Jacob Goldstein (2:36)

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Garrison Davis (3:28)

This is It Could Happen Executive Disorder Our weekly newscast covering what's the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode we're covering the week February 11th to February 18th. Some small news items up top. Last week the FDA declined to review a new flu vaccine from Moderna. On February 12, Tom Homan announced that Operation Metro Surge has concluded and quote, a significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through the next week, unquote. Zoran Mamdani has ordered a new audit of city agencies to ensure compliance with sanctuary city laws in New York. And Stephen Colbert says that CBS refused to air his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James talarico, citing the FCC's equal time rule. Despite this rule historically having an exception for late night talk show interviews. Last month FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to enforce the rule regardless of the well established precedent that excluded talk show interviews. And finally, the owner of a warehouse facility in Hutchins, Texas has said that they won't sell or lease the building to the federal government as a detention facility. The city's mayor and council all opposed the project. Seizure by eminent domain is still possible.

Jacob Goldstein (4:47)

Yeah, and I guess with that there's been campaigns in a couple of other small, traditionally conservative rural areas to not lease facilities for ice. And it's still a little unclear and I suspect it's kind of column A, Column B. How much of this is, you know, NIMBYism and how much of this is resistance to ICE specifically?

James Stout (5:07)

Yeah, we covered a little of that in the episode I did on Social Circle, which is in Georgia last week. But I think it's fair to say both.

Jacob Goldstein (5:14)

Yeah. And obviously, when I say NIMBYism, I don't mean it in a bad way. It's bad to have this in your backyard. But, like, their issue isn't a moral one. In some cases.

James Stout (5:23)

Yeah. In some cases. I think in some cases it's that little column A, little column B. Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (5:29)

It's hard to tell.

James Stout (5:30)

Yeah. And I think, like, it's worth noting, for instance, hearing in Southern California, Right. A town called Dulzura. Pretty small town. Maybe you've heard of it from when the KKK did border patrols there back in the day. But the. The Border patrol are trying to build a big new facility there and have been for some time called New Brownfield. There has been local opposition to that among people who are very, like, people who I have spoken to who are otherwise conservative. And, like, some of it is. Yeah, I don't want this changing the character of the town. I don't want a giant detention center that would eclipse the population of this very small town. Some of it is also, like, I want them to be locking up people out here. We have a nice life out here, and, you know, we have lots of fields and horses and space. And it seems like it would be really fucked up to have people detained out here. Like, I think, like, that. That NIMBY impulse can sometimes, like, could still combine with even people who are not, you know, abolitionists. They don't want to be confronted with the horrors directly next to them.

Jacob Goldstein (6:29)

Yep. And we'll talk a little bit more about the numbers, like, ICE's polling numbers, like, how popular they are with Americans. But one of the things we've seen this year is that, like, they've been shedding support, even from Republicans. So, like, you know, whatever. Whatever debate we have here that's, like, certainly not a non factor.

James Stout (6:47)

Mm, definitely.

Jacob Goldstein (6:48)

I think it's now time for us to talk about the biggest news story this week, which is that Shia LaBeouf was arrested in New Orleans during Mardi Gras after getting into a series of fights.

Garrison Davis (7:01)

Who.

Jacob Goldstein (7:03)

He was in the movie Holes.

James Stout (7:05)

Oh, yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (7:06)

He was also in a different production called Holes, but not based on a book.

Garrison Davis (7:09)

He was in Holes. I forgot.

Jacob Goldstein (7:11)

Yeah, he was in both Holes.

James Stout (7:12)

So I don't know who this person is. I've never.

Jacob Goldstein (7:16)

