized around specific individuals. And so if President Trump decides to go down that route, there's a possibility for this to become a very personalized conflict.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Dana Al Kurd]

And I think it's important for listeners to understand the connection, why the Palestinian issue holds such weight for Gulf leaders. You mentioned, for example, ethnic and sectarian divides in particular countries. I'm thinking Bahrain, or rising unemployment and dissent and discontent in places like Saudi Arabia. It's because, either explicitly or implicitly, the Palestinian issue in some parts of the Gulf is connected to people's anti regime sentiment, which of course the Iranian regime is very good at stoking and exploiting. And so it's not just that they're worried about regional instability outside their borders. It's also, like you said, there are domestic implications for all of these regimes.

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah, I think if we want to turn back the clock to like the first Trump administration and even right up to October 7th in places like Saudi Arabia, I think there was a belief that you could just suppress people's solidarity with Palestine or that this was like a dead issue for most Saudi citizens. But what kind of October 7th showed or changed was that that sentiment had really never gone away as much as it had seemed. And also that there's now an entirely new generation that has seen the atrocities perpetrated in Gaza over the past few years that is now well aware of everything that has been done. And this is not something you can hide from people or pretend that it will go away. And it's even harder to do so if people aren't seeing kind of rapid economic gains in their, their own lives. So it becomes yet another thing that, yeah, if you wanted to fault Saudi leaders for kind of weakness and the international stage, if you wanted to fault them for not demonstrating political courage, that could be a cudgel to use against them. So inside Saudi Arabia, the one consistent thing over the past five, six, seven years is the complete suppression of talking about the Palestinian issue. Because political authorities are so worried that if people start talking about one political issue, maybe they start linking it to other concerns. At the same time, there has been a shift among kind of regime aligned commentators from if this were back in 2019, 2020, you would hear them say, well, Saudi Arabia is now a country that acts in its own national interests. That means we don't have to listen to the Palestinian leadership. That's their own concern. Now you hear kind of same tune, different variation, where it's like, because Saudi Arabia is acting in its own national interest, we can decide that we want to act in solidarity with the Palestinian leadership, not just do whatever the west tells us to do. But then this leads into, I think, kind of the polarization among some of the Gulf countries because it's the exact opposite dynamic for the uae, where the UAE goes the route of presenting itself as closer than ever to the United States, very aware that they can use Saudi skepticism towards Israel as something to attack Saudi Arabia in US Commentary and US Media markets. And then even if the countries seem to be able to patch these differences up from time to time, it's going to keep driving them apart as well.

[Dana Al Kurd]

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, wrong. But during the first Trump administration, the propaganda around Palestinians emerging from the UAE was extremely vehement, let's say. Like there was so much rhetoric coming out of uae, like government officials and associated influencers and things like that, that was attempting to kind of change the image of the Palestinian to an Arab audience. And, and even though you're right that they are clinging more than ever to the Abraham Accords, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that they can't do that as much anymore. I'm not seeing as much of that kind of rhetoric and kind of anti Palestinian racism that I used to see.

[Andrew Lieber]

Yeah. And it used to be that you could walk this. I don't want to call it a fine line, but you could play this game. I'm more familiar with this in the Saudi case, but the rhetoric would go. Of course, Saudi Arabia stands with the Saudi issue, but the Palestinian leadership, they would basically adopt the same tropes we were familiar with the United States, the Palestinian leaders leadership never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Or they would just do direct translation of that.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[Andrew Lieber]

But yeah, it's much harder. Like, you can't get away with that anymore because the pushback online would be incredibly intense. And likewise, even from the uae, we see continued coordination with Israel. But it's interesting how the UAE denies or doesn't confirm certain things. So bombing Iran during the war, the UAE Foreign Ministry kind of does a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, like, well, look at our policies where we said we would retaliate if we were attacked. Draw your own conclusion. Whereas when it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, like, visiting the uae, they're like, absolutely not. This is false news.

[Dana Al Kurd]

It did not happen. Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Andrew Lieber]

And I think that points to the extent to which especially Netanyahu has become extremely toxic and hard to separate from that. And that even though I don't think the UAE is going to be hosting any, like, major Palestinian solidarity events anytime soon, at the same time, they're not like, you know, this is not like a warm piece in terms of how they're approaching Israelis either. I'm pretty sure the UAE even condemned the recent law basically allowing executions of the death penalty.

[Funko Pop Advertiser]

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[Andrew Lieber]

Specifically defined to basically be Palestinians in the West Bank. Also condemned Israel's actions in Lebanon as well. So it's become harder to mount the kind of media campaigns against Palestinians, I think, partly because they backfire and then partly in recognition that this was done for years and years. And then ultimately, what distinguishes Saudi Arabia from the UAE is not that their citizen publics have different views about the Palestinians, but just that in the uae, you can surveil, coerce, and bribe your citizen population so much better than in Saudi Arabia. It's like, sorry to be kind of crass about it, but the juice just isn't worth the squeeze in terms of the Saudi monarchy relative to at least being in this kind of middle path where they're maybe not not pushing the United States too much for Palestinian statehood, but are like doing at least the bare minimum to keep, I guess, the idea of a two state solution alive.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah. And to stay adhering to the Arab peace initiative in some capacity. What's kind of the takeaway, do you think, for all of these countries in the aftermath of this war? Do you foresee a change in their positions vis a vis the United States in particular?

[Andrew Lieber]

For years and years, analysts of the Gulf have been talking about like these states hedging. And I think, think in one direction this war showed that like most of that amounted to just trying to get like more concessions from the United States. Like you had a couple European countries show up, you had like Pakistan get involved a little bit. But their strategies for the course of this war still revolved around trying to influence US Thinking, you know, frame how they were viewed in the United States. But I do think it is going to trigger changes down the line. Like we saw Saudi Arabia normalize ties with Iran four years after the United States failed to intervene after Iranian line groups attacked Saudi oil fields. I think something similar here where we're going to see developments three or four years down the line that have been cooking in the background as a result of what has happened in 2026. I think we're starting to see some of that now. And it's not going to be like, oh, we're going to get a Chinese military base in the Gulf. It's going to be other things. Like we're seeing Saudi Arabia try to work with what it views as the other regional middle powers it can trust and work with with Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan. The uae, meanwhile, is trying to like double or triple down on its direct security ties with Israel. But I think the way these ghost states are going to react is going to figure out how can we shape the diplomacy around the region, how can we shape our own security in ways that don't rely on the United States but aren't like, how to put it, I think in Washington D.C. because of the obsession with Chinese influence in the world, there's always this belief of like, oh, like, if not us, then it will be like the Chinese will be involved. Think the reality is going to look very different. I don't think China wants to get involved in a security fashion in the Gulf. But there are other countries that have an interest in like some degree of peaceful economic development or some degree of like maximalized security. And that's going to be the future of these state security relations.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Well, thank you so much, Andrew. Really appreciate your expertise. I'll link your profile at Carnegie in the show notes as well as given that we talked about kind of the Palestinian question in in relation to some of these other issues domestically in the Gulf States. I'll also link to some of my own research on this topic. So thank you so much.

