Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #36

Summary

It Could Happen Here – "Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #36"

Date: October 3, 2025
Hosts: Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, James Stout
Podcast: It Could Happen Here (Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts)

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Episode Overview

This episode serves as the 36th installment of the “White House Weekly – Executive Disorder” series. The panel covers major developments from the week of September 21 to October 1, 2025, focusing on U.S. political chaos, particularly the ongoing government shutdown, Trump administration's authoritarian pivots, escalations in domestic security policy, culture war backlashes (like the Jimmy Kimmel/Disney controversy), and intensified federal action in cities such as Chicago and Portland. The hosts provide insight, dark humor, and on-the-ground analysis, seeking to contextualize these ongoing shocks and their impact on democracy and civil society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Government Shutdown: Origin and Fallout

• The Situation: The U.S. government is currently shut down as the Senate failed to pass a short-term funding bill. Republicans are blaming Democrats, falsely accusing them of trying to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.
• Clarification:
  • Democrats are actually fighting to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse recent Medicaid cuts, not fund health care for "illegals."
  • Republicans are intentionally misrepresenting these efforts to stoke outrage and deflect blame.
  • Many undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek medical care due to ICE-related rumors, leading to negative health outcomes.
• Quote:

  "It's a bad faith representation, as it always is... There has never been a massive federal free healthcare plan for undocumented people."
  — Robert Evans [03:21]

2. Media Culture Wars: Disney, Kimmel, and the Boycott Backlash

• Key Event: Disney faced substantial subscriber losses (1.7 million cancellations) after suspending Jimmy Kimmel—a move interpreted as a right-wing effort to purge "anti-state" voices.
• Public Response: The backlash forced Disney to reinstate Kimmel, indicating broad public opposition to overt government censorship backed by corporate compliance.
• Quote:

  "There are more of us than there are of them, and there always have been."
  — Mia Wong [07:32]

• Additional Note: The attempt to create a similar boycott against Netflix over “woke” content using years-old footage is mostly performative.
• Quote:

  "Good luck with that. Have fun."
  — Garrison Davis [09:08]

3. Department of Defense Renamed to "Department of War"

• Policy Change: Trump signed an executive order allowing the Department of Defense to use its historical name, "Department of War," including for domestic contexts.
• Implications:
  • Shifts language to justify militarized domestic policy.
  • Symbolic move reinforcing the administration’s posture toward dissent.
• Quote:

  "They're going to continue to push this and using this kind of war framing for domestic operations, not just international deployments."
  — Garrison Davis [09:47]

4. Trump’s “War from Within”—Federal Militarization of Cities

• Rhetoric: Trump and his officials are framing protests and immigration as existential threats—a “war from within.”
• Action: Trump has signed an order for a rapid reaction force to quell civil disturbance, urging military leaders to be ready to deploy against U.S. cities, especially “liberal-run” places like Portland and Chicago.
• Quote:

  "That's a war, too. It's a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in."
  — Trump (audio clip) [15:17]

• Portland Reality:
  • Protests remain limited compared to 2020, despite dramatic federal rhetoric and television news running old footage.
  • Recent escalations include increased DHS helicopter flights and surveillance, but no National Guard presence or mass troop deployments.
  • Quote: "There really hasn't been any of the, like, what we were seeing in 2020... So far at least, I have not seen either an escalation on the ground or an escalation in what's being deployed on the ground."
    — James Stout [13:18]

5. Chicago: Major Escalation of Federal Action

• Recent Raid:
  • Brutal late-night raid in the South Shore neighborhood—predominantly Black—targeted recently arrived immigrants, using flashbangs and mass detainment, including of children.
  • CPD was spotted aiding the operation in apparent violation of state law.
  • Reports include children zip-tied together and federal agents using racist, inhumane language.
• Quote:

  "They are zip tying children to each other as they drag them from their homes at one in the morning and saying fucking kids."
  — Mia Wong [36:02]

• Further Escalation: Surveillance footage later showed feds choking a Black man during an unrelated operation; the justification from officials was unclear and shifting.

6. The Military’s Rightward Turn: Hegseth and “War Fighters”

• SecWar Pete Hegseth:
  • Made speeches emphasizing “male standards,” grooming, physical fitness, and removing waivers for shaving—policies directly impacting Black service members.
  • Emphasis on purging “disloyal” or “woke” military leadership, expressly referencing the removal of Milley and others who resisted unconstitutional orders under Trump’s prior administration.
  • Quote:

    "They don't want people that will deny him. He wants just a complete loyalist government, and that includes the military."
    — Garrison Davis [30:55]

7. Border Policy and Indigenous Rights

• Fast-Tracked Wall Construction:
  • New waivers allow for rapid border wall building at the expense of environmental and indigenous protections, especially the Kumeyaay people’s ancestral lands.
  • Simultaneously, Hegseth has controversially restored Medals of Honor to the soldiers responsible for the Wounded Knee Massacre.
  • Quote:

    "Hundreds of unarmed Lakota civilians were murdered by the United States military."
    — Robert Evans [39:20]

8. Federal Law Enforcement Retracted from Traditional Policing

• Resource Shift: Federal agencies, including the FBI and ATF, have reportedly redirected focus almost entirely to immigration enforcement, reducing prosecution and investigation of other major crimes like drug trafficking and racketeering.
• Corruption Spotlight:
  • Trump border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 from undercover agents in a bribery sting; the investigation was quietly dropped by the Trump DOJ.
  • Quote:

    "This is like the level of normalized corruption which exists in every level of this administration..."
    — Garrison Davis [45:13]

9. Venezuela: Secret Strikes & Miller’s Role

• New Policy: Stephen Miller has been orchestrating “limited” military strikes on alleged drug smugglers in Venezuela with much of the government left uninformed until after the fact.
• Justification: Article 2 powers invoked for self-defense engagement.

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Major Policy Memo: Countering Domestic Terrorism (NSPM #7) – [48:29]

Overview & Concerns

• New Powers: Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum #7, instituting a far-reaching domestic terrorism crackdown, explicitly targeting “antifa” and other left-leaning groups by linking protest, disobedience, and radical beliefs with terrorism.
• Sections:
  • Section 1: Claims a 1,000% rise in attacks on ICE, blames “sophisticated” left-wing networks for orchestrating protests and riots.
  • Section 2: Mandates joint terrorism task forces to investigate “radicalizing” and “recruiting,” targeting group funders (including NGOs), surveilling “indicators”—anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, anti-Americanism, “extremism” on migration, etc.
  • Section 3/4: Broadens financial surveillance (IRS, DOJ, Treasury involvement) and designates domestic terrorism a funding priority.
• Practical Ramifications:
  • Justification for increased surveillance and prosecution of protest groups, legal NGOs, bail funds, and ordinary protesters.
  • Expansion of criminal statutes (RICO, money laundering, conspiracy, etc.) to nonviolent protest, doxing, trespassing, and civil disorder.
  • Chilling effect on speech, fundraising, and organization—intended to suppress dissent, not just punish acts of violence.
• Quote:

  "They're basically using... tactics to take down organized crime rings just targeting their political enemies, targeting political organizations and people who attend protests."
  — Garrison Davis [69:04]

• Important Caveat:

  "No laws have been changed criminalizing anti-Americanism. Right. But that does not mean that this order is not going to chill speech, suppress free speech, or be used to criminally target people."
  — Garrison Davis [73:10]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Media Manipulation:

  "They've created a reality around what happened in Portland in 2020 that you will never change with facts or evidence."
  — Robert Evans [21:57]

• On Administrative Authoritarianism:

  "They don't need to use coded phrases, right? They just say this stuff... they're just saying the thing."
  — Mia Wong [17:31]

• Federal Law Enforcement Corruption:

  "Tom Homan, for those who are not familiar, is Trump's border czar... They gave Homan the money, but waited to see what he would do in office... The Trump DOJ took no further steps to investigate and has closed the investigation."
  — Robert Evans [43:31-45:13]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Gov’t Shutdown & Health Care Dispute: [01:03]–[04:25]
• Disney/Kimmel Boycott Fallout: [05:08]–[08:37]
• DOD Rebranding/“War Department” & Portland Militarization: [09:08]–[17:19]
• Chicago Raid Details & Escalation: [31:26]–[37:35]
• Military “Loyalty Purge” / Hegseth’s Policies: [25:00]–[31:21]
• Border Wall, Indigenous Rights, Medals of Honor at Wounded Knee: [37:35]–[41:44]
• Law Enforcement Shift (FBI/ATF) & Tom Homan Bribery: [42:06]–[45:59]
• Venezuela Strikes / Miller: [46:02]–[47:54]
• NSPM-7 Anti-Terror Memo (Deep Dive): [48:29]–[74:15]
• Fundraiser (Emergency Circus) & Sign-Off: [74:15]–[76:45]

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Overall Tone

The discussion is a mix of sardonic humor, exasperated realism, and alarm, reflecting both the absurdity and the gravity of the ongoing political collapse. Hosts are unflinching in calling out authoritarian tendencies and misinformation while contextualizing for listeners the actual on-the-ground realities behind cable news headlines and government pronouncements.