Yeah, he's a. He's a child actor who is a. Who was very popular during the, like, early 2000s and has gone. He played the. Indiana Jones's son in the reboot event or in the new, in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. God. And then he is, he is. He has since kind of fallen into madness and disrepute. He's a spousal abuser. He's repeatedly assaulted people in public. He showed up on that webcam white supremacists were drinking milk on once for reasons that are still to this day somewhat unclear to me. And he got into a fight in Mardi Gras, which is just a fun little bit of news. My favorite part of this is that he assaulted a guy. He was repeatedly restrained by members of a bar and whenever they would let him go because they just wanted him to leave, they didn't want to call the cops. He would then continue to attack the guy he was assaulting until they forced to, they were forced to call the police and have him arrested. And I've been in Mardi Gras over the last few days and let me tell you, getting arrested by the police during Mardi Gras, not easy. I don't have a lot to say about that other than I was surprised by the number of very political floats that I saw. Particularly at least one that was entirely paper mache ice guys in a very like non flattering way. There were a lot of like costumes and a number of like references on floats. There was a couple of pretty hideous caricatures of Trump on floats. And they all got like a widely positive reaction. And I find this interesting and I'm bringing this up because the research that I've largely been doing for the ED this week is trying to get a handle on like where Americans are polling right now and how popular or unpopular is the president and his agenda. Because like we. You see articles every week about like Trump's polls hit a new low or the most recent article that I think it's Gallup is no longer going to be doing presidential like popularity polling. But I wanted to get a look at like how the actual like parties and their agendas are holding up. And it's a pretty shocking gap between September, October, like fall of last year and today. So In September of 2025, per YouGov, the Democratic Party had about a 64% unfavorable. So like 64% of polled Americans didn't like the Democratic Party. And a little less than 34% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. And if you actually look at the graphs for, for those that YouGov presents, they're basically making like a wine glass shape. Right? So what that means is unfavorability is moving up and favorability is moving down rapidly, like at the time at which those polls were taken in September of last year. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, neither party was popular but the Republican Party. The wine glass shape was a lot more muted. It's more like a shot glass. 55.4% of Americans polled by YouGov expressed an unfavorable opinion of the Republican party. And about 42.3 expressed a favorable opinion. You can compare this to October 2025 polling by Pew Research, which showed something similar. 64% of Americans were frustrated with the Republican Party. 75% of Americans reported being frustrated with the Democratic Party. 49% of Americans polled replied that they were angry at the Republican Party. 50% reported being angry at the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans, 36% of Americans felt hopeful about the Republican Party. 28% of Americans felt hopeful about the Democratic party. And then 27% of Americans were proud of the Republican Party. 16% Democratic Party. Those are pretty bleak numbers for the Democrats coming in the fall of 2025. Like that is kind of black pilling stuff, right? Yeah, this was in the fall of last year. Pretty rapid change from where things had been about four years ago. For example, in September of 2021, about 64% of Americans had expressed frustration with the Democratic Party as opposed to 75% four years later. So that's all fall of last year. Now, between when the polls that I read to you came out and now, we've had a several major things happen. One of the more significant was the long shutdown, which was disastrous for Republican favorability and for Trump's own favorability. And we also had a significant, I mean, obviously in LA and in Chicago, ICE had been doing very terrible and very like, you know, I guess I should say like documented crimes, like horrible things that were spread widely on social media. But that has also accelerated massively in the first couple of weeks of 2026. Yeah, and what we're seeing now in more recent polls taken in late January and from anywhere from like kind of early January to late January and early February is a significant reversal. So NBC News's decision desk collated a bunch of different polls like Daily Mail, Marquette, Wall street journal, Yahoo, YouGov, Fox News, Emerson. And over the last month or so, you're looking at an average spread of all of these polls of about negative 19.9% favorability for the Republican Party and about negative 12.8% favorability for the Democratic Party. So when you think back to those numbers from last fall, that's a pretty dramatic change. And it kind of correlates to a dramatic change in Trump's own favorability, which has gone down by about 12% per the average of those polls. That kind of aggregated by NBC News desk Their article notes quote, Ipsos polling released in late January found 51% of Americans say Trump's immigration policy is on the wrong track. Amazingly, just a year ago, Americans said Republicans have a better plan, policy and approach than Democrats on immigration by a 22 point margin. Now that advantage is down to 5 points. So while Trump is underwater with immigration, his and the Republican Party's policies towards immigration are still more popular than the Democratic Party's responses to immigration. But they have also collapsed in terms of like the gap between those two things. Again, 22 point margin to a 5 point lead is a, is a pretty dramatic narrowing. And one of the things that that has come along with this is an increasing agreement among Americans that ICE has not only gone too far, but needs to be, if not abolished entirely, then severely curtailed. And a lot of Americans, a shocking amount currently support abolishing ICE entirely. A PBS News NPR Marist poll released recently found that a majority of Americans feel ICE is making the country less safe and has gone too far. Six in 10Americans disapprove of what ICE is doing. Only about three in 10 approve of it. So by a two to one margin, Americans disapprove ICE's operations to like approve of their behavior. This is a very like political breakdown. About 91% of Democrats disapprove of ICE. 60 cent of independents disapprove of ICE. Meanwhile, 73% of Republicans approve of ICE. But even that number has has dropped fairly recently. Right? Y In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe ICE hasn't gone far enough dropped from 18% to 12% over the last year. And only about 22% of Americans feel like ICE is doing a good job compared to 26% of Americans a year ago. So we're seeing like pretty unequivocally Americans rejecting the Republican tactics on immigration and they tend to be blaming ICE for it. Right? Like that's one of the things that's most interesting to me is that both ICE and President Trump have seen the most dramatic collapses in public support. Which suggests to me that like Americans are kind of tying these two things together. Currently, per YouGov, as of January 24, 2026, more Americans support abolishing ICE than oppose it. Now, this does not mean a majority of Americans support abolishing ICE. I've seen some people misstate that 46% of US adults as polled by YouGov, somewhat or strongly support abolishing ICE. 12% are not sure. 41% somewhat or strongly oppose abolishing ICE. Yeah, that's still pretty striking.

James Stout (15:46)

Yeah, it's a plurality. Right. Maybe now would be a good time to talk a little bit about, like, where the Democrats, different Democrats or different wings of the Democrat Party are on abolishing ice, because I think it's one of these areas where, like, the further up the party you go, the more detached from that public opinion you get. So maybe we'll start with Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat leader in the House. Here's him on the Joy Reid show on the topic of abolishing ice.

Jacob Goldstein (16:17)

Why not lead and say abolish ice? Because what you're telling us is you

Garrison Davis (16:22)

want our taxpayer dollars to pay for

Jacob Goldstein (16:25)

a lawless, mass armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities. And I'm trying to figure out how you as a leader can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should be going twice. I don't understand anything that you just said when I spoke English. I don't understand anything that you've just said to me when I've made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutalize or kill them. That's the whole reason we're in this fight right now. That's the whole reason the DHS is getting ready to shut down. That's why you agree with me, Joy. Abolish ice, that is. Listen, I'm going to use the language that I want to use. You can use the language that you want to use.

James Stout (17:09)

You can see Jeffrey's visibly kind of tense when the phrase abolish ICE is used. Right? Like he's. Yeah, he wants nothing to do with it. His immediate response is, is to, to go to affordability. I do want to note that when he was previously asked if he would use the appropriations process to rein in ice, he did exactly the same thing.

Garrison Davis (17:33)

But why not use the appropriations process

Sponsor Representative (17:35)

to rein in ice?

Jacob Goldstein (17:36)

LEADER jeffries, FOREIGN OPERATIONS no, what I'm focusing on, what I'm focused on right now, Chad, is to make life better for the American people by extending the Affordable Care act tax credits, which, by the way, a lot of folks in this institution believe was not possible. But Democrats made clear before the government was shut down that we were in this fight. Until we win this fight on behalf of the American people, cancel the cuts, lower the cost, save health care. That's our objective

James Stout (18:05)

there. He does the same Thing. Right. He goes back to affordability, which is something the Democrats have done for the last year and a half. Right. When asked to, like, take a strong leadership stance on ice, far too much of their leadership has instead, like, tried to deflect to affordability. I do want to note that, like, they are now doing exactly what he was deflecting from there.

