← It Could Happen Here
It Could Happen Here
Executive Disorder: Tariff Refund Disaster, DHS Citizenship List, Idaho Bathroom Bill, Two Bombing Plots
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A
This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human day or night. VRBoCare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly, because a great trip starts with the right support. And, hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either. Cool zone media.
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B
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 and James Stout. This episode, we are covering the week of March 12th, 25th to April 1st.
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A
Yep. So we're all gonna do silly things that aren't really news.
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B
No, we're not gonna do us.
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A
We're not. I love it when outlets do that.
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B
This comes out Friday. This comes out Friday. It's over. It's done.
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A
No more. No more fish of April to April. There's French people out there now.
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B
With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, I know everyone's gonna get tired of election news, but there is some very important voting that needs to happen in these next few weeks because it could happen here. Another show called behind the Bastards and James's excellent series Migrating to America have been nominated for Webby Awards. You know the Emmys. Yeah, they're like those, except they're for the Internet, but they're just as serious.
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A
More serious.
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Some people are saying the Internet obviously, is more real than television. No one watches TV anymore.
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Yeah, it's. It's. It's like the Emmys. People who aren't boomers.
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B
People are saying, so this is. This is obviously very exciting. And voting lasts until April 16th. There will be links in the show notes to vote for the. The three nominations that we have here at Cool Zone Media. Migrating to America is nominated for the limited series and specials podcast documentary category. Find the Bastards is the podcast features for experimental and innovation. And It Could Happen Here is also nominated under the limited series category under news and politics. It's kind of confusing to navigate the website because there's just so many categories, but those three links will be there below, and we will continue to be talking about what is arguably the most important election of our lifetimes in these next few weeks.
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Yeah, Pokemon, go to those links and vote for us.
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Even if you see that, you know we might be ahead. Stay in line. You cannot leave. We will not let Trump land By Ms. Now, come on, steal our spot as number one. So stop the steal. Do not let Trump land win vote. It could happen here. April 16th. Up until the 16th.
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A
Vote early. Vote often.
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B
Vote early. Vote often.
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A
Vote with your spare email address.
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C
Look voily Vote often. The great slogan of my home state of Illinois.
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B
Everyone take this liberal direct action very seriously. Let's start with some actual news getting serious here. Kristi Noem's husband was outed as what I'm going to call a sissy crossdresser with an interest in quote, unquote, bimbo ification. Nome as governor signed a joint state letter attacking trans rights. There's so much gendered angst among these conservatives. Projection, et cetera, et cetera. Representatives for NOME released a statement after this news dropped, quote, Ms. Gnome, which is interesting. Quote, Ms. Nome is devastated. The family was blindsided by this and they ask for privacy and prayers at this time.
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A
Yeah, cool.
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C
I think. I think we need to. We need to expand the right to arm bears to the right to arm dogs. This is my final statement on this matter.
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A
Yeah, not a great month for the Gnomes after she joined the Shields of America's task force, which so far has existed for less than a month and already bombed the wrong country once. Jesus Christ.
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B
In other important news, 413,793 Kit Kat bars were stolen in transit from Italy to Poland.
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A
Okay, when you give that statistic, is that 413,793 four finger bars or is that 100,000 and you're counting each finger separately?
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B
No, it's each packaged bar, including some of the new limited edition Formula 1 and chunky bars.
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A
Oh, that's been a thing in the UK for like 20 years. KitKat Junkie.
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B
This is a new version. This is a new version according to a press release from Kit Kat. Okay, so if you want to argue
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A
with Kit Kat, I think what you're seeing is it's called Cool Britannia. It's a phenomenon by which British culture is slowly taking over the world.
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B
This is. This is 12 tons of kit Kat bars that were stolen. Their whereabouts are currently unknown. An on duty Secret Service agent assigned to Jill Biden shot himself while at the Philadelphia airport last week. Look, the lines are bad, but come on, it's not that bad. This was a negligent discharge while the agent was traveling through the airport in an unmarked car. Jill Biden was not in the immediate area at the time of the shooting. Last weekend, Trump signed an executive order to start paying TSA agents as The Senate and House failed to agree on a DHS funding bill. Congress has adjourned for two weeks as the shutdown continues to set new records for the longest in any federal agency's history. Quick update here. Literally, as we were recording, House Republicans caved and agreed to the Senate bill to fund dhs, except for ICE and cbp, which Republicans will be trying to fund later in a reconciliation bill. But as of Wednesday afternoon, it looks like Congress has finally reached a funding package for the rest of dhs. Politico has reported that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has been hospitalized at least twice for stress related issues.
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C
Oh, my God.
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While working to implement Trump's immigration policy.
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I think it's specifically like because they're shouting him for not hitting the targets. Right.
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Because Stephen Miller has been calling Lyons, yelling at him, quote, unquote, yelling about not hitting certain immigration targets. Yes. And Trump has yet to endorse still still yet to endorse anyone in the Texas runoff between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. Early reports indicated Trump would back Cornyn, the incumbent. But recently Paxton has been seen meeting with Trump at Mar a Lago in what have been reported as, quote, unquote, positive meetings.
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A Russian oil tanker has docked in Cuba after the United States allowed it to break the blockade on the island. As we reported last week, there's been a massive shortage of oil in Cuba. This will alleviate that slightly. Yeah. A US Marine, probably former US Marine now, if not very shortly to be former US Marine, has been charged with federal offensive after allegedly selling millions of rounds of ammunition, including M855A1, which isn't normally available for civilian purchase, and Javelins in Arizona. Javelin. Yeah, yeah. Just for those, those who are not familiar, Javelin. I'm not talking about like a spear here. I'm talking about a guided anti tank missile.
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C
Holy shit.
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Yeah.
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Who was he trying to sell them to?
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So he sold them to two people who acted as brokers, two unindicted co conspirators, and then they sold them to other people. And an undercover agent was able to purchase some of the ammunition. Guy's name is Andrew Paul Amarillos. He was indicted by grand jury this week. He was an ammunition tech at Pendleton, but he bought them to Arizona to sell. And at this time, about 2 million rounds are not recovered.