[Andrew Lieber]

Thanks for having me.

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Goodbye.

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Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Andrew Sage]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

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No idea.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Last week it was Dinosaurs.

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[Garrison Davis]

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Everything kids love. Download it for free. Garrison thinks that's Good.

[Garrison Davis]

That's good. If we were brave. If we.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. New Halloween.

[Garrison Davis]

That's not happening.

[Andrew Lieber]

Howard.

[Garrison Davis]

This is. It could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout and Robert Evans.

[James Stout]

Hey.

[Garrison Davis]

This episode we're covering the week of June 3rd to June 10th. James, some small news items to start.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, many small things. This weekend, new details have emerged about the Santa Rosa island fire. If you remember, the fire was started by a mariner. At first it was reported that the mariner had started the fire by firing distress flares. It now appears that the mariner's engine caught fire. Starting to fire.

[Mia Wong]

Oh.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Then he fired distress flares. But there's more. Okay.

[James Stout]

How many fires did this guy have involved in his boating trip?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Well, he ran into the island next door a week before. Okay.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, boy.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And was towed by Coast Guard to their harbour where they found that he didn't have a number of. Of items that you have to have on his boat for safety equipment reasons. Right. So he pounded his boat for six days until a good Samaritan donated those items. He then left the harbor and crashed into the next island.

[James Stout]

I think that Good Samaritan made a mistake. I think we can agree this is not the man now.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Yeah. I think doing anything to enable this man to re float on the seven seas.

[James Stout]

He should not be in the sea.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. This guy listened to too much Jimmy Buffett. It. Yeah. Unfortunately, like this seems to be one of those situations. He bought the boat for a single dollar.

[Mia Wong]

What?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

We generally don't give advice on this podcast, but I will say you couldn't have said a funnier thing than that. It's not uncommon in Southern California for people to buy boats in order to find a cheaper place to live. Yes, of course, things like slip fees, registration, people don't really see things that are. I have worked on some old diesel engines on these boats. They're not particularly straight. I'm not a great diesel mechanic to begin with. But they're not particularly straightforward. And this results in what I. I think we have seen here, which is a delta between confidence and ability on the seven seas. This isn't a boat that one should be sailing alone. Much less so if they only bought a couple of years ago for a single American dollar. No, unfortunately, it did destroy a large grove of Torrey Pine which only exists there and here. So. Yeah, I know. Be careful out there. Would be Pirates moving on Now ISIS reported 19th in custody death this year when correctional centers Georgia.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Continuing to set all the worst records. A court has vacated the President's hundred thousand dollar H1B visa tax cases brought by a California et al. But it's more than a dozen states that will be impacted by the tax. This is a good one. Gregory Bevino appears to be eyeing a run at the presidency. Sure. This is interesting. So he launched an exploratory website. Yeah, why not? Why like his website bavino2028.com the campaign appears to have originated from Jacob Engel. So Engels is a. Right where he's kind of Roger Stone protege. They broke ways. Engels was appears to have been charged with his methamphetamine possession earlier this year. Oh wow. It was Engels who was first posting this House Bavino 2028 thing in Bavino's replies. And Engels now appears is listed on bavino2028.com oh God.

[James Stout]

In this House Spavino thing he's just. He watched too much Game of Thrones. Right? That's why he's saying that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I think so.

[James Stout]

Because I looked into it. That's as far as I can tell. It's him trying to do like a knightly. Like we're the new Knightly order. I mean it's part of his SS cosplay is how I kind of interpreted it. Cause he clearly is obsessed with the fucking Schutzstaffel and they were like a knightly order and that's. I get those vibes from Greg. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like if you look at the website. Right. Like you could like he's prominently featured wearing his now infamous great coat. Trench coat, whatever you want to call that.

[James Stout]

Big fucking coat. Yes.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I don't know if Bavino like Bavino, maybe he's just trying to run this as far as it'll go. Right. He just lost his job, so maybe he's looking for like something new to do.

[James Stout]

Oh sure.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Like I'm not sure how serious Vivino is with this. I do think he's. He's definitely trying to continue to I guess influence the national discussion. I guess.

[James Stout]

Well in the Internet. I mean he's hanging out with the fucking Martin Sellner over in Portugal. He's hanging out with like straight up like Christchurch mass shooting affiliated Nazis, you know, like he's going for it.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Everyone should just scroll down to the our founders section of this website.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, hold on. Before, before we do that. This link has now appeared in our group chat. That is the most Nazi ass. Like, just profile picture thing I have seen in a long time.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's like a Wolfenstein.

[Garrison Davis]

Gary Wolfenstein aesthetic.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, right.

[James Stout]

Like, but like, in the same way that, like, they're also clearly aping from like. Like communist aesthetics. Like, the red background, the way he's kind of framed. Is this, like, weird.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Is it kind of West German?

[James Stout]

I would almost say it's like generic propaganda now, which is sort of like a mix of like, West German East German or East German. Like USS and art. Like the use of bread, the use of the olive branches, the sun.

[Garrison Davis]

The sun rays coming from his body.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. The oak leaf.

[James Stout]

It's just kind of like generic propaganda. House Bovino Min fight.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's an AI generated image. Right. So it is based on the way

[Garrison Davis]

the text is formed. It does appear to be an AI generated.

[James Stout]

It looks AI.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's not properly framed. Right. The framing on the left and right is thicker than the framing at the top. There is no framing at the bottom. Like Zamator our shit.