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Useful for Listeners Who

• Want a clear, critical, and sometimes darkly funny breakdown of contemporary U.S. authoritarianism.
• Need context beyond partisan soundbites about federal crackdowns, protest “wars,” and culture war eruptions.
• Seek to understand which threats are overinflated media narratives versus where real-world repression is (and isn’t) happening.
• Are organizing, advocating, or simply worried about democratic backsliding and what it means for ordinary Americans.

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For more information:

• Visit Cool Zone Media
• Submit tips securely: [e-mail]
• Fundraiser mentioned: GoFundMe for Emergency Circus bringing performances to children in migrant shelters (link in show notes).

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Summary by your podcast summarizer — listen for the laughter among the ruins, the urgent calls for action, and the reminders that, as the hosts repeat, “there are more of us than there are of them.”

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Ambas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Garrison Davis]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Media.

[Garrison Davis]

Happy Groktober, everybody.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, shut the up. We can't.

[Garrison Davis]

This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout and Robert Evans. This episode we're covering the week of September 21st to October 1st.

[James Stout]

And what a week it was.

[Garrison Davis]

Does not feel like it should be October, but who cares? I guess the government's shut down right now. So all of the dozens of anarchists around the country are rejoicing as the Senate has failed to pass a short term funding bill.

[James Stout]

That's right, everyone. We did it. We defeated the state using the power of the state.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Many such cases as the government shut down, Trump is threatening mass layoffs. And Republicans are framing this whole shutdown as being caused by Democrats who are trying to defend health care for quote unquote illegals. Which isn't real. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health care. That's not even what the Democrats are fighting for. Would be cool if they were. Would be cool. If you're in this country, you could just get health care. That sounds nice. Wouldn't that be a cool, almost utopian place to live? But that's not what's happening. And the rights confronted with this. But they just do not care. Here's Mike Johnson, speaker of the House on cnn, having a little debate about this.

[James Stout]

If that counter proposal was enacted is illegal aliens would be paid for American taxpayers. Hard earned dollars would be paying for benefits for illegal aliens. Again, we're not doing that.

[Garrison Davis]

But it's against federal law for people who are here illegally to get.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[James Stout]

And that's why our reforms are so important to enforce all that. The important thing to remember is what's.

[Robert Evans]

Happening at the Democratic proposal that people.

[Ad Host]

Who are here illegally should get because.

[James Stout]

They don't have the level of specification that we had in our bill. It will unwind that and all those things that the CBO just verified will be reversed. We can't afford to do that. But you see My point, there's no, I don't think. No, that is a red herring in this, in this debate.

[Garrison Davis]

So what the Democrats are actually doing right now is they're trying to extend the current, currently enacted federal subsidies for the Affordable Care act, which keeps millions of people able to access health care. And Democrats are also trying to reverse some of the federal health care cuts, including to Medicaid, which happened under the one big beautiful bill earlier this year. That is what they are actually fighting for. The White House is retruthing and retweeting proposals from the Democrats that include health care for aliens. But that's legal aliens. That's like legal, documented residents. And they're framing this as healthcare for, quote, unquote, illegals.

[Robert Evans]

It's a. It's a bad faith representation, as it always is. Like, people can go all the way back to the episode that I made with Robert and Sophie last year about what Trump made might do to learn more about the public charge rule and how that pertains to people who are not U.S. citizens. I don't think we really have the time, nor is this the place to go over that here. But there is not and there has never been a massive federal free healthcare plan for undocumented people. In fact, people who are undocumented are not going to see the doctor right now because of the persistent and untrue rumor that ICE are taking people from hospitals. That is not something I'm aware of ever happening. I. I do take people who are already in their custody to hospitals and they will wait for those people while those people are treated. That is not the same as entering the hospital and grabbing people based on their immigration status. And I'm aware of several cases where people whose life was genuinely in danger were afraid to go and seek medical attention because they were afraid that they would be targeted for their immigration status.

[Garrison Davis]

So we'll see how long this government shutdown lasts. The last one started in 2018 lasted 35 days. If this shutdown's still happening next week, I'm sure we will include some details about government services being affected. But this could resolve in a few days, a few hours, or in a few weeks, we do not know. But luckily not all is depressing and dark in this country. There still is a ray of hope, and that ray of hope is named Jimmy Kimmel, who is thankfully back on the air. I know we've all been watching. We've all been watching this, certainly. And nexstar and Sinclair have ceased preempting his show. That's back on air across the country. Free speech is so back in America. Robert, do you want to talk about the Disney boycott?

[James Stout]

Yes. So we've gotten some data finally on the damage done to Disney as a result of the boycott after they fired Monsieur Kimmel.

[Garrison Davis]

Suspended. Suspended. Monsieur Kimmel.

[James Stout]

Suspended. Suspended. They were definitely going to fire him.

[Garrison Davis]

They wanted to fire his ex.

[James Stout]

They definitely wanted to fire him. And you know, there was a lot of posting online about. There's a lot of posting online, posting about people canceling their accounts and people being like, wow. And it's, I always, it's always very frustrating to me because, like, people get very excited and it's impossible to tell at the moment. Is this actually anything? Right.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[James Stout]

16,000 people shared this thing about how the website for Disney was down, but that doesn't mean anything other than like someone saw the website down and a bunch of people shared and posted it. So it was very difficult to tell. Like, is there actually any follow through on this? Is Disney's bottom line being hurt? And thankfully, I'm very happy to say that it does look like Disney suffered a substantial financial setback as a result of the boycott campaign.

[Mia Wong]

Yep.

[James Stout]

Something like 1.7 million paid subscribers canceled. And this was immediately before Disney was looking to announce a price increase. So, like, this is, this is like a serious. I'm not surprised they reversed course. This is like damaging to them. We're not talking about the amount of money that a company like Disney would just ignore.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I think the most important thing here for all of us, and this is something I talked about, we did an episode about this. This is actually before Kimmel had been reinstated by Sinclair. But one of the really important things here is that everyone fucking hates this government. They are hideously unpopular. All of the, all of their sort of legitimization stuff, all of the sort of media complicity they've bought has bought them about a 4% approval rating bump from where they were this time in the administration the first time. So he's had about a 41% approval rating. Everything that he's doing is hideously underwater. Like, his most popular thing is his immigration policy, which is horrible. But it's again like 42%. Everyone hates these people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And it's very easy because of their control of the media sphere to believe that they have this sort of total hegemonic power over everyone in the US until the exact moment where it gets challenged and everyone's like, wait, hold on. No, it turns out most of the country hates this, does not want Jimmy Kimmel axed from Disney.

[Garrison Davis]

Like Comrade Kimmel has joined the fight.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. There are more of us than there are of them, and there always have been.

[Garrison Davis]

And by more of us, Mia is referring to herself and Jimmy Kimmel as a coherent political class. Just for the record there the only.