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B
Great.
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It's not clear if there are still Javelins in circulation. Basically.
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What? They don't know where the Javelins are. They lost it.
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They recovered a Javelin. They don't know if they recovered all the Javelins.
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So potentially There are just anti tank rockets out there.
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Wait a minute, wait a minute. They're with the KitKats. This is a joint operation.
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Maybe that's how they stopped that large Kit Kat truck they hit the vehicle
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with Javas got in there.
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Yeah, it's one of those growth operations, you know, you get one Javelin, you strike a KitKat vehicle, you sell the KitKats. Now you've got two Javelins, you hit the Mars Bar vehicle. Right. This is capitalism in action. And then let's return to Arizona where normal things happen. Also in Arizona, a grand jury has indicted a man for material support for a foreign terrorist organization after he allegedly sold weapons that he intended to provide to the CJND and CDS cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Cartel de Sinaloa. So two of the larger Mexican cartels.
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Right.
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These are two groups that were listed as FTOs by the Trump administration very early on last year. Lawrence Gray, 65, was a federal firearms licensee. He owned a shop called Grips by Larry. He sold fancy grips for 1911s. He was already facing a raft of weapons charges after selling a.50 caliber Barrett, a semi auto belt fed and of course a 38 Super 1911 pistol to a confidential informant. The.38 Super 1911 pistol. The reason I say of course is because anytime people get busted for illegal weapons sales in the Southwest, there always seems to be a.38 Super 1911 involved. That they're very much like a status gun in organized crime in Mexico because certain calibers are less available there. 38 super is pretty much uniquely associated with that market. It always seems that that pops up in busts. And he was selling fancy grips, some of which had symbology which sometimes is used by organized crime groups in Mexico. Anyway, this is the first time I've seen a material support for terrorism charge for one of these cartels who were recently designated as FTOs. So that was interesting to me. Finally, Israel has passed a law allowing the death penalty for murder. It uses a phrase, quote, with the intent of rejecting the existence of the State of Israel. It appears to be a binary system of punishment. Right. It seems that the death penalty is only going to pertain to Palestinian people here. Yeah, it's worth noting the Palestinians of the west bank are tried in military courts and they face a very high conviction rate. Often people will admit, I think we can safely say that they admit under duress in conditions that would not generally be considered applicable with justice. Right. This is, I mean this is an apartheid legal system on top of Everything else. Right. Israel previously hadn't had the death penalty other than for certain war crimes, which is in and of itself quite amusing, given the stuff we will talk about later in this very episode.
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One of the really bleak things about this is. Oh, God. Ben gvir, who's been. Who's the Minister of National Security, the unbelievably unhinged right winger who's been campaigning for this law, has been going around with a bunch of his parliamentary factions wearing yellow noose pins.
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Yeah, this is their thing.
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And in support of this. So it's really, truly cannot be clearer what this is about.
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Yeah, no, that's their. Like their version of the MAGA hat, I guess. Like their branding of their movement is this noose pin.
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Yeah, well, specifically, it's the thing that they've replaced. The. Like the ribbon they were wearing for the hostages has now just been replaced with a noose. With a noose.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty disgusting. Jesus Christ.
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There is one more little thing I'd like to mention. There was a Daily Mail article that went viral. Only the best news coming from the Daily Mail.
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A
Yeah.
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That carried the headline, quote, bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson.
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C
God.
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B
So this article is reporting on a motion filed by the defense characterizing findings that are still yet to be fully resolved from the atf. This does not mean that a different gun was used. What it means is that the ATF was maybe unable to positively match the bullet fragments to the gun, which does not mean that this was a negative match. This did not come from that gun, but that the fragments could not be positively linked to the gun. Again, this is a motion filed by the defense doing what they need to do, which is legally defend this man. Like that is. That is their job.
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Yeah.
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And that is. That is what they are doing. The characterization of this motion by the Daily Mail is designed to drive clickbait and it's being used to encourage this sort of conspiracy around the Charlie Kirk shooting. That there was this like, other currently unknown shooter, possibly with foreign ties. That's. It's a very, very popular thing right now on the Internet.
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A
The grassy knoll theory of Charlie Kirk shooting.
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C
Ye.
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That basically like a Mossad agent was. Was hiding somewhere and.
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Yeah.
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And Tyler Robinson is a patsy. Tyler Robinson, obviously innocent until proven guilty. This is going to get settled in court. But the characterization of the early findings by the ATF through the Daily Mail was a bit misleading.
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Yeah. Daily Fail.
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And also, I think it's worth mentioning that, like this kind of bullet matching stuff is just as a forensic science, and this is true of a lot of the sort of forensic sciences that are used in, used in courts. Like we, I think Robert has talked on behind the Bastards about like a bunch of like the fire pattern stuff. This is kind of in the same category as that, in that it's not very good, like even to begin with. And so what we have here is a bad mischaracterization of a report of like an incomplete analysis from a not very good piece of forensic technology that's being used to do conspiracy because it makes money.
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Yeah.
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We will certainly follow this case as it actually reaches trial. There will be many interesting things that come out through the course of that trial.