[James Stout]

Oh, my God. No, I think we're all missing something, which is that right underneath the big propaganda image. Tiny text. The words in very tiny texts, almost hidden. Bevino knows what America needs. America's men.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's not in quotation marks, but.

[James Stout]

No.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

The slogan of the campaign is Men Fight Back.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Or the slogan to House Bavino. It's a little unclear.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, right, Unclear. Maybe it's Howl's Bevino. Maybe he's struggling to make rent, having lost his job at the Border patrol. And this, he's setting up a pack to pay his rent. Yeah, but. Yeah. Incredible. Wow. The Our Founders section. Really?

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, I have sc. I have scrolled down to the Our Founders section, and there is an incredible specimen.

[James Stout]

The a bold national strategy part is really upsetting to me. Yeah, because he's calling himself the Commander in capitalizing the V and the C in A in a very like, here's the ways. Following the Commander's maximum effectiveness in quelling the foreign hordes that have subsumed our nation's cities both large and small, the American people witnessed what true leadership powered by a warrior mindset actually looks like, as the Commander endeavored to restore order and national sovereignty. That is one sentence. Second sentence. America as a whole has already fallen to the grasps of the foreign global one world hellscape ushered in by Barack Hussein Obama. However, we believe that the Commander can not only usher in the great restoration of America, but also cement the continuity of a strong and sovereign UN United States that will last a millennia. A thousand year Reich, in other words. And that also was one sentence. That is two sentences that I just read.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I need to be clear.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

You have a campaign, a couple of Gmail addresses they're using here, some really

[James Stout]

small font by the way.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It's inconsistent periodically, right?

[James Stout]

Yeah, it's very inconsistently. This looks like they had AI lay out his website too, but they have

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

one woman on their founders page and everyone else in size like 20 and she's like size 11.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Like the set will have, you know, images of him or of his post where you can see his name, but it refers to him only as the Commander. So like there's a post of Greg's where it like it's that post that he made at the airport where he's like pointing at the flight to Newark when he was on his way to Portugal, being like, should I just handle it myself and you know, go to Jersey to deal with this? And above that is perhaps I must resolve this personally as a quote. The Commander challenging the inertia of the open borders bureaucracy. In response to like, it's written like Greg Bevino became the overall dictator of America and this is a history book 60 years later. Like that's the way his website is written.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, it's incredibly low effort and quite concerning.

[James Stout]

And he really has a high opinion of himself. Yeah, I gotta say that.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. I do wonder how much this is just Engels just writing this like as a fan. Yeah.

[James Stout]

I wonder how much he had to do with this. But this does not seem like he had nothing to do with it. I will say that based on my knowledge of Greg Bevina.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, he's shared it on his own social media.

[James Stout]

Great.

[Garrison Davis]

In other news, the months long fight over ICE and CBP funding has come to an end. In a 214 to 212 vote on Tuesday, the House has passed a reconciliation bill funding ICE and cbp.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, this is the so called Secure America Act. Right. It'll give them $70 billion. So if we look at that combined with the big beautiful bill, there's about 240 billion allocated them in a single year. That doesn't mean they have to spend it all this year. Right. The Secure America act gives them a window up to September 30, 2029 with no particular allocations for any given year. To me that strikes me as a hedge against funding after the midterms. I think that is what that's about. Also notable that Carrison said that they use reconciliation to allow a simple majority in the State Senate.

[Garrison Davis]

We went over the details of a previous version of this bill a few weeks ago. This money is going to go towards hiring, arming new officers, hiring more administrative staff, attorneys and this is all going to be towards immigration enforcement as well as some money allocated for acquiring new border technology. The $1 billion of quote unquote security funding for Trump's ballroom was removed from the bill by the Senate last week. Week Two other short things I want to mention. Yesterday a federal grand jury indicted two people in relation to stop Cop city protests and alleged crimes in 2022 and Wednesday morning the FBI raided about seven people in Michigan related to pro Palestine protests at the University of Michigan and protests against University of Michigan officials. As of recording like this just happened a few hours ago and relates to an indictment that was unsealed this morning as well which charges eight people. We'll cover this more in detail in the future.

[Mia Wong]

We're gonna do one more quick segment here and then when we return we're going to talk about the pogroms in Belfast.

[Garrison Davis]

Yay. Some updates related to primary elections in Maine. Graham Platner has won the Democratic primary with about 72% of the vote. The Governor's race is too close to call with the ranked choice voting yet to be tallied. But I'm keeping my eye on the Sanders and labor backed candidate Troy Jackson who campaigned with Platner. Jackson is about 9,000 votes behind the pre ranked choice vote candidate Dr. Nirav Shah. After a week of counting we have more definitive results from the elections in California last week.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Week.

[James Stout]

Yeah, which a lot of people are saying is an unforgivable f up of democracy. That they counted all of the votes and it took them a while. But yeah, Garrison, please continue and we'll talk about the the chaos that is is being justified by the fact that this took a while to count.

[Garrison Davis]

Tom Steyer will not be making it onto the ballot this coming November.

[James Stout]

Nope.

[Garrison Davis]

With 91% of the votes counted, Steyer has earned earned 1,928,381 votes or 22.5%. Republican Steve Hilton, former Fox News host, has edged IR out by about 200,000 votes, earning 25% of the vote and advancing to the general election where he will go up against liberal Democrat Javier Becerra with 27.9% of the vote. Katie Porter won just under 400,000 votes. Karen Bass still leads the LA mayoral primary with 95% of the votes counted. Bass has nearly 300,000 votes winning 34.3%. Progressive Nithya Rahman has moved into second place with 29%, beating Republican Spencer Pratt with 25.5%. So the general election will see see Rahman go up against Bass. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt was up in the early vote. But as Ramon started to pull ahead, Trump and others began claiming the election was being stolen from Republicans. Pratt has insinuated that Ramon's lead came from LA's homeless population. And Musk wrote that, quote, the level of fraud here is mind blowing.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Also, homeless people can vote. Like what?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah. Provided they are US citizens. Like, yeah.

[James Stout]

Yes, yes. It's all lies.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I mean, and a lot of what's, even, what's being reported in the Washington Post is, is straight up lies. Like, they just published an article today that includes this line and again the, the theme of the article is like, well, you know, obviously this election wasn't stolen, but the fact that, that it's taken so long is really a problem. You can't actually blame all these people if they, if they think it's suspicious. This is not evidence of a rigged election, but it creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories to take root. It didn't help that Rahman tearfully conceded last Tuesday. But it's irresponsible for Pratt to intimate on social media that stolen. She didn't tearfully concede.