[James Stout]

Two members of the coherent political class.

[Robert Evans]

Mayor Kimmel is in. But that's good news.

[Garrison Davis]

Just overall, the fourth estate, which holds me up and Jimmy Kimmel. This is the worst day of my life.

[James Stout]

The entirety of the fourth estate. But I don't know, there's a little bit of good news for you. A bunch of people got really pissed at something blatantly anti First Amendment, anti Democratic, massive overreach of the state thought crime nonsense. And the company suffered such dramatic within like literally in the space of a week, that's 330 million or so million dollars a year. That's that Disney lost that even Disney can't ignore that kind of money.

[Garrison Davis]

A whole bunch of like regular people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Like people who subscribe to Disney. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

An army of ordinary liberals. The actual like silent majority in this country said no to Disney.

[James Stout]

We're like, well, that's gross and scary. I'm not paying Disney anymore. And it's good that they did that.

[Garrison Davis]

Currently, the right's trying to manufacture a counter boycott against Netflix for having children's shows with non binary characters, mostly using clips from children's shows that are like two or years old. Clips that Libs of TikTok has already posted years ago. Now Chaya Raichek and others are recirculating these clips being like, look at, look at how Netflix has gone too far, is pushing woke nonsense down the throats of your children by using like ancient clips from like the Jurassic Park TV show. Like, okay, guys, good luck with that. Have fun.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

In other news, the Department of War. So this actually happened last month. On September 5, Trump signed an executive order approving the name the Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense to use in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non statutory documents within the executive branch. While the administration also works on changing the name officially through Congress, Hegseth nearly immediately switched all of his accounts and his office nameplate to read Secretary of War.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you know, he pushed hard for this one. Mm.

[Garrison Davis]

Defense.gov now redirects to war.gov, and they're just referring to this in all public appearances as the War Department. Something that we've talked about on the show before of them wanting to do and they're Going to continue to push this and using this kind of war framing for domestic operations, not just international deployments.

[Robert Evans]

This was its historical name, right? Like way, way before it was a dod.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, it was.

[Robert Evans]

So just to be clear for people, that doesn't mean that it's like a good reason to change it back.

[Garrison Davis]

Trump truthed last week, quote, at the request of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I'm directing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by antifa and other domestic terrorists. I'm also authorizing for full force if necessary. Thank you for your attention in this matter. War ravaged Portland. How's it, how's it hanging out there for our Portland correspondence?

[James Stout]

It's fine. It's kind of rainy. I had an ICE tapas dinner on Sunday. It was pretty good.

[Mia Wong]

The crows are really nice.

[Garrison Davis]

Does someone want to mention, like, the nature of the anti ICE protests happening in like, one square block in like the south waterfront of downtown Portland?

[James Stout]

Yeah, it's in the South Waterfront. McAdam is what people here call it, the neighborhood where the ICE auxiliary facility is. And there have been protests off and on pretty much since Trump took office. Usually on like a good night, you'd get maybe 150, 200 people. There were some nights kind of around where things blew up in LA that there were more like five or six hundred people out for a couple of days. There really hasn't been any of the, like, what we were seeing in 2020 in terms of like the mass, mass gatherings. And, you know, there has not really been much in the way of like, people getting arrested, are generally getting arrested for crossing a line that separates federal property from like state property, so to speak, and like step over it and then a bunch of guys run out and grab them. Right. That's, that's mostly what the arrests are for. A lot of people have had charges dropped. I mean, people get fucked up charges when they get charged, but a lot of them are not really sticking because they're not very strong. Like, because there's just not much going on. Right, Right.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

We'll talk more about why Trump thinks there's this Apocalypse now scenario happening in Portland. But, but yeah, so far the protests have been relatively mild.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. The vibe is very much like the classic Portland thing of people with like, holding donuts on fishing lines out in.

[Garrison Davis]

Front of the cops.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like that.

[Mia Wong]

Not like Molotovs.

[James Stout]

The response has been crazy, like There's a video going around that's a bunch of federal agents. I think they're FPS rolling in a, from a van from outside of the ICE facility and arresting somebody who again, probably crossed a line or threw something generally is why people have been getting arrested. So that the response has been nonsense. That that video is from recently and I'm seeing it attributed to Trump's declaration of war. But like, I saw stuff like that three months ago, four months ago. Like it's been happening every day. Like they do roll up in their vans when they. Because they periodically throughout the day will have feds come in to go grab a couple of people and that this is a thing they've been doing. So they've been at. So far at least, I have not seen either an escalation on the ground really in terms of like what protests, what the protests are doing and the numbers of protesters since Trump's declaration. And I also really haven't seen an escalation in what's being deployed on the ground.

[Garrison Davis]

We have not seen the Oregon National Guard presence that is being promised. No, this has just been DHS officers.

[James Stout]

I can confirm, just based on some, some information that's come my way, that there do seem to be an increased number of DHS Blackhawks flying with their transponders off, which there's a couple of reasons they can do that. Some of them is for if they are transporting like high value, quote unquote deportees. Right. People who are being deported for some sort of serious crime.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[James Stout]

Some of it is if they are. Feel like they are under threat and are doing like emergency personnel transfers, they're not generally supposed to fly without their transponders. Although, again, you can't really trust anything to work the way it's supposed to work. But there is some evidence that they have been ramping up and they have been flying more MQ9s over the city, Reaper drones for surveillance purposes. So that I can say there does seem to have been a degree of escalation. But in terms of we're not seeing troops marching through the city yet. And I honestly can't. It doesn't seem to me, as of the moment that we're recording this, that there has been an escalation in the level of force used on the ground right now. That said, the level of force used on the ground before Trump declared his war on Portland or whatever was still pretty extreme. That has continued. I just. It doesn't seem like what's happening right now is a massive increase over where we were two weeks ago. You know, that's all I'm saying.

[Mia Wong]

And I think the place where that has happened is Chicago, and we will.

[Garrison Davis]

Get to that later.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, Trump has continued to talk about deploying quote, unquote troops to US Cities, including at a, a meeting of top brass on Tuesday, September 30, where Pete Hagseth basically ranted to top generals and admirals about no more wokeness in the military. But Trump also spoke telling top military officials to prepare to deploy military to liberal run cities, calling it a, quote, war from within. Let's play the clip.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places and we're going to straighten them out. It'll be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in.

[Robert Evans]

The two separate issues there that he conflated. Right. Protests in cities and people crossing the, the border.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And that's the way Trump's been.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Talking about this for a while. I mean, same thing with like DC Right. Combining this like crime issue with undocumented immigration and also with protests against ICE operations targeting undocumented immigrants. All kind of bundled together into this. Into this war from within.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, the immigration issue. Right. Is one that gives him a much broader leeway in the powers the constitutionally available to him as the executive than policing with the military, which is on the face of the thing that shouldn't happen in the United States. It makes sense from a tactical perspective for them to conflate those two things together. I will say, even if it's not particularly real.

[Garrison Davis]

During this televised meeting, Trump told military leaders, quote, last month I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room talking to the generals because it's the enemy from within and we will have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control once you're involved. Unquote. So they're directly addressing admirals and generals.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

About them having to help form a quick reaction force to quell civil disturbance, which won't get out of control once they're involved. Calling it again, the enemy from within. A line that Trump used a lot during the tail End of his presidential campaign in 2024.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, which is just, it's, every single element of it is just fascist.

[Garrison Davis]

It's pretty blanket authoritarian stuff. Like there's no like sugar coating it here.

[Mia Wong]

No, yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

They don't need to like use coded phrases, right? They just say this stuff.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, no, they're just, yeah, they're just, this is, this is just fascism. Like they're just trying to do it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, they're just saying the thing.

[Garrison Davis]

In the meeting, he explicitly labeled these dangerous cities as a training ground for our military National Guard.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a very important mission. And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid Governor. Stupid.