Jacob Goldstein (18:26)

Right.

James Stout (18:26)

Yeah. And that was only less than a month ago.

Garrison Davis (18:29)

It's interesting because it's like this cowardice on, like, specific terms and messaging.

James Stout (18:34)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (18:35)

Even though they are using the appropriations process to try to rain and ice. Like that is that. Yeah, that is what they are doing now. But it's like a complete, complete cowardice. Or actually, like.

James Stout (18:44)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (18:44)

Trying to, like, use like, public pressure to your advantage at the moment.

James Stout (18:49)

Like, yeah, he's doing the thing and almost like, failing to. It's not that he's doing the thing, you know, as many of us would wish he did, but like, he's failing to take the easy win.

Garrison Davis (18:59)

Yeah.

James Stout (19:00)

Like, because of, like, you say this, like, institutional cowardice or like these. It's like there's some kind of red line rhetorically for Jeffries and other leadership Democrats that they will not cross. And I have to believe that some of that comes from what they see as, like, the long legacy of 2020

Garrison Davis (19:20)

or like, perceptions of the Democratic Party is, like, too far to the left, is too extreme or something.

James Stout (19:25)

Yeah. That they. That, like the. Specifically the perception that they, like, attempted to abolish the institution of policing, which was.

Garrison Davis (19:31)

Yeah.

James Stout (19:31)

Not really anything that they had that was not in their policy platform. Right. There were not Democrat leaders saying, we're going to do away with the cops. In fact, Biden was talking about how we need to fund the police, not defund the police in 2020. Right. Yeah. But nonetheless, there seems to be this real. It's very hard for them to break that rhetorical boundary. It's not entirely just Jeffries on this. Seven Dems cross party lines in late January to vote for a DHS funding bill. So we got Representative Henry Queller of Texas.

Garrison Davis (20:04)

Worst. The worst Democratic Congressman.

James Stout (20:07)

Holy shit. What a fucking asshole.

Garrison Davis (20:11)

Hate that guy.

James Stout (20:12)

Texas Dems hit different. And like, specifically, like Rio Grande Valley. Democrats are a different breed.

Jacob Goldstein (20:19)

God, he sucks so much.

James Stout (20:20)

There's Jared golden of Maine, Mary Glusonkamp Perez of Washington, Laura Gillen, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laurie Gillen is New York, Tom Suozy of New York, and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas. This is not. It is not a position that he's unique to. To Jeffries Right. Like, this is idea that, like, perhaps there needs to be some reform of ice, but. But abolishing it would go far, too far. Other Democrats have introduced an act which would essentially move funding from ICE to local law enforcement. So it would take that $75 billion budget allocation to ICE and move it to local cops. Right. This is called the Providing Useful Budgets for Localities to Invest in cops by Substituting six appropriations from federal Enforcement to Yield Results Act.

Jacob Goldstein (21:13)

Holy. No wonder these people's favorability is like

Garrison Davis (21:17)

negative 1 trillion percent.

James Stout (21:19)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (21:20)

Good Lord.

James Stout (21:21)

It's what we call a backronym in that they have started with the word public safety and then made a really horrendous attempt at turning that into an acronym. There is also, like a. A wing of the Democratic Party right there on the left, which is more forthright about abolishing ice. Here's a clip of AOC talking about why I should be abolished.

Garrison Davis (21:42)

And this is at an event in Queens.

James Stout (21:45)

Yeah.

Podcast Advertiser (21:45)

ICE is a very young agency relative to many others. Enforcement of people who committed crimes that were undocumented or had visas used to be under the Department of Justice. And in the Department of Justice, if someone wants to come to your house, you need a judge, you need an entire judicial process, you need a warrant to ensure that your constitutional liberties respected. You need all of it. What they did was that they took ICE out. Well, they took immigration enforcement out of the doj, which had very tight reins on what you're allowed to do. They take that, they put it into this new agency that they put at the time, which is the Department of Homeland Security. First of all, in what world does FEMA belong under the same umbrella as ice? It makes no sense at all. No sense at all. And what happened is that once you take that enforcement piece out of that agency, they then start to answer to nobody, even though I. Technically, statutorily, their responsibility is just supposed to be on immigration enforcement. They are now expanding their data collection to US Citizens, to everyone on this soil. They are waving these phones around and saying that they're implementing facial recognition technology to a centralized database. We have to fight this tooth and nail. We need to defund it. We need to not allow this to be collected by private companies. A lot of what we need to do is not just revisit section 702. We need to abolish ICE and we need to have comprehensive changes to that data.

Garrison Davis (23:34)

One thing I do want to note about her statements is that during the appropriations process, she did give statements about how she was pushing to defund ICE as an agency. And this did cause a reaction from some, I'll call them overly online leftists claiming that AOC had like changed positions from wanting to abolish, to defund, that this is some sort of slide. And then she then had to follow up with saying, well, currently the way to restrict ICE and lead to abolishing it is through defunding it. So that's what we're doing through the appropriations process. No, my position has not changed. I still think that the agency should be abolished.

James Stout (24:08)

Yeah, yeah.

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Kevin Durant still right now. Yeah, but what about like a, a smaller guard like yourself?

James Stout (25:45)

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Jacob Goldstein (25:45)

Nobody's fucking with me though. Now that's like. That's one thing I do. One on one shit. I, I do that. You can ask anybody. Any team I've been on after practice, come over and get this ass whooping if you want. Yeah, we're playing ones every. After every practice. Do you have any legendary one on one? No. Ask my teammates about the legendary one on one. Don't ask me. They know.