[Garrison Davis]

That did not happen.

[James Stout]

That never happened. The Washington Post lied. Like that's just in a Post article. That's just a lie by the Washington Post. Like an intentional lie, I would argue.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I guess to just go into this so people understand, like, you know, like I've written for broadsheet newspapers, several people. This is not one person fucking up.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

This is an institutional fuck up.

[James Stout]

This was a choice.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

It was a choice to get this wrong.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

The person whose name is on the byline wrote that. Yes. An editor then edited it, a copy editor then edited it and then somebody laid it out for the website. Yep.

[James Stout]

And you know this, if you're listening and you work for the Post, you know this. Yeah. You know that your editors, your bosses and your colleagues chose to lie, lie and are choosing to continue to lie and spread lies through their publication. You're aware of this if you work there still.

[Garrison Davis]

Anyway, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity all alleged that Democrats stole the election. And Trump has continued to make claims that the election was rigged. Quote, here we go with the very late and massive numbers of mail in ballots truthed.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Sorry.

[James Stout]

Yeah, man, it's convenient.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Just eternal 2020 Trump truth earlier this week, quote, not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the LA runoffs after the big lead he had. Third world nation, unquote.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Does he understand what the word nation means? No, no, I don't think, based on

[Garrison Davis]

these truths, I don't think he understands how election works, obviously. Or he does and he's just saying what he needs to say here. Notably on Sunday, Trump stormed out of an interview on Meet the Press when asked if he had any evidence of, quote, unquote, cheating in California.

[Andrew Lieber]

The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Presented evidence happening right now in California.

[Andrew Lieber]

Right now. It's. Look at, look at what's happening in California. It's four days doing well in California. It's. No, they're not. They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you. It's four days and they aren't even close to coming up. You know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election.

[Dana Al Kurd]

There's.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

What, do you have evidence to support?

[Andrew Lieber]

All I have to do is look.

[Garrison Davis]

All you have to do is look.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Is he in front of a green screen that depicts a John Deere tractor and planter?

[Garrison Davis]

No. They are in Wisconsin in some kind of barn and it's raining outside in this barn with the John Deere tractor and like hay bells. It's an interesting kind of like real World set they have.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, okay. And the focus is very weird, like the. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Trump later called vote counting in California, quote, unquote, crooked. Just like how the press is crooked. Quote, you're either crooked or you're stupid. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged.

[Andrew Lieber]

We're like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Meet the Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

[Mia Wong]

But Mr. President, one sided crooked network.

[Andrew Lieber]

So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Mr. President, let's.

[Funko Pop Advertiser]

Please.

[Podcast Advertiser / Sponsor Voice]

I traveled all the way to Wisconsin.

[James Stout]

God, that's embarrassing. Yeah, just being mean to him. Be rude, Yell at him, call him a fucking liar. Scream at him, stop doing this bullshit. Like, I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for that.

[Mia Wong]

Like, people booed him. Dreamed the national anthem at a Knicks game. You can fucking do this.

[James Stout]

Scream at him, call him a piece of shit. Like, you know, you're not getting anything out of just letting him talk. Call him a liar. Shout over him.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Stop pretending.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

Fucking cowards. I'm sorry.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, you're right. I think we should definitely pay attention to the fact that Trump did cause the Knicks to lose that game.

[James Stout]

Yeah, he did. He did. He did. And honestly, that's what I like about him, because it continues.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

James Jolin's streak of.

[Garrison Davis]

House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about these claims on Monday and said that the vote counting in California, quote, unquote, stinks to high heaven and that the schemes are so, quote, unquote, diabolical that it's impossible to prove election rigging.

[Andrew Lieber]

The President keeps saying that there's election fraud in the California mayor's race is

[Andrew Sage]

what evidence is there to prove that?

[James Stout]

You tell me, Manu. They are counting votes weeks after the election. We have entire nations with huge populations like India that can count their votes

[Andrew Lieber]

in 24 to 40 saying it's rigged like the President.

[James Stout]

I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to high heaven. And everybody knows that. Let's, let's, let's remove the appearance of impropriety. Let's have. What a concept. Let's have votes on an election, the day of the election. That's what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with

[Andrew Sage]

this, but what evidence does.

[Andrew Lieber]

Is there to prove that there was his rank.

[James Stout]

I don't. Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.

[Garrison Davis]

So this is, I think, very clearly a preview of what's to come in the midterm elections.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, for sure.

[Garrison Davis]

And they are kind of laying this out here. It's, of course, impossible to prove, but we all know that it's wrong.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

This is going to be every election for the rest of my life.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yep, yep.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

But there's going to be anything that happens that does not meet the increasingly fanciful version of reality they have to believe.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Right. It's not just elections. It's literally any fact that, like, is inconvenient. It's any storm that shouldn't have happened based on when they think a storm should happen. Right.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

This is just life now.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. It's necessary to, like, create the version of reality that they're existing in.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

We're going to go on break and then discuss the PS in Northern Ireland.

[Mia Wong]

We are back.

[Andrew Sage]

Ooh, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

On Tuesday, July 9th. This is the day before we are recording this, which is important because we don't know how that's going to proceed from Here, when you're listening to it, it. But on June 9, there were widespread attacks on the homes of non white people in Ireland. In what I and many others have described as a poke rom mass assailants kicked down doors, forced on white people from their homes and lit houses and cars on fire. People were being stopped in the streets. I'm going to read a little bit from a report from Hannell Othman who was on the scene reporting on what was going on.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Quote.

[Mia Wong]

As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down with the attack. Thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks. As they stormed the property, some claimed to be liberating it. Graffiti nearby demanded local homes for local people. A woman in the crowd said to her friend, quote, there's wee girls inside. Yeah, it is an extremely bleak and worrying event. The nominal cause of this pogrom was a video of a stabbing in Belfast that has gone viral on social media, which has been amplified by right wing forces both in Ireland, the UK and across the world. Probably most famously by Elon Musk. We will touch on that more in a second. But before we say anything about the broader context, I think it's important to state two things here. One, Ireland, and also particularly the factions of Irish politics you're going to be getting to here has had racism problems long before any of these events. Famously, you know, if you want to look at the most immediate stuff in the recent past, exactly one year ago today in Northern Ireland, there was a smaller race riot, there was a smaller scale version of the thing we're seeing here, with less damage but still absolutely terrifying effects.