[Mia Wong]

I think it's worth noting both the mayor of Chicago and the Governor Pritzker have been very unhappy about this. Like, as much as Pritzker has kind of not been doing anything about like CPD aiding ICE in raids, he is absolutely not budging at all about not putting National Guard troops in. So if they're very serious about following this through, we're going to see some kind of large scale confrontation with. And Pritzker is not the kind of like knock kneed Gavin Newsom type governor.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's not Gavin Newsom.

[Mia Wong]

He's not simply just going to let Trump do this. And yeah, that's going to be a major source of confrontation. Assuming this specific, like we're going to send the National Guard in to Chicago. Stuff like happens soon.

[Garrison Davis]

Trump also talked about talking with Tina Kotak, governor of Oregon, about deploying Oregon National Guard and her pushing back against that, but ostensibly acquiescing in some way because there's been an announcement from the Oregon National Guard that they will be deploying and people in Oregon probably aren't going to be happy about it. They won't quote, unquote, understand the mission. But during this meeting, Trump did talk about his phone calls with the Oregon governor.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone. And I get a call from the liberal governor, sir, please don't come in. We don't need you. I said, well, unless they're playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding, sir, we have it under control. I said, you don't have it under control, Governor, but I'll Check it and I'll call you back. I called it back. I said you, you. This place is a nightmare. Probably. It's certainly not the biggest, but it's one of the worst. It's brutal. They go after our ICE people who are great patriots and tough job too, but they love it. They love it because they're cleaning up our country.

[Robert Evans]

They love it because there's a $50,000 sign up.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, unless they're playing false tapes. So the tapes aren't necessarily false. But if you're watching Fox News 24. 7, what Fox News is doing is they're playing a lot of clips, not from the year of our Lord 2025, but in fact from 2020, when Trump's last federal invasion of Portland happened, where he deployed bortac, which looked much more like a war scene. Do you know why? Because of the massive amounts of chemical munitions that bortak like, caked downtown Portland in, which made it look very similar to a war scene. So, yeah, that. Those are the clips that are playing nonstop on tv. I've been watching Fox News clips. They're just playing clips of Portland 2020 to make this look like a different situation than what the current on the ground situation is, which may have some intense moments, but not nearly the intensity of five years ago, which again, was stoked by Trump's own military police force, which was deployed to the city.

[James Stout]

So, yeah, there's some information that Trump got corrected internally. I don't know that I think that that's gonna mean anything, but yeah, six year old footage, five year old footage being used to justify military deployments is about what you'd expect, really.

[Garrison Davis]

Literally yesterday I saw footage circulating on X, the Everything app of someone throwing a Molotov cocktail into a street.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I remember that Molotov.

[Garrison Davis]

And I'm like, I remember that Molotov.

[James Stout]

I remember that Molotov getting thrown half a decade ago.

[Garrison Davis]

It only had another protester whose feet got very badly burned.

[James Stout]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

And that's the, that's the type of footage circulating that makes it look like, you know, once again, Portland's burning down. Portland's always burning down. Using like one or two select clips from. Yeah. Half a decade ago.

[James Stout]

And again, no buildings actually burnt down.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. They've created a reality around what happened in Portland in 2020 that you will never change with facts or evidence. Right. Like to people who watch Fox News, Portland was burned to the ground in 2020.

[James Stout]

And again, even on the worst nights in Portland, we could go three blocks and get food from a food cart.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we got a lot of great Chinese food that summer.

[James Stout]

Got great Chinese food shawarma, you know.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. In la when the city was whatever, under siege, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings and pretty, pretty normal Buffalo wild wings at 2am on a Wednesday scene.

[James Stout]

That's a war zone. That's a war zone.

[Robert Evans]

I had my plate carrier on. I was, I was ready to go.

[Garrison Davis]

Here's some ads. We'll be back to talk about Chicago, but enjoy these possibly Buffalo Wild Wings sponsored ads.

[Robert Evans]

I doubt it. No vegan food.

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[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Robert Evans]

You know how waking up from a dream a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Get back everyone, and if you see the the devil walking around in sight of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Garrison Davis]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Abbostown all right, we are back.

[Robert Evans]

Sweet. And it's good to be back. I want to talk very briefly about Pete Hexess, Sec War, as he is calling himself now, right? And the little speech he gave Pete Peg Seth. He's. He's he's working on his. His physical fitness for sure. His bod there put a big emphasis on. On physical fitness in his speech along with grooming standards and other shit.

[Garrison Davis]

Male standards, yes.

[Robert Evans]

Everybody has to attain the male standard for the various role of their combat roles if they want to do that. Right. So that would mean, you know, the army physical fitness test. Right. Whatever the. The male standard, quote unquote was, would be everyone's standard. I don't want to go deep into Hegseth's career. That would be. That would be another episode possibly of another show. But I do want to talk about the stuff. Did you notice he said no more. He lifted a number of generals, but one of them was Milly. Right. He said no more Millis Ciarelli. And I forgot who the other one was, but I thought that was interesting given what we saw Trump say about a qrf. Right. Milley had a long career in the military. Right. He saw plenty of combat and all that stuff. But I think he's most well known to most people for his cooling effect on the use of the US military against protesters in 2020. I'll say. I think that is what that was referring to. Right. That hes was talking about removing that kind of person from command.

[James Stout]

And Milley also said no to Trump when he wanted to deploy for. And he was also working behind the scenes, he's admitted now with Pelosi being like, we need to have a plan if he tries to use the nukes after the election.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Milley was doing everything he could to mitigate what he saw as a massive. Yeah. Danger of, of Trump responding in a completely disproportionate way.

[Garrison Davis]

A legitimate national security danger.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Like, like, yeah. Someone who's. Whose job is protecting the United States. Like that's a reasonable concern. Was a reasonable concern at that time. Obviously the Trump administration does not want people like that in command anymore. And that was something that he spoke about at length. The rest of his speech focused on shit like fitness standards, shit like grooming, visible tattoos, a bunch of stuff that you would expect from a mid career infantry officer who hasn't had a particularly distinguished career. Right. Like that's the shit that mid career infantry officers do.

[Garrison Davis]

I think you mean war fighters, James. Which is Hagset's preferred term for soldiers.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Fuck me. Yeah. Well, because it's gender neutral.

[James Stout]

Start that. They've been doing that for a while.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, it's on the MREs. It's been on the MREs for a while, but yes, hegseth does like the phrase war fighters. Yeah, his, his stuff was, like I said, not something you would expect from someone who. I think he was at 04 in the national card. Right. I don't think any of that is particularly new. He issued a number of directives. One thing I did want to talk about was this change in grooming standards. So the War Department has issued a new directive on shaving profiles. What this does in practice, as we can see from their announcement, which features prominently a black soldier shaving is it takes away long term shaving profiles for soldiers with medical conditions such as pseudofolliculitis or eczema, or other soldiers who experience skin irritation by shaving. Previously, those soldiers may have had a waiver which they could show to their officers. If their officer said, hey, soldier, why haven't you shaved? Soldier, sailor, airman, space force guardian, whatever. Right. Why haven't you shaved? They could say, well, I'm on the shaving profile because of this condition that I have now. You will only have a year and then you will have to somehow rectify that condition. They talk about treatments a little bit in this announcement, which you can read if you want. I'm not going to read them out for you. But this will very clearly target black service people the most. And I don't think that's a coincidence. And as we see from the, from the picture of the black soldier shaving in the. In the release that they sent out there, this is happening at the same time as the rest of this stuff. Right. And at the same time, as we've seen trans folks removed from the military, as hest seems to be going pretty hard on removing women from combat roles. He's previously been more outright in that. This time he's in his speech, he was talking about how women, if they could meet the same standards as Mental, would be welcome in combat roles, but they wouldn't, quote, unquote, lower the standards. The whole thing was pretty remarkable to see. Hegseth lecturing, you know, people who have spent collectively maybe hundreds of years in combat.

[Garrison Davis]

Really? People who spent decades losing wars.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Decades of cumulative time.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, centuries between them. Right. But explaining how warfare works to people who have vastly more experience in it than him.