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Jacob Goldstein (28:07)

There's a broad issue we had which was that at the end of 2020, as a result of all of the federal agents that were in American cities and had been videoed brutalizing citizens in places like Portland, there was a lot of anger about dhs. In particular I wrote a column for Business Insider about like look this, this agency even is going to remain under Biden, but if we don't cut the legs out from under the entire agency, it's basically set up to be the President's secret police. Yeah, and broadly speaking, the Democrats didn't do anything to stop it. But I also like I guess where I am on this is. I think it's kind of counterproductive at this point. The failures of the Biden administration, I think, are quite manifest in what the Trump administration is doing right now. And what I want to focus on is the fact that we've had, in the space of several months, Americans become more than twice as likely to support abolishing ice, which is both a fragile coalition, because the fact that the number has changed so rapidly means that it could potentially change back. Like, I don't feel solid in counting on that to be the permanent state of affairs, but it introduces an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to build support to destroy this agency. And, you know, I think it's probably too much to hope for DHS as a whole and anything close to the near term. But the. The fact that during the Biden administration, so much got punted on, I don't know. Like, we're. We're past that. We have the opportunity now.

James Stout (29:42)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (29:42)

We have the anger now. I. I do. I retain my worry. And I. I would say almost one of my biggest political fears is that 2026 and 2028 go well for Democrats. They do again, what happened under the Biden administration.

Garrison Davis (29:55)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (29:55)

And they leave all these things intact. But one of the big differences that we have, at least right now, is that at no point was abolishing ICE polling the way it is right now during the Biden or the first Trump administration.

James Stout (30:07)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (30:08)

And I think we have to take advantage of that. There's momentum right now.

James Stout (30:12)

Like, this is a crucial time, not just like we're talking here in terms of, like, abolishing ICE moves us back to the 2003 norm. Right. Like, what it doesn't do is fix the fundamental issue here, which is that there are not legal pathways for people to come to the US and then need to be. And, like, I think, like, now is the time for people who are involved in Democratic politics. Right. To agitate for, like, a. A genuine reform package. I don't think we will ever see support like this again for legalization of undocumented people, for dreamers. Right. Or people who are impacted by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is a policy that came into place under Obama. Like, now is the time for substantial immigration reform. I say this knowing that this will not fix a problem. Like, more than most people, you know, I have seen the horrors of our immigration system firsthand. But, like, there is a moment right now that we could change things for the better. And I share Robert's worry that if Democrats get Like, an easy win even in the midterms that we might not get that. And, like, what we saw under Biden was of a big pointer to what we're seeing under Trump, that essentially the DHS was almost impossible for him to control.

Jacob Goldstein (31:36)

Yeah.

James Stout (31:37)

In that he acquiesced to oads. He is still responsible for them. Like, the buck stops with him. He's president. I'm not certain that he planned it, but nonetheless, it continued to happen for months and months and months out of his presidency. Right. Like, it was very obvious the way this was going to go if we got another Trump presidency, and if they do that again, we're just setting the table for things to get worse again.

Jacob Goldstein (32:01)

Right. And I think, James, the task before us is twofold. Right. Because on one hand, we have to reform the system by which people gain legal acceptance to live in this country. And that also includes, I think, there needs to be a push for some sort of federal law that will make it impossible or at least much harder to reverse these acceptances and to do things like nullify or cancel green cards and permanent residency, like the administration is doing right now. Like, both. We need increased pathways and we need increased resilience to promise people that, hey, if you go through all of these hoops to become a legal resident or a citizen or whatever, it can't just get pulled away the next time a Republican wins office.

James Stout (32:49)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (32:50)

And then on the other side of things, you have this vast, uncontrollable, militant agency built as the armed wing of the presidency that has to be destroyed because it can't exist in a democracy.

James Stout (33:05)

Yeah. It's not compatible.

Jacob Goldstein (33:07)

And then you have. I mean, I would extend that to DHS as a whole, but it's my same issue with, like, if we can defund ICE right now, I'm always in favor of taking away some of their money. That's not the extent of what I think should happen to ice. It's just.

James Stout (33:20)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (33:20)

Like, it's a salient. Right. Like, you, you. You have to look at it that way. Like, it, it, it would be as if you're, you're like, well, it's not worth winning the battle of Stalingrad because that doesn't give us Berlin. Well, but these are steps, you know, you, you try to damage and reduce the agency's power and ability to function.

James Stout (33:37)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (33:38)

While you're continuing.

James Stout (33:39)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (33:39)

And I guess the, the worry about that, too, is that if you do defund ice, if they. Because Trump has made a couple comments about worrying that, like, we need to reduce Kind of the tempo at which ICE is operating, because it's bad for them. So that is kind of one of my concerns, that maybe if they pull back on the throttle a little bit, the rage will decline enough that there's not this kind of motivation behind abolishing. But I feel like that's just a fear you kind of have to eat as opposed to not trying to stop and reduce the harms the agency does in the immediate term while you're working long term for abolition.

James Stout (34:18)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (34:20)

I did want to talk a little about other numbers, because immigration is obviously a major issue for American voters. It's an issue people pick who they're going to vote for the presidency on. It's one of them, but it's not the main one. As a general rule, throughout most of modern political history, the kind of top issue for Americans is the economy. And if the economy is bad, it is very hard for your party to stay in power. If the economy is good, it is a lot easier for your party to stay in power. Right. Like, these are fairly basic facts of political life in the United States, always with some caveats, but that, that it bears looking at. How do Americans feel about the economy, and who do they blame for the fact that they feel badly about the economy? And per Politico, which carried out a recent survey, about 46% of Americans say the cost of living is the worst they can remember it ever being. This includes 37% of people who voted for Trump in 2024. And Americans pretty, like, significantly agree that this is a Trump problem. Inflation, the fact that they can't afford things is on him because he's the president. Again, 46% of Americans say it's Trump's economy and his administration is responsible for rising costs.