[James Stout]

This very much rhymes with the race riots that we saw in the UK a couple of years ago. Right? Similar deal, similar motivation, mobs attacking. At that point, it was more focused on hotels that refugees were believed at. But like you were saying, basically the same idea.

[Mia Wong]

Idea, yeah, these are white mobs. It's also, I think important to note on top of just the general sort of racism of our society, this program's largely taking place in loyalist neighborhoods. You know, these are places with very, very long standing far right paramilitaries with very close ties to the police. A lot of the people in the streets are, you know, sort of parts of old loyalist paramilitary and criminal networks. These are in many cases, like believed to be the same networks that, you know, were doing shit during the troubles and have been active in various forms throughout the occupation of Ireland. And deportations, Belfast Notes that leaked emails from police after the 2025 riots. They are from the riots themselves. They said, quote, it is important for you to understand our expectations. Unless there is an obvious Article 2 issued, we do not expect you to expose yourself to significant unnecessary risk. So what that in effect is saying is that this is in effect a stand down order. If you don't, if you, if you think that anything would be even, let

[James Stout]

the mobs do what they're going to do.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, right. And that's, that's just the stuff. This is from the 2025 riots. Presumably similar orders went out during these riots and that's just the stuff that they sent via email.

[Andrew Sage]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

That has been, that has been leaked out. The police again, very notably did very, very little while all of this was happening. While people's houses were being burned down, while people were being dragged out of their homes. These attacks also come after weeks of far right discourse in the UK about like the killings of two white men by non white men. Yeah, I mean on the BBC they are having debates about whether there is a quote, two tiered police system which, you know, when I initially saw that I was confused because, yeah, two tier police system has been the way that, you know, like anti anti police violence activists have talked about the way the police system functions where there is a way the police function for white people, which is that it treats them significantly better and then there's the way it works for non white people. The far right has flipped this on his head and is now arguing to an extent that his now sort of national discourse on the fucking BBC is arguing that there is a two tier police system where non white people are let off the hook for their crimes and where white people aren't protected by the law. This is nonsense. But it has been spreading rapidly, pushed by far right actors like Tommy Robinson and of course Elon Musk.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah, Musk specifically has been really pushing this and he was a big figure too in what happened in the UK a bit ago.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, and the 2025 Irish riots too.

[James Stout]

That's exactly right. And he's been non stop pushing and making posts, making claims to the extent of like we need to, the only way things will get better is if we keep protesting. You know, this has to be handled like forcefully, yada, yada, like that sort of shit. Like he has been. Yeah, he's been basically devoting, as far as I can tell, the week that he is about to have and that he is having his IPO devoting the majority of his time to Inciting up a grom.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes, seems to be.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. He retweeted a post from Restore Britain which is a. Somehow now even further right. Just straight up effectively fascist party, but even further right than the already horrifying Reform Party saying, quote, do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yep.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. There's another one where it's like, either you fight back or you die. That's what it comes down to. There's been a lot of comparisons between Elon Musk and Radio Rwanda, which is a radio outlet that was broadcasting calls for the Rwanda genocide.

[James Stout]

Well, and that's not accurate, really.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But you're referring to rtlm, right? Radio Television Libre Mel Colie. Yes. Radio Render is a different thing.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, sorry, am I.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Radio Render is a currently existing corporation. So we need to be extremely clear in our terminology.

[James Stout]

Let me be very clear here. Cause I actually had this pulled up for this. RTLM was the radio station that is often accused of helping to coordinate, or some people will just say straight up incited the genocide. It was owned by a guy named Felician Kabuga, who was an extremely wealthy Rwandan man and who was personally very much involved in, like, wanting to push for the genocide. RTLM regularly called Tutsis cockroaches and encouraged people to cut down the tall trees. However, there are also good reasons why this is not quite as direct as it seems. RTLM did not coordinate attacks, they did not plan specific actions. And analysis in the modern day has shown that a lot of the worst massacres, and in fact, the majority of the worst massacres did not have any direct relation to RTLM. Now, RTLM's propaganda and broadcasts played a role in the genocide and incited and continued to, like, escalate the violence. But it's not exactly, I would argue, it looks like. And we also. We don't have perfect analysis of what's just happened in Northern Ireland. So maybe this will prove to be wrong. It looks like what Musk is doing has more of a direct causative effect. Effect.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

But that's also not clear to me at the moment.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

My estimation so far. But again, like, this is changing. My estimation so far is that I think it is actually closer to it in that I think even if Musk isn't there, something like this happens.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Sure.

[Mia Wong]

Because I think a lot of this is mobilization through, like, very local Irish political forces and these sort of unionist networks.

[James Stout]

But it's also really difficult to say just because all of those networks have been heavily influenced by Musk X in the last Few years too. So it's.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I don't know how you want to.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And it's feeding off of like a decade of intensifying anti immigrant sentiment across the uk Right. Including Ireland and Northern Ireland.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And this is also something people will point out when you're talking about Rwanda and rtlm, which is that, like, well, as much blame as you want to give RTLM and some of these other media organizations that unquestionably had some role in, in motivating and fueling what happened. I mean, the root of the Rwandan ship genocide comes from the period of colonialism when the Tutsis were like a favored group of people within the country, which is what started a lot of these, like, underlying hatreds.

[Andrew Lieber]

Right.

[James Stout]

Is. Is the way in which the colonial power played these different groups off of each other. So anyway, whatever, like, yeah, as is always the case, it's always going to be deeper than some guy has a media outlet. Right. But that doesn't mean the media outlet is not involved in what's happening.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It was the same in Rwanda. Right. Like we had the Interahamwa. Like they existed and they existed distinct from rtlm, but the environment that allowed those two things to happen. Nothing's monocausal. People want to do this in history.

[James Stout]

No. And it's the difficult thing of both. It's very important to point out when something like this rhymes with something that happened in a genocide that had killed a million people. And also, the more you learn about stuff like this, when people make those comparisons, the more learned people are like, well, that's not quite right.

[Andrew Lieber]

Actually.