[James Stout]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

And basically telling them it's not a myth that we haven't seen from fascist states before. Right. The soldiers were fine, but they were betrayed by the politicians and the generals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is nothing new. Yeah. But it was still kind of remarkable to see Hegtes delivering it to the.

[Garrison Davis]

Generals, and specifically both Hegseth and Trump made statements about if the generals and admirals did not like what Trump and Hegseth were saying, they should just resign, they should just leave.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very. Don't laugh, don't laugh. You're not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future, but you just feel nice and loose. Okay. Because we're all on the same team.

[Garrison Davis]

Part of this is because Trump just wants more loyalists in the upper brass of the military. Like, that's part of this process. That's why he doesn't want Millies. He doesn't want people that will deny him. He wants just a complete loyalist government, and that includes the military.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And if that means that we're going to have a whole bunch of generals and admirals resign because of Hagseth and Trump's anti woke ranting, then that's a desirable outcome for the administration at this point.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Speaking of war, Chicago.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I mean, the scenes that I have seen the most frequently described as war or looking like a war this week have come out of Chicago, where on Tuesday the 30th, there was one of the most brutal raids that we've seen from the feds yet in any city. This took place in South Shore, which is a 90% black neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, where a whole bunch of immigrants who. I don't know if people remember when Texas and a bunch of other states in the south started busing immigrants up to cities in the north. Chicago is one of the ones where that happened a lot. A lot of these people ended up in South Shore. And there was a massive rate of. On an apartment complex in the South Shore. Agents showed up in a combination of moving vans, sort of unmarked vans, and armored vehicles. It's still unclear exactly how many people were taken. We still don't know. Estimates at the time suggested about 40. It's very unclear. What we do know about the raid was that it was absolutely brutal. A bunch of the initial reports thought that there had been shooting, but there hadn't been shooting. What there had been was that they blew into this apartment complex with flashbang grenades.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Pretty common for people to mistake those two.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And these are just, you know, these are just regular people who suddenly at one in the morning, a bunch of explosions start going off. There's a whole bunch of pictures that you can see in, in various articles about this of doors torn off their hinges. The agents did a. I think this is a classic Chicago police tactic, but, you know, they just went through and just started grabbing everyone's stuff and tearing through it and throwing it onto the ground. There were Black Hawk helicopters, like, constantly circling this just random apartment complex. There was a massive FBI presence alongside Border Patrol and ice. It's also worth mentioning that independent outlet Book Club Chicago, which is one of the very sort of prominent independent local media outlets there, obtained a picture from a neighbor who was like, next to the raid that show Chicago Police Department on the scene, which they are expressly forbidden, like by state law, from assisting in immigration enforcement. It is worth reading this article in order to see this. Quote, we did not participate in or assist with any immigration enforcement, spokesperson Maggie Hyun said in a statement, followed immediately by pictures that clearly show a CBD car on the scene of this raid. Yeah, this raid is a really significant escalation of force in a city that has, I mean, has already seen ICE literally shoot someone and kill them. But yeah, I'm going to quote this from Tribe, which is another independent news outlet, in collaboration with Unraveled Press. Veronica Castro of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights at a press conference said, quote, this looked like hundreds of masked agents knocking down doors and dragging families out in the middle of the night holding babies that were unclothed. Castro added, so they are dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night holding naked babies because people haven't had time. Like, they're not giving people time to even put clothes on something. You see a lot in the accounts of this. I'm going to read some more from an account from abc. As I got to my unit to stick my key in the door, I was grabbed by an officer and I said, what's going on? What's going on? He never actually told me. He said I was being detained, said Alicia Brooks. Neighbors like Ebony Watson say they ducked for cover as they heard several flashbangs. They was terrified. The kids was crying, people was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there when I seen the little girl coming around the corner because they was bringing the kids down too. Had them zip tied to each other, Watson said, that's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where is the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right there. He Said fuck em kids. So that is what these raids are looking like now. It is again also worth noting that like this is, this is a very significant escalation of force. They are zip tying children to each other as they drag them from their homes at one in the morning and saying fucking kids. Yeah. And this also marks what seems to be a pretty large pivot away from the areas they had been targeting before, which tend to be the suburbs and the outlying areas and into very, very majority, the majority black parts of Chicago. And we're going to talk more about this next week with journalists who's been on the ground. Yeah, I mean for example, a couple of hours before we recorded this episode. So there are sparse details, but there is a video that shows the feds just two hands on neck choking a black man in East Garfield Park. It's deeply unclear why this is happening, but they are just doing this now. And what we have so far, we don't know why they were doing this. But this is also something I think is very alarming. This was also reported by Tribe. There was a video from the scene where an agent is recorded saying, just so you guys know, this is not an immigration enforcement action. The agent goes on to say they were responding to a robbery in progress. All we know about is there was a car crash and they just started choking this guy. It's unclear exactly what's going on with this. There probably will be more details by the time this episode is going out. But the feds are just doing this stuff every day in Chicago. I mean just randomly choking black people on the street and this massive hideous raid in South Shore are pretty significant escalations in places they haven't been targeting before. And it's hard to see this ending anytime soon or things getting any better from here, especially with the sort of, you know, as you were mentioning earlier, there hasn't been really any sign of like an intensification of federal violence in Portland, but in Chicago there absolutely has been and it's horrible.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So talking of intensification of federal activity, I guess according to a notice posted in the Federal Register, DHS is going to use the Cultural, Environmental and Historical Protection Waiver that we reported about that came out this spring to force through wall construction in the San Diego sector. I am guessing that in part we will see this used to waive one of the acts that is waived, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And I'm guessing in part that this will be used to waive that. Right, because Kumeyaay Ancestors are in these areas and in at the end, tail end of the previous Trump administration. I reported on this for Sierra, which is a magazine of the Sierra Club. Kumeyaay people were using ceremony. So they were participating in ceremony every day at construction sites in order to slow down the clock. And they also filed a lawsuit. Right. But they were trying to basically run out the clock on the Trump administration in 2020. They successfully, in some areas, prevented some construction, but with the waiver of nagpra, it's hard to see how they will be able to do that. They also waive a bunch of other acts, the Eagle Protection act, environmental and migratory bird treaties. A bunch of other acts. Right. This comes on the same week as Secretary of War Pete Headfest restored Medals of Honor to soldiers at Wounded Knee. If people are not familiar, this is not the episode where I do a history of things that have happened at Wounded Knee Creek. But this was the largest mass shooting in US History.

[Garrison Davis]

This was just a slaughter.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Hundreds of unarmed Lakota civilians were murdered by the United States military.

[Garrison Davis]

This wasn't a battle. This was just a massacre.

[Robert Evans]

There were significant casualties for the US Military. Most of them were caused by the US Military, I. E. Friendly fire and a completely disorganized slaughter of civilians. There was a standoff at Wounded Knee later in the 1970s in which two indigenous people died, one went missing. You can read Mary Brave Bird's book about that if you want a firsthand account of that. It's a very good book. But, yeah, Hegseth is doing this, I think, because Lloyd Austin had previously ordered a review of those medals because they weren't fighting. They were just killing people. Therefore, it makes sense, you know, to strip these Medals of Honor in that there was very little honour in what they did. Hegseth has restored those. Very amusingly, he said this is final. Like, another SECDEF couldn't just order a review, like in four years and change it again. CBP has also issued a request for comments here in San Diego about its plans to build 7.6 miles of wall west of Tecate, as well as 1.3 miles of wall east of Tecate, more secondary barrier east of Otay Mesa, and install or maintain 51 miles of, quote, barrier system attributes, which may include fiber optic cables, lighting poles, artificial lights, power cables, surveillance cameras, access and patrol roads, and utility shelters. What this would do, I think most people who haven't spent time at the border are not aware that there are vast gaps in the border wall. Right. And this would close some of those There are still gaps east of this area. When a lot of people were entering in 2023, they were coming east of here in a more mountainous area. But this will close existing gaps in the wall around Tecate, around Marin Valley. I imagine that after that they will continue to move east. The areas where there are gaps, some of the areas where there are gaps further east aren't that hard to access. Some of them would be very hard to access with construction machinery and therefore they'd have to spend a long time building a road before they could even begin building the wall. Reuters has conducted a review of more than 2 million court records and concluded that federal prosecution of drug cases, especially those of high profile traffickers, have dropped to the lowest level in decades.