Garrison Davis (35:36)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (35:37)

And this is true both among Republicans and Democrats, which is very interesting to me. A percentage of Americans, based on the vote in the 24, 24 election, 53% of Harris voters in 2024 say the cost of living is the worst. They've seen it. And again, 37% of Trump voters in 2024 feel the same way. So that is. It's an example of something that we've talked about and wondered about on this show a lot, which is like, how much does reality break through the fever swamps? And this is suggesting that, like, to a pretty solid degree, that actually Trump is. I still think he's got a floor of somewhere around 30% of Americans who will follow him into the pits of hell, even if it means shoveling themselves into it. But that number used to be like 40%. Right. And it does seem to be declining. This is being treated as a five alarm fire among the Trump White House, which is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. You know, anytime you talk with, especially people on the left about, but also increasingly a lot of Democrats about the midterm elections and the 2028 elections, a thing you have to deal with is people saying, but are there going to be elections? Right. And, you know, I don't dismiss those concerns out of hand, obviously, in part because the administration's talking right now about having ICE agents at polling places. Right.

James Stout (36:57)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (36:57)

You do have to acknowledge that as a concern. But at the same time, I think if you're looking at this rationally, you have to note that the Trump administration internally is acting as if there will be elections and that those will be competitive elections. They are worried about the economy, they are worried about their polling, and they are taking actions to try to mitigate the worries that they have, which they wouldn't be doing if they were already sure there's never going to be another election. Right. And that is important to remember. It doesn't mean there's not a danger. It doesn't mean they won't try shit if they lose. But it does mean that they are, they are treating these political issues as political issues that they have to deal with via messaging. There was an article in Fox News recently about Trump's team huddling to decide on midterm messaging. I'm going to quote from that now. The meeting, which was confirmed to Fox News by sources familiar with the gathering, was hosted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who is steering Trump's political strategy. According to sources, the message during a slide presentation by chief pollster and chief strategist and strategist Tony Fabrizio, was that the economy will be the top issue in the minds of voters and the White House needs to spotlight its efforts on easing affordability. The meeting was held as the GOP works to defend their control of the Senate and their razor thin House majority in November's midterm elections. Republicans are also dealing with the president's continued underwater approval ratings and a slew of surveys, including the latest Fox News polling that indicates Americans are pessimistic about the economy. And publicly, the administration claim is that Americans are happy with the economy. The economy is the best it's ever been. Look at how good the Dow is. It's over 50,000, right?

James Stout (38:31)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (38:32)

But everything we're hearing Internally, like all of the reports that from people inside the administration about like what's going on day to day is that they're wide awake and worried over the fact that their economic numbers are completely fucking dogshit. Now. What does this mean for the midterm elections? Well, very few people that I have found who are like credible analysts don't expect the Democrats to retake the House. Right.

Garrison Davis (38:58)

Meaning most credible analysts do think the Dems are likely to retake the House.

Jacob Goldstein (39:05)

That said, there's fairly few people who expect a 2018 style Democratic blowout among like the, the professional poll watchers and stuff, which is if you remember, the Democrats flipped about 41 seats. There's a couple of reasons for this. Right. And I found a good article in the Hill that's kind of analyzing like why we shouldn't be expecting Some of the exuberance that you're seeing on social media about like early elections and how bad Trump's numbers are is maybe making people overly optimistic about like flipping all of Congress to Democratic control, which is not currently the likeliest outcome. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One of them is that as unpopular as Trump is, and I've hit on that quite a lot, the Democratic Party's overall favorability is at about 33%, which is 9 points lower than the Republican Party's favorability and you know, depending on the poll, 5 to 10 points lower than Trump's own favorability. This is based on a Marquette Law School pollution. Right. So Trump is very unpopular and so are the Republican Party. But people don't like the Democrats. The Democratic Party as a whole, people like individual Democrats, a lot of people like their congressperson, a lot of people like whoever it is they want to see as the presidential candidate. You know, you can look at, you know, you've got folks who really like Mamdani or really like Pritzker, but as a whole, voters, including Democratic voters, don't feel very positively towards the Democratic Party, in many cases more negatively still than they feel about the Republican Party. That started to turn around. But if you're kind of hoping that there's going to be like a full on switch that makes it immediately possible to successfully impeach President Trump, that is extraordinarily unlikely to come in 2026. Right. Which doesn't mean that it's unlikely to have a good result. Republicans losing control of Congress is a good result. Right? Yeah, there's just a lot less. I mean, there's a lot less even if you're kind of Taking the unfavorability of the Democratic Party out of it. There's a lot fewer seats up for grabs right now in 2018. And when that, you know, the Democrats flipped 41 seats. There were 75 competitive races this year heading into the midterms. There were only 18. Right. There's a lot less that can flip. And I don't think Republicans are likely to lose control of the Senate. Right. And the polling shows things being pretty razor thin there. Democrats have about a 4% advantage, according to economist YouGov polling right now in the congressional midterms. And there's a three point margin of error. So you're looking at like a lead, but not enough of one for a complete fucking blowout. Right. There has been some more positive data, like kind of right before we came on to record this, I looked at some charts by focal data that was kind of breaking down midterm voting intention by groups and looking at like likely voters. And this is always kind of a little bit like voodoo, right, in terms of how you're trying to like, well, how likely is a likely voter and how do we like factor in? Realistically, are they going to show up in anyway if you're kind of assuming that like people who self report as likely voters will only actually vote about a third of the time, Per this study, Democrats are ahead by about seven points in a generic House ballot. So, you know, that's kind of where we are right now. I think we're looking at a midterm season that's going to go well for the Democrats, but I don't think we're looking at a midterm season that delivers us from the Republican Party being able to ram through legislation. I think our kind of best case scenario is one in which they have to give major concessions because the Democrats have, you know, flipped the House at the very least, like, and that's, that's big. But I don't think, I don't think Trump's going to get impeached starting January of next year.