[James Stout]

This is. It was a little different than, you know now.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

The Genocide Memorial Museum in Kigali is the most moving museum I've instituted in my life. It's incredible. If you have the chance, everyone should

[James Stout]

go, we need to do more in bastards on Rwanda.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

But yeah, anyway, wonderful country.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. The one thing I also want to mention sort of in closing here is that, you know, again, like, part of the reason this is happening, part of the reason it's been a lot of, you know, these, of these unionist networks. Part of the reason it's happening the way that it is is that this is a very, very old white supremacist project going back like, you know, like through the British occupation of Ireland. Right, right. And it's a project that's been aligned with like, the Rwandans were once British in the sense of like, like the, you know, this, this is carrying on the sort of long imperial British tradition is like yes, the world. One of the world's like, largest and most bloody and ruthless white supremacist organizations.

[James Stout]

Yeah, we talked about this in a meeting we were having beforehand. But like loyalists in Northern Ireland have regularly made a habit of, particularly in the 70s and 80s, displaying Rhodesia flags. In the 90s, apartheid, South Africa flags. It's very common to find Confederate flags. Like, you know.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Like partly as a direct response to the internationalism of republicanism, they just decided to align with the worst people on the planet.

[James Stout]

Yep.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. There'll be another episode up on this Monday that goes into more detail and we'll have more information as it comes out. This is again, a rapidly changing situation. There might be more by the time you hear it. Days of this. It's possible that the police will crack down harder because there's been some pressure put on them by basically every government involved in this, but we just simply don't know that at this time. And yeah, it is a absolutely horrifying day.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. Pretty horrible to see. Let's do immigration in the U.S. now, another country where things are going great. So a judge has ruled that the Trump administration's broad restrictions on asylum and work permit. These were issued after the shooting of two National Guards people in D.C. are unlawful. To quote from the court order here. More than six months ago, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services enacted a series of policies that threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo. The agency announced that it will be placing an indefinite pause on the adjudication of immigration benefit requests from individuals from 39 African, Asia, Latin American, Middle Eastern countries. Since then, individuals from these countries have been categorically barred from receiving final decisions on, among other things, their asylum, work permit, green card and citizenship application. And USCIS's hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals do wrong. Rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth. And then I found this interesting in the court documents here. In ruling on these motions, the court is reminded of a line often repeated in discussions around immigration policy. If people wish to immigrate to the United States, they ought to follow the law and do things the right way. This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that. They went on to say that that the USCIS had used what they called pretextual concerns of national security that mask anti immigrant sentiment that is forbidden from letting influence its decision making. In legal terms, that means that USCIS's actions were contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious. There's a fairly like emphatic court response, right? This will affect a great deal of people. This has affect left a great deal of people in limbo, right. Most famously, I guess there were people who were at the natural. The stage of their naturalization where they take the oath to become American citizens. Right. The very final step, it is obviously a formality. You've passed the background checks, done the interviews, et cetera, et cetera. But it's still a necessary step. Without doing it, you do not become a citizen. And those people had been delayed and unable to do that. They will be able to proceed with that. Other people will be able to proceed with their process. With the caveat at that uscis, if we have reported before on the show, is heavily focused on denaturalization, and it might be very hard for them to actually make that progress and get USCIS to move on stuff. Talking of denaturalization, the DOJ has begun proceedings against 17 people. These people are either accused or convicted of serious crimes. What it seems that in most cases, people have been adjudicated to have committed crimes. In some cases, they pled guilty to crimes after they naturalized, but that they were doing before they naturalized. And what they are arguing here, the DOJ is arguing, is that therefore they lied when they were naturalized because they were asked if they had committed any crimes for which they had not been arrested. So by not confessing to those crimes in their interview, they were therefore lying.

[Garrison Davis]

They were lying on the form?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yes, on the form or in the interview, or both.

[Andrew Sage]

Both.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And therefore, that is why they are trying to denaturalize them. This is a large denaturalization. 17 people is a lot. A couple of them also are alleged to have applied for immigration benefits under multiple different identities. One that I found particularly interesting is a Catholic priest who abused a minor parishioner. It's interesting because it's interesting to see them going there. I'll follow these and kind of keep tabs on how these progress, but that they have been ramping up denaturalizations. This we are beginning to see. See them kind of reaping the work USCIS has been doing since the Trump administration fundamentally turned that agency around and pointed it at denaturalization. Meanwhile, a GAO report on immigration detention in Camp East Montana. I've never seen it written like Montana with. So I'm guessing it's Camp like Joe Montana. Yeah, well, like they write, it says Montana. So, like, I don't know, it's in Bliss, right? Like, it's inside Fort Bliss. So like one would expect normally like a Spanish style pronunciation given the region. Yeah, but maybe they just like fucking nye. I don't know. Like why they're not. Anyway, it's camp. Its name is spelled like the state, not the, not the Spanish word for mountain. Some of the things detailed in this report are pretty shocking. A guard lost a loaded gun. Oh boy. Yeah. People with diabetes and HIV did not receive treatment plans. And quote on Jesus. Yeah. On February 20, 2026, ICE issued a discrepancy report for detained non citizen death by use of force. In January of 2026, the coroner's autopsy found the death to be a homicide due to asphyxia. However, the contractor did not provide use of force and death reports to ICE as required. In addition, evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed. Jesus. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like one of their guards strangled someone to death, it appears.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah. There's a range of ways someone could be asphyxiated, right? Like, yeah, that's true. But I'm guessing they attempted to restrain this person violently and like as we've seen many other times in American history, murdered them.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

And then evidence of that was destroyed. What is allowing this to happen? It's that the contract was solicited using a worldwide expeditionary multiple award contract vehicle. That's a generally like a military contract vehicle. It allows an experienced pool of military contractors to apply for. For the contract. They probably did it like this to expedite the awarding implementation. Right. Like Camp East Montana is a soft sided facility on Fort Bliss. I've talked about it before here. Soft sided facility means tents, Right? It means keeping hundreds of people in tents. They hired a contractor who had no experience using what's called a lowest price technically acceptable evaluation approach. So they filter out people who can't do the requirements that they have for the contract. And then when they look at which which of the ones that does meet the requirements has the lowest price, right. This has resulted very clearly in them contracting someone who is completely incapable of managing a facility like this. And even among ICE facilities, this one appears to be particularly heinous. And this has resulted in very, very predictable and easily foreseen human tragedies. Right. They are capable of doing better than this. Conditions were very bad. Had a bliss for Afghan people, right. Who came here after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I wrote about that for the Nation. You can look it up. I interviewed someone who was there. But this is even worse. Rather than learning from that, they've, they've just gone deeper. This has resulted in at least one person being Killed. It's pretty horrific.