[Garrison Davis]

Fell for it again award.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, normally you would see things like racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy charges. Right. But these are down 24 compared to last year. Even ongoing investigations have stalled as a federal law enforcement apparatus is focusing the vast majority of its people on deporting people who have not been accused of any crime.

[Garrison Davis]

Even just like the regular FBI investigative capacity, it's been shifted massively to large extents towards just immigration enforcement. So they're not, they're actually just not going after as much like actual crime.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think some agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive, for example, I think have the majority of their agents tasks to immigration raids right now. The FBI, one agent described what he had been tasked with as, quote, photo op bullshit, which was taking photos of their teams on and before raids for use by the ATF and the White House in social media posts. So they do appear to have to have lost the support of even some federal law enforcement. Talking of federal law enforcement, we have also learned this week about an FBI operation during the Biden administration during which Tom homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash.

[Garrison Davis]

What?

[Robert Evans]

You didn't hear about the Tom Homan bag of cash?

[James Stout]

This scares me.

[Robert Evans]

What a joy to be able to share this with you. It's going to get better. Just, just keep it, keep. Simmer, simmer down, simmer down, simmer down, simmer down. So Tom Homan, for those who are not familiar, is Trump's border czar and a longtime border security official dating back to the Biden administration. Let's find out about how they got onto Tom Homan.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, it was.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no, no.

[Garrison Davis]

You just said that there was $50,000 in cash, but for what?

[Robert Evans]

Just wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Another Obama era ICE staffer Julian Calderas, who agents undercover Agents had contacted as part of a separate investigation, repeatedly suggested to the agents that they may wish to bribe Homan in order to obtain government contracts. Karl Daras repeatedly suggested this to the undercover agents. So much so that they diverted their investigation and set up this investigation. They gave Homan the money, but waited to see what he would do in office. In order to see, I guess they felt they would have a stronger case if he came back to them and said, you know, I have these five federal contracts. Which one would you like? The Trump DOJ took no further steps to investigate and has closed the investigation. According to NBC, the Trump administration is claiming this was a setup by the FBI. But of course, the investigation occurred in. In September of 24, so before the election. Again, it was not an investigation that they started on. It branched off because Calderas repeatedly suggested that they should continue to. They should try and bribe Homer. The agents who, who did this operation were posing as businessmen trying to get government contracts. Right. Okay, this might explain. So Homan was a big time Trump affiliate, right? Big time Trump supporter. People were suggesting that he might be made Secretary of Homeland Security. This might be why we will never know for sure. Right. This might explain why he's been given this slightly less formal role, which I don't believe he has to pass through Congress, which is quote, unquote, border czar.

[Garrison Davis]

This is like the level of normalized corruption which exists in every level of this administration is like, remember when they just could not stop talking about Hunter Biden? It was like, all the time. And meanwhile you have like, like, you know, like all of, like, Jared Kushner's dealings with, like, tutor the Saudis. Tom Hoban getting $50,000 in cash from, like, undercover agents posing as businessmen to help obtain, like, government contracts. It's like an absurd, comical cartoon world.

[Robert Evans]

Though it's Keystone Cop shit. We don't know. He's given the cash back.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, he. That cash is long gone.

[Mia Wong]

So much cocaine, like, I could either confirm or deny it was spent on cocaine.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. A wild instance of corruption.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God.

[Robert Evans]

Finally, I want to talk about Venezuela. In Venezuela, it seems that Stephen Miller has been taking the lead on strikes on alleged drug smugglers. According to a Guardian piece of the strikes had been authorised by the Homeland Security Council. Sure. That's a body that Miller leads, which has massively grown in influence since the Trump administration. It seems like most people in the administration were pretty much kept in the dark about this until very shortly before the strikes took place. They were justified under the Article 2 powers which give the President authority to use force in limited self defence engagements. But it seems like Miller is, pardon the pun, driving the ship on this increased violence that we're seeing against Venezuela.

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[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Robert Evans]

You know how waking up from a dream a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Get back, everyone's gonna and if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Garrison Davis]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Wall in Abbostown all right, we are back for our final story. This episode we're gonna talk about the National Security Presidential Memorandum's Number seven, titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, which was signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday, September 25th. This relates in many ways to the Antifa Domestic Terrorism Executive Order from last week, but this memo is a lot more clear and outlining actual policy changes that will affect law enforcement investigations. So let's go over the four sections of this very, very long memo. I've tried to condense it down as much as possible, but there is some good information in here to know. Section one asserts that there's been an increase in political violence in recent years with assassinations and quote, unquote, riots in Los Angeles and Portland, which have resulted in a more than 1,000% increase in attacks against ICE officers since Trump's inauguration 2.0. The memo states that riots and violence aren't organic events or isolated incidents, but in fact, quote, a culmination of a sophisticated organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society, unquote.

[Robert Evans]

We've spoken about the statistic about attacks on ICE officers before and how that's very misleading.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, an ICE officer is attacked when a ICE officer's fist encounters the face of a child. That's. That's.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Latino grandmother.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Latina grandmother, in that case.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, and a lot of this talking about, you know, riots as not organized events or incidents. What, what they describe here is this like a culmination of this sophisticated, like, campaign. This is just describing, like, the process of, like, what protesting is. Right. Trying to direct or change policy outcomes, which comes up a lot in these, like, domestic terrorism laws, which when over applied to just nonviolent acts of speech, just start infringing upon very standard First Amendment activity.

[Robert Evans]

It's one of the five fundamental freedoms of the First Amendment right, like the right to assemble. The right. Well, several of them actually. The right to assemble, the right to speak, the right to the government. These are fundamental.

[Garrison Davis]

The right to twitch stream at a riot as a free member of the press. Yeah, definitely that's not a right that.

[Robert Evans]

I choose to exercise, but I guess it is one that exists. But you and I have. You were important. I was in Los Angeles. The idea that these cities were fundamentally damaged by these protests is just not true.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, and they're not just talking about damage from riots. They're also talking about, you know, effects on individual citizens. This memo describes how these organized campaigns start by, quote, isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action, unquote. Claiming that this process happens across, quote, anonymous chat forums, in person, meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault targets, unquote.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, this is what the right has done to like, express especially migrants and trans people. Right. For. For a very long time. Anonymous chat forums and do they mean a Reddit.

[Garrison Davis]

Reddit telegram, maybe?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I know, I know that some subreddits have been closed since the issuing of this memorandum, which I'm wondering if.

[Garrison Davis]

It is related not explicitly but like I think this memos would be in this section like referring to things akin to Ice Watch.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, yeah, yeah that makes a lot of sense.

[Garrison Davis]

As well as you know, standard like you know antifascist action against like legitimate neo Nazis which yeah the right is is not against doxing as a practice as we have seen the past few weeks with the state sponsored organized doxing harassment campaigns against people for their comments about the death of Charlie Kirk.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

The memo goes on to list a collection of quote common recurrent motivations and indica or indicators that unite this pattern of violence and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self described antif fascism. These movements portray foundational American principles, support for law enforcement and border control as fascist to justify and encourage acts of a violent revolution. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race and gender and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality unquote. So insofar as this memo has been reported, it's mostly been on this specific section here listing the indicators that could be driving terroristic acts under the umbrella of anti fascism including all of these beliefs that people are allowed to hold in the United States due to the rights granted to us in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean the hypocrisy is the point and it's sometimes not worth or it's not the point but it's not particularly. You know it doesn't change anything by pointing out but I will just point out that like the idea that border control is a foundational American principle. It's not true that it was not until the Chinese Exclusion act that the United States began to exclude anyone from coming here. And that was in the 19th century History understanders will have noticed that the United States began at some point before the 19th century.