Garrison Davis (43:04)

Yeah, the one thing I will say

Jacob Goldstein (43:06)

about the polling data is that so

Garrison Davis (43:08)

obviously Democrats tend to perform better in special elections because to vote in a special election you have to be a higher interest voter. And that also special election cycles get driven by immediate like anger over stuff.

Jacob Goldstein (43:21)

And there's a bunch of different factors that drive special election turnout.

Garrison Davis (43:25)

And also the Democrats have been absolutely

Jacob Goldstein (43:28)

obliterating the Republicans in all the special elections that have been happening recently or,

Garrison Davis (43:33)

and even in the cases where they

Jacob Goldstein (43:34)

lose, they're losing by very Small margins in places where Trump was winning.

James Stout (43:38)

Blowouts.

Jacob Goldstein (43:38)

Yeah. So I think if you want to

Garrison Davis (43:40)

be optimistic, I think that's the case for optimism. But also.

Jacob Goldstein (43:45)

Yeah, like we're not going to have

Garrison Davis (43:47)

all of our problems magically solved by the midterms.

James Stout (43:50)

Yeah.

Jacob Goldstein (43:50)

Yes. To specify on that, what you were saying. There was a, a special election in Tennessee and Republican Matt Van Epps beat the Democrat afton Bain by 9 points, but Trump had won in 2024 there by 22 points. Yeah, yeah.

Garrison Davis (44:07)

And like, like a few, we talked

Jacob Goldstein (44:09)

about this on the show, but like

Garrison Davis (44:10)

last year there was, there was an election in like a special election in

Jacob Goldstein (44:12)

western Iowa that Trump had won by

Garrison Davis (44:15)

double digits and the Democrats won by double digits.

Jacob Goldstein (44:17)

And that kind of thing shouldn't be happening. It sure shouldn't.

James Stout (44:23)

No, it is.

Jacob Goldstein (44:24)

And you know, so that, that's, that,

Garrison Davis (44:26)

that's the optimistic case.

Jacob Goldstein (44:28)

And hey, like I, I've just come in saying, like, hey, don't expect Congress to be completely flipped, but like, you know, it's, the times are crazy. Who knows what else? Who knows how many more people ICE is going to murder? Who knows like what other, like how bad the economy is going to get. We might have invaded Canada by then. Like, who knows? Yeah, anything's on the table. Anything still on the table. We're just kind of looking at shit from February.

James Stout (44:53)

Yeah. Yeah. And some of this shit will depend on like what atrocities they commit in the weeks and days before the midterm election. Right. Like we, we see surges around certain. The killing of Renegade, the killing of Alex. Pretty. Right. We, we see those things shift public opinion dramatically. And the ongoing snatching of immigrants and deportations and sending people back to places where they'll be tortured and killed. Like that's kind of the background. It makes people angry, but like it's these, these, these specific actions which seem to shift public opinion dramatically.

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James Stout (48:49)

All right, so on that topic, I guess we should talk about the quote unquote shutdown and specifically the Shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Right. I guess the first thing to clarify is this isn't a government shutdown in the sense of the shutdown we saw last year. Right. That lasted like 40 plus days.

Jacob Goldstein (49:06)

Right. It's a partial shutdown.

James Stout (49:08)

It's a partial shutdown. What's happening right now is the Democrats are holding up further funding for DHS until the administration agrees to some concessions they have asked for. This is unlikely to impact ICE and CBP a very great deal for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the tax and spending cuts bill. Right. The 2025 bill funded them to an absolutely like unfathomable degree. I think 65 and 70 million, respectively.

Garrison Davis (49:39)

Yeah.

James Stout (49:39)

More quickly it will affect other agencies under dhs. Those includes Transport Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard. Some TSA workers will be working that they will likely not be receiving pay. This is pretty common. Right. They're deemed as quote, unquote, essential workers and that means that they will be expected to continue to work. What we saw last time was that as the shutdown dragged on, people were calling in sick or not coming into work because they were taking other jobs. Right. Because they had bills to pay. The reason this is happening is because Democrats successfully managed to get Trump to separate DHS funding from another spending bill which passed through and funded the rest of the federal government. They are demanding an end to masking. I should clarify specifically like masking in the sense of law enforcement officers wearing gaiters over their faces, a return to officers displaying their name, badge and ID number, increased oversight of detention conditions, coordination with local law enforcement, an end to the detention of US citizens, targeted enforcement and not roving patrols, and a unified use of force and uniform conduct policy for CBP and ICE. And then an end to raids using Form 215. I'm just going to note here that I'm moving forward, going to refer to that using that name and not call it an administrative warrant because an administrative warrant like kind of implies the action of a judge. But these are forms that are filled out. It is not the same in any aspect as a warrant unless a judicial warrant. The Republican counter proposals so far have shown pretty little common ground on this aside from over body cameras where GNOME did implement body cameras. As I said, ICE and CBP will continue doing what they do. Right. I was at the border on Saturday and I saw tons of CBP patrols. They do not seem to have slowed down with their wall construction. That may over time slowdown. They won't be paying the workers, week by week on those contracts, they will be paying a contractor who might be paying a subcontractor. So that would take time to slow down. The things that will slow down are things like the oversight function to dhs, potentially administrative and hiring functions, things like that. Right. But the actual underground patrolling, most of those people are deemed as essential workers. So it seems unlikely that we will see, for instance, fewer CBP patrols at the border or fewer ERO IS agents tasked with doing these ongoing raids. So yeah. Talking about dhs, I want to talk a little bit more about the Coast Guard. I think it's likely that some people won't be aware that the Coast Guard is an element of the dhs. They're also a branch of the military. They're the only branch of the military that's under the dhs. Yes. So they like considered veterans, but they're not in the DoD or the DoW, as you can now call it. The NBC has a piece suggesting that there is, I guess, a split in the Coast Guard between lower ranks and higher ranks. And specifically they're talking about feeling that Coast Guard is moving away from its core mission, which is search and rescue. They highlight one incident in February of last year when a Coast Guardsman went overboard and A Coast Guard C130 was detailed to participate in the search for that Coast Guardsman.

Jacob Goldstein (53:17)

Right.

James Stout (53:18)

It had previously been detailed for a deportation flight, but it was retasked to assist with the search. According to the piece, quote, noam verbally instructed the acting Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lundy, to pull the plane off the search and rescue mission so it would not miss the immigrant flight as part of DHS's so called alien expulsion operations. According to two US officials and a Coast Guard official. As a result, what happened is that local Coast Guard officials in San Diego scrambled to find two C27s that could fulfill that deportation flight. In doing so, that freed up the C130 to then go return to participate in the search. Right. They did continue searching, I believe for 190 hours, but they never found the missing Coast Guardsman. Right. You cannot and we'll never be able to conclusively prove that all of this back and forth with this C130 had any impact on that. But this incident has clearly had an impact on morale and it suggests a general shift in priorities away from search and rescue and towards doing more border enforcement. Right. Under Nome, 750 flights have been redirected from their regular work to instead deport migrants. This comes after she Removed a high ranking Coast Guard official from her house so that Nome could live at the house. Wait, what? Yeah, yeah. Hold on. She kicked the Coast Guard person out of their house?

Jacob Goldstein (54:40)

Yeah.

James Stout (54:40)

This was last year.

Jacob Goldstein (54:42)

What?

James Stout (54:42)

She moved with, like, very short notice. She moved on to a. Holy shit. Yeah, she moved onto a base. I missed this.

Garrison Davis (54:49)

Yeah, with Lewandowski. Right.

James Stout (54:53)

That might be the case, guys.

Garrison Davis (54:54)

There was like, a few people in, like, the Cabinet or orbit.

James Stout (54:58)

Yes, yes, yes. I thought you meant, like, they were cohabiting.

Garrison Davis (55:00)

Oh, no, no, no.

James Stout (55:01)

Okay, yeah. Okay.

Garrison Davis (55:03)

Beautiful domestic life.

James Stout (55:05)

Yes. Okay. I was, I was. I don't want to doubt you, but that would have been a news to me. Yes. A number of Trump's, like, executive officials are living on bases more than is usual. I think the Millers maybe do as well. But yeah. She also purchased two Gulfstream jets to fly her around. Unlike most government jets, which tend to be returned to what's. What's called a sterile state after use, that just means that they go back to being completely clean. Like, they're like a generic jet. They're not your jet. Nome prefers to keep some personal items aboard the Gulf Streams, but one of these items, a heated blanket, was left behind after her jet broke down. She had to switch planes. Koila Windowski reportedly shouted at the Coast Guard flight staff and demanded they turn around before attempting to fire the pilot, who fused to do so.

Jacob Goldstein (55:57)

Jesus Christ.

Garrison Davis (55:58)

I. I need. I need my blankie. I need my blankie.

Jacob Goldstein (56:01)

Turn around.

James Stout (56:02)

Yeah, I think she. She had a rough week. I guess one of the blanket.

Sponsor Representative (56:07)

These are absolutely just like the softest

Garrison Davis (56:10)

fascists that have ever ruled a country. Like, I turn up flight around because I left my baby blanket.

James Stout (56:16)

Like, yeah, right. Like, oh, God. Fortunately, I guess they. They de. Escalated that one and continued the flight

Jacob Goldstein (56:23)

blanket free to fire the pipe.

James Stout (56:28)

Yeah. I think it is interesting to look at Coast Guard's morale, right? Like, Coast Guard's traditional mission has been search and rescue and then the interdiction of, like, drug vessels. And they have been doing a great deal of. Of border enforcement stuff and removal stuff. And it is obviously like, people who've been at the Coast Guard for a long time, not what they joined the Coast Guard to do. I will just say that there are very few areas in which the United Kingdom has worked shit out, but the lifeboats are one of them. They are mentioned in mutual aid. The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has an article on Kropotkin on their website.

Garrison Davis (57:07)

Incredible.

James Stout (57:08)

And it is. It is one of the really genuinely good things about Britain, by contrast, they are not part of our government security apparatus.

Garrison Davis (57:17)

Yeah, because that makes no sense. The entire agency of DHS makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah.

James Stout (57:21)

It's just because, yeah, there are better ways to do this.

Jacob Goldstein (57:24)

I mean, it makes. Again, it makes a lot of sense as the President's private army. Yeah.

Garrison Davis (57:29)

For our final segment this episode, some tragic news. On Monday afternoon, February 16, two people were killed in a shooting at a hockey game in Pawtucket, R.I. before the shooter died by suicide. Three others were shot but survived their injuries. In the aftermath of the tragedy, people across the right and the left have both used this shooting offensively and defensively in the culture war because of the shooter's gender identity and far right conspiratorial politics. Even though evidence points towards this being targeted domestic violence, the deceased or the shooter's ex wife and eldest son and the deceased ex wife's parents were critically wounded but survived, as did a family friend. The shooter's other son was on the ice playing hockey while the shooting took place. Ordinarily, we would not talk about an incident like this in the news because there's a lot of domestic violence shootings that happen across the United States every week, and not all of them become national news stories. This is news because of its weaponization in the political culture war. But under most methodologies, like this incident would not even be categorized as a mass shooting.

James Stout (58:41)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (58:41)

Because less than four people died. It does qualify under the Gun Violence Archive criteria, which counts injuries, not deaths in which. This would be the 41st shooting in the US this year. But after the shooting took place, right wing accounts and influences started using this as a part of their trans mass shooter narrative. On Monday night, the Pawtucket police said they believed the shooting stemmed from a family dispute. The shooter was 56 years old with six kids. About 10 years ago, the shooter started identifying as a transgender woman and used the name Roberta Esposito. The legal last name is Dorgan. They're not Hispanic.

Jacob Goldstein (59:24)

Oh.

Garrison Davis (59:26)

The shooter was divorced about five to six years ago. Dorgan's ex wife lists the grounds for divorce in the documents as, quote, gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic and personality disorder traits. Then she crossed that out and instead wrote, quote, irrevocable differences which caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage, unquote. The shooter was extremely active on Twitter, made anti Semitic and conspiratorial posts, and frequently interacted with a large assortment of mega influencers, as well as far right, neo Nazi and conspiracy theory influencers like Nick Fuentes. And Alex Jones Dorgan also shared pictures of a massive like SS Totenkov tattoo on their right arm.

James Stout (60:17)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (60:18)

And wrote on Twitter, quote, post op, trans to the right of Hitler and quote, you can be pro LGBT and pro Trump, unquote. From looking through their Twitter, it, it mostly appears to be someone who is suffering from extreme mental distress. It's hard to, you know, chart how much of the political beliefs that can be displayed on the Twitter are like genuinely held versus how much they relate to long standing mental health issues this person suffered from. Which I'll get into in a sec.

James Stout (60:48)

I'm still a little hung up on the name.

Garrison Davis (60:50)

The name also, I think relates to just this person's very, very not well.

James Stout (60:55)

Okay. They're just trying to piss people off, like with.

Garrison Davis (60:57)

Correct. I think everything about this person can be seen as an expression of like antisociality. I'm just trying to politics their presentation, their name now. While right wing news agencies and influencers have used this horrifying incident of domestic violence for their, you know, trans mass shooter narrative, framing every trans person as at risk of randomly becoming a mass killer while ignoring this shooter's own extremist politics, people on the left have blamed this tragedy on the shooter being a, quote, unquote, far right Trump supporter or a quote, unquote Nazi groiper. And this is in part a defensive reaction against the right's own like misleading and non sourced claims about a statistical epidemic of trans violence. But laying blame on Make America Great Again and the MAGA movement doesn't really get us much closer to understanding this violence. We're so used to defaulting to this partisan culture war like ideological explanation for the cause of public violence. Whether that's, you know, for the right, trans ideology or neo Nazism. Even though both in this case and the shooting in Canada last week, which I talked about a few days ago on the show, this was like antisocial, unstable and self destructive individuals who killed family members and then created a deadly public situation leading them to kill themselves. Despite Nazi tattoos and Twitter posts, this hockey game shooting was not ideologically motivated violence. This was targeted interpersonal violence against family stemming from extreme mental health issues. This goes beyond like right left politics. This shooter just seemed to be drawn to anything seen as extreme or anything that produced antisocial effects. The daughter of the shooter briefly spoke to local news on Monday saying that the shooter was her father and that the shooter had quote unquote mental health issues and was, quote unquote, very sick. The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence Said in a statement Monday night, quote, while details are still emerging, we know that violence within families and intimate relationships can have devastating and far reaching impacts. Domestic violence does not stay behind closed doors. It affects children, extended family members, and entire communities, unquote.

Jacob Goldstein (63:11)

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you

Garrison Davis (63:13)

want to do analysis of it, it's that, like, the thing that's actually a predictor for violence is domestic violence. And this is another really horrible domestic violence incident. But, yeah, it's. It's pretty tragic. Yeah. Interestingly, there was some news that came out today, which was Wednesday, that one of the other sons of this shooter was arrested a few years ago in North Providence for setting fires to a black church, which did appear to be ideologically motivated violence. And police found notebooks inside of this person's home filled with hateful writings. Quote, gunned down everyone that isn't white, if one is white. Spread the gospel. Always give our bloodline a chance, Unquote. So this incident of arson in a black church is definitely ideologically motivated.

James Stout (64:07)

Yeah, it's in a great, extremely normal country.

Garrison Davis (64:10)

And this person was sentenced to six years in prison.

James Stout (64:13)

Oh, wow. So the person. That's the son of the person, the

Garrison Davis (64:17)

son of the shooter. One of the sons of the shooter.

James Stout (64:19)

Yeah, because they had several sons.

Jacob Goldstein (64:21)

Yeah.

Garrison Davis (64:21)

Just a pretty tragic series of incidents with this family.

James Stout (64:26)

I do find it really disturbing that the thing that you mentioned, gay, where people just kind of drop into a channel when it comes to responding to a tragedy like this. Like, and I find it really upsetting when I see it from, like, yeah, left and progressive organizations that promote firearms training or, like, I just find it really kind of disappointing, I guess, to see people dropping into these same kind of callous and dismissive responses. Yeah, it's just something that's been weighing on me recently. Like, I am a person who owns guns, but it's still. I don't know, I'm disappointed, I guess.

Garrison Davis (65:01)

Yeah. All right, well, we reported the news. Put a trans girl on your couch.

James Stout (65:08)

Yep. And if you have some news that you think we should report, some tips, you can do so by emailing coolzonetipsoton me. And do you have someone that you would like to be a guest on our show or a topic that you think Robert should cover from behind the Bastards, we will make another email for that. But you could just not email the tip line. If you're a publicist and you email, I will block you.

Jacob Goldstein (65:33)

We reported the news.

Garrison Davis (65:42)

It could happen.

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Jacob Goldstein (65:45)

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Jacob Goldstein (65:59)

Thanks for listening.

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Jacob Goldstein (66:38)

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