[Garrison Davis]

Let's go on break and then we will return for some stories about trans healthcare and war with Iran. All right, we are back. I have a sort of hodgepodge collection of stories related to trans healthcare and trans rights of the United States States that I'm going to go kind of sequentially and they some of them tie together. But let's start with the trans military ban. We have an update on this. A federal appeals court has at least temporarily blocked the Pentagon from expelling transgender members of the military, though trans people may be barred from enlisting. So this is kind of sort of like a new form of don't ask, don't tell in a way of you can get in if you're not trans, but once you're in and you are trans, there's no legal grounds to remove you from the military. This was a 2:1 ruling that found Hagset's anti trans policy was, quote, driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group and, quote, both arbitrary and based on animus. For those reasons, the policy violates the plaintiff Appelli's constitutional right to equal protection of the law, unquote, quote. The last bit is very important, like the equal protection clause in cases like this is going to be the the main thing that trans people are able to rely on now. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote that the Trump admin claimed their anti trans policy is solely about whether the military can disqualify people from service due to a mental health condition like gender dysphoria. Judge Wilkins wrote, quote, quote, but the record shows that the purpose of the Hagseth policy is to target applicants and service members who express what the administration believes is a, quote, unquote, false gender identity. And the policy goes far beyond disqualifying persons currently or recently suffering from gender dysphoria. Some of those disqualifications are completely unexplained and have no reasonable justification, unquote. Vote Hagseth almost immediately announced he is appealing to the Supreme Court.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Oh, boy.

[Garrison Davis]

We will see where this goes.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

Last month, the DOJ announced a settlement with the Texas Children's Hospital as part of an ongoing national investigation into violations of federal law for providing gender affirming care to minors. The Texas Children's Hospital has entered into agreements with both the DOJ and the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that includes a commitment to not perform, quote, unquote, sex rejecting procedures on minors, which the DOJ says includes puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. This is a new term that they're really, really rolling out. It's sex rejecting procedures. That's, that's, you're going to see this a lot more in these next few weeks to months.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

The hospital in Texas also agreed to pay over $10 million in damages and civil penalties to quote, resolve allegations that it submitted false billings to public and private payers to secure insurance coverage for pediatric sex rejecting procedures. The department alleges this conduct violated the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic act, the False Claims act and federal fraud and conspiracy laws, unquote. So they're saying that by billing insurance will, whether public or private, for, quote, unquote, sex rejecting procedures, trans healthcare, that this was an act of fraud. Now this is a settlement. And at the end of the settlement they do note that these are just allegations that these have not actually been proven. Liability has not been proven in a court, but these are the allegations that resulted in the settlement. Now, as a part of the settlement, the children's hospital will also open the first ever, quote, unquote, detransition clinic. Nick. So detransition care is the same as transition care, right? It is the same type of care. Yeah, I know this, this is, this is like what I do. There's not enough D transitioners out in the world to like sustain an actual full clinic. Which points to the, the fact that this clinic is not going to be used for consenting detransition. This is mainly going to be used as a conversion therapy clinic for, for kids who, who want to transition but are now going to be forced to go to a clinic like this because they're not able to get their health care.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Through this hospital or really like in Texas as, as a minor. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio settled a very similar case last week, paying a $308,000 fine and agreeing to dedicate $2 million in funds for d transition care care while promising to not provide gender affirming health care to minors for 20 years.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Jesus.

[Garrison Davis]

That is the part of the settlement in the Cleveland Clinic case.

[James Stout]

My God.

[Garrison Davis]

In mid May, Oklahoma passed a bill prohibiting Medicaid coverage of gender affirming care, including surgery and HRT as well as offering this care in state owned facilities. The bill does not cut cut funding to doctors at private healthcare facilities to provide hrt as I've seen some claim online. This, like many of the Medicaid restrictions, primarily affects poor trans people on state Medicaid and may make care hard to access in the future, depending on how private hospitals react to this bill, even though it does not necessarily force them to change the way they operate. Lastly, later this summer, New York City will begin testing a pilot program for a direct, low slash, no cost gender affirming care clinic for adults opening in a low income neighborhood in Queens. I think this is a good first step in providing access to care considering the Trump administration's threats to restrict Medicaid and Medicare coverage or remove Medicare Medicaid eligibility from hospitals that provide general gender affirming care services. But as we know, trans youth have borne the brunt of these threats. Now, both Momdani and the city health commissioner have said they are working to expand city provided gender affirming care services to cover trans youth. Commissioner Martin told the City Council last Friday, quote, we are committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth as well as making sure we don't expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government government which disrupt the rest of the care we can give. There's much more to come on this, but rest assured we are working on this. Unquote. Something that is worth understanding here is that this new pilot program, this this city run low slash, no cost drop in clinic, is completely separate from the city's HNH Municipal Hospital system which already operates multiple H and H prize centers that currently offer youth gender affirming care, including hrt. I called one this morning to confirm that they are still offering services to children, people of all ages. Now HNH is funded through city subsidies and patient revenue through Medicare. The new pilot program is attempting to launch an alternative care service that isn't reliant on insurance or federal funding. If that comes into question, question. And they're trying to get this clinic up and running off the ground as soon as possible and then once the pilot program is tested, expand it. Last week, Mamdani announced a $15 million investment in gender affirming care, quote, unquote as a first step and said that the funds would be used to, quote, unquote, unlock care for youth who have had their health care restricted by private hospitals, though it's currently unclear how exactly these funds will be used. For a while, advocates in New York City and state were fighting for care in the state budget which delayed some of the process on this city provided care because they were expecting about $8 million of care from the state budget which eventually fell through. So now the city process is ramping up on this. Earlier this year, two major hospital systems in New York City stopped providing gender affirming care to trans youth ahead of prospective of HHS Federal rule changes that would prevent hospitals from receiving federal funding if they offer gender affirming care services to youth. These rules have yet to go in effect, but two major hospitals essentially complied beforehand. The risks from the federal government aren't just isolated to restricting federal funding. The Trump administration has employed a variety of threats in an attempt to intimidate patients and care providers. Last month, the two hospitals that discontinued care for trans youth received a criminal grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of Texas requesting information on patients under 18 years of age. At least one of the hospitals, Mount Sinai, is complying with the subpoena, though telling parents the records would be anonymized, whatever that means.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

A group of trans New Yorkers who have received care at NYU Langone and their parents have filed a class action lawsuit to protect their medical records. Though patients at Mount Sinai could also sign on to this suit. The suit has extended the deadline for the subpoena till late June as both the hospital and patients fight this in court. A similar administrative subpoena requesting records for youth patients was challenged and successfully blocked in Rhode Island. These subpoenas should be fought on the strongest grounds by both the patients, the state, the city and the hospitals themselves. And beyond the all ages care currently offered by the HH Health system. I think it was also fair to advocate that the direct, low, no cost drop in clinic expand to cover all ages. Once the pilot program is up and

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

running this summer, we'll briefly discuss the detention of an ICE officer and the the war on Iran.

[James Stout]

We do have a good ICE arrest

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

for you this week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one good ICE arrest. Right. Let's just start there then. So Hennepin county attorney has filed charges against ICE Agent Christian Castro. Castro was arrested in Texas. He's arrested by Texas Rangers with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Investigators and DHS Security Office of the Inspector General Staff at the scene. According to a statement by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, Castro is charged with, quote, four counts of second degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime for an incident on January 14, 2026, when he discharged his weapon through the front door of a home knowing there were people who had just run inside. The bullet traveled through the door and struck one victim in the leg before making its final impact in the wall of a child's room. They didn't know in this that the case might be removed to federal court, but they say that he would still be ineligible for presidential party pardon. It is not Usual when announcing any prosecution to consider the impact of a presidential pardon. It is interesting that they did. The case in question refers to Castro's shooting of Julio Sorcerer Celis in which DHS claimed that Sosa Selis and two others attacked Castro with a broom and a snow shovel and that Castro, quote, fired the defensive shot to defend his life. DHS very quickly dropped its case, put two agents on leave for providing accounts that were contradicted by video evidence. Probably Castro was one of them. Right. This is interesting. A that they were able to like obtain the DHS OIG support. I had forgotten that DHS OIG was still doing stuff like this. To be honest, I didn't think they were. So this will be one that we will follow. That only leaves us with Iran, where this week a a United States Apache helicopter was people have been using shot down. I'm not sure if it was shot. It was taken down reportedly by an Iranian drone and reportedly by a collision with that drone. It's possible that this happened accidentally. But given other things we've seen. Right. With in Ukraine for example, it is possible to take down a helicopter with FPV drone. That would be my guess as to what happened here. Its crew were then rescued from the Strait of Hormuz by another drone. An uncrewed surface vessel. The US only bought these online in March of this year. So this is the first time that we're aware of that they were using this capacity. Right. So this is like a boat drone, an uncrewed surface vessel and it scooped. Well, it didn't scoot them up, they got on it, it collected them and then it took them to a second location where a helicopter was able to lift the them up as a direct result. And according to centcom, at the direct order of the President, the US then began self defense, I'M quoting here, right Quote, unquote, self defense strikes against Iran. They claim these strikes were a quote unquote warning shot and will not impact negotiations. But as we record this on Wednesday afternoon, they have just announced another series of strikes. This all comes after Israel and Iran exchanged missile salvos when Iran responded to Israeli bombing in basically Beirut. And the Houthis have also claimed a missile attack on Israel and have said that they would begin targeting Israeli shipping again. We are already teetering on the edge of this becoming a massive international conflict in a region again. I mean it is a massive international conflict, right? But returning to these full scale conflict that we saw until the ceasefire, which has been repeatedly violated but nonetheless has reduced the amount of Bombing that's happening. Israel also bombed Palestine this week. Among the people killed was an 8 year old boy named Jud Solomon in northern Gaza, which is tragic. Yeah, we'll keep reporting on this. Like I've tried really hard not to make our coverage of especially what's happening on Iran Twitter review because real people are killing and real people are dying and like it's, it's focusing on the stupid that the President said or that you know, Netanyahu said on Twitter. Like isn't a true social converted Twitter. Twitter or whatever. Like that's not really what's at stake here. Like what's at stake is people's lives. And so I want to kind of avoid doing the back and forth social media review. But yeah, that's what I got this week.

[Garrison Davis]

Cool.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Oh, breaking news as we go to press here. The Berlin Zoo has announced the name of its newborn pygmy hippopotamus.

[James Stout]

And I thought Hitler was a mistake. I'm going to be honest with you guys. I don't think that's an appropriate name for them to use

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

a little Hitler. I'll drop a link in the chat so you all can appreciate it. It's like a new mudang just dropped moment. They are calling it broochen brochen. I don't speak German. Sure. Okay guys, that's, that's market. Yeah, great.

[James Stout]

Good work guys. That sounds like a candy children aren't legally allowed to eat in my country.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Another dub for German marketing. It means bread roll. I guess it is a very cute hippopotamus.

[James Stout]

That's a pretty cute name. Bread roll would be a cute name for.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess if you're German, it's a cute name. Hit us up German language listeners. Does it seem cute to you?

[James Stout]

No, don't because you'll just get angry at us for not understanding your strange language. In my defense, you live outside of America, the only other country in the world, right?

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, I think that's it.

[James Stout]

Yeah. I'm just going to ignore the Iran reporting that you said.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Yeah, yeah, we just did. Yeah, yeah. We'll not mention in that. Email us at Cool zonetips. Proton me some of you marketing are still trying. Remarkable. I. I'm pretty sure it's one person who just creates new new aliases. But I'm playing whack a mole over there in the block list.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

I will read your name out if you keep doing it.

[James Stout]

All right, well I think that's gonna be it for all of us here and that it could Happen here. That's the it. And it Could Happen here is this is us doing it. The podcast Goodbye.

[Mia Wong]

Put a trans girl in your couch.

[Garrison Davis]

We reported the news.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

We reported the news.

[James Stout]

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

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

[Dana Al Kurd]

Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

[Mia Wong]

or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

You can now find sources for It

[Dana Al Kurd]

Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions.

[Podcast Host / Commentator]

Thanks for listening.

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