[Garrison Davis]

One thing I will say regarding like this section, some reporting around this memo is framing things like you know, anti capitalism or anti Christianity is now that is going to be used as evidence that you are a terrorist. That is not the explicit way is written about in this memo. These are indicators which if some investigator sees on a Twitter account or a Blue sky account could then cause them to investigate further into this person or group. But it's not like just expressing these things will itself deem you a terrorist and be putting you in jail. This does rely on action. Now the memo does go on to talk about trying to prevent Crime before it happens. I think this would be more in the way of how the FBI tries to set up like sting operations or catch people who are planning a violent act before they actually do it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

As we've even seen the past few weeks, with people being arrested for planning retaliation attacks following the death of Charlie Kirk, this has happened.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Now the memo calls for a new national law enforcement strategy to quote, investigate all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies and disrupt networks, entities and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts, unquote. So that is the, the pre crime aspect of this order, which they, they could use some of these beliefs like. Right, yeah, extremism on migration or race or gender, anti Americanism as justification to start investigating groups which then arrests could follow prior to imminent violent act as deemed by federal law enforcement.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, in theory, the role of the especially federal law enforcement has always been to investigate people who were planning violent or terror acts. The difference here is that this is being specifically framed around a certain group and this probably will lead to more attempts by them, more surveillance on people within exactly those groups. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

No, this is very worrying in terms of like surveillance, suppressing speech, chilling speech, because what they're qualifying as violent or terroristic acts is just ordinary protest activity. First members protest activity, non government organizations that, that support progressive causes or values. That's the real concern here.

[Robert Evans]

It's worth stating here that in Los Angeles, for example, a number of grand juries did not return indictments of people who were accused of quite serious crimes that the grand jury did not think it was reasonable to indict them for. Right. This is unusual. Most federal prosecutions do result ultimately in a guilty plea. Right. Because they bring very strong cases when they bring them. But it's worth noting that the specifically like the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles has not stuck the landing on all of its attempts to indict people for things that they did during that time of protest in June.

[Garrison Davis]

In terms of like implementation, the memo says, quote, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society. Unquote. Networks, entities, organizations. These refer to like established organizations, like actual, like formed groups that have political activity. Now section two outlines how the National Joint Terrorism Task Force will quote, unquote, coordinate and supervise a new comprehensive national strategy and orders the local Joint Terrorism Task Force around the country to, quote, investigate potential federal crimes relating to acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons for the purpose of political violence, terrorism, conspiracy against rights, or the violent deprivation of any citizen's rights, unquote. The GDTF's Joint Terrorism Task Force will also investigate institutional and individual funders, including employees of organizations which are, quote, responsible for, sponsor or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct as previously described.

[Robert Evans]

That's a broad net. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

There's a lot of this stuff. Like the antifa order also alluded to this. Trump's statements made in the Oval Office have alluded to this. Going after funders, foreign funders, whether that's the groups like the ACLU or like bail funds. They mentioned George Soros very often. Yeah, the Open Society foundation. Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I think the Right has had a fascination with Soros for a long time. Right. They've been looking for a reason to either exclude Soros from participation in US politics and just to be like, obviously, I think most people realize this, but that fascination is rooted deeply in anti Semitism. George Soros is a Holocaust survivor. And there has been an attempt to find reasons to exclude Soros from US Political activity for some time. I think it's reasonable to see this in that trend.

[Garrison Davis]

This sort of like big organizations, foreign organizations is also mentioned in this memo and saying the Investigation will include NGOs and American citizens with foreign ties that could be in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration act or, quote, money laundering by funding, creating or supporting entities that engage in activities that support or encourage domestic terrorism, unquote. The memo states that the Attorney General shall issue guidance which ensures that domestic terrorism priorities include, quote, unquote, politically motivated terrorist acts, such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, damage of property, threats of violence and civil disorder. The guide shall also include an identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indica common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity, unquote. This is a worrying list of things that are not domestic terrorism that they're going to try to claim aren't domestic terrorism. Trespass.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, trespassing is now domestic terrorism. That's not a great thing for the Attorney General to be issuing guidance on.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Civil disorder is a very broad and somewhat nebulous term. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, are they gonna call the organized doxing campaigns that the Right is doing right now domestic terrorism? No, of course not. Right. These things are just Taking form for explicit, like political prosecution for the political ends of Trump administration.

[Robert Evans]

I think the goal here, like some of these, there isn't even a statute. Right. Like, I'm not aware of a broad federal doxing statute, aside from, you know, certain specific instances where it might be a crime to reveal someone's address.

[Garrison Davis]

Violent intimidation of probably like federal law enforcement would be one thing that they go after.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Federal law enforcement, people with protective orders, that kind of thing. Right. And yeah, there are probably ways of doing that, but I think a lot of this is, is intended to have a chilling effect on speech and organizing.

[Garrison Davis]

Absolutely. The Treasury Secretary will work with the Attorney General to, quote, identify and disrupt financial networks that funded domestic terrorism and political activity. And she'll deploy investigative tools, examine financial flows, and coordinate with partner agencies to trace illicit funding streams, unquote. Again, very obsessed with this idea that there's tons of money that is funding antifa, which if you know anyone under the antifa umbrella, you know that they are extremely broke.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, this is.

[Garrison Davis]

Left wing protesters are not the most financially stable bunch. Yeah, there's, there's not this illicit funding stream. This is a huge, a huge idea that the right has, like, latched on.

[Robert Evans]

Ironically, this is something that the right shares with the authoritarian left. Actually. The idea that people can't act independently unless there is a large, well funded actor motivating them to act is something that, because the authoritarian right and the authoritarian left agree on some things. And one of them is that, like, people can't take the initiative to act. Right. That there has to be some kind of vanguard in the case of the authoritarian left, or nefarious funder in the case of the authoritarian right. And so this, this lines up with the way that they understand the world. I mean.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And this, I'm just talking specifically here in terms of like regular people on the ground attending protests. There's like big, big groups like, you know, often like, you know, communist aligned groups that may be receiving funding possibly from foreign sources.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For real.

[Garrison Davis]

But I do not believe that is what this order is. At least this section is actually wanting to go after. That might be what they, in the end actually end up targeting, end up sweeping up. Because it's the only thing that actually has like, you know, foreign funding, but like, you know, capital A antifa teenagers with like umbrellas showing up in front of an ice building are not receiving money from like Iran, China or Russia.

[Robert Evans]

Like, yeah, as you say, it might be large Southern Policy Law center, the aclu, the Open Society Foundation, Bill Gates.

[Garrison Davis]

Network for Strong Community.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, like some of these organizations might be what they're trying to drag a.

[Garrison Davis]

Net over here, or nonprofits. The next section instructs the IRS to, quote, take action to ensure that no tax exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism, unquote. And calls for the IRS to refer suspect organizations and their employees to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.

[Robert Evans]

It's probably worth noting the context here that there was. This is after a 2010 congressional investigation that found out that the IRS had gone after some Tea Party groups. Right. Do you remember the Tea Party, Garrison? You were seven at that time.