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All right, so let's begin by talking about immigration with this. Brad Lander more or less broke this right on his social media accounts. The United States Department of Justice, via the United States Attorney's Office in New York, has admitted that it was misguided by ICE attorneys in asserting that they could detain migrants in immigration court. There was a memo, right, An ICE guidance memo that they relied on. The memo they now say should have applied to other courts, but not to the Executive Office of Immigration Review. The declaration came in New York Courtsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of advocacy groups which had challenged the courthouse arrests. That's been happening for about a year now, as I'm sure most people are aware of in the filing, the US DOJ said this error, however, was not caused by a lack of diligence and care by the undersigned attorneys. The undersigned were specifically informed by ice that the 2025 ICE guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests. In addition, we discussed and obtained the approval of assigned ICE counsel before filing every brief in this case and making any oral representations to the court and the plaintiffs. We also transmitted copies of the court's orders, Transcript of the September 2, 2025 oral argument and plaintiff's filings to ICE Counsel throughout its litigation. Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error. So what you've got there is a U.S. attorney basically saying, like, not my fault, ICE attorney's fault. Relatively unusual statement. Right. Obviously, we've seen them attempt to kind of split the executive branch before in these legal filings. Right. We saw, we saw this happen in some of those cases in Minnesota and then the judge rejected that. Right. The ACLU in a letter of response, noted the wide reaching consequences here. And it's asked for 14 days to consider what to do next and file a motion. The memo in question. Right. This ICE guidance memo said that, quote, civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted aliens, alien brackets s is or will be present in a specific location. It said those were permissible. Right. Dhs, however, has said that there will not be a change in their policy going forward. It's unlikely that they will stop until they are told by a court to do so. Right.
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Yeah.
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So what it seems here is that the ICE attorney has for some reason reconsidered, perhaps because of this ongoing case in New York. What they had said there and now attempted to walk back something that they have been doing for a year. This will not change the fact that people who have probably been arrested in those courthouses, I have no doubt many of them have already been deported from the United States. Right. Many more of them will have suffered material damage if they have not been deported because they will have been detained in horrific conditions. Right. We've seen more photos today from inside immigration detention. Immigration detention has always been horrific. It continues to be horrific. We can't make those people whole again in a meaningful way. But what it means going forward, we will keep reporting on another deportation story. I want to talk about a deportation flight on Monday landed in Myanmar. The flight also stopped in Thailand and it is the fifth such deportation flight that I'm aware of. I know of two that were announced. These have not been previously reported, but in March of 2025, one at the time was a state administration council. The Myanmar military dictatorship is going through the process of changing its clothes and pretending to be a civilian government. Right now, that doesn't matter for this story. In 2nd of March 2025, the illegitimate government of Myanmar announced that it had received two individual deportees, one on each flight. In April and May of that year they received more. So we now believe that 22 people had been deported up to this Monday and more people, it appears from this flight have been deported on Monday. The last deportation flight resulted in the deportees being detained and tortured by Myanmar's brutal military intelligence. The flight was aboard a jet owned by Journey Aviation and it returned via Sydney to the United States of America. The United States has been trying to cancel the temporary protected status for Burmese people for some time. But even with a tps, it's worth noting that people, some people who have been convicted of crimes and for other exceptions, can still be deported. The junta said in a press release last year, quote, the Myanmar government is cooperating with the relevant US Federal entities in verifying and accepting deportees to Myanmar. This and some other things the Trump administration have done. They've tried to characterize it as a de facto recognition of their right to rule the country. Yeah, very clearly. The reason that they're talking about these deportations is because they're flexing that, hey, the U.S. government is talking to us. This has downstream effects. Right. I think the world is largely not taking that seriously, but nonetheless, they are using that, whether it's for external or internal signaling. The last time this happened, according to Myanmar now, the deportees were taken straight to the Ong Tao PI interrogation center. And last time, it was mostly ethnically Karen or Qin people. So these are not people. It's a majority ethnicity. Right, the majority ethnicity. The ethnicity that comprises most of the armed forces is. Or certainly most of the high ranks of the armed forces are Bamar people. If people want to listen to more about Myanmar, Robert and I have made two very extensive series about that that we will link to. Talking of torture, here are some advertisements which are like torture for your ears. You know what they say? Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over $120 with VRBO, because early gets you closer to the action, whether it's waves lapping at the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks, well, whatever you want it to, so you can all enjoy the payoff come summer with Verpo's early booking deals. Rise and shine. Average savings, $141. Select homes only.
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B
Some people actually like torture.
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A
Just to clarify, Garrison, I don't think this is the kind that people like.
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B
Some people might. Might like those ads. There is a huge industry of watching vintage advertising on YouTube just like, like, edits together of, like, old ads. People love that stuff. Weird, weird nostalgic capitalism brain.
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A
Yeah, it is funny to look at the old ads. When I was doing my archival research, I'd find like 1920s and 1930s ads, and you're like, oh, what you're selling is drugs.
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B
So true. So true.
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Yeah, it's like the. The two. The. The.
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B
The.
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The two kinds of early 1900s ads are drugs. And you should buy this because it has a swastika on it.
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Yeah, it's just like some form of racism in marketing.
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Well, I wasn't even racist in, like, 1905. I mean, kind of. Yeah, but.
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And guys, it's a Buddhist symbol originally. Guys, it's fine.
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B
Let's return to our Namesake and discuss two executive orders. As the voting restriction bill, dubbed the Save America act, continues to stall in Congress, Trump has attempted to take matters into his own hands by signing a new executive order, quote, ensuring citizenship verification and integrity in federal elections. This order directs dhs, USCIS, and the Social Security Administration to create a, quote, state citizenship list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject state, unquote. And this citizenship list will then be used to compare to state voter rules. The list will be derived from, quote, federal citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security Administration records, the DHS systematic alien verification for entitlements data, and other relevant federal databases, unquote. James, do you want to talk about this idea of having, like, a list of citizens? Because this is, I think, something we've, we've mentioned before how there, to this point hasn't really been like, a single list of U.S. citizens.
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C
Yeah.
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Because you can obtain United States citizenship through a number of means. Right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Um, so these would exist in different agencies and generally there has been like, a hostility, a well founded, like, hostility to, to this kind of overarching government, like in outlist. Right. Not least because they will screw it up monumentally.
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B
And that could have devastating consequences that affect not just your ability to vote, but, as we have seen through the past year of ICE enforcement, your ability to remain in the United States.
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A
Yeah. And just every part of everyday life. Right.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Not least add that one of the ways you can obtain United States citizenship is through being an enrolled tribal citizen. I don't know if they're consulting tribal citizenship roles. I don't.
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B
There was nothing about that in the order.
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I legitimately do not think the people who are pushing this understand that that's a thing.
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B
Yeah. They don't think about it.
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C
Yeah.
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Yeah. It's not a group of people who they care about. Right.
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B
Earlier today, during the Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship, which. Which Trump attended for 90 minutes and then. And then left because he wasn't happy with the way it was going, Gorsuch asked the seasoned Solicitor General if he thinks Native Americans are birthright citizens under their test, to which the Solicitor General replied, ah, I think so, and then said, I'll have to think that through.
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C
Oh, my fucking God.
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He later indicated that they probably would, but this, this just shows that they aren't really, like, thinking about all these sorts of things.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It's not necessarily like, in that case, trying to be intentionally harmful. It shows just. They're. They're not. They're not even, like, thinking about these sorts of things that could have really, really devastating effects if implemented.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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B
Which is, like, an odd part of the Trump administration has, like, not everything bad they're doing is necessarily has every single specific implementation pathway in mind.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But when implemented is, like, still. Is still devastating to people's lives.
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C
I want to say one thing about the birthright citizenship thing. Josh Chaffetz, who's a professor of law at Georgetown Law, Law and Politics, had a very good point about this, which I think is worth making, which is like, part of what's going on here is that the Trump administration is trying to carve out, like, a specific thing called birthright citizenship. That's, like, a thing that you get if you have two immigrant parents. But birthright citizenship is a citizenship that every single person in the US Has. Yeah, it's everyone's. There's no. There's no distinction. There's not like a different kind of citizenship you get if you have two immigrant parents versus if you have, like, parents that were, like, born in the U.S. right. Like, it's all one thing. Every single person in the United States has the same kind of citizenship. But the moment you start trying to, like, hack apart different people's citizenship, right? You try to. You try. You try to, like, you know, like. Like make there be, like, classes of. Of how you're a citizen through, like, this whole birthright citizenship complaint that they're doing.
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A
Right.
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C
And to be like, oh, well, just these people who were, like, born to immigrants or birthright citizens, Right? That's one of the ways you start getting into these, like, fucking hideous issues of, like, okay, are people with tribal membership, like, you know, residencies, like citizens? Right. It's like, all of this stuff is, like, downstream of this effect to, like, cut citizenship apart. That needs to just be resisted. Like, from the fundamental thing of. There is not a different category of people called big birthright citizens. That's every single person in the U.S. yeah.
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A
Unless they naturalized, Right. Unless they're a naturalized citizen.
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C
Yeah. Unless you're naturalized.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Yeah. And even then, you're still just a citizen. Yeah.
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A
Then you become a citizen. You just go into the citizen bucket.
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C
That's warm, and then you are now citizen.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Yeah. And the moment you cut that apart, like, it's terrible. Terrible things happen.
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A
Yeah. 2024, I made an episode with Robert and Sophie in which we discuss potential attacks on citizenship and potential ways that Trump and we get into the birthright citizenship. And we get into where it comes from. And the fact that this is not an issue about which there has been legal debate. You will now see articles being like, the debate about birthright citizenship, that is people pulling things out of their ass to create two sides on an issue which has been settled for quite literally decades, if not centuries. No.
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C
Yeah.
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A
I will probably try and do something else on birthright citizenship. The reason I haven't done a lot is because there isn't a great deal to say. Yeah, like, birthright citizenship is a thing in the United States. It has been a thing in the United States for a very long time.
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C
It's just in the Constitution. Just says that. It just says that.
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A
Yeah. There are some people who want to take it away. And it's specifically. Like, we did that after we ended chattel slavery. Right. Like, for a very good reason.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And pushing back on the things we did after we ended chattel slavery is. Is bad, actually. But, yeah, I. I will. Maybe I'll do another episode because I know we've picked up a lot of new listeners since then.
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B
Now, Trump's new executive order on citizenship verification for elections also states, quote, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish procedures to allow individuals to access their individual records as well as to update or correct them in advance of elections, unquote. Unclear how this is going to work, if it even is going to work. It's still not clear that this executive order will actually be implemented as written because of potential constitutional violations. But, you know, this would be in an attempt to address some of the. Some of the pretty. Pretty big issues that we're saying about someone may be a citizen and not show up as a citizen in these databases for a number of reasons, whether it's because they were naturalized or even, in some cases, were granted citizenship through one of their parents after being in the sole legal custody of that parent who is a US citizen before this individual is 18. This is called the Childhood Citizenship act of 2000, which makes a permanent resident become a citizen if they're living with a US Citizen parent.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And things like that. Citizenship kind of rolls over from permanent residency without ever actually having to become naturalized. And getting that added to any kind of database doesn't really happen by itself. You have to then apply for proof of citizenship, like a passport or a certificate. So there's all these sorts of weird instances where someone is a citizen, but it may not show up in these sorts of records, including Social Security records.
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A
Yeah. I should just clarify that, like, not all tribal members are necessarily U.S. citizens. But tribal membership documents could sometimes be used, like Garrison was saying, right, as a way to prove United States citizenship. Just more than 100 years now since the Indian Citizenship act of 1924. Right? Like there may still be people alive today who were made citizens by that act, but would not have any particular documentation that's personal to them to show
- [30:24]
B
that, the Executive Order also writes that the Attorney General will investigate and prosecute state officials, local officials, individuals and public or private entities who issue federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote or aid and abet the printing, production, shipment or distribution of ballots to those ineligible to vote.
- [30:44]
A
That's what we call a chilling effect.
- [30:46]
B
The second half of the order takes on Vote by mail by instructing the Postmaster General to initiate a proposed rulemaking that requires states submit lists of voters who will be provided mail in or absentee ballots at least 60 days before an election and that the USPS shall not transmit any ballots for anyone not on this state citizenship list. Now, all of this is intended to take effect before the midterm elections, with the DHS instructed to establish the infrastructure necessary to compile, maintain and transmit the state citizenship list within 90 days. Though this Executive order may very well be blocked by courts for being an unconstitutional breach of presidential power, the fallout of this will be determined in the next few weeks as states and legal entities prepare lawsuits. Let's talk about one other executive order. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that a key section of the executive order, quote, ending taxpayer subsidization of biased media, is unconstitutional. In this order, Trump instructed all federal agencies to cut funding to PBS and npr. The judge in this case wrote that the president can criticize reporting from such outlets and fund programs that promote specific perspectives and impose limits on federal grants. But under the First Amendment, the government cannot use the power of the purse to, quote, punish or suppress disfavored expression by others, writing that both the Supreme Court and the D.C. circuit Court have repeatedly observed that one quote may not deny a benefit to a person on the basis that infringes his constitutionally protected freedom of speech, even if he has no entitlement to that benefit. Unquote. The judge writes that the Executive order, quote, does not define or regulate the content of government speech or ensure compliance with the federal program, nor does it set neutral and germane criteria that apply to all applicants for a federal grant program. Instead, it singles out to two speakers and on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs. It does so, moreover, without regard to whether federal funds are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems, which serve as a technological backbone of public radio and tele television, to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones, to support the emergency broadcast system, or to produce or distribute music, children's or other educational programming or documentaries, unquote. Now, besides setting a good legal precedent, this ruling won't have much in terms of immediate effects because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was dissolved last month after being defunded by the Republican controlled Congress. That's not being reversed, but this ruling could make it less difficult for PBS and NPR to receive money in the future either from Congress or some federal agencies.
- [33:35]
A
What's that sound? Oh, no, it's someone desecrating the legacy of the Clash by singing their worst song with different lyrics. Seriously though, I'm.
- [34:01]
C
I'm still angry, to be fair to my entrance music. The Clash desecrated themselves by making that song.
- [34:09]
A
Yeah. With the moment they released that song. Yeah. Joe Strummer cried when they played that song during Desert Storm. And if he was alive today, he would be crying again.
- [34:18]
C
Yeah. So, okay, we actually do have tariff news, which is the first tariff news in a while. When we last spoke about the Supreme Court nullifying the Liberation Day tariffs and a significant chunk of the tariffs that Trump had been putting into effect, we said that there wasn't a plan really to get tariff refunds out and that it really hadn't been addressed other than by dissenting Supreme Court members. We are sort of starting to see what that looks like after a series of rulings from trade courts. Right now it is a fiasco. So the government has set up a portal through which you can get relief. Now after it was sort of. After it was sort of forced to by the courts. The implementation of this has been delayed several times because the government didn't have time to actually get it out. A bunch of. The portal is not built yet. The government is claiming that it is going to take more time to build a whole bunch of it.
- [35:20]
B
Yeah, I bet.
- [35:21]
C
Now this is a catastrophe because they're dealing with about a bit over $166 billion of tariff money. But they have to pay back plus interest.
- [35:31]
A
They have to pay interest. That's funny.
- [35:33]
C
Yeah. Plus interest. This is the whole thing, right. They have to do interest on all of this, which is a nightmare.
- [35:38]
A
It's the interest accruing while they bungle setting up their Squarespace site or whatever.
- [35:42]
C
Yep. It's going every second. The interest thing is ticking on this. So I'm, I'm going To quote here from Bloomberg, Brandon Lord, executive director of the Trade Programs Directory of the Customs Agency. Who are the people who are sort of running all this is also part of why it's such a disaster, because there's like 17 different agencies that are, like, working on this, right? Some of it's like the Trade Program Directorate, like at the Customs Agency, but there's also just, there's different parts of the customs and like, Customs and Border Patrol that's dealing with all of this stuff, quote, wrote that more than 26,000 importers who paid $120 billion in the challenge tariffs were registered to receive electronic refunds. So far, the government has said that payments could take up to 45 days to review. I would bet that it takes longer than that because, again, the portal hasn't been written, hasn't been, like, made yet, but partners are still being built.
- [36:38]
B
I'm sure those Doge guys are on it. I'm sure they'll get this thing up and running in no time. I'm sure they'll vibe code their way to a perfectly functioning portal.
- [36:47]
C
It's going to be so good. And again, I can emphasize how much catastrophe this is. The government has said in court that their portal set up for two thirds of the money, right?
- [36:57]
B
There's still another third.
- [36:58]
C
They're like, yeah, I don't know. We're working on it. Who knows when it's going to happen? So there's just again, like a third of $66 billion that they don't have a plan to refund.
- [37:08]
A
Amazing.
- [37:10]
C
Now, now, this is not even the messiest part of this, right? There's a very good piece in the conversation from Peter R. Crabb, who's a professor of finance and economics at Northwestern Nazarene University, and also Alison Graham Larson, who's an assistant professor of criminal justice at the same university. And they point out that it's not actually as simple as, okay, you have a, you have a item on your balance sheet that is the tariff payments for these companies. Because, for example, you know, okay, so if you were doing, like, FedEx, which example they use, right, FedEx has like, a number, right? Because they just, they pass the cost directly on to the consumers. However, Costco didn't do that. Costco shifted the cost around internally. So it's actually very complicated for them to figure out how much money they, like, they paid on these tariffs because it was spread a bunch of. Around a whole bunch of stuff. They also, like, changed the way that they were structuring deliveries and stuff internally and There are. So there are a whole bunch of different lawsuits from these companies to try to get their tariff money back, because a lot of these were going on before the actual FOMO refund process was started. So this is like, this is another rolling catastrophe. There's also consumer lawsuits of consumers, people who bought shit who want refunds for the tariffs because they were forced to pay the costs of it. Now, because this is the United States of America, there's another layer of this, which is there are a whole bunch of companies where there are. There are these investment firms who have come in and said, hey, we will buy the rights to your tariff money for a fraction of the money, and we will guarantee that you get this money now, and then we will pay ourselves with the tariff money that we got back. So now you have investment firms who are buying up pools of this tariff money. And I bet from spending a bunch of time last week in the trenches of the 2008 financial collapse, Mali, I bet they're going to start selling securities based off of these pools of tariff money.
- [39:08]
B
So this is my headache.
- [39:09]
C
This is going great.
- [39:17]
A
Amazing.
- [39:18]
C
Oh, it's so good.
- [39:19]
B
Well, I'm just excited to receive my refund from all of the J Fashion I ordered from Japan, which I'm sure I'll be personally receiving thanks to this.
- [39:28]
C
Hey, you. Here's. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. The one truly beautiful part of the US legal system is that you can sue someone for $20 of damages. That number has never been changed. It is the one truly beautiful part of the United States of America is that you, Garrison Davis, almost certainly could sue the government for that money.
- [39:52]
B
That's funny. Yeah, I'm not doing that shit.
- [39:54]
C
That's so good.
- [39:54]
B
That's too much work.
- [39:55]
A
No, we'll include the GoFundMe link for Garrison's constitutional lawyer.
- [39:59]
C
If so, if so, if someone takes a $20 bill from you, you can go fucking sue them in court.
- [40:06]
B
It's beautiful.
- [40:08]
A
Just tag Garrison at I write okay on Blue Sky Bsky app. Yeah, and just say, hi, I'm a constitutional lawyer. I would like to represent you in court. Re the $20. Thank you.
- [40:20]
B
Yes.
- [40:20]
C
Oh, and by the way, by the way, the one last thing I want to notice on a somewhat serious note, is that this entire catastrophe is just for one specific set of authority that Trump was using to put tariffs into place. There are a whole bunch of other ones that he's been doing now that will also get challenged that will have their own refund processes where we will go through this entire mess again with different things. So it's great, great things happening for international trade as we, yeah, increase the price of fucking oil to like $200 a barrel and I don't know, finally get our Calvin and Hobbes $8. And gasoline. It's great. Long live the cycler.
- [41:01]
A
Yeah. The national price of gasoline is now at four bucks, I think.
- [41:05]
B
And that's why they call him the affordability President.
- [41:08]
C
Uh huh.
- [41:08]
A
Yeah. Has anyone checked on the egg prices, though? Because that's how we do things now.
- [41:13]
C
Expensive as shit. Expensive as shit, James.
- [41:15]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:16]
C
Not cheap.
- [41:18]
A
Let me divert new listeners to our famous chickens episode circa 2023, in which they can learn more about keeping poultry at home. Talking of catastrophes, I would like to continue to talk about the war on Iran. The President truthed this week that he was prepared to attack desalination and power plants in Iran if the state did not comply with his demands. Jesus. In his truth, he said, I will skip remarking on capitalization, as is our house style, because otherwise these would take half an hour. The United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made. But if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Kharg Island. Probably all this is a sick desalinization plants which we have purposely not yet touched. This will be in retribution for our many soldiers and for others that Iran has butchered and killed over the old regime's 47 year reign of terror. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, as a reporter at NBC, pointed out targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited. Why is the President threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the US military? And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?
- [43:11]
D
Ms. Look, the President has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read that their best move is to make a deal or else. The United States armed forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the President is not afraid to use them. Ms. That's not what I said, Garrett. And you're saying the word potential for a reason because I'm sure some exercises experts are telling you that in your ear to try to ask me that question. Of course, this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law. But with respect to achieving the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.
- [43:56]
A
It should be noted that Iran has said that it is not negotiating directly with the United States. They're negotiating through a third party. What is largely missing from this discussion is that Israel has been doing this stuff already. Obviously, Israel has not limited its war crimes to its bombing of Iran. Right. It has been on a war crime fee for several years and that is an extension of a war crime speed that has been arguably on for several decades. Yeah. Israel attacked a desalination plant on 7 March. Very briefly, the Israeli press attempted to report that the UAE had done this. The UAE had to issue a statement essentially saying, like, we would never attack the people of Iran while we disagree with the state of Iran. While that you've been like, outwoked by the uae. But them saying, like, it is no way to attack the Iranian regime to force Iranian people to die for lack of water is a perfectly reasonable and just statement. Right. Officially, both the IDF and the US Government have denied this strike. But the combination of, like, several factors, including this incredibly rapid disinformation campaign, strongly point to this being an IDF joint.
- [45:03]
C
Yeah. Also, who else? Like, what are you two Bob dip? Like, I don't know.
- [45:09]
A
Yeah. What are you going to do lately? Yeah.
- [45:13]
C
Come on.
- [45:14]
A
There have been attempts to. Several attempts over the last month to suggest that, like, other Gulf states have done things when they're politically inconvenient. This, as far as I'm concerned, very, very likely to be an IDF situation. This points to something that we've talked about for more than a month now. But I just want to make it really clear that the US And Israel very clearly have very different goals in Iran. I think that sometimes we see this. This very puerile analysis has taken hold on the left in the United States. Right. Which suggests that Israel is entirely driving the bus here. That they cajoled the United States into doing this war and that they are telling the United States what to do, when, where and how. I think that's a very juvenile way of understanding this. Hawks in the United States have wanted war with Iran for decades. Trump talked about it in his first term. Trump also still clearly harbors resentment for Obama getting bin Laden and wants a sort of similar commander in Chief win. His confidence was significantly bolstered after the Venezuela operation and he thought he could affect a regime change here quickly and then extract tribute from a client's day, as he appears to be doing from Delsy and Venezuela now. Right. This has not worked so far in Iran. Israel, on the other hand, has continued with its own campaign, which is an extension of what we have seen it doing in Gaza, what we are seeing it doing in Lebanon, which seems to be to cripple any state in the region, any population in the region that opposes it. Right. But it genuinely seems that its goal here is to leave itself sort of the only functioning polity in the region and to destroy any other armed actor with very little concern for the loss of innocent life. The United States in the last week has lost significant aviation resources after Iranian ballistic missiles struck an airbase in Saudi Arabia. They damaged at least one E3 AWACS aircraft and then a handful of KT135 air to air refueling aircraft. This is not an insignificant loss. This is half a billion dollars of aviation wiped out in a single strike. And these are not airplanes that the United States has a large number of. Right. Iran also hit a Q80 tanker this week. A drone seems to have hit it off the coast of Dubai. It caught fire. There was potential for an oil spill. But what I'm seeing at the time recording this is it has not been one so far.
- [47:42]
C
Christ.
- [47:43]
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, every war is an ecological disaster, right? But this one could be a particularly remarkable one. And then I just do briefly want to mention the economic impacts, of course. Like, it would be very hard to be living on this planet right now and not notice the economic impacts. But the Republic of the Marshall Islands has declared a state of emergency and begun fuel rationing. That they're strictly limiting the use of government vehicles. I have reached out to the government presidency. You can hear my reporting from Republic of the Marshall Islands, including an interview with the then president in 2023. That's another series that we have made here on it could happen here. But I'm gonna see if we can get someone from the RMI on for an interview. Because I think some of these small island nations, right, where everything has to be shipped in the cost of fuel can make things extremely difficult for people just trying to eke out an existence there in a place that the United States nuked despite never raising the word and anger against us.
- [48:42]
B
Finally, our last few stories. This episode, starting with a tale of two bombing plots. American classic, truly the American tradition that just Won't die. A brother and sister have been indicted after allegedly planting an improvised explosive device outside of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, on March 10 before fleeing to China two days later. After planting the bomb, the brother allegedly alerted officials by calling 911. But the explosive went undiscovered for nearly a week. It did not detonate. The sister was arrested after returning from China, and she's charged with evidence tampering and being an accessory after the fact. Prosecutors allege that she helped clean and sell the car used to plant the bomb and asked ChatGPT how to obtain a Chinese visa and transfer properties in her brother's name and searched for Chinese schools for her brother to attend. Her brother is still suspected to be in China.
- [49:44]
C
Look, I. I am stunned that these people didn't accidentally blow themselves up.
- [49:48]
B
Well, the reason why is because it's actually very hard to build a bomb.
- [49:52]
C
Yeah. Oh. So, yeah, I guess. I guess. Well, because when you try to build a bomb, there's three outcomes, right? There's one, you failed to build a bomb. Two, you either succeed to build a bomb or fail to build a bomb and it blows you up. Or three, you successfully build a bomb. And successfully building a bomb is like,
- [50:06]
B
that last one's the hardest part. The hardest.
- [50:08]
C
And it's. You're pretty likely to blow yourself up or fail to build a bomb. So I guess. I guess they never got to the threshold of bomb building where they would blew themselves up because they just didn't produce a viable device.
- [50:23]
B
In this next bombing plot, the suspect did actually construct what could be considered a bomb.
- [50:30]
C
Oh, good Lord.
- [50:31]
B
That could have been used in what's being reported on as an assassination plot. Last Thursday, a New Jersey man, Alexander Heifeler, was arrested as a part of a plot to firebomb the home of pro Palestinian activist Nurdine Keswani.
- [50:49]
A
Jesus Christ.
- [50:50]
B
Alexander Heifler is a member of the JDL 613 Brotherhood, a new offshoot of the terrorist group the Jewish Defense League, which has been active at Palestine protests in New York the past few years. This is a Zionist extremist group that has been designated in the past by the FBI as extremist group.
- [51:13]
C
Yeah.
- [51:14]
B
According to the criminal complaint, Heifeler was in a group video call with an undercover officer last February in which he asked about receiving training, quote, for how to use instruments that were not knives, guns, or crossbows for, quote, unquote, self defense. That's an odd, odd phrasing in the complaint. Crossbows not okay things.
- [51:35]
C
Things that aren't those things okay? Great things happening here.
- [51:40]
B
And Heifler later specifically mentioned that he was looking for somewhere to throw Molotovs.
- [51:46]
A
Oh, boy.
- [51:47]
B
The undercover sent Heifler a message via an encrypted messaging application stating, hey, let's talk about that in person. Don't say that on here. Heifler responded, don't use the M word. Copy that. The M word apparently being Molotov.
- [52:05]
C
Incredible operational security happening here.
- [52:08]
B
The next day, the two met in person. Haifler told the undercover that Molotovs were easy to make, and they discussed targeting the home of pro Palestinian activist Nurdine Keswani. Haifler talked about needing to obtain fake license plates and told the undercover that he had an escape plan to flee the country. At the end of April, Mayor Zoramdani clarified online that Heifler intended to flee to Israel.
- [52:32]
C
Great.
- [52:33]
B
To quote Heifler in the criminal complaint, quote, I'm thinking, like, if we wanted to go after Kiswani, we have Kiswani's address. So it's like that. That would be easier if you'd be more comfortable with that. Drive down to Kaswani's home, middle of April, no IDs, no phones, in and out, unquote.
- [52:51]
A
Great.
- [52:52]
B
A few weeks later, they met up again and drove to Kiswani's home to conduct surveillance. Heifler told the undercover that he had done tests with a Molotov and a DNA kit from a pharmacy. And because his DNA showed up on the test, they should wear gloves during the attack. A real genius at work.
- [53:10]
C
Oh, my God.
- [53:12]
B
The plan was to build 12 molotovs and throw several at the home and two at cars parked outside. Heifler mentioned having an address they could hide out before he would then flee to Israel. On March 26, they met at Heifeler's home to start making the Molotovs. And after the assembly, law enforcement searched the home, and Heifler was arrested and has since been charged with unlawful possession and making of a destructive device.
- [53:38]
C
Great stuff. I very glad they didn't pull this off. And also, Jesus Christ.
- [53:44]
B
You know, something like this. It is interesting that this was joint with the FBI, that the. The current FBI was. Was doing like a sort of a sort of sting operation like this.
- [53:53]
C
Yeah.
- [53:54]
B
With the Jewish Defense League. Is interesting. It. That is. That is something that I think people may not have expected. The undercover was part of the furthering of this plan in some way. It's. It's. I don't know. We. We don't know If. If this guy would have done this exact attack. Yeah, if not planned with the undercover, but this. This guy was very, very clearly willing and able to hurt and possibly kill this pro Palestinian activist. A very prominent one at that. Lastly, let's talk about Pink News and the Idaho bathroom bill.
- [54:29]
C
Oh, my fucking God. Yeah.
- [54:31]
B
So earlier this week, I released an episode and an accompanying article online on what I've dubbed the trans panic clickbait economy. My reporting goes through a series of misleading viral claims about the attacks on trans people from the Trump administration and red states that have been recently flooding the zone and overwhelming the census with an endless stream of forecasted doom. These viral claims are usually based on some irresponsible reporting designed to drive Internet engagement rather than inform about the very real dangers trans people are facing. This kind of clickbait treats every horrific potentiality as an inevitable eventuality, undermining our capacity to accurately assess risk and effectively dedicate resources to oppose pressing threats. One of the key outlets profiting from the panic clickbait economy right now has been Pink News, an LGBTQ news outlet, which we learned last month is pivoting to a quote unquote, reporter free newsroom.
- [55:29]
C
Incredible. And just one of the most Orwellian things I've ever heard. Just, holy fuck. Just, just on a base level of like, just, oh my reporter free newsroom.
- [55:42]
B
Because of this change, one of the. One of the journalists there have already quit.
- [55:45]
C
Yeah.
- [55:46]
B
With four others possibly being laid off shortly, the sort of editorial department of Pink News is now being taken over by their social media content creation wings and some of like the editorial staff, which are repackaging press releases and stealing the work of other journalists, including some other journalists who may be engaging in this sort of misleading reporting, attempting to drive their own engagement. Then Pick News is using that framing to drive their own engagement. That's why this sort of panic economy is a whole economy. Like, it's, it's. It feeds on itself. Now, on March 30, Pink News published an article that went viral online that claimed Kentucky was, quote, to pass a bill that would declare trans people mentally ill, unquote, as well as prohibiting trans people from teaching in schools. But a report from an actual Kentucky based journalist named Olivia Croth for the outlet Queer Kentucky clarified that no such bill was going to pass. The push for a bill declaring trans people as mentally ill was by a single Republican state senator named Gex Williams.
- [56:52]
C
Jesus Christ.
- [56:54]
B
So, yeah, pause there. And Gex could not even accomplish the first step in the legislative process, getting the Senate committee assignment for this prospective bill. Gex then tried to turn his failed bill into a floor amendment slapped onto a separate bill that was expected to pass. But such an amendment still requires a vote on approval separate from the vote to pass the bill itself. Olivia Croth reported that this amendment does not have such support from other legislators.
- [57:26]
C
Yeah.
- [57:26]
B
And that Gex was expected to withdraw his amendment for breaking Senate rules on piggybacking failed bills onto different bills as an amendment. And even if this amendment somehow got through, the bill would then need to be sent back to the state house for approval and would spark a huge fight that the legislature does not have time for because the legislative season is now wrapping up.
- [57:47]
C
Yeah.
- [57:47]
B
So after this article from Pink News was fact checked by this really good journalist doing doing important reporting in Kentucky, Pink News then deleted this article and the viral posts plugging it. But any corrections to this false story do not spread nearly as far as the initial panic inducing claim. And like that's crucial here because like the night that this article went out on Pink News, literally my entire feed was full of dozens and dozens and dozens of people all quote, tweeting this Pink News story and the fact check and the fact that Pink News deleted this is not going to get spread in that same way. Now misleading stories like this distract from the very real attacks Republicans are waging in red states.
- [58:30]
A
Yeah.
- [58:31]
B
One of which one, one of, one of a few was. On Monday, the governor of Idaho signed a new bill into law that criminalizes trans people using the bathroom that matches their gender. Including bathrooms in private businesses.
- [58:46]
A
Yeah.
- [58:47]
B
A first offense would be a misdemeanor with punishable by up to a year in prison. Second offense within five years would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. And this would be prison housed based on quote unquote biological sex at birth, which leads to abuse of trans inmates. This is the most extreme bathroom bill that this nation has seen so far. Most restrictive, affecting private businesses and this sort of very, very intense criminal punishment.
- [59:13]
C
Yeah. And it's also worth noting in ways that are very bleak, trans people are also just criminalized at an extremely high rate. And these felony charges would count for Idaho's three strikes law, which is a fucking nightmare. This. And we also got the Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday which applies a significantly stricter level of scrutiny to any like ban on conversion therapy, which is probably going to end up killing a whole bunch of conversion therapy bans across the country. Which by the way, 8:1 ruling. So a bunch of liberal justices also fucking agreed with this yeah, like, that shit is, like, actually happening. And then meanwhile, we have this, like, panic slop that people are using to get money. And it's incredibly frustrating.
- [60:00]
B
Yeah. It makes it harder to actually evaluate the news as it's happening and. And trust certain. Certain news from certain sources.
- [60:07]
A
Yeah.
- [60:08]
B
Because we all know that these attacks are real. Like, there are real attacks going on
- [60:11]
C
that are really bad.
- [60:12]
B
But we do need to focus on the ones that actually are real, as opposed to a single state senator's amendment to a bill which is never going to pass.
- [60:20]
C
Yeah.
- [60:20]
B
Taking up all of the oxygen one night. Meanwhile, literally that same day, a bill like this Idaho bathroom bill is being signed by the governor.
- [60:28]
C
Yeah.
- [60:29]
B
Well, on that note, I think that does it for us here at It Could Happen Here.
- [60:34]
C
Put a trans girl on your couch, I guess. Especially also now trans people from Idaho who are going to be fleeing in presumably very large numbers. And just great and good.
- [60:46]
B
We reported the news.
- [60:49]
A
We reported the news.
- [60:58]
D
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [61:21]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.