[Garrison Davis]

I remember the Tea Party, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So the feeling here, Biden, if you remember, Garrison, also hired a number of new IRS agents. There was a conspiracy theory that these were to provide some kind of armed, massive, armed element to the IRS that was going around in the Biden administration. I'm sure the IRS had an armed element. Right. There is not a federal investigative agency that doesn't like the Postal Service has cops and probably a SWAT team. But there was a feeling on the right that Biden mobilized the IRS against right wing individuals. And I can see this being the old painting. I'm swinging back in the other direction a little bit.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the more interesting sections that I've highlighted of the memo instructs investigators to, quote, question and interrogate individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement, unquote, that's directing, like the interrogations of people arrested at protests, like, specifically go after who's funding them to be a protest. I'm sure some very fruitful information will come out of. Yeah, referring back to our discussion of like, you know, the. The common motivators are indica, including things, you know, like anti capitalism, anti Americanism. And how those beliefs in and of themselves I do not think will be sufficient for declaring someone a terrorist. And like locking them up is because later in this memo, the memo directs investigations to, quote, prioritize crimes such as the following, assaulting federal officers or employees, conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to commit offense, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, money laundering, funding of terrorist acts, or otherwise facilitating terrorism, arson, violations of the RICO act and major fraud against the United States, unquote. So could the government use these indicators to then find groups to target to stick some of these crimes onto groups or organizations? Absolutely. That's probably what they're going to Do. Yeah, but these, these are the things to, like, be aware of. And they're gonna try to, you know, slap these on people who are just arrested at protests, people who work for NGOs, people who work for legal support networks, maybe migrant assistance networks. Yeah, like that's, that's gonna be the, the target for a lot of these things. And we've seen some of these, like, conspiracy charges in San Diego, like with their, with their antifa prosecution case. We've seen similar stuff in Atlanta with Stop Cop City. Right. There is precedent for this. We've seen the state try to, and to a degree of success and failure, actually push these charges forward.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. The panic that those two cases created, I think we were still pre, you know, trial in the Atlanta case. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Trials in progress.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, sorry, pre, I guess, the conclusion of that trial.

[Garrison Davis]

But the current indication is that most of these RICO charges are not going to stick.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. And most of the conspiracy charges in San Diego did not. Right. And most of those people ended up not being convicted of all the things they were accused of. I do see the major fraud against the United States, and I think that's probably going to use against NGOs. I do also wonder they have spoken before about the payroll protection plan and looking at PPP fraud.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean, financial crimes are always, are always really scary, Right?

[Robert Evans]

Like, yeah, yeah. Like a lot of nonprofits, you know, like, people undoubtedly, given the scale of the PPP people abused it. I think nonprofits would be a lot more buttoned up than almost anyone else in that regard. You know, these, especially these big liberal nonprofits. But that is an area which I'm sure that the Trump IRS will be looking at.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And they might even try to slap these on people making jokes or quote, unquote, fake threats online. Right. Solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People shouldn't be saying stupid shill on social media right now, which, which is.

[Garrison Davis]

Absolutely like a chilling speech. Right. That is a bad thing. But you don't want to give these people extra ammunition to use against yourself right now.

[Robert Evans]

Fighting words are not always like First Amendment speech right now. Like, I'm no expert in where that starts and where that ends, but yet, yeah, like, in terms of, of not doing stupid things, like, this is not a time to do stupid things. On your posting website of choice, section.

[Garrison Davis]

2 closes by calling for investigators and federal police to, quote, adopt strategies similar to those used to address violent crime and organized crime, to disrupt and dismantle entire networks of criminal activity. Unquote so, yeah, especially with all this financial stuff, money laundering, rico, conspiracy charges. They're basically using or they want to use like tactics to take down like organized crime rings just targeting their political enemies, targeting political organizations and people who attend protests like that Is that is the real gist of this memo.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Section three instructs the Attorney General to designate qualifying groups or entities under investigation as domestic terrorist organizations per the definition of domestic terrorism in 18 USC 23315, and to submit a list of such groups to the President of the United states. And Section 4 instructs the attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to designate domestic terrorism a national priority area and provide extra funding for law enforcement to, quote, detect, prevent and protect against threats arising from this area. That is the bulk of the national security. Presidential memorandum number seven, promising to chill speech and go after political opponents and organizations, entities and individuals and employees of organizations.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Very, very undemocratic. Very, very, on its face, authoritarian.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

You don't even need like, like allegations of political targeting. Like they're writing down how they want to do political targeting. They're bragging about it.

[Robert Evans]

I just really would briefly want to raise the example of the flag burning. Right. So Donald Trump signed an executive order ordering the Justice Department to investigate flag burning earlier this year. I can't quite remember when. Subsequently, someone called Jan Kerry of North Carolina was arrested after they burned a flag, an American flag, just to be clear, outside the White House. I guess the flag burning executive order doesn't apply to like you're, you know, like anime flag or whatever, specifically about the flag of the United States. Something which I think Johnson vs Texas is a Supreme Court case. Right. But there is a considerable amount of legal precedent that that is First Amendment speech. Kerry was arrested. What is being missed in the discussion is that Kerry was charged with two misdemeanor crimes. One was for lighting a fire not in a designated area and receptacle. The other was for lighting a fire in a manner that threatened to cause damage to him, resulted in the burning of property, real property and park resour. These are both offences that you can be incarcerated or fined for. I want people to know that. Right. Like, he was not arrested because of the Executive Order, although the executive order may very much influence the climate which led to his arrest and charged with these other things. But he wasn't charged with violating the executive Order because that is not how it works.

[Garrison Davis]

They can't change the law with executive orders or presidential memorandums. What they can do is, is direct how the law will be Enforced or policy guidelines. Right. And that's what this is affecting right now. All of these branches, like the dhs, Justice Department, federal police, are going to be following the policy guidelines and outlines established in this memo to then try to enforce the laws that we have, some of which they will probably find ways to do it and sometimes they won't.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. We have a very broad range of statutes criminalizing a very large range of things. And someone will find some way in there to criminalize someone for something that might seem on the face of it to be not nefarious. But that doesn't mean that we have executive legislative fusion. We don't write two branches of the government. And that is important to remember too.

[Garrison Davis]

No. No laws have been changed criminalizing anti Americanism. Right. Yeah, that is. That is an important thing to keep in mind. That does not mean that this order is not going to ch speech, suppress free speech, or be used to criminally target people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Criminal prosecutions can ruin the lives of people for years and years, regardless of the actual, like, outcome. Right. Even if they get off on the charges. And totally we want to be clear that we're not like, minimizing the effects of this, but we do want to actually break down what like the threat model is specifically for like NGOs, legal organizations that help protesters or migrants, LGBTQ organizations. Right. These are probably going to be the first targets of a lot of like the conspiracy, fraud, sections of disorder. Besides, you know, protesters that get rounded up and get put into, into this like, political war game that they're playing.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Similar to how regular protesters in Atlanta then found themselves suddenly amidst like a three year long RICO domestic terrorism case.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Despite not participating in any kind of large organized aspect of Stop Cop City, they were just regular attendees. So there'll be stuff similar to that that, that happens throughout the next few months to years. And I think that is where we should keep our attention focused on mitigating the harms of government overreach.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So for the fundraiser this week, something slightly different. I wanted to read off this. GoFundMe for the emergency circus. They are traveling south of the US border. I believe they're going to migrant shelters in Tijuana to hold circus acts, circus performances for kids. I have obviously not obviously, but I've spent a decent amount of my life in refugee camps and migrant shelters. And they can be pretty hard places for kids. And it's something that I think about almost every day. And so people bringing joy to those children is something that I think is wonderful. And very important. People get the impression that legal funds are important and kids having a laugh is not important. But children have a right to be children and that's taken away from them by the immigration system. And so I would like if you supported this the website is www.gofundme.com f EC off ice. It will also be in the Show Notes. If you would like to email us, you can do so at our encrypted email address, which is Cool Zone Tips Proton Me. Your email will only be end to end encrypted if you send it from an encrypted email address. ProtonMail is an example of an encrypted email address.

[Garrison Davis]

Before we close the episode, I will tease an episode for next week. There was a shooting at a Mormon church on Sunday which the right briefly tried to turn into like this culture war narrative on my attacks on Christianity. And then once information about the shooter became more clear, they quickly dropped this subject. So on Wednesday I'll be doing an episode talking about this shooting and a few others, and how various outlets on the right and left are only reporting on these big shootings insofar as they can turn them into political weapons against the opposition party. We reported the news.

[Robert Evans]

We reported the news.

[Mia Wong]

It Could Happen.

[Garrison Davis]

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.

[Mia Wong]

Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Garrison Davis]

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Ampas Town. You must excise it, Dig into the deep earth and cut it out from.

[Garrison Davis]

Iheart podcasts and grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast.