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- [00:00]
Robert Evans
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Garrison Davis
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:08]
Robert Evans
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [00:33]
Garrison Davis
The past few weeks my social media feeds have been more apocalyptic than usual, oddly enough. Not due to the escalating war with Iran, the shell shocked economy or oil prices, but because of a wave of posts and news articles proclaiming impending doom for trans people in the United States. Attacks on trans rights are obviously not new and have steadily risen the past 10 years, but this recent collection of worrying claims are especially grim or outright genocidal. Just this month I've seen viral posts citing online articles saying that ICE is going to round up and quote unquote disappear trans people, that the FDA is making a quote unquote registry of trans women, and that an adult trans healthcare ban is imminent. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. For this episode, I'd like to emphasize the could in it could happen here. It's not. It will definitely happen here and there's nothing you can do to stop it. These panic inducing claims and the articles they're sourced from are referring to real things or movements happening in either right wing activism or anti trans policy and legislation, but are framed in a way to maximize catastrophe rather than actually understanding what's happening at the moment and what we can do about it. Left unchecked panic, clickbait reduces the process of staying informed to being in a state of constant doom and feeling hopeless against an unstoppable enemy. Or it makes someone completely check out and not believe anything they see online, even if there is a real pressing threat, both of which cloud our ability to assess and respond to very real threats. For the bulk of this episode, I'm going to focus on an article that claims ICE is now permitted to detain anyone for quote, unquote looking trans. This reporting and the online discussion around it is a microcosmatic example of how we understand both the Trump administration's attacks on trans people and how and why ICE operates as an agency. This story can be traced to a substack post with the headline Trump Administration Opens the door for ICE to target anyone Suspected of being trans. The sub headline continues by reading, quote, under a new rule the State Department will be able to revoke trans people's visas over quote unquote misrepresentation. It'll give ICE grounds to suspect all trans people of being in the US Illegally. Unquote the information contained in this headline is the furthest many people will engage with the content of this article. Combining that headline with preconceived notions about how ICE functions under the second Trump administration makes this a very frightening claim. So what evidence does the Substack article include to support this claim? Earlier this month, the State Department updated its policy for the diversity immigrant visa program, also known as the green card lottery. The new rules require that applicants upload a scan of their foreign passports, biographic and signature page to cut down on fraudulent diversity visa program entries. The policy update also changed the gender entry to sex on application forms. In the policy rule update, the State Department wrote the marker reflected in the sex field on any visa application, including the entry form, should match the applicant's biological sex at birth, even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant's foreign passport or other identifying documentation. Unquote the substack article claims this could force a quote, mismatch between trans people's applications and their passports, something it can then use to declare their applications fraudulent and disqualify them entirely. Unquote. The first half of that sentence is true. A mismatch may occur between the gender listed on foreign documents and the sex the US Government wants you to list on a visa application, but it is simply not the case that this mismatch will inevitably result in an application being deemed fraudulent and then denied. The kind of fraud this rule change is trying to combat by requiring a passport scan is not unique to trans people, according to Melita Picasso, staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project. Picasso said in an email that the new rule, quote, seems to more directly target fraudulent activities involving third parties, basically entering the lottery on behalf of individuals without their knowledge and consent and then extorting them for large amounts of money if they are selected. Unquote the stipulation requiring an applicant to list their biological sex at birth on forms has actually already been State Department policy for both immigrant and non immigrant visa applications for over a year, effectively since Trump's executive order mandating the US Government officially recognized two biological sexes which are determined at birth and that, quote, government issued identity documents, including visas and all forms that require an individual's sex shall accurately reflect an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female. Unquote there's just no basis for the claim that a mismatch between the gender listed on a foreign document and the sex marked on application forms will itself, quote, unquote, disqualify someone from receiving a visa. ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso told me that the new policy itself recognizes this could cause discrepancies and that she doesn't see a, quote, new or heightened risk of being accused of fraud or willful misrepresentation if a transgender person follows the instructions by listing their sex assigned at birth on the application, even if they also file a birth certificate that has been updated to reflect their gender identity, unquote the State Department has been aware for a while that this kind of policy will create these kinds of mismatches. A February 2025 State Department memo reads, quote, there may be instances when a consular officer becomes aware that the sex listed on the foreign passport may not be the applicant's sex as defined in the executive order. In such cases, the adjudicator should confirm the applicant's sex as defined in the executive order, indicate that sex on the visa, and add a case note documenting any discrepancy between the passport and the visa to prevent issues at the port of entry, unquote later, In April of 2025, the United States Citizenship Immigration Services officially updated their policy on requiring, quote, unquote, biological sex on immigration applications. The policy also states that, quote, USCIS does not deny any immigration benefits solely based on a failure to properly indicate the benefit requesters sex, unquote. ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso told me that USCIS officials have, quote, unquote, a lot of discretion and that the policy says that failure to list biological sex, quote, will cause delays in processing the application while USCIS tries to verify your sex assigned at birth, unquote. Now, the State Department has said there are grounds to deny visa applications for trans people if they make a, quote, willful affirmative material act of misrepresentation by misrepresenting their, quote, unquote biological sex at birth in application forms or to a consular officer to gain entry to the United States under false pretenses. Legally qualifying as willful misrepresentation is a relatively high bar, and this language was specifically written with the intent to restrict trans athletes from entering the country to play sports. The sort of misrepresentation the State Department is talking about is if a trans woman, quote, unquote, misrepresents her birth sex to procure a visa or admission into the United States for the purpose of competing in a women's sports competition. This same sports related memo, dated February 24, 2025, also states, quote, if there is a discrepancy either in the applicant's documents or in electronic consular records, or if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant's sex, you should refuse the case under 221G and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth, unquote. Section 221G of the Immigration and Nationality act is a temporary visa refusal pending further documents or information provided by the applicant. For an athlete visa, the bar is very high and the burden is on the applicant to prove they have the special and rare qualities required to be eligible for a visa. But the substack article doesn't just claim that being trans could disqualify you from receiving a visa. The article escalates its claims, stating that trans people who already have a valid visa could have it revoked and be deported for misrepresenting their sex in the past, citing US Law that if an alien is found to have obtained a visa, quote, by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact, they are ineligible to be in the United States. The article also refers to a section of the Foreign Affairs Manual which includes providing, quote, a fake birth certificate in support of an immigrant visa application as misrepresenting a material fact, unquote. The article goes on to assert that the Trump administration could refuse to recognize trans people's amended birth certificates from foreign countries and essentially consider them, quote, unquote fake, thus making their visa eligible to be revoked by, quote, unquote misrepresenting a material fact. The author of the substack links to another one of her own articles on a new policy regarding the issuing of US Passports with sex markers reflecting biological sex at birth. The passport policy instructs State Department employees to check birth certificates for signs of being amended and if they are amended, request more documents that list sex at the time of birth, such as medical records, hospital records, or early school records. ACLU staff attorney Picasso says that this does not mean entire amended birth certificates are quote, unquote fake for the purposes of establishing fraud or willful misrepresentation, which is again a high bar. And the Trump administration has never argued this as such. Quote, I think it's dangerous to even suggest that a legally obtained and valid birth certificate could be viewed as quote, unquote fake without a much clearer statement from the federal government to that effect. Picasso advised in Trump's recent travel bans, they have specifically mentioned the availability of fabricated birth certificates in certain countries, and this whole claim about Trans people's visas being revoked because of applications of misrepresentation is contradicted by the State Department, which said last year, quote, currently valid US Visas issued prior to the effective date of this guidance bearing a sex that differs from the visa holders sex as defined in Executive order will remain valid through its expiration date. The visa holder does not need to apply for a new visa with an amended sex marker until the current visa expires, unquote. So the first half of this article covers what I argue are gross misrepresentations of State Department visa policy. The second half of the article speculates on how this misrepresentation could be enforced by ice. In a Supreme Court ruling last year, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that ICE could detain people based on a combination of factors such as working a certain kind of job, ethnicity, and speaking Spanish or talking with an accent. Kavanaugh said that ICE can detain someone for questioning, quote, if they have a reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in the United States. The author of the substack article argued that Kavanaugh's concurrence, quote, unquote effectively permitted ICE to use the fact that someone looks trans as the, quote, specific articulable fact allowing its officers to question, harass, detain, and even deport both citizens and non citizens as long as it has a reason to claim that being trans makes a person more likely to be in the US Illegally, unquote with this substacker adding that because of State Department policy requiring applicants to list biological sex at birth on forms, quote, ICE now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans people are more likely than CIS people to have misrepresented themselves during the visa process and therefore are more likely to have entered the country unlawfully, unquote. This assertion from the substacker rests on the idea that looking trans makes someone more likely to be in the US Illegally. This idea is not supported by any immigration policy memo or guideline. It also assumes that the justification for a Kavanaugh stop is the same as the legal process of removal, which it is not. This idea was invented by the author of this article. It's not based on any enforcement directive from ICE and misrepresents what the State Department means by intentionally misrepresenting biological sex in the visa application process. Discrepancies in gender markers across government documents is not itself grounds for detention or deportation. In fact, it's federal policy to create such discrepancies. Furthermore, dealing with potential discrepancies between gender markers on foreign documents and the Trump Admin's insistence on only using biological sex at birth on federal documents is handled by State Department consular officers and USCIS employees, not ICE enforcement and removal operations officers who work under an entirely different agency. But the main thing that makes me believe that ICE will not suddenly start targeting people for being trans is that this State Department policy requiring sex at birth on visa applications isn't actually new. It's existed in some form since February 2025 for both immigrant and non immigrant visas. The only recent change is that the green card lottery rules have been updated to use the same language. Quote Nothing about this new rule makes it more or less likely that that ICE will be free to scrutinize trans people's documents and detain those whose documents show any inconsistencies, unquote affirmed ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso Put plainly, State Department restrictions on stating assigned sex at birth on green card or visa applications does not give ICE any new justification to roam around disappearing random people who, quote unquote look just trans. But it could make border crossings more risky for non citizens and visa applications harder to navigate and subject to delays. This policy from the State Department is bad, but turning that into saying that ICE is now going to round up trans people and V code them doesn't understand how this will actually affect immigrant trans people or trans people currently in federal custody. Side V coding refers to this systematic enabling of sexual abuse towards incarcerated trans women to please male prisoners. Near the end of the substack article, the author suggests that trans people in Kansas could be at extra risk of getting detained by ICE because of a new law invalidating driver's license and birth certificates with amended gender markers, possibly leaving some US Citizens temporarily unable to prove citizenship with a valid birth certificate. This new law is certainly dangerous, and any attempt to strip away people's legal ID is very worrying and carries potential for abuse. In the case of Kansas, already having a passport would be really ideal. Otherwise, a hospital birth certificate or early school records can theoretically be used to help prove citizenship. And it is worth saying that a citizen temporarily losing documentation does not put them at the same level of marginalized risk as an undocumented immigrant. The new Kansas law does direct the Office of Vital Statistics to, quote, reissue birth certificates when necessary to correct the sex identification, unquote. Similarly, DMVS were instructed to reissue a quote unquote corrected license once the invalidated one was turned in. We'll be right back after these messages.
- [17:54]
Molly Conger
Foreign.
- [18:04]
Garrison Davis
Welcome back to it could happen here. The unsubstantiated claims made in that substack article went viral across multiple social media platforms like TikTok, Blue sky and Twitter, bolstering further speculation. Social media posts further extrapolated the potential harm facing trans people by ICE agents and beyond the claims made in the article by saying that ICE will now deport or disappear trans citizens. Anyone who tried to push back on the legitimacy of those claims were labeled dangerous or feds for trying to, quote, unquote downplay the threat posed by ice. Assertions of new pressing danger in this back and forth discourse largely took three forms. One saying that because ICE is already doing x bad thing, that means they could also start doing this new bad thing two people asserting that ICE is in fact actually already doing this and three arguments based on distrust of the government and ICE's general lack of legality. Much of the discussion emerged from the genuine belief that ICE has been granted new power or has been, quote, unquote authorized by to detain someone for looking trans that Trump has, quote unquote opened the door for ICE to start profiling trans people that, like the Supreme Court's ruling last year, profiling has been essentially greenlit for trans people, or that checking the consistency of gender markers has been added to ICE's quote unquote jurisdiction. And to be 100% clear, there's not been any new ICE memo or policy related to trans people, gender markers or documentation being in their jurisdiction. State Department policy on requiring biological sex on applications has existed for over a year. The real danger posed by this policy is that more trans immigrants could have their visas delayed or in extreme cases, denied, and people may need help navigating this increasingly confusing application process. Still, people have tried to assert that that ICE's intentional targeting and profiling of people for being trans was, quote, unquote already happening. In the past year, ICE has detained trans people. It's hard to get exact numbers on this because ICE stopped collecting detention data for trans people last year to comply with Trump's anti trans executive orders. Though we do know of attempts to deport trans people from news reporting last August, ICE detained a trans woman who overstayed a visa by six years. And in November, a trans woman who lost her lawful permanent resident status in 2023 after pleading guilty to a felony was, quote unquote, inadvertently deported to Mexico despite a court order specifically barring her from being sent to Mexico. We have no evidence that these women were targeted for removal on the basis of being trans. But what happened to them is still horrific. As of now, there has been no reporting on people being targeted for detention based on looking trans because the government has not actually argued that being trans itself qualifies as reasonable suspicion of a legal presence. When I voiced skepticism about the claims sourced from this substack article, people responded to me saying that even if this has yet to happen, one could argue that ICE still could expand their operations to include profiling and targeting trans people for detention, since they're already profiling and rounding up quote unquote random brown people. After all, this podcast is called It Could Happen Here and ICE has detained both citizens and legal immigrants and sent them to quote unquote camps. Though this show is called It Could Happen Here, that doesn't mean we should spread unsubstantiated doom spiraling disconnected from the material reality of real policies advancing a fascist project The Trump administration has been very clear and open about targeting groups of people flooding through our southern border. That is who ICE is designed to target, and they have policy directing them to do so and new permission from the Supreme Court. It is true that ICE has temporarily detained US Citizens when looking for people they suspect are undocumented immigrants. This has been for two reasons. US Citizens accused of interfering with ICE activity while protesting, or because ICE suspects US Citizens may be undocumented based on factors like skin tone, occupation, or speaking a foreign language, usually Spanish. This second group of people then must demonstrate proof of citizenship or, if they are immigrants, their legal status. The period they're detained is supposed to be relatively short, usually a few hours, though in extreme cases that's stretched into multiple days. When I posted about this online, someone sent me a Wikipedia article claiming it proved that ice has deported 170 US citizens during Trump's second term. The article actually said 170 citizens have been detained since Trump took office. Again, there have been a few reported instances of US Born citizens being deported. These are citizen children who are deported with immigrant parents to avoid child separation, though many, many children do end up being separated from their parents when their parents are deported. The last argument that people fall back on is simply that ICE is a completely lawless agency and it can do whatever it wants, including going after trans people. After all, ICE has murdered US Citizens on camera in broad daylight. But it's important to remember that happened for a reason. Those weren't random acts. ICE and CBP murdered people protesting ICE raids targeting their immigrant neighbors. Federal agents killed people because the protesting was an inconvenience and there was use of force policy and training directing them to do so for decades, CBP agents have killed people at the border and gotten away with it. The Trump administration may not care about the law, but this analysis is not based on any assumptions about legality. It's based on the administration's own stated goals, which they've been very open about, and the policies and practices currently in effect, none of which relate to ICE targeting people for, quote, unquote, looking trans. From what we know, the Kavanaugh Stops framework have never been used to target trans people for being trans as the reasonable suspicion of being illegally in the country. And there's been no change in guidelines saying that being trans can be the basis for said stops. Asserting otherwise is simply false. Insisting that because of State Department application policy, ICE will now randomly arrest trans people is conflating two very different things. This isn't about the potential legality of ICE targeting trans people. I'm simply saying there is no such directive instructing ICE to do that. Asserting that the Trump administration is completely 100% unbounded by law also ignores the fact that federal and immigration courts are still in active terrain of battle. While the administration has repeatedly ignored courts and judges orders, people have also been successfully released from ICE custody by filing habeas corpus petitions. It's not that I believe in the personal integrity of ICE agents, far from it. But this concept of ICE as this vague fascist death squad that will go after any group the Trump administration hates turns ICE into this abstract idea rather than a single material agency with concrete motivations and limits that leaves a wake of destruction in the course of achieving their purpose. ICE does raids where there's high concentrations of immigrant workers. The targeting isn't actually random. ICE is going after undocumented immigrant workers, sometimes using skin and language as a rough proxy to do document checks to assert the inevitability of ICE going after trans people. People invoke comparisons to the Nazis. And as rhetorically useful as it is to equate ICE to a modern version of the Gestapo, this is not Germany in the 1930s. ICE is a contemporary version, but the current world is different. The chronically online doomer may retort, but once ICE is done with immigrants, then they will go after trans people. After all, what's the purpose of increasing ICE's staffing and funding, or the building a network of detention camps across the country, if not to use them against the undesirables? There's about 15 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and about 3 million trans people. That's five times as many undocumented immigrants than trans people. Last year, ICE reached a record high number of deportations, over 600,000. This number still leaves millions and millions of undocumented immigrants. ICE will never be, quote, unquote, done with immigrants. This logic again reduces ICE to this vague, abstract evil and fails to consider the purpose of ICE and why it currently operates as it does so. What motivates ice? Do individual ICE agents share the same motivations as the agency itself or the people directing it? Individual agents certainly could be motivated by racism, political ideology, a paycheck, or a combination thereof. But the motivating factors across the entire agency cannot solely be based on ethnicity itself, or else you wouldn't see as many Hispanic ICE and CBP agents. People tend to think of hate as a vague causal force itself, rather than it being the result of complex societal factors shaped by material forces like the economy, jobs insecurity, and housing shortages. These material forces are often expressed as racial or ethnic prejudice. But the underlying motivation of ICE as an agency, and by extension dhs, still rests on material forces, not racial hatred. As an abstract ideal. Rank and file employees could have entirely different motivations compared to some of those at the top of the agency or the agency as a whole. And people in charge of the agency may themselves even be confused as to the material motivations that underline the existence of immigration enforcement agencies. But this lack of alignment is a weakness in the agency and DHS more broadly, as demonstrated by the fallout of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which left ICE and DHS in a compromised state. So why does ICE exist? What material role does it fulfill? It seeks to stabilize the social order by targeting surplus populations. And what's the most efficient way to do that? By going after the most marginalized populations with the least amount of legal and economic protections, which are undocumented immigrants. This operation may be sold to the public and indeed its enforcers by marketing it in the language of race and crime categories, which are often equated. But underneath that, it's still an attempt to solve problems caused by material economic forces. In reality, this material motivation establishes a certain direction of impact as well as material limits like budget, personnel, and balancing between public approval and public opposition. So with that in mind, does it make sense to claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to conduct the targeted mass detention of trans people as a class? Signs point to no, it's not that I disagree with the idea that trans people are under threat from the government, but they're under a different threat than that of undocumented immigrants or people detained by ice based on profiling. Obviously, trans immigrants have an overlapping threat vector. As such, migrant support should remain focused on things like ICE Watch rapid response networks and providing immigrants legal resources, including to trans immigrants who may need assistance navigating the visa process and working to get people out of ICE detention. The latter is especially important considering Trump's executive order forcing trans women in federal custody to be detained with men and the Trump administration's plan to end federal prison rape protections for trans people. But most people engaged in this discourse genuinely don't understand how State Department policy on visa applications will actually affect trans immigrants and what we can then do to support trans immigrants. But this whole discourse takes the focus away from the people most at risk of ice, which are still undocumented immigrant workers. Lilith in Seattle, with a $150,000 a year tech job, is not at high risk of being detained by ice. Believing otherwise prohibits people who are actually safe and secure from using their wealth and status to support others who do not have the same safety provided by wealth or status, whether they're transgender, an immigrant, or both. Misleading articles in the larger panic driven information economy encourages people with financial or legal security to be scared into paralysis because they believe that any amount of opposition to the government will result in being disappeared to a concentration camp. This justifies a retreat from the world by framing it as safety, allowing one to focus on maximizing their own power and wealth to achieve security. Retreating solely into the role of the victim achieves a sort of emotional catharsis, but this also alienates you from the world and ends up doing propaganda for the enemy. In this discourse there's a tendency to make the enemy out to be an unstoppable monster, which further justifies inaction because it doesn't allow you to understand the limits of the enemy, whether logistical or ideological, and resigns us to cower before an omnipotent, all powerful evil. ICE operations are an expensive, unpopular, destabilizing thing and we must keep an eye on the fragility of power as that informs us on how to fight it. When removed from action in the real world, people have no way to confront truth. It is a frightening time to be transgender. On top of what feels like never ending attacks on health care and our ability to exist in public life, you now see news stories about a US state invalidating people's IDs. At the same time as viral social media posts claim ICE has been given new authority to detain trans people and deport immigrants for having the wrong gender marker. Various attacks on trans rights separated through time could be viewed as a coherent, centralized strategy towards a singular horrific end. But they also may be in fact disparate, often petty attempts at cruelty, intending to demoralize trans people and make trans life prohibitively difficult. The way Red States and the Trump Admin are trying to eliminate transgenderism, as Michael Knowles would say, is to simply make it incredibly difficult to socially and medically transition, like by not recognizing gender on government documents, be excluded from public bathrooms, and continuing efforts to restrict healthcare. We'll do one more break and return for a final segment. The state of catastrophic fear I've been talking about is maintained by a near constant wave of articles with panic inducing headlines which fuel social media posts that further escalate and abstract claims made in headlines to a Nazi Germany esque level of potential danger facing trans people. One such impending danger circulating online this month is the claim that the FDA is making a registry of trans women and moving to criminalize DIY estrogen. This claim originated from an article in a trans News outlet published March 12 reporting that anti trans lobbying groups sent a petition to the FDA to create a registry of trans women who take estrogen and restrict the use of feminizing hrt, which if implemented could, quote, fast track a pathway to criminalizing estrogen use. Importantly, this citizens petition is not US law or proposed government legislation, nor is it FDA policy or regulation. It was written by an anti trans activist coalition and sent to the FDA over three months ago in December of 2025. The petition requests, quote unquote immediate action by establishing a new docket for the public to officially comment on the safety and effectiveness of estrogen in gender transitions and to schedule a public hearing on the subject. That is mainly what the petition is for, though it does make further recommendations following the conclusion of a public hearing. These recommendations include adding a warning label to estrogen, conducting a safety review, having clinicians report adverse effects to the fda, and requiring the drug manufacturers quote, establish a patient registry as a part of a risk evaluation and mitigation study to capture real world safety data, unquote and that is the registry mentioned in this panic headline. This article, or more accurately, distorted versions of its claims, went viral across trans Twitter with tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands of quote unquote views. But the article received strong pushback on Blue sky for being, quote unquote sensationalist and inflammatory. The outlet that originally published the story later updated the article clarifying that the FDA receives hundreds of petitions a year and even if implemented, they can take years to go into effect. From 2001 to 2013, only 6.6% of FDA citizen petitions were approved and resulted in new regulation. A study from 2016 found that, on average, quote, these petitions require 2.85 years for a final agency decision, and many decisions remain pending 10 to 13 years after their initial submission. Unquote this FDA petition story was not the only article this month theorizing about a trans registry or adult HRT restrictions. In mid March, multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that Republican lawmakers in Tennessee advanced a bill that would, quote, unquote, create a public list of trans residents in the state. The bill in question mandates insurance companies also cover detransition and would require that care providers submit statistics on gender affirming care to the Tennessee Department of Health, which must, quote, not contain individually identifiable information defined in hipaa, unquote. The Tennessee Department of Health would then use that information to make a publicly available statistics report. But online accounts are spreading this story as if Tennessee is making a, quote, unquote sex offender style public registry with the names and locations of all trans people in the state. A bill like this could potentially be used for harm, and it may face court challenges for possibly violating parts of HIPAA by collecting data on county of residence and procedure dates. But the reporting on the bill and the viral reaction online make it out to be something completely different. There's no reason to believe this bill would create a publicly accessible registry or list identifying trans people by name in the state. The bill has not yet passed the state Senate, and it may not in its current form. Right now, it's unclear what exact form the collected data will take within a statistics report and what level of anonymizing data aggregation will be employed. This is something to keep an eye on if the bill does pass and the state Department of Health drafts guidelines for the mandatory statistics reporting. But the way it's being reported is incredibly misleading. Interestingly, the source for this public list claim is the same substack outlet that created the false story about ICE now being able to detain people for looking trans. Also, earlier this month, multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that the 4th Circuit Court approved state bans on gender affirming health care for adults. On March 10, a Republican appointed three judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states can prohibit gender affirming surgery from being covered by Medicaid. The ruling affirmed a ban on Medicaid coverage for, quote, sex change surgeries in West Virginia, with the panel arguing it doesn't discriminate against trans people because it applies to specific procedures not specific individuals. This is certainly bad news for trans people in West Virginia on Medicaid, but reporting that this decision could soon result in trans people losing healthcare in other states or nationally is misleading and removes key context. This is not a total ban on these procedures. It's a ban on state Medicaid coverage of these surgical procedures. The ruling is not a ban on other forms of gender affirming healthcare like hrt, nor does it threaten the hospital's ability to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds for providing gender affirming health care, like the Trump administration has threatened so far, unsuccessfully. Still, people postulated on how this ruling could be laying the legal groundwork to eliminate adult transgender health care. But trans journalist David Forbes noted that this ruling will likely be appealed to the wider 4th Circuit, which has recently ruled in the opposite direction of this three panel ruling. What panicked assertions of an impending total ban on trans healthcare tends to overlook is that going from a state ban on Medicaid coverage for surgery straight to an all ages ban on gender affirming health care skips a lot of steps, and those steps are crucially important. The panic, clickbait induced doomer mindset treats every horrific potentiality as an inevitable eventuality. This undermines our ability to accurately assess risk and effectively dedicate resources to oppose what are pressing threats. So what purpose does this sort of posting serve and why are people so primed to believe it? These panic driven claims rest on the very real fact that trans people are facing present danger. Oftentimes, people boosting these panic stories are genuinely trying to help inform their own community of potential harm. In the case of that ICE story, it was based on the assumption that there was a legitimate recent rule change enabling ICE to target people under suspicion of being trans. It makes sense that people would want to raise the alarm about ICE gaining new powers, But ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso cautioned, quote, we are supporting our community by trying to warn people, but these warnings need to be clear and accurate, otherwise we end up inadvertently contributing to the chaos and fear. Other times, these panic stories are spread with the hope of scaring allies into caring about the ongoing attacks on trans people. Perhaps this is successful in some cases, I don't know. But as a side effect, this strategy deals significant damage to the people it's trying to protect. Forecasting Doom 24. 7 can drive people into hopeless despair and push them away from strategies to fight against the current attacks on trans rights. Panic driven agitprop could also contribute to a girl who Cried Wolf scenario where allies start to discount concerns about certain attacks on trans rights due to previous unsubstantiated viral claims. Though many people spreading these claims may have genuinely good intentions, the people creating these claims may develop certain material incentives. Traditional mainstream journalism has failed to question the massive government overreach into the lives of trans people and in some cases helped manufacture consent for the stripping away of trans rights. This state of affairs has made trans people lose faith in the big outlets leading to small upstart outlets filling in the information gaps in trans news coverage. But without any institutional backing, independent news sites and substack style blogs have to build an audience to generate traction and stay operating. It turns out thousands of people constantly freaking out creates high social media engagement. This creates a loop where trans panic fear mongering boosts social media engagement, which further encourages more irresponsible clickbait framing. Those who are successful may slowly develop a new class position which then needs to be maintained. Financial incentives may even pressure journalists who have done good work in the past to fall back on panic driven engagement bait to attract new traffic. This isn't exclusive to trans outlets either. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Ken Klippenstein reported on his substack that the FBI was about to, quote, designate transgender people as violent extremists. His report contained no new verifiable information. The core evidence was an unnamed, quote unquote senior official who told Klippenstein he quote unquote feels like trans people could be labeled nihilist violent extremists. Cliffenstein has previously misunderstood the nihilist violent extremism label. The term actually predates the second Trump administration and refers to groups like 764 Child Sextortion Rings and communities like the School Shooter Fandom TCC. Hours before Klippenstein's report was published, the Heritage foundation and the Oversight Project publicly released a petition calling for a new classification of extremism called Trans Ideology Inspired Violent Extremism to categorize attacks they believed are motivated by transgender ideology. The petition memo denied that all trans people and their allies would be designated domestic terrorists under this label only those who quote, encourage, promote, condone, take, or incite unlawful violent action or threats based on this ideology, unquote. The Heritage petition also runs contrary to Klippenstein's report by advocating against the use of the nihilist violent extremism label to describe transgender motivated violence. A Heritage petition to establish a new category of extremism is different from an unnamed official who feels like trans people as a whole could be labeled as nihilist violin, extremists and and it's important to understand that distinction. That was last September. It's now half a year later, and neither of these things has come to fruition. The closest we got was in late September following Trump's antifa terrorism executive order with the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number seven, which listed quote, extremism on migration, race and gender as common recurrent motivations and indica of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of of self described anti fascism, unquote, among many other threads animating violent conduct. Regardless of that, people online interpreted both Klippenstein's report and the Heritage petition as meaning the FBI classified the entire class of trans people as domestic terrorists. Social media both amplifies and distorts already misleading claims. Turning news into a massive game of telephone and the siloing of certain users and platforms makes countering this misinformation incredibly difficult. The social media economy carries certain incentives for the producers of panic bait that could be attention, status and money. But the consumers of panic also stand to gain something catharsis justification for their actions or lack thereof, as well as attention from fellow consumers. These clickbait panic pieces explode around Trans Twitter, which is still quite active, consisting of sex workers, gamers, TTT style posters, and zoomers who think Blue sky is cringe and liberal. Some of these panic stories, like the FDA registry, don't do very well on Blue sky because that's where a lot of trans journalists who do actual journalism are. But those journalists are not active on Twitter and TikTok, making it harder to to counter misinformation on those platforms countering trans panic. Clickbait also suffers from algorithmic suppression because it doesn't get people as riled up. A wave of emotionally charged doom posting is boosted much farther than a calm and calculated rebuttal. The biggest TikTok about ICE detaining people under suspicion of being trans has 1.2 million views. The biggest TikTok, fact checking this claim, has 290,000 views. So much of social media politics is emotional manipulation based on anger, fear, or catharsis. Posting about perceived danger is essentially viewed as a form of activism, and if someone casts doubt on what's seen as an existential threat, that person becomes emotionally equated with the enemy. Panic produces helplessness, but helplessness can actually be cathartic for the individual. It's not helpful for people currently in the most danger. So then, what is there to do in terms of the trans panic information economy? Don't be afraid to openly question the legitimacy of certain reporting due to fear of backlash from the community. If it's good reporting, it should be able to stand up to scrutiny. So when you see a news story that triggers an emotional response, stop a moment before clicking Share and find out where this claim is coming from. A reliable journalistic outlet, an independent publication. What other reporting has this publication done? Has it been accurate? Who is the reporter? Are you familiar with their reporting? What else have they reported on? Is it speculative? Are there logical jumps without supporting evidence? Again, I'm not trying to minimize the danger coming from attacks on trans people. Quite the contrary, the right is continuing to take away trans rights and these threats should be treated seriously. But when trying to counter these real attacks, one must be cautious about looking so far ahead into the speculative future that it takes the focus away from the clear and present harms. This isn't about trusting the government. It's about understanding the world in order to change it. See you on the other side. You can find a text version of this episode on the Shatter Zone substack with hyperlinks available for many of the terms or reporting referenced.
- [50:48]
Marianne
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- [51:21]
James Stout
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. It's me, James and a very lucky to be joined by Marianne today. He's an outspoken member of the Venezuelan diaspora, a writer, photographer and we're gonna talk today a little bit about our shared frustration with the left in this country talking about Venezuelan people, but not two Venezuelan people. So thanks for joining me tonight.
- [51:43]
Marianne
Thank you for having me.
- [51:45]
James Stout
Yeah, this is something that we've been trying to put together for a while and I'm really glad that we're finally doing it. So I guess if I can just frame this discussion. We've spoken about this extensively, so like I'm sure we, we won't need much, much prompting. I do not understand how people arrive at a position of identifying as being leftist if they don't love and care about other people. And if you love and care about other people, then you should listen to them. And I am appalled at the discourse about Venezuela which is happening without Venezuelan voices for the most part, where people will talk to Venezuelans at all in the US Press. It's far too often people in the diaspora who are talking to the right wing of media and highlighting like, what are sometimes reasonable objections to Maduro, sometimes which are completely insane. But like, it's. It's a complete failing of us on the left to not talk to people from Venezuela. Maybe you could just share with us, like, how it's been since January to see it, offered it as a binary right. You can either exist under Maduro and people can live in poverty and suffer, or you can watch your country get bombed and choose like, mcm, I guess. And none of this is happening. Was asking you what you would like. Can you share how that's been?
- [53:06]
Marianne
Oh, my God, it's been. It's been a wild ride. I mean, there's a lot of different emotions going on, which is one of the things that I think a lot of people don't understand that are not Venezuelan. But, yeah, just a lot of emotions. I mean, I remember when it first happened, I immediately messaged my family back home. So my brother, my mom, my. My grandparents. My family is not from Caraca. So they were all right. They were just saying, you know, it's calm wherever we are, it's fine. But yeah, the immediate thing was concern. Then obviously I couldn't sleep that night because of everything that was going on. I live in Europe. So by that time it was like, I don't know, it was like five in the morning or something. Eight in the morning. I don't remember. It was. It's all just a blur to me now. But I remember I was just like on my phone seeing the updates, like every minute, trying to contact my friends who did live in Caracas. And they were just saying, yeah, like, we hear bombs, we don't know what's going on. And then eventually, like, some people started saying that they bombed, liked, some strategic military bases or like El Palacio de Miraflores, which is the presidential house. And so everyone was like, all over the place. And then we got all this information that they took Maduro, whatever. And then at that point it was just like, okay, concern, worry, confusion, and then joy because not because the place was bombed by Americans, but because this guy was like, taken away. Who he deserves worse than prison, to be honest. But then concern again, because what are the Americans going to do now? So it was just a lot of different things going on. Like, I think a lot of people, including myself, were just like, paralyzed by all these different emotions. Like, joy, because again, this guy who has done horrible things to the Venezuelan people is now paying for his crime somewhere. But at the same time, fear, because of what is going to happen next. I mean, we're not dumb. We know what the US Is capable of. So it was a little bit of both of those feelings after we knew what had happened. And ever since then, it has been just a struggle because, of course, there's a lot of misinformation going out there. It's been frustrating because I see many of my people's voices being silenced by people on the left. And then also you have a lot of people on the right, like, appropriating our narrative to, like, push their own pro American propaganda, whatever. So it's kind of just like everyone's trying to, like, appropriate or steal our own narrative and suffering for their own gain. And the left and the right are doing both, like, equally.
- [56:17]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [56:18]
Marianne
So it has been kind of frustrating because, I mean, every time I even just try to leave a comment on Instagram or say something, I'm called a fascist, like, Trump supporter, CIA, Mossad agent, whatever. And, you know, it's frustrating to see so many people because most of the people I follow are, like, leftist. Right. But I've unfollowed, like, 70% of the people I used to follow because they started posting, like, pro maduro stuff and talking about how he was so great, whatever. And, you know, it has been very defeating to feel like we don't have anywhere to go to. Nobody is supporting us because again, one side just wants to rob us from our resources and seal narrative to, like, push their own agenda, but then the other side is, like, completely denying or calling us, like, all these horrible things to also steal our narrative. Right. So it has been really frustrating and scary and isolating. Yeah, it has been a lot to the point where I think. I mean, do I even have a place in the world of nobody wants to hear my voice? So it has been very difficult. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very disheartening. But then, yeah, like, that's why I. I told you about the bass player thing recently. It was kind of like a positive thing, like, because one of the good things about that game is that people were finally, like, getting to know us and how we're actually good people. And. And that was kind of like a pick me up after how horrible life has been since January 3rd. So.
- [58:06]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, people obviously, like, undervalue sport, or I think they do. I wrote a book about sport and anti fascism, so I'm kind of predisposed to this position. But, like, these moments of joy are really important. And God knows the world tries to rob us of joy at the Moment. So we should embrace them and enjoy them and not feel like we're, like, obliged to be sad because of all the sadness in our worlds.
- [58:33]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [58:35]
James Stout
I think something you said there, like, struck home with me. Two things, I guess. Let's address the first one. It is fundamentally a colonial impulse to steal someone's narrative and assume that they're incapable of speaking for themselves. So you must speak for them. Right. Like, that is something that I have seen, not just now, but for years, about Venezuela. Right. Like, it must have been really frustrating to see this kind of campus tendency to. To. To literally steal, like, the voice of Venezuelan people and speak on their behalf.
- [59:15]
Marianne
Yeah. That's nothing new, though. I mean, I remember when I was in college, it was kind of the same. Like, there were. I think it was like 2017, there were some protests and. And people were saying all sorts of things. And I remember losing a lot of my friends in college because of that. Because I was saying, like, you know, it's more complicated than that. Like, you know, actually people do dislike this person for this, this and this reason. And, yeah, I remember losing a lot of friends because of that. Even at a mental breakdown. Because it was just like a. Right.
- [59:51]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [59:52]
Marianne
I remember even at one point, I went to, like, a cafe, was one of these, like, half face where people write on the walls, and it said, like, Venezuelans. And I was just like, what a fucking dystopia am I living in? And I also used to work at a front desk, and this guy somehow found out that I was Venezuelan and he started saying, like, oh, Maduro's the best, like, whatever. And my boss had to come in and, like, take the guy away because he was just being really, like, rowdy. Right. So, yeah, it's calm.
- [60:25]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [60:26]
Marianne
In fact, like, when we introduce ourselves, like, we don't say that we're Venezuelan immediately just because it can be dangerous at times.
- [60:35]
James Stout
So, yeah, especially now we have this combination of, like, when we've. We've discussed this, but, like, on the. On the right, Venezuelan people are all perceived to be members of Trend Aragua now and then. Yeah. It's that or you line up behind the regime. And even when those two things, like, they're not as distinct as people, you know, sometimes in their imagination see them, that they're also not as joined as other people in their imagination see them. Yeah. It doesn't give you a place to express your identity. Right. You just have to fit into someone else's box.
- [61:07]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [61:08]
James Stout
Something else you said really struck me, like, there seems to be and again, it's like, it's not distinct from the colonial impulse. Right. I think about the uplift, civilized and Christianized, or the white man's burden, or these, like, notions of, of people who were subject to colonial violence being lesser than or incapable of. And like, one of the things I see is like, the idea that Venezuelan people are not aware of United States imperialism. I lived with Chileans in, in Caracas in, in like the first decade of this century, Right. Like, people were very, extremely aware. Like, I live with people who have been tortured because of, because of United States imperialism. They played me Victor Hara records and then told me how they chopped his hands off. Right. Like, yeah, you're a person on the left. You have an understanding of the world and world politics and you've studied and traveled. But, like, there is a cultural understanding of this. Right. Which does not require one to attend university. Can you explain how people. Because people are weighing. On the one hand, we have this Maduro regime, which is killing people, which is imprisoning people, and which is acting as a fundamental constraint on our autonomy. And on the other hand, we have the Americans dropping bombs and we know what the Americans have done.
- [62:23]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [62:24]
James Stout
To this part of the world. If you could just talk on that a little bit, explain how people live with that balance.
- [62:30]
Marianne
I think it's a combination of multiple things. So first, I mean, for many years, the government horribly mismanaged the country and then blamed the US for everything that went wrong. I mean, there were moments in which we knew and had proof that these problems were coming directly from the regime's actions. And yet so many times they simply lied about it and said that it was the US's fault to the point where many of us were, you know, simply desensitized to the idea of US intervention. It's the case of the boy who cried a wolf, but in this case, it was the dictator who cried intervention.
- [63:06]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [63:07]
Marianne
Second of all, I mean, for many years now, every cent made from our country's resources have gone everywhere except to the people. Our resources have been going to other country, let's say Russia and China, just to name a couple. And yet we, the Venezuelan people, have not seen a single cent of that. So at this point, we're used to being exploited and we're used to being cheated. So when people in the US say, hey, the US only wants to steal your oil, or, hey, like, they're going to exploit your country, it's ignoring the fact that we have already been living through that very same thing for decades. And many believe that our material reality won't be affected just because now it's someone else stealing our resources. If anything, people are willing to see if these new guys, AKA the US might do things differently. Now, whether that's right or not, what it really speaks to, I think is, I guess my final point, which is that people are desperate. Every time a leftist says, oh, your life is about to get so much worse or so bad or whatever, they say that without knowing how bad things have already gotten. I mean, I remember going to school during like the worst parts of the famine and seeing like a skeletal dead body lying on the street. Like that's an image I still have nightmares with. And I mean, for a time I remember someone I knew dying or being killed every single week. The abuse and the torture we've endured at the hands of this regime. I mean, anyone can Google like what's going on in places like Elikoide or La Tumba or any of the other torture centers in the country. I mean, people experience mock and real executions, getting electrocuted like by their genitals, rape, being forced to eat feces, and a whole list of medieval sounding torture methods. And you know, people are truly desperate for a change, any change. And the fact is that the global campus left, or is me and my friends have begun calling them the Imperial Left, has done nothing for us. They've given us no sustainable solution and if anything, have completely sided with our oppressors. So, you know, if Trump comes and says, I recognize this regime is bad and I'm going to do something about it, people are going to take that. And this is what is so frustrating to me is that many of these leftists will go ahead and then criticize Venezuelans for siding with their enemies. But what they don't see is that they have sided with ours and at the end all that does is make life even harder for us. We've gotten so desperate that we've run directly into the hands of vultures because they're the only hands that we've been given. I personally don't love what the US is doing to our country, but I mean, I understand why many Venezuelans have reacted the way that they have. And this is how I can best explain it to those who don't understand it. It's sad, I know it's very sad. And it's hard for people who haven't lived through this to wrap their heads around this level of despair. But it's the simple truth, and it's a hard truth that I think many leftists need to hear and understand. And I say that as someone who is also saddened by this because I want to see a more left leaning future, especially for my country. But I don't think it can happen if people don't start accepting realities like these.
- [67:06]
James Stout
The other thing that gets collapsed a lot I think is the Venezuelan opposition position.
- [67:10]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [67:11]
James Stout
Like it is always amusing to see, like I myself, I'm not a communist. Right. I'm not, not, not a state communist anyway. And I've seen like the Venezuelan Communist Party and the Communist Youth of Venezuela, like they'll put out a thing being like we support opposition and then you'll see people being like, oh no, we're communists. But like, like American communists who don't speak Spanish, like are engaging with them. It's, it's very funny to see that in their mind all opposition in Venezuela is of the right wing MCM tendency. There are many very valid reasons why people on the left would be opposed to what's happening. Does it feel particularly isolating to be of the left and at the same time have this constant assumption that to be in opposition you have to be of the right?
- [68:00]
Marianne
It feels isolating when it comes to dealing with non Venezuelans, but when it comes to dealing with Venezuelans, not really. Pretty much all of my friends, I mean as a queer artist, like most of my friends are also like pretty left leaning.
- [68:17]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [68:17]
Marianne
You have different kinds of people on the left. Right. But, but yeah, like when it comes to my Venezuelan friends, it is not isolating at all.
- [68:26]
James Stout
Right.
- [68:26]
Marianne
Because precisely we already know what's going on. You know, we know that the, that the opposition isn't just like a right wing thing. Yeah. I don't know. It doesn't feel isolating because we know the, the political diversity that exists. Right.
- [68:41]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [68:42]
Marianne
And so you just kind of have to find your tribe and it exists. Again, we're a country where people have all different sorts of opinions. And so, you know, between my Venezuelan friends it seems pretty. What's the opposite of isolating?
- [68:56]
James Stout
Yeah, like inclusive, I guess.
- [68:58]
Marianne
Yeah. But when it comes to dealing with my non Venezuelan friends, that's when it gets isolating because there's just not an understanding. Like they just don't seem to understand. No matter how much I try to break it down to them or how much I try to explain to them I have been successful and many of my good friends who are like leftists, most of them are anarchists.
- [69:22]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [69:23]
Marianne
But when I do try to explain it to them, they do seem to understand because they know who I am. And, and they know that I'm not like, you know, bullshitting them. But. Yeah, but again, that doesn't mean, like I told you earlier, I have lost many, many friends and, you know, have had to unfollow many people. Like, I don't feel welcome in all, like, leftists or even queer spaces sometimes because of what I think, which is, you know, a free Venezuela isn't just free from imperialism, but also free from dictatorship. It's free from both.
- [69:57]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [69:58]
Garrison Davis
It shouldn't be controversial, but that is
- [70:02]
Marianne
something that most of my Venezuelan friends like, they completely agree because similar to me, but my non Venezuelan friends, or ex friends, as I should say, they just don't understand that at all.
- [70:15]
James Stout
So it's always interesting. Like, you know, I spent a good deal of time with Venezuelan people coming to the United States or who have recently arrived in the United States. And it's funny to see how people represent their operation to Maduro. Like, because at first I'll be like, oh, this guy's an American. So they're like, oh, be great. The Americans came to liberate us. And like, you know, what a wonderful country. And then like, you, once people begin to feel comfortable and safe with you and you talk more, everybody knows we don't have it all figured out either. Everybody knows the history. Right. Like, and then people, yes, of course, have a wide and varied range of things that they would love to see in Venezuela, but they are united behind seeing an end to dictatorship and.
- [70:55]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [70:56]
James Stout
And state violence.
- [70:57]
Marianne
Yeah, no, and, and I think that's honestly kind of like a beautiful thing where, you know, in spite of our differences, because I may have differences with other people who may be moderates or right wing or whatever, but we've all united against this, like, bigger evil. And I think that's something that I wish actually the US could learn about. Right. Putting their differences aside to actually like tackle that bigger evil. I think that's something the US should learn about us. How we've been able to do that, how, you know, we can all say, you know, we may not agree on how certain things are done, but we all agree on what needs to be done, which is, yeah. You know, like getting rid of this regime. Right. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's actually pretty, pretty cool. And although it's not always easy because again, like, you have, like in any country, we have all sorts of different opinions going on. It is really nice to see everyone united for one thing and one reason, and that's really the important thing. So. So, you know, I. I wish other countries could maybe learn a little bit about that too.
- [72:09]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [72:09]
James Stout
Like, the left in this country could learn a lot from the way that, like. Yeah. A vast variety of left organizations in Venezuela have managed to unite with organizations that are more centrist or straight up on the right.
- [72:26]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [72:26]
James Stout
To achieve at least one goal with the understanding that they still retain disagreements that are profound about other things.
- [72:36]
Marianne
Exactly.
- [72:37]
James Stout
That's something we could learn a lot from. And, like, I'm always kind of in awe of the capacity for solidarity that I see especially for Venezuelan people. Like, and I think it comes from, in part, like, decades of dictatorship and. And of hardship more generally. Right. But like, of the continuous resolve that I've seen to get through it together rather than for each person to get their own and sort of leave the rest behind.
- [73:04]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [73:04]
James Stout
It's remarkable. Genuinely, like, seeing again, like, a lot of my experience, I have not been in. In caracas for probably 15 years, maybe longer, is seeing people in the diaspora and migrants, but, like, people who have grown so used to the state ironically failing to provide the basic necessities of life that they've got used to just obtaining them for and from each other. Like, even if those people are not anarchists, they're probably doing more mutual aid than people who spend a lot of their time being anarchists on the Internet.
- [73:36]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [73:37]
James Stout
Like, that's a beautiful thing that we should be in awe of, rather than invalidating, as so many people on the left are.
- [73:45]
Marianne
And I think that's something that really starts with our own crisis, because I remember at the height of the famine, right. I mean, I'm speaking maybe like 2013, 14 around time. Because by 2017, when there was like, another big, like, famine going on, I was not in Venezuela, actually. But I remember when that was happening, like, it was very common. Like, hey, so in my backyard we had plantain and our neighbor had avocado. So you. We would, like, exchange things. Somebody needed anything, like if somebody's grandmother needed, like, this medication that can only be found in, like, this one place in Caracas. Like, but then I didn't have gas, but maybe, like, my cousin had gas so that we could drive to Caracas. Like, so that's kind of how it worked back there. Like, we had that solidarity towards each other. And I think, obviously, if we go abroad, we're going to continue showing that same. Yeah, like, that same attitude, because it's just, like, part of who we are, I guess.
- [74:48]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [74:48]
James Stout
It just seems to be very much like, part of the character of community. It's even like, when I was there, you know, a decade before that. Quite a decade. Anyway, sometime before that, like, it's funny, I went to this place where they're having, like, a revolution which was extremely grounded in state power, and came out realizing that the state is not the vehicle for human liberation and other people are. I just. I just find this. This impulse on the left to invalidate and, like, therefore refuse to learn from Venezuelan people. So frustrating is like, a mild phrase. But, like, what can people do? Right. Like, we're in a situation now where we have, like, Maduro without Maduro. Right. We have Delsey doing, like, tweeting how much he likes Donald Trump all the time. We are at the worst of all possible outcomes, really. Right. We still have this apparatus for repression, but at the same time, the US Is basically engaged in a colonial relationship of extraction of resources and anything else it wants from Venezuela. Like, how can people better be in solidarity instead of trying to force you all into one box or another box.
- [75:53]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [75:54]
James Stout
If we assume most of our audience is in Europe or the United States. Right. And they. Yeah, there haven't been big, like, we're in solidarity with the Venezuelan anarchists or even the Venezuelan socialists or communists who are opposed to Maduro or to Delsey.
- [76:08]
Marianne
Now, for non Venezuelans, I think the key thing is to speak about this from a complete perspective, a whole perspective, because what's the issue? And I can tell you personally, sometimes I see, I don't know, like, anti imperialists, you know, US get out of Venezuela protest. And I would love to join because I want the US out of my country. But then I see them with pro Maduro signs or just like, free Maduro or, you know, talking positively about the regime, and then I'm like, actually, I'm not going to participate in that.
- [76:47]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [76:48]
Marianne
So, you know, you're actively excluding Venezuelan voices by doing these kinds of unilateral thing. And what do I mean by unilateral? So I understand that many, let's say Western non Venezuelans are speaking and looking at things from their own perspective, which is, Trump is a bad guy. He's not going to do anything positive. We know the history of the US and so they are, from their own perspective, they see what their bad guy is doing. Right?
- [77:20]
James Stout
Right. Yeah.
- [77:22]
Marianne
From the Venezuelan perspective, we also see what our bad guy is doing.
- [77:27]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [77:27]
Marianne
Like we're speaking up about this particular bad guy more than what we are about Trump, the other bad guy.
- [77:33]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [77:34]
Marianne
So it's kind of like we have two different perspectives here. And Both are looking at their own. Right. And so the issue here is that those two perspectives are not combined. Right. So I would say the first thing you need to understand is that, you know, I understand why you're looking at things from your own perspective, but you also have to include Venezuelan perspectives in your activism in order for them to actually be productive towards the Venezuelan people. Right. Because when you say, you know, free Maduro and you know, us get out of Venezuela, you're still not addressing the necessities of the Venezuelan people.
- [78:21]
James Stout
Yes.
- [78:22]
Marianne
Right. Which is we need to get out of the regime. Sure. Like one of those necessities is the US Getting the fuck out of there.
- [78:28]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [78:29]
Marianne
But you're not addressing the main issue that has plagued us for the past 30 years. Right, right. So when you're not doing that, and that's the dangerous thing about, you know, conversations like that of Venezuela or Cuba or even Iran as well, when you speak about things from one specific perspective, when you omit one side, you're making it seem like the other side is better. When it should be abundantly clear that both the US and Maduro need to be out in order for Venezuela to actually be free. Right. So I think it's key, it is very necessary that when we have these like, free Venezuela protests, it's not just about the US but it's also protesting the Maduro regime.
- [79:19]
James Stout
Right.
- [79:19]
Marianne
Because otherwise what you're going to do is you're going to exclude many people who also want the US to back off from your own protests. Right. And if, you know, it's. It gets even worse because I've seen Venezuelan activists actually getting, you know, pushed out of conversations on Venezuela because they're talking about, you know, what I'm telling you right now.
- [79:43]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [79:44]
Marianne
Right. So they're talking about what the regime has done and maybe focusing on the regime while also mentioning that the US should like, you know, they know US history, but they're focusing on the Venezuelan perspective because as a Venezuelan, that's what you want to bring into the conversation.
- [79:58]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [79:59]
Marianne
Right. Like non Venezuelans can go ahead and out of that, you know, anti imperialist part of the conversation or, you know, perspective to the conversation. But they do need to make space for the Venezuelans who also need to speak out of the regime. Right. So it needs to be a combination of both. And in your advocacy, you have to include both at the same time always. Because again, if you don't speak about one, then you're sort of like portraying the other one is like the good side. Right?
- [80:27]
James Stout
Yes.
- [80:28]
Marianne
And what that does is that that continues to isolate Venezuelans, I mean, including myself. Like I said, I can't even go to a Free Venezuela protest because I'm never going to be next to somebody chanting Free Maduro.
- [80:41]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [80:41]
Marianne
So that's like the key thing the leftists, like non Venezuelan leftists, need to understand.
- [80:48]
James Stout
Yeah. I think a lot about how people on the left, for some reason, and this is particularly odd with the fact that we have lived through a genocide in Gaza for two and a half years, that people seem to only be able to understand solidarity with states and not with people. And we have the Palestinians. Right. A stateless nation. People seem to understand that there to an extent. Right. Albeit that for many people, Palestinian statehood is a solution to the problem. It just seems to be such a condemnation of the organizing on much of the left that people cannot. I mean, this is my general frustration with the world. Well, one of them. They can't think outside of the state model. They cannot conceive of an alternative that does not already exist.
- [81:41]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [81:42]
James Stout
Even though there are movements outside of the state.
- [81:44]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [81:45]
James Stout
Like the Kurdish struggle in northeast Syria, for example, is one. But, like, I don't know, like, we should be able to. To dream of a better world or a beautiful life. And it. It seems like so many people have forgotten that that's what being on the left is about. And they identify as revolutionaries, but they're extremely reactionary.
- [82:06]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [82:06]
James Stout
In their politics and their goals. Like.
- [82:09]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [82:10]
James Stout
It must be so strange to come from. I don't know how old you were. When do you remember? Like, very early Chavismo.
- [82:17]
Marianne
I remember parts of it is like a memory. So I was born in 97. So early Chavismo was like a fever dream. I remember, you know, during, like, the Paro Petrolero and all that.
- [82:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [82:32]
Marianne
I would, like, go outside of, like, my apartments, like, or, like, go to my window. Like, we used to live in a building and we would, like, take out pots and, like, casseroles and start banging.
- [82:42]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [82:42]
Marianne
And everyone. And that was like, my favorite part of the day because I, as a kid didn't really understand that it was a protest, but I loved banging on things, so I remember that. I remember, like, my parents not being able to find certain things that maybe in the past they could find. I remember, like, at some points, like, not being able to go to school because, like, there was something happening. This is like a really Venezuelan thing. But I remember thinking, I hope there's another coup so that I don't have to go to school tomorrow.
- [83:15]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The kids here with snow days.
- [83:18]
Marianne
So that's kind of like what I remember of early Chavismo. I also remember as well, sort of seeing the division. And that, to me is like the biggest, most impactful memory. Right. The division that existed. So on my family, I remember just for context, like, yeah, part of my family. Half of my family is like middle class. And the other half of my family was working class, like, you know, brown working class from the coast. Right. So shout out to marijuana. So, you know, it was like different realities, different necessities. I remember both sides of the family arguing a lot. Like, there was a lot of division.
- [84:00]
James Stout
Okay.
- [84:00]
Marianne
Very similar to what's going on in the US Right now in terms of division. Right?
- [84:05]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [84:06]
Marianne
Where there were, like, heated arguments, people did not speak to each other, people hated each other because of, you know, like, part of my family was Chavista. The other part was opposition. Whatever. Like, it was. That was one of the biggest things that I remember was, like, half of my family hating the other half of my family because they had different backgrounds and different political stances. So. So, yeah, that was a big thing as well as the fanaticism. Right. That existed especially.
- [84:35]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [84:37]
Marianne
I mean, I remember my grandmother had like, a poster of Chavez and like, like a figurines, and she dyed her hair red because she supported the regime. Whatever.
- [84:47]
Robert Evans
So.
- [84:48]
Marianne
So that's one of the things I remember the most is my family, both sides, like, hating each other because of their. And. And it's something that I'm seeing in the US right now a lot. And. And it think it. It's operating in a very similar fashion.
- [85:04]
James Stout
Yeah, it does seem to be. And, like, did your family reconcile at some point or do you still have people who are like, die hard?
- [85:12]
Marianne
No. So, for example, my grandmother that I told you about.
- [85:16]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [85:17]
Marianne
She says that she's still. But she's not Madurist.
- [85:20]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, I've heard this stunt, too. Yeah, yeah.
- [85:23]
Marianne
Which is like, you know, she supports, like, what the revolution initially meant, but, like, she doesn't support Maduro. Right.
- [85:31]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [85:31]
Marianne
Or, for example, like her husband, my grandfather, he's just like, you know, this revolution was all bullshit. We thought that this was going to be good, but they ended up being absolute traitors. Like, you know, they ended up not doing what they promised to do. Right. So it was all just disappointment. And the other side of my family is just like, chill. I don't know, like, they were just never Chavista. So that's kind of. But they are, like, strong environmentalists. So that's why they kind of hated Chavez, because they were also doing some crazy shit in the Amazons. So it's kind of like they do all get along much better. Right? So that's good. Yeah, I guess, because, like, one side realized, oh, actually this guy was not that good. Right. But that particular side of my family, that was Chavista. That's how they think right now, where it's like, either it was disappointment or that perspective of, you know, I support Chavez, but not Maduro.
- [86:29]
James Stout
I've heard that from a lot of people, right? Like, Hugo Chavez wanted to make Venezuela better for us. And, like, if we just look at the shit he said, yeah, I want people to have enough to eat. I want them to have education, I want them to be able to go to the hospital, I want them to have safe houses. Like, I want all those things, too. They didn't get those things. But, like, I've heard a lot of people say that, like. Well, yeah, we. We wanted it, too, so we supported it, but it wasn't. We didn't get that. We got prisons and cops.
- [86:57]
Marianne
Exactly.
- [86:58]
James Stout
And, like, that stance seems to be entirely absent in any discussion of Venezuela, which is. It's so common. It, like, you just don't hear the. Like, that. It's not like a left critique from other left stances. It's a left critique from the same place that Chavismo claimed to come from. And it's completely absent in our discourse. And, like, I can't. Well, it's because we don't talk to people from Venezuela.
- [87:25]
Marianne
But, yeah.
- [87:26]
James Stout
Yes, it's extremely frustrating. And I think, like, there's a lot that the United States can learn because we're already seeing large numbers of people being like, oh, yeah, I voted for Trump 1, 2, 3 times, and now something has alienated them. Right? Whether it's mass deportations, whether it's a war with Iran, whether it's the economy being shit, whatever it is, like, we need to learn how to allow people to change their minds or, like, to get better. Like, the Venezuelan opposition wouldn't be what it was if they said, anybody who supported Chavez at any point can off. We don't want you. Right. Like, yeah, it's. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't function. And I think if we would listen to people, there's so much we could learn from that. But we seem so locked in on talking down to them instead that.
- [88:25]
Marianne
Yeah, I mean, exactly. That's what I mean by, like, it reminds me of that, like, division, you know, it's almost like rap. Like, people are foaming at the mouth. Like, that's kind of like the level of division that I remember growing up in. And to be honest, a lot of what's going on in the US Is eerily similar to what I grew up seeing. I think both Trump and Chavez are very similar kinds of people. And, you know, I used to live in the US Now I live in Europe. But that's one of the reasons I decided to leave, because I saw many similarities to what happened in my country, and I decided to just skedaddle as soon as I could because I sort of knew where it was all going. But I knew where it was all going because of what I already lived through. There was actually one more thing that I. I'm thinking about it, that it didn't get a chance. But you mentioned Palestine. I think it's. It's really interesting because the school that I went to, actually Venezuela has a really big population of Middle Eastern people, among them Palestinians. There was a Palestinian club in my hometown. And I remember during. Was it like 2012, 2014? Again, this was years ago, but 2012, maybe 2014, at some point there were protests. La Jordan bus, if you know them.
- [89:56]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [89:57]
Marianne
During Las Guarimbas, there were protests for Venezuela, whatever. And I remember that I. I had many Palestinian, like, Palestinian Venezuelan classmates, and they were protesting both. Right. So they had Palestinian flags and they had Venezuelano flags, and they were protesting for both peoples. So, yeah, you know, that's like an example whenever people say, like, try to divide and, you know, say, like, oh, like the Maduro is like, pro Palestine, whatever. I think of my friends in school where they were like, no, actually we're Palestinian Venezuelans, and we don't like what's going on in either place.
- [90:36]
Mia Wong
So.
- [90:37]
Marianne
Because we do have a very big Middle Eastern population, again, many Palestinians, many Lebanese people who are not unaware of what has been going on in the Middle East. Right. So that's also something to be added to the conversation is, you know, when we talk about these things, like, they're not isolated. And precisely because we're not isolated, that's why we should, like you said, like, be more in support of the people rather than the States.
- [91:02]
James Stout
Right. Yeah.
- [91:03]
Marianne
Wanted to bring up, like, that little bit of, like, that little memory that I had, because I just remember the image of it of my friends doing that.
- [91:12]
James Stout
Yeah, it's very similar in a sense, I guess, to, like. I think a lot about how the Assad regime used Palestinian people. Right. Like, it would constantly talk about fucking Solidarity with Palestine. And it had all these tanks and all these guns and all these planes and bombs and it turned them all on its own people.
- [91:30]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [91:30]
James Stout
It didn't use its state power to liberate Palestine. It would have been destroyed by the IDF if it did, I imagine. But it used its state power to kill its own people.
- [91:41]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [91:41]
James Stout
It is so frustrating that we, we saw that happen. And the world still allows people to tokenize the Palestinian people. Right. And to, to use them as a shield, definitely. Against the oppression of their own people. I think a lot of people will be thinking or listening and being like, oh, well, I haven't really heard from Venezuelan voices, or they might not know any people from Venezuel. Where can people do more to listen if they want to, as they, like, approach this issue in so much as people are still approaching it because half the US media has forgotten about Venezuela already.
- [92:18]
Marianne
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot going on for sure.
- [92:22]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [92:22]
Marianne
But I want to say, like, this might be a little bit annoying, but. Learn Spanish. Right. If you're going to advocate for a specific group of people, at least learn the language, you know, so that you actually know what people are talking about. Right. Not everybody speaks English. Not everybody's going to speak your language. So if you're actually going to take advocacy for Venezuela seriously, then you should learn the language straight up so that you. It's easier for you to get into these conversations, see what local activists are saying, see what the news are saying, like, see even what our leaders are saying. Right. So I think that's one of the first things, I think another thing, I mean, there are some, like, English language Instagram accounts who are like, post things.
- [93:08]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [93:08]
Marianne
But I think the biggest thing is to be for the people. And what do I mean by that? Everyone wants to claim that they are for the people, but very few people actually are for the people. Right. So what happens is they might hear like, I don't know, a Venezuelan person saying, oh, thank you, USA for taking out Maduro. Do whatever you want, whatever. They might hear, like the typical magazolanos, you know.
- [93:38]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [93:39]
Marianne
And you might hear all of these, like, perspectives that are really coming from not a place of them being fascists or whatever, but coming from a trauma. So I think that if you want to inform yourself, you need to develop the. The ability to think critically about what's going on and be able to understand who are these people and why do they have this perspective. Right. So they have this perspective not because they were slave owners back in Venezuela, not Because they are white. Some of them are not white. It's not because they are, like, pro fascism or they necessarily love the US Right. But it's coming from a place of trauma. And why do they have that trauma? Well, they have that trauma because all of the abuses that were committed, like, to the Venezuelan people were on behalf of this quote, unquote, socialism. Right. So they were committed in the name of the left, whatever. So that's why all of a sudden they claim to be very right wing. Although if you speak to them, you might ask them, well, what do you want to see in your country? And you're like, well, this doesn't sound very pro capitalism to me. But I guess the ability to understand these people instead of calling them, like, CIA agents, fascists, like, they're stupid, they're idiots, don't listen to them. The Diaspora is just full of, like, Mossad agents, whatever you want to call them. Right. Like, I've seen every. In the book, like, any excuse in the book, like, to not listen to these people.
- [95:08]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [95:08]
Marianne
But I think the solution is to listen to these people and try to understand and again, think critically. Okay, well, I understand that maybe what they are saying is not necessarily great because I also understand that the U.S. you know, has done this, this and this, and that they are coming from a place of trauma, that perhaps they do know what the US Is history. But again, they're just desperate. But let's get to the bottom of this. What is their root concern? The crisis in Venezuela. Right. So why do they have all of these, like, crazy ideas? Why are they so crazy? So, because of everything that they've endured in Venezuela. So don't try to focus on, like, the shallow part of it all. Like, try to go to the deeper end, and that way you will truly understand what is going on. Right. Not to ignore these people or just, like, dismiss them as A, B or C, like CIA, fascist, whatever. They're not fascists. They're just people who are traumatized. And it's really important for you to understand their trauma in order to address the issues that actually concern them and to actually have communication with these people and include them in your advocacy. And who knows, maybe you'll be able to convert some to your side too. Right. Which I think that's been one of the most critical mistakes that many people on the left have made is that, you know, we have all these Venezuelans who, again, claim to be right wing. And I'll get to a second why I say they claim to be.
- [96:37]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [96:37]
Marianne
But they claim to be right wings. And again, it's not just because of the Maduro, Maduro and Chavez regime. It's not just because all of the abuses committed to them were in the name of socialism, but it is also because the international left has reacted so negatively towards our cause that, you know, many Venezuelans decided to say, hey, you know what, I'm right wing or I'm moderate, or, you know what, I love the US now because all of the people who are anti west are pro the regime that is killing my people.
- [97:08]
James Stout
Right, right.
- [97:09]
Marianne
So what's that? What that is doing is like actually pushing these people even further. When you call, you know, these like, magazolanos, because they are. When you call them like fascists or whatever or CIA, you're just pushing them even further. And at the end, that sucks, like, for us, because then we're going to be the ones who are going to be politically confused. And God knows that's going to lead us to some in crazy places. Right?
- [97:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [97:33]
Marianne
So I think the first thing is actually having empathy towards people and using your ability to think critically and hearing people out who maybe you were told not to listen to and thinking, okay, well, I don't agree with what you're saying on the surface, but I understand what your root concern is. Therefore, I think we should talk about this. And I can understand that in order to inform myself what is truly happening to these people that are making them believe these crazy things, like Trump is save us. Right.
- [98:08]
James Stout
Yeah. I think that's like, really important to remember that you might come across some of Venezuelan who might be advocating for or someone from Iran or someone from one of these other places who might be, like, advocating for intervention.
- [98:19]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [98:20]
James Stout
And like, it's not really important not to be like, okay, this person goes in the maga box for me. Because, like, there are Venezuelan people who are going to go in that box.
- [98:29]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [98:29]
James Stout
But, like, we have a good deal of people who, like, they're obviously not going to be opposed to migration if they themselves are migrants.
- [98:35]
Marianne
Exactly.
- [98:36]
James Stout
That doesn't always apply. There's a famous video of the Turkish guy complaining about migrants as he enters the United States.
- [98:43]
Marianne
Like, oh, yeah, I mean, of course. But I get what you're trying to say.
- [98:46]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Like there are people who, whose views on, like, the world and the way it should be might not be that different from yours. And like, we only find out by engaging with each other in good faith and like, as people, not as tropes.
- [98:59]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [99:00]
James Stout
Which I think is a huge part of the problem. I Do think the language barrier is an issue. So many people on the left want to talk about places but not talk to the people and can't.
- [99:12]
Marianne
Yeah.
- [99:12]
James Stout
And then we only see a small subset of discourse translated into English.
- [99:17]
Marianne
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I mean by like, you know, everyone wants to be for the people, but very few people actually are because being for the people takes a lot of effort because you need to learn languages, you need to visit places, you need to talk to people who you might on the surface disagree with. You might have to think about what they tell you in order to come to a conclusion yourself about what's actually going on and how you can actually support these people while not compromising your own beliefs and your own knowledge and experiences. Right. So that takes a lot of work. So that's what I meant by that. Like very few for the people in that sense, where they engage and actually go and, and try to talk to us. And I think that's the best way of being informed of any issue is just talking to the people. But it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work.
- [100:06]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what solidarity is like. It's putting in the work to take care of each other.
- [100:12]
Marianne
Exactly.
- [100:12]
James Stout
It's been a failure of the non campus left that we have not done more, we have not reached out to more people in Venezuela that we've not like used our platforms, that we've not shared their voices, that we haven't done more to push back on this idea that like the only options for Venezuela and neoliberal, neo imperialism or maybe neoliberalism is what we're doing anymore, but American imperialism or like this anti imperialism of idiots. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Do you like people to find you on the Internet or some other stuff you'd like to direct people to maybe? So they can call you a Mossad or CIA or whatever.
- [100:53]
Marianne
Yeah, you can find me on my Instagram account. It's e.m.a r I n. Okay, so just like my name deconstructed.
- [101:04]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [101:06]
Marianne
I can send it to you later.
- [101:08]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [101:09]
Marianne
Trying to think of like what else to say, but I mean. Yeah, like going back a little bit. I just wanted to clarify this because I brought up a few times, but what I was saying, you know, like looking at these magasolanos and what I mean by like they're quote unquote, right. They're not actually right wing. Like if you speak to them and there's a really Good video that this guy made. But it's in Spanish talking about this. But what I mean is, many people who are magasolanos, you ask them, what do you want to see in Venezuela? And what they want is affordable housing, affordable health care, clean water, proper environmental policies. They don't want any more abuses committed to the indigenous communities, particularly those in the Ar Cominero de Lourinoco. So you ask these people what they want, and this is what they want.
- [102:03]
James Stout
Right.
- [102:04]
Marianne
So when they just say that they're right wing, they say that they're right wing simply because they are traumatized from, you know, this apparently socialist regime, which was anything but. And people on the left sort of, you know, just supporting that regime and isolating them and. And treating them like absolute crap. So they're traumatized by both of those things, and that's why they claim to be in this position. But if you actually talk to them, that is not the case. Yeah, keep that in mind. Because it's funny to me when many people say, oh, you guys just believe propaganda. That's why you're pro Trump and that's why you're right wing, because you consumed the CIA propaganda. You guys are blinded by propaganda, when in reality, what that doing is, that is taking away the accountability that many on the left should maybe, you know, maybe think about. Because it hasn't just been CIA propaganda. Like, it's also just leftists acting like. Like that's something that has also pushed many Venezuelans away from the left 100%. It's not just the CIA spreading propaganda. It's also that the left has acted horribly with Venezuelans and that has also pushed people away. And I think if we're able to solve that issue, if I think of the left is able to see Venezuelans as human beings and to have a different approach, such as with what we've talked about earlier, I think we're going to be able to have a better conversation and have a better relationship between these two communities and actually get somewhere productive. But I just wanted to bring that up because I am so tired of seeing people saying it's all CIA propaganda and not really thinking, well, actually, we have also done some pretty bad things, and that's why these people kind of have taken a dislike to us. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Like, in conclusion, just hear, Hear us out. We're human, and we're not the perfect victims. We. We're not a monolith. We. We're human.
- [104:12]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [104:13]
Marianne
So we should be spoken to as humans. And thought about as humans, not as some chess piece in this political game. Just include us into the conversation, I think is the most important thing anyone listening to this should takeaway.
- [104:31]
James Stout
Yeah. And that's a really good place to end. Thank you so much for sharing some of that time with us.
- [104:36]
Marianne
No, thank you so much for giving me the space to talk. I mean, it's, it's very necessary, as you might imagine, for our voices to be heard and be put out there. Because I'm lucky enough to be multilingual. I, I try to do my best and, and speak in other languages so other people understand what's going on in our minds and in our communities. So I am very grateful that you're able to have me here and to actually listen. It's not something many people do, so I really do value it.
- [105:10]
James Stout
Great. Thank you. That's great. Foreign.
- [105:29]
Molly Conger
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today by a very special guest, Michael Edison Hayden.
- [105:36]
James Stout
Hi.
- [105:36]
Michael Edison Hayden
How's it going?
- [105:37]
Molly Conger
Thanks for being here. You may know Mike from his work as an investigative journalist and an expert on far right extremism. He currently co hosts Posting Through It, a weekly news podcast with fellow veteran of the far right beat, Jared Holt. But today we're talking about his new book, Strange People on the How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town. It comes out April 7, 2026. But you can go ahead and pre order it now anywhere you buy books, and make sure you ask for it at your local library and your local independent bookstore. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I'm excited to talk about this.
- [106:10]
Michael Edison Hayden
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [106:12]
Molly Conger
Yeah, I was worried that I wasn't gonna have time to, like, read the whole book. I mean, you talk about this a lot in the book. Right. The stresses of covering this beat. But I sat down to read it and I read it in one sitting. It is very compelling.
- [106:22]
Michael Edison Hayden
Wow.
- [106:23]
Molly Conger
But it's not the book I thought it was, you know, so when your publicist sent this to me, I thought, oh, phenomenal. This is a book about Peter Brimlow and the racism castle in West Virginia. I would love to read a book about Peter Brimlow and the racism castle. And it's not really, is it like the Brimlows are the strange people on the hill and they sort of stay on the hill. Right. You have a couple of encounters with them in the book, but for the most part, it's a book about the town.
- [106:50]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [106:51]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [106:51]
Michael Edison Hayden
It's about the town. And I'm glad that you mentioned that. I really didn't want to write a book that was about these villains that have been, you know, populating our culture for the last 10 plus years that just seem to get unlimited traction on social media. There's nothing wrong with talking about them and there's nothing wrong or certainly reporting on them because I did my share of that, you know, day in and day out when I was with splc, for instance. I think that all that is important and there's different ways to do it and do it effectively. But I think for a book I wanted to focus more on what these people and this culture that is surrounding them is doing to everyday people.
- [107:36]
Molly Conger
Yeah, I was just, I was so startled by, by what it wasn't and then so engrossed by what it was. But just quickly, for the listeners, tell us what the book is not about. Tell us who Peter Brimlow is and V dare and how they ended up with a castle.
- [107:49]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, well, it's not totally without him. I mean, there we, we do, we do get a bit of information about him. Yeah, we meet him. Peter kind of came up as a financial reporter. That's the short way of understanding how he became America's most influential white nationalist. That's what SPLC labeled him, which is covered obviously in the book. And he became obsessed with immigration and in particular Hart Cellar, which brought in tons of people from the developing world. My mother came to the country in 68, for example. That was like a, you know, three years after Hart Cellar. And I wouldn't have been born if, if not. Right. She married a white guy and et cetera, et cetera. She came from Egypt. So you became obsessed with this and kind of in the way that I, I know, you know a lot about these, the way some of these minds work, Molly, but in the way that some people get obsessed with environmentalism and then they kind of expand that concern to sort of say, well, there's too many people. Right? There's too many people. There's too many people. Well, there's too many brown people. You know, that's what's destroying the environment. And then they become, you know, sort of white nationalist minded or anti immigrant minded. In Brimble's case, I really think it was like a financial thing. Just like this is putting all these different strains and whatever. And then it became the financial became less of a concern and the actual anti immigrant thing became bigger and bigger for him. In 1995 he publishes Alienation, which is a book that was actually praised by people like David Frum, you know, the very same guy who's high hatting about Trump every day. It was considered socially acceptable. And then over time, I think people realized that the book had a very racist undercurrent and it became beloved by neo Nazis, white nationalists, et cetera.
- [109:42]
Molly Conger
I think if people like David Frum had been honest with themselves, it was there all along. It was not a subtle undercurrent.
- [109:48]
Michael Edison Hayden
Fun aside about David Frum, which is that I did put it in the investigation into Stephen Miller's private emails. Miller shared posts by from on more than one occasion about, like, sort of anti Islam posts, which I think is interesting.
- [110:03]
Molly Conger
I think what these people disagree most about is how loud you're supposed to say the quiet part.
- [110:08]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, no, I think. I really do think that that's true. So when Peter became more of a contentious figure, he founded Vidir, which is a nonprofit that lasted for about a quarter century.
- [110:22]
Molly Conger
Recently died.
- [110:23]
Michael Edison Hayden
Recently dead. Well, that's covered in the book. It dies over the course of the narrative. And it was hugely influential, hugely influential in changing the gop. And at the time when W. Bush was president, Brimlow was railing against the GOP to change, to move in this nativist direction. And eventually they listened to him.
- [110:45]
Molly Conger
And so the book sort of starts with 2019. Right. And Peter and his wife, Lydia Brimlow, have purchased this gigantic castle in the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Right. I guess it's not gigantic. It's a medium sized castle. I don't know what the scale for castles is. And so you become interested in their purchase of this castle, and you go to this town and you meet the people of Berkeley Springs, the people who are indifferent to their presence, the people who are organizing against their presence. And it's this really sort of engrossing story of just small town drama, this interpersonal drama of these, like, small business owners. And the castle is always there in the background. Right. The strange people are up on the hill. But it's a story about this small town struggle.
- [111:32]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. I think we should just talk about the castle real quick because it's beautiful. And I think that's a key thing. I hope when you read it, you were like, oh, I want to go to Berkeley Springs now. Which is. I've had more than one person who read the book tell me that I'm
- [111:46]
Molly Conger
gonna wait till they leave.
- [111:48]
Michael Edison Hayden
I've also heard that too. But, you know, I know the people who are there who despise the Brimlows and Their ideology. And I wanted to make sure that they didn't feel let down by the book, that they felt like, at least honored to a degree, because I really want them to be able to recover their business. Their business have suffered since the Brimlows took over. But just a quick thing on this castle. It is absolutely beautiful. It should be like a national park or something. It has that feel. It was built in 1880 by a guy named Samuel Taylor Suit, who made it for a very, very young. A young girl. I think she's like 17 or something like that.
- [112:27]
Molly Conger
It's fitting that Brimlow bought it for his much younger wife.
- [112:30]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yes, that's true. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, spiritual kind of woo woo stuff in Berkeley Springs. And there's a lot of, you know, superstition. And a lot of people really think that they are carrying on, like, some sort of ghost like, thing, like, carryover from this relationship. But he made the castle for her and he died, and she took over and went bankrupt. And there was also, allegedly, a murder or something like that that took place there. And then there's like this kind of turnover from people, one generation to the next, trying to keep the castle going. It's always more expensive than it's worth. It's beautiful. It overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny, gorgeous, looks like a great place to go on vacation. And if you imagine, like, for Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Times Square rolled into one, that's what the castle is. It's so tiny. And this is the main landmark. This is the thing that everybody goes to, and they go hiking around there and all this stuff. So this is a tourist town that attracts a lot of LGBTQ people from places like Washington, dc, Baltimore, a lot of liberals. And all of a sudden you have this, again, splc, labeled white nationalist, anti immigrant, nativist, whatever you want to call them, couple buys this castle, right? They decide to buy it. And the way they found it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is 37 years younger than Peter herself and started with him when she was 20 or something like that, and he was nearly 60, right?
- [113:59]
Molly Conger
She was an intern at the Heritage foundation when they met. Intriguing.
- [114:03]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. At Heritage, Ed. It's interesting. Weird. In any case, she finds it on Zillow. And you remember this period very well. I know. But in 2018 or so, it became very, very difficult for these folks to stage events, right.
- [114:22]
Molly Conger
For, you know, for unknown reasons. It's not because they kept killing people.
- [114:27]
Michael Edison Hayden
I don't want to, like, Derail this podcast by bringing up Jason Kessler. But Jason Kessler, who we both know very well, who is, who secured the permit for the Unite the Right event, who has been at different times obsessed with both of us. I think we're like in his top oppo list. Jason was readily associated with Vidair because of his contributions to the site. And people knew that. And that may put even more pressure because they're like, well, this Charlottesville guy, right, the Unite the Right guy is a savior. So Vidr couldn't stage any events. They were very worried about counter demonstrators. I think that the counter demonstrators from that first MAGA era really put the fear of God in some of these people. They were scared shitless of anti racist, anti fascist. And all of a sudden you got a castle on Zillow a million point four and it's got stone walls all over it and hey, we can hold our conferences here. And so that's how they got it. They ended up getting it for that reason. And what happens to the town afterwards is, I think is a minor tragedy in our culture that hasn't been paid attention to enough.
- [115:35]
Molly Conger
Yeah, it is this sort of microcosm of what happened to America. Right. Like we don't all have a racism castle in our town, but sort of the way this castle bears down on this little town kind of mirrors the way the influx of these extreme right wing ideas into the gop, into, you know, the administration that governs all of us, kind of is bearing down on us.
- [115:57]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, that's very smart. I think that's true. I think that is one of the reasons that the, the story spoke to me so much that I wanted to pursue it for so long, is it really felt like what everybody was going through in the town and readers will, will learn this. Imagine business owners who are catering to many liberals there in. Stuck in, in Morgan county, which is 75% Trump and 90% white. And they're panicking because they need to keep people going. And the press goes a long way in Berkeley Springs. It's a, it's a little place. They don't know how to push back. Someone buys private property, what can you do? But they start to organize and try to figure out a way to urge Brimlow to leave or to make it so difficult for him that he leaves. And yes, it is absolutely a symbolism for what everybody's going through. And there are people all over the country in places, red states, where you might find people who you wouldn't expect kind of protesting against Tesla or something like that and they could be kind of corny, these type of people who are like corny online and easily ignored. They're all over the country feeling that exact dread that you're talking about where something very like above them is bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs.
- [117:13]
Molly Conger
Right. It's such a specific story about Berkeley Springs, but at the same time, this could be almost any town. You know, I'm sure you're, you followed the story of what happened in Enid, Oklahoma when the identity ROPA guy got on their city council and was this, this, this very local small town struggle with these very specific local personalities butting heads. But this story is playing out in small towns all over America because everyone has, you know, if not a racism castle, everyone has a local racist who's making life hard for everyone.
- [117:42]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. I mean they're ascending right now to use Clavicular's phrase, the. Yeah. I mean think about north Idaho, for example. I did a story for them for, about from Mother Jones and you know, they, they have a long history with white supremacy and certainly dead red far right part of the country. But you have like anti Semites like Dave Riley.
- [118:10]
Molly Conger
That's right.
- [118:10]
Michael Edison Hayden
Rebecca Hargraves and those type of people encroaching on their everyday politics. Right. They're trying to change the politics. They're trying to integrate themselves, you know, coming from outside basically to take over.
- [118:24]
Marianne
Right.
- [118:24]
Molly Conger
I mean it's the same thing as what happened in West Virginia.
- [118:27]
Marianne
Right.
- [118:27]
Molly Conger
It's that these white supremacists are moving to these places because they have a perception about what it will be like when they get there, that, oh, everyone who's there will agree with me because they're mostly white.
- [118:37]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [118:37]
Molly Conger
That's why Dave Riley moved to Idaho.
- [118:39]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. When Peter Brimlow first moved to the castle, he would repeatedly, I think he would do it when people reach out for comment, be like, you know, Morgan county is 75% voted for Trump, it's 90% white. It's you who have the problem, not us. And if you're looking for a more optimistic thing here, I've gotten good reviews for the reviews that I've gotten, but they keep using like disturbing, like this is so scary. Like, I think for us it's not as much because we've been living in it for, in a more intimate way.
- [119:10]
Molly Conger
Right. I found it encouraging.
- [119:13]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yes.
- [119:13]
Molly Conger
You know, because, because you met these people who were doing their best in this like bizarre fucked up situation. Like they didn't ask for a weird old British Nazi to buy the castle.
- [119:22]
Michael Edison Hayden
Exactly.
- [119:23]
Molly Conger
They're doing their best. And I think that's beautiful.
- [119:25]
Michael Edison Hayden
I think, I think if you try to tune out the reality that we're all going through right now and just focus on, you know, your own private world, it can be scary because you're letting in Peter Brimlow into your chair head while you read the book and you're, you're, you're seeing neighbors kind of turning on one another and you're seeing me go through a mental health crisis in the book. I mean, these are things that for a normie maybe a little bit, you may like the book, but you may be finding a little disturbing. But for people like us who have kind of really been through stuff in this and seen it up close on a regular basis, look, what I like about the book is it's rare to say I'm going to praise some white people here, but it's white people saying that they don't want to be represented by these values. Right. And I think that for me, as somebody who comes in, I'm sort of an outsider. I like look so normal in New York. I'm just, I'm just swarthy, but they are there, there. I look like Osama bin Laden and
- [120:27]
Molly Conger
I was going to say an all white environment. I don't think you pass as white as you do in New York.
- [120:31]
Michael Edison Hayden
Exactly. It's very different. Yeah, yeah. And I say like, you know, when you see them, I mean, they, they have a choice to just kind of say like, actually, yeah, we're, you know, Peter Brimlow is standing up for my rights. He's standing up for me. He's speaking for me. But a lot of people are not saying that a guy who thinks a
- [120:49]
Molly Conger
$2,800 political donation is a small amount, that's not the average West Virginian's idea of a small amount of money.
- [120:56]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yes, that is a good thing to pull out. Yes. You know, the other thing is the people who ultimately in the book tend to defend Brimlow or align with him because basically the town is, becomes completely divided, maybe irrevocably. So hopefully they'll come together one day. I mean, it's still, I think the tensions are still quite bad. Yeah, it's still happening. Even though VDR dies at the end, the Brimos still live there. The people who do it are not like, yes, we believe full throated in the great Replacement conspiracy theory. We think that the great Replacement that like, you know, I'm thinking the more extreme things that Brimlow has said no.
- [121:38]
Molly Conger
They're, they're just people who see a nice white man and his nice white wife. And they were nice to me. And I don't understand why you're making life so hard.
- [121:46]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I mean, Vitor has published apologia about mass shooters intentions basically.
- [121:53]
Molly Conger
Right. But so many of these, these Brimlo defenders are just, they're not saying what he said is okay or I believe what he said. They're saying he was nice to me. Why are you making such a big deal out of this?
- [122:03]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I will clarify that. But they haven't said, yes, mass shootings are good. They have condemned that. But they've also said that like this writing makes sense. Right. And they're like, when during the tops supermarket shooting in Buffalo in 2022. That's something I highlight in the book. BDR publishes something that's like actually like, look what, look how the great replacement has changed Buffalo. That was their response to 10 black people getting shot.
- [122:31]
Molly Conger
Right. So Peter Riddle is very litigious. So we do have to be very specific here and say Peter Bemol did not say it is good that Peyton Gendron shot up that supermarket. But what he did say is if the great replacement weren't happening.
- [122:43]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, yeah. I mean it's. It look. And I think that going back to the people in the town, I don't think that they at every point be like, that is good. That what, what he's saying here is good. The great replacement. So I'm fully on board with it. What they buy into is this profound friend, enemy distinction that now hovers over our entire country, right? Where it's just sort of people who are friends of MAGA and Trump are on one side and then anybody who's at is my enemy.
- [123:18]
Molly Conger
And these, these more extreme talking points are sort of creeping into that space and they're not stopping it.
- [123:24]
Michael Edison Hayden
You know, of course it's two sided. Of course there's like that, that comes from the, the liberal left, wherever you want to, whatever you want to call it. But I think in the case of the Bremlows, it's not the specifics. I remember asking one guy in the book whose name is Charlie Curria, and he owns a, you know, a sort of a crafts shop at the corner of Berkeley Springs park and is right next to another main character of the book, Trey Johansson, who is, you know, kind of almost the most important person. And I asked Charlie, I was like, you know, so you met the Brimlows, you hung out with them. What Was that, like, it's like, for Christmas and stuff like that? And I was like, well, how do you feel about the great replacement stuff? How do you feel about, like, the stuff he writes? And what he said was, he's a writer. He's a writer like you. He's a journalist just like you. He's the same as you. There's no difference. And he was very defensive.
- [124:18]
Marianne
Like, yikes.
- [124:19]
Michael Edison Hayden
You know, I think that framing is very useful for understanding why we can't seem to snap out of this current condition that we're in. When you're inside that bubble, that's the logic that works. It's like, this is the guy on our side. We're defending the guy on our side. Right. That's a psychosis that kind of overshadows the entire narrative.
- [124:50]
Molly Conger
Right. So this. This story in this town plays out against the backdrop of the wider world. Right. So, you know, your first visit to Berkeley Springs was right, as Covid is starting. Right. It's the last time you left your New York apartment before lockdown. You're in Berkeley Springs. And as the story progresses, we see the 2020 uprising, and there's, like, a little BLM rally in this tiny town, and then there's J6, and there's October 7th. There's the 2024 presidential campaign, and there's these big events in the world, and then there's these smaller events in the town, but interwoven with this sort of personal memoir. Right. That the world is in turmoil and so is your life.
- [125:27]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [125:27]
Molly Conger
And all these threads sort of weave together.
- [125:30]
Michael Edison Hayden
Mm. Yeah, that's true. Regarding the events in the world and in the town, I'm glad that you brought that up. One thing I wanted to do with the book that I don't see done enough is just to understand that, like, everything that we see, all these, like, viral trends and all this stuff filters down into everyday life. And I think when news is breaking or trends are happening, we only look at the news and the trends like that, and we rarely look at the impacts on our neighborhood. Whereas, you know, if you do a movie that's set in the 80s, you will see, like, the event a little bit more about, like, at the kitchen table, what the family is going through as something happens nationally. Right. Or so. And so it's. It's almost like we need time to process, but this has a very clear time period, which is the period right before COVID to the 2024 election. And it's enough in the past now that I think we can look at how these things affected regular people in this, in this town. Because every time you're seeing viral videos about Black Lives Matter, that's impacting the way people act there. So you may get like five white people, go stand on a street corner there with some signs after George Floyd's death. And that's like a huge deal in that town because it's like people are shocked by it or they want to harass those people after that. So that was one factor. And as. Yeah, and as for myself, it also overlaps with like probably the darkest time in my life. And that's not totally unrelated to Berkeley Springs in the sense that like, you know, stuff at SPLC was like really, really bad at the beginning of the book. Then they're not there in the second half and my mental health was, was just not in a great place. I had spent as, you know, a lot of time with these guys. And I know you personally have dealt with a lot of threats and really, I mean, as a woman, I mean, you're dealing with it, I imagine it's even scarier because it's grosser anyway. Is. Yeah, it's grosser for sure. And then you, I mean, you're dealing with, I mean, I can't even imagine the mentality of some of the guys who are messaging you and what their, their private lives are like. So. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I had gone through it for a while on my end. One example of that is in 2021, I took my son to the batting cage and afterwards we went to 711 and I got a call from a number in North Carolina and then it was an FBI agent and he's like, hey, I just want to, you know, as a courtesy, you want to let you know that we have somebody who's like talking about assassinating you and you know, do you have any questions?
- [128:08]
Molly Conger
Several.
- [128:09]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I was like, I do, but my, my a year old is like slurping on a, you know, a cherry Slurpee in the back seat.
- [128:15]
Molly Conger
That duty to warn thing is kind of a double edged sword.
- [128:18]
Marianne
Right.
- [128:18]
Molly Conger
Because they, they do have this legal obligation to inform you that there's a credible threat on your life. But like they're not going to give you enough information to make you feel empowered by knowing this information. So it's like, maybe I would rather just not know.
- [128:29]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [128:30]
Molly Conger
Oh, it was like, if there's nothing I can do to mitigate this, can I just not know?
- [128:34]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, it was horrible. It was horrible. That is, I think one of the things that a normie person would find deeply disturbing in the book. But like, yeah, I was dealing with that stuff all the time. I would get like, you know, I'd get people sending me photos of Alan Berg's shooting in the driveway. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but like, he was the talk radio host who was killed by members of the order.
- [128:54]
Molly Conger
Killed by David Lane.
- [128:56]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. And I would get that all the time. I must have been like months of just getting that from like, random numbers and all this stuff.
- [129:03]
Molly Conger
Sometimes, like a group of guys will get very into a particular image. And I can imagine the kind of guy that is very into the image of Alan Berg's corpse. And it's not a nice guy.
- [129:12]
Michael Edison Hayden
I mean, it's. It's taboo. It has like a pornographic quality to
- [129:16]
Molly Conger
it, but it harkens to a very specific era of the movement. Like, I can imagine there is a particular man who gravitates towards that specifically.
- [129:24]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [129:24]
Michael Edison Hayden
And I mean, I like, I remember getting threatened by Bowers, the guy who shot up, like, because I was on gab all the time as you know, to a fault, I think, but like, you know, I mean, I got some. Got a lot of stories out of it and sources. But yeah, because I was always dealing with those guys and I was always posting on there and, you know, trying to stir things up and see what I could shake loose for a story. And yeah, Bowers was just some kind of idol thing. And so when the Tree of Life shooting happened, when he went out and said, you know, screw your optics, I'm going in.
- [129:56]
Molly Conger
That's right. That's right.
- [129:57]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. And I was like, I know this guy. One of that one dingo. So, yeah, this was. This was very traumatic for me. I've been holding pretty firm on this. I had a lot of manic tendencies in the sense of like, I could just work constantly and you just work around the clock, work late at night, constantly doing investigative reporting. And I was on a mission because I was so angry about what had happened at. You know, you're right. The right. That's what that really triggered me. I had. Before then I had been really open to pursuing a beat as a crime reporter or on. On climate change. These were the kind of things that were like I had. I'd written features of previously, but it was. It was after unite the right. I got folks and I really was like, I'm gonna put all. All my abilities into trying to create trouble for these guys. And.
- [130:44]
Molly Conger
And you did.
- [130:45]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I did. And then when they pushed Back, I guess I wasn't mentally prepared for how scary it could be. And it was lots of stuff. I mean, I went through a separation with my wife, which is fine. We're great friends, you know, but that was like another factor. And then also the SPLC thing, which we can talk about, but the main thing is that I reached a breaking point. I was. I was happened to be in Berkeley Springs with some of the sources from the book when I had to go home and go to a psych ward. And I went for three weeks and I got diagnosed with bipolar there, which was a very useful diagnosis.
- [131:25]
Molly Conger
It makes. It makes a big difference because especially with bipolar, if you're just taking antidepressants, like, you're going to be up shit creek.
- [131:31]
Michael Edison Hayden
Oh, yeah, well, the antidepressants really screwed up my stomach and also made me, like, even more manic and stuff like that.
- [131:37]
Molly Conger
But the book is a very frank, very, very honest, very personal. And maybe this is why people found the book to be, you know, disturbing, because it is a very frank discussion of what it means to be the person who is for so many years in the thick of it, you know, not. Not doing sort of objective, detached reporting, but getting in there and mixing it up with these guys, like, really, you know, skin in the game, committed to the cause, doing investigative journalism in these spaces. And I mean, I think we both are guilty of this. Over the years on this beat, there is this tendency to sort of, you know, exchange war stories like, oh, you know, I got this terrible threat. I got this terrible threat. You laugh it off and it's like, you know, it's. Is this sort of fact of life that you brush off and, you know, everyone says, oh, you're so brave. I could never do that. And you say, oh, it's not a big deal. I deal with it all the time.
- [132:26]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, they say that for sure.
- [132:27]
Molly Conger
But then you go home and it. It is a big deal. And people are not.
- [132:31]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [132:31]
Molly Conger
Is honest about that as they could be. I mean, in part because admitting that it hurts you makes them double down. If they know they got you, they're going to keep digging in that spot. But, like, we don't talk enough about the fact that this destroys us.
- [132:44]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, for sure.
- [132:44]
Molly Conger
It's a very honest look at what happens when you. You bottom out on that.
- [132:48]
Michael Edison Hayden
And it's so much worse than just threats. I mean, you're constantly concerned that somebody is going to use lawfare against you and try to hurt your family and you have children. Yeah, of course, you know, and I Am extremely anal about legal stuff. Like, I'm just, like, hyper. Like, I don't. You know, I don't play games. I like. And so that's just an example. It's like we published. When I was with sblc, we published the identity of Matt Gebert, who is the State Department official. Remember that guy?
- [133:20]
Molly Conger
I was actually gonna bring him up. I was gonna bring up Matt Giebert in terms of the number of guys who've moved to West Virginia because they think it's only white.
- [133:27]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, we'll get there in a second. But I just say, like, before I published that story, even though I had been through a million lawyers and like, every. I mean, we just went through everything and stuff like that. I bought a pack of cigarettes, which I never do. You know, I don't want to get into my stomach thing too deeply, but it was not working. It was not working at all that day. It was August 7, 2019, and I was like, literally, I was. I was clammy. I was sweating. I had never seen his face. He kept all of his pictures offline. But I had the goods. I knew I had everything. But yet, at the same, there's this one doubt. It's like, what if it's not him? Because I don't have the face match. Forget threats. That level of stress of just, you know, like, I checked everything, right? I checked. Like, you think. Think about the. The. You're trying to leave the house for a long trip or something like that. And it's like, you know that thought.
- [134:15]
Molly Conger
Oh, I know.
- [134:15]
Michael Edison Hayden
Like, did I leave the gas stove on when I was. You know, when I was boiling something for my kids or whatever? Like, that's the way it feels, right? It's like a sort of. You, like. Like, you memorize the entire investigative feature, and you're, like, going through it, and there's like, oh. Oh, you know, is that. Was that right? Did I check that? And I'm like, yes, I did.
- [134:32]
Molly Conger
Oh, I know. I know that. I know that feeling. Exact. It drives my husband crazy when I say things like, I'd rather get shot than be wrong in public.
- [134:38]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Like, I don't. I don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to be wrong. And also, you don't want to give these people a chance for.
- [134:46]
Mia Wong
For.
- [134:46]
Michael Edison Hayden
For anything. As you mentioned, Brimlow is very litigious,
- [134:49]
Molly Conger
not usually very successful.
- [134:50]
Michael Edison Hayden
No, no, he's.
- [134:52]
Molly Conger
But that doesn't matter.
- [134:53]
Michael Edison Hayden
No, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but it's Stressful to report on him because of that, because he just, he will use it as a tactic and stuff like that. And I gave, I, I also gave the Brimos, I should point out, many, many opportunities to talk to me and, and more detail about everything. And they didn't want to.
- [135:07]
Molly Conger
But you do speak to him several times in the book.
- [135:10]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I do, I do.
- [135:11]
Molly Conger
Much to his displeasure.
- [135:13]
Michael Edison Hayden
Well, I was just to say, like. Yeah, I mean all that really led up to me going to the psych ward and that and the, the SPLC thing, which is basically my relationship with SPLC is like, I was probably the most well known person there, largely because I had a social media presence and I was doing a lot of spokesperson work. So I was like on TV a bunch and stuff like that.
- [135:34]
Molly Conger
So whenever someone's mad at the organization, they're going to take it out on you.
- [135:37]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. And really for a good part of the early years there after Heidi left, we didn't even have a director of the Intelligence. So, you know, I would just get thrown into a lot of tv, radio, stuff like that. And you know, they treated me great. I mean, I got my pay raise multiple times and promoted and stuff like that. And I kept breaking investigative stories. And then when we started to have problems where we were, they, they started to limit our ability to publish stories. They really became very risk averse, which
- [136:09]
Molly Conger
is so contrary to my image of what this institution is for.
- [136:13]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [136:14]
Molly Conger
Both like functionally and morally.
- [136:16]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, yeah.
- [136:17]
Molly Conger
As, as a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law center, you didn't have mental health coverage. You couldn't see a real therapist.
- [136:24]
Marianne
Yeah, that's horrific.
- [136:26]
Molly Conger
That's a human rights abuse to make you look at gab all day and not get you a therapist.
- [136:30]
Michael Edison Hayden
They, they were giving us like the app stuff, which is not gonna cut it.
- [136:34]
Molly Conger
No, but you, you need like a 500 an hour.
- [136:37]
Garrison Davis
You need a New York analyst, a
- [136:38]
Michael Edison Hayden
psychiatrist, you know, in some cases, like, you know, somebody good.
- [136:41]
Molly Conger
But they should be covering that.
- [136:42]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, no, they were not. And there's just a whole bunch of stuff. There were a bunch of safety issues, no doubt. Hannah Gase, my dear colleague, still my colleague, even though I'm not there anymore. You know, she went to go cover Amran in Tennessee and like a bunch of proud boys like basically chased her down.
- [136:58]
Marianne
Right.
- [136:59]
Michael Edison Hayden
There was no security plan. There was a woman named Susan Cork was the Intelligence project director at that time and she was just, you know, out to lunch. You just didn't do anything. As far as I could tell, things
- [137:09]
Molly Conger
like, what happened to Hannah? Like, stuff like that happens to me. I expect it. I'm out there by myself.
- [137:13]
Marianne
I have no plan.
- [137:14]
Molly Conger
It's just me. I have no plan. It was so startling to me to hear that, like, Hannah is out there operating without a net, too. There was no plan for her safety.
- [137:23]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, there was nothing. And so one of the first things I did was I helped shepherd a grievance about this. And it was effective because I think that got Quark put on, like, a performance improvement plan. And then after that, everything changed at work. I went from being the favored person to being repeatedly a target of, what did you do? Why did you do this? Like, it was really. I mean, to add on the already stressful situation that I was in. It was just like, your tone in a meeting. And then there was. The thing about that was there was, like, a verbal warning or something that they actually bothered to write out, which was quite stupid. If you're doing a verbal warning, you shouldn't put it in print. And sure enough, we found in there that, like, all of the dialogue that was in there was completely fabricated and made up.
- [138:13]
Molly Conger
And so for the listener, so discussed in the book a little bit, is the fact that the Southern Poverty Law center was engaging in union busting.
- [138:19]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yes, that's right.
- [138:21]
Molly Conger
So, you know, you were. You were dealing with retaliation for union activity in the workplace.
- [138:24]
Michael Edison Hayden
Retaliation for union activity. It was really bad. It happened a second time after that when I was covering the trial of Doug Mackey character. We can save for another day.
- [138:37]
Molly Conger
For another day.
- [138:38]
Michael Edison Hayden
And it was really bad. And I. The stress was really getting to me, and I had a panic attack, which I've never had before while I was in the shower. And I told them about that and Susan Cork and the person above her, whose name is Anne Beeson, I told them about that. And then they responded by turning around and disciplining me again. Almost like to say, like, we've got him on the ropes now. Let's really, like, make them quit.
- [139:05]
Molly Conger
ADA violation.
- [139:06]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. And every time we do this, we'd summon the union and we'd make it as hairy for them as possible to do what they're doing. But there's limits to what you can do, really. When they want to try to do these sort of thing, they pushed it as far as they wanted to go, which is after the summer of 2023, there was a Hamas attack on Israel. And, you know, I have Arabs in my family of my mother's side, including Palestinians. You know, I was distraught about this whole Situation is adding another thing on top of it and watching the retaliation, which became a genocide, very quickly did not improve my mood. Obviously. It was very stressful to see that stuff. And Hannah invited me to sign a thing about, you know, there's just sort of like asking writers to sign on Israel's an apartheid state, you know, calling for a ceasefire.
- [139:59]
Molly Conger
Writers for the ceasefire. Yeah, I remember.
- [140:01]
Michael Edison Hayden
And Free Beacon. I don't know if you're familiar with that wonderful politician.
- [140:07]
Molly Conger
It still comes up in the first few pages of your Google results.
- [140:10]
Michael Edison Hayden
Thank you for noticing. Yeah, I know, but this, the book
- [140:12]
Molly Conger
should push it back.
- [140:13]
Robert Evans
The book
- [140:16]
Michael Edison Hayden
Free Beacon, like, came out with this thing and it was like, SPLC spokesperson, you know, blames Israel for Hamas violence or something like that.
- [140:24]
Molly Conger
And just the audacity to accuse you of anti Semitism for.
- [140:28]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [140:29]
Molly Conger
Signing this letter, you know, supporting a ceasefire. I mean, I've read that letter. It's, it's, it's not an anti Semitic letter. It's. It is calling it what it is and just asking for a ceasefire. Right. And you have spent a decade writing about anti Semitic violence.
- [140:42]
Michael Edison Hayden
Well, there's, there's tons of, there's, there's tons of anti Zionist Jews on there. I mean, there's probably more than anything else. But, you know, when this, when this came out, I was really pissed. Obviously it had a racist undertone. I mean, Hannah was mentioned, but it was mostly about me. And then the, instead of a picture of me, they used, they used like one of those pictures of Hamas looking like Cobra from GI Joe and with like a rocket launcher and like.
- [141:07]
Marianne
Right.
- [141:07]
Molly Conger
Implying that you, as a, as a man of Arab descent, are an anti Semitic terrorist.
- [141:11]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, basically. And good faith stuff. Adding to that, I would say this is also complex because, you know, my family basically fled because of threats from Islamic terrorism. Right. So this is even more like, you know, to align me with that necessarily is not my, not ideal. Even though I'm in like, you know, I'm sure I have a very more, a more nuanced idea of what Hamas is than that author. The point is, it's just, I mean, just basically to do that. And then rather than splc, like, care so much about social justice and racism,
- [141:39]
Molly Conger
rather than seize the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the psychosis that the ADL has descended into, as you know, because those two organizations sort of exist in the same space, they're often used in the same sentence. And the ADL has really lost a lot of credibility in the last few years.
- [141:54]
Michael Edison Hayden
Oh, I don't think they have any credibility because of this.
- [141:56]
Molly Conger
And so instead of differentiating themselves from that, they chose to discipline you.
- [142:02]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, they. They did. It was. That was when I. Like I said, mental health was like the. All the factors that we've just discussed. Mentioned. And then I was. Happened to be in Berkeley Springs when I reached a point where I was like, I had, you know, I was. I was suicidal. And, um, news trigger warning for people. I apologize, but that's the truth. And came back and had to spend the sort of Christmas break period there where I lost. You know, they. They. They ultimately terminated me. It was a Title 7 violation in terms of discrimination. Well, we'll get into what happened afterward, but. And then when people found out what happened, the union started to write things to, you know, to management. There was all this internal dialogue happening while I was in a psych ward with, like, no access to anything. And almost everybody in my line of managers was pushed out and given buyouts, allegedly. Cork, this woman, Ann Beeson, and now the CEO is.
- [142:59]
Molly Conger
They exposed themselves to some serious liability there.
- [143:02]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, they got off easy in many ways. Yeah, they disposed of me. But I threatened suit with a lawyer, a wonderful lawyer who. She was great Jewish woman from New York, and she was. She's tough as nails. And. Yeah, I mean, I got a good settlement out of it, which is. You know, I would have preferred just to be able to just continue doing my job, though.
- [143:23]
Molly Conger
I mean, it's heartbreaking to remember that, you know, even these progressive nonprofits that are fighting for what we believe, they're. They're using you up and spitting you out, too.
- [143:31]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, oh, sure. They're.
- [143:32]
Molly Conger
They're doing union busting. They're firing you for having a mental health crisis. They're opposed to you exercising your free speech off the clock. The kinds of things you just. You don't want to see from an organization like the splc.
- [143:43]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, they had to retract my termination and assign into a layoff. And then, you know, I had to retract labor claims I had made, which would have gone nowhere as soon as the Trump administration took over anyway. That's heartbreaking, which I. Which I saw coming in 2024 to a degree. So, yeah, like, that happened. And then bringing it back to Berkeley Springs, I was told not to go anywhere, but I needed to keep working on the book. So it was like a week after I got out of the hospital, I came back down there. And then the folks who I had been working with since 2020, when the Brimmels first arrived, they Kind of took me in and nursed me back to health. So that's why I feel unified in the narrative and we're able to explore what happened to me psychologically and what happened to them psychologically as this other stuff is happening.
- [144:44]
Molly Conger
So I guess I understand why some of the reviewers call it disturbing. But that sort of full circle, that sort of personal closure, you know, obviously things weren't ideal. Right. You lost your job. But it, I don't know, things came full circle and the people that you went there to write about took care of you and you, I don't know, you all continue along your way as the world falls apart.
- [145:04]
Michael Edison Hayden
I don't think that they come across as like perfect either. I mean, like, that's what I'm really hopeful for.
- [145:09]
Molly Conger
No, I mean every. They're all complicated people.
- [145:11]
Michael Edison Hayden
You know, I wanted to avoid like this sort of wishy washy utopian. Like I'm an ally, you know, and I'm. It's like, yeah, actually the people who are allies have all kinds of issues. They have marital problems. Maybe some of them are like behave badly in one thing or whatever. We're all people like trying to, trying to live. It's really a question of what this particular ideology that has been foisted upon us very rapidly by the likes of Steve Bannon and Brimlow and others, it was a collective push to take the existing right wing monster and set it in this direction. What this is doing to us, it's
- [145:54]
Molly Conger
a very intimate look at what that is like for individual people. You know, we're all experiencing having right wing violence foisted upon us from above. But this is, I don't know, there were these like small moments of like physical intimacy. Like when you're, you're at the Castle for the party and you know, you and Peter Brimlow are exchanging like this light hearted moment and you reach out and you put your hand on his shoulder instinctively when you're sharing laughter with someone, you put out, you put your hand on his shoulder and like, you know, recoiled immediately and didn't know why you had done that. But this like tiny moment of physical intimacy that, you know, this was a person or the, the transgender mushroom farmer, Lisa Marie, who sought out Lydia Brimlow at church and shook her hand during the Rite of Peace. Like, I would have loved to have seen that.
- [146:37]
Michael Edison Hayden
She's so cool, by the way. You should have her on. She's awesome.
- [146:41]
Molly Conger
She sounds amazing. I would love to meet Lisa Marie,
- [146:45]
Michael Edison Hayden
but I'll tell you about her in A second. But, yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, Brimler was behaving in a very. I mean, he has, like, an infuncular kind of vibe, like in person, when he's not angry with you. And I'm sure that for people who know him in a friendly way in the movement, that he's fun. You know, he likes to drink room temperature vodka. He's always talking like this. He sounds like he's always had a few drinks.
- [147:11]
Garrison Davis
He probably has.
- [147:12]
Michael Edison Hayden
He. He has that British way of just some kind of dry remark about things going to pot. Like, you know, I'm sure it's fun for people who know him. And, you know, you're in that space and you. Any kind of party thing or whatever, you can let go for a second. And for a second, I felt. Not. Not that like, I felt like, oh, this is my friend, or anything. It's just more that I'm just talking.
- [147:35]
James Stout
Exactly.
- [147:35]
Molly Conger
You know, people really bristle at that. You know, you're humanizing him. Well, yeah, because he's human. Humanizing doesn't mean excusing or, you know, coming to appreciate in any way. It just means, like, he's human. So for most of the book, the strange people on the hill are removed on the hill. But when you encounter them, there is this very human intimacy to these encounters.
- [147:55]
Michael Edison Hayden
And not only that, everybody has a rough go in this book, including them
- [148:00]
Molly Conger
getting raked over the coals by Letitia James.
- [148:03]
Michael Edison Hayden
Well, over the course of that narrative, you follow their arc and their arcs throughout the book. But one particular arc, it starts with them really thinking they've got it. This is the high point of VDR's existence. They have a castle. They have a home base that they can use in perpetuity. After Brimlow leaves, the movement can flourish and grow. This is like, this is it. They got a castle.
- [148:28]
Molly Conger
I mean, it would be the perfect place for a white nationalist meetup. They haven't really used it that way that much, like, every now and again,
- [148:34]
Michael Edison Hayden
but, like, this is the best situation they've ever had. Like, they're great. And they've also just coming off of getting a whole bunch of dark money donations from two people. We don't know who they are, but it's like, you know, 4.5 mil in, like, one year through donors Trust. And they're riding really high. And then by the end, from the Letitia James investigation, it had not turned into a lawsuit yet by that point. Under the pressure of that and just under the pressure of just everybody around them, you know, not wanting them to be there, they decide to dial down Veer altogether. And it still exists in the sense of like the, the Twitter account still exists and Brimal is still writing on substack.
- [149:15]
Molly Conger
God help us.
- [149:17]
Michael Edison Hayden
Some of it is a legal thing to try to, you know, get them out of the way of Letitia James, but, you know, they're really broken down. I mean, the videos that they published about their closing, I mean, it's just a laundry list of things that add up to a defeat. I don't think they would disagree with that, that they felt defeated by the end. And the people who were in the town who are so nice and sweet and wonderful and all this, they're laughing and as you would, right. As everybody talks about, like, when Trump dies, and everybody's like, I'm going to do this when Trump dies and all that stuff, right. It's just liberation from that thing. But ultimately it's a really, like, if you just look at the Brimlows, it is a, you know, it is a brutal fall by the end of the book.
- [149:58]
Molly Conger
Yeah. I mean, 10 years ago, they were poised to be on top of the world and their ideas remain ascendant. But he himself has really fallen now. He just has the flooded basement of his little racism castle.
- [150:10]
Michael Edison Hayden
Well, there's no, there's no solidarity on their side. I just.
- [150:13]
Molly Conger
Oh, God.
- [150:14]
Michael Edison Hayden
That's what I say.
- [150:15]
Molly Conger
No, that's one thing they will never have.
- [150:17]
Michael Edison Hayden
I mean, you get somebody who annoys me, who is a sort of anti fascist, anti racist, who like annoys the out of me, but they, they wind up like, you know, being targeted by somebody. I'm like, okay, well, you're not going
- [150:30]
Molly Conger
to gloat about their downfall.
- [150:31]
Michael Edison Hayden
No, but it's not only that, but it's like now it's time to like, you know, support them. You know, that's the way I feel.
- [150:37]
Molly Conger
And they just don't do that. They don't do that for each other. They hate each other.
- [150:41]
Michael Edison Hayden
They're always malignant narcissists because it's always about clawing to the top, right. It's always trying to get power over other people.
- [150:47]
Molly Conger
I mean, everybody wants to be the crab at the top of the bucket, but you're still a crab in a goddamn bucket.
- [150:52]
Michael Edison Hayden
There's two strains of, of maga. I know MAGA is a very broad term and like one of them is really this kind of grift focused, kind of crypto web three aligned aspect where just AI and this and like a small number of people like 15% will go hoard a bunch of fake coins or whatever thing. Polymarket Odds or whatever. They're all hoarding information to kind of beat people in Polymarket. And then the suckers, whatever the rest of it, the bigger percentage, the 75% followers, they're taking their money. And that's MAGA. That's a big part of MAGA. Then the other part is less concerned with money, although money is a part of it, is just ascending and pushing down from a power, Power space. Right. Like, you just like to. To be in a place where they can have power over other people. And usually other people being designated by not looking like them or not behaving like them or not having the same kind of boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever, than them.
- [151:55]
Molly Conger
It's like, I mean, I couldn't be happier that Peter Brimlow is going to end his career on the bottom of the heap he was trying to climb.
- [152:01]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [152:01]
Molly Conger
You know.
- [152:01]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. And there'll be. I guarantee you there'll be more of an effort from us to define his legacy than from them. Because they don't care. They don't care.
- [152:11]
Molly Conger
No, they. They will. They'll use you up and forget you.
- [152:13]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, they don't care. We. We will spend more time on him than him. And so we. Look, I mean, we're talking about him right now. I mean, we have. I have a. I host a podcast where we talk about these guys all the time. Right. So it's like we're always bringing up new guys. I think we're doing a. We're doing a full bio app on Stephen Miller soon. Oh, you know, they don't do that. They don't care. They're not like, here's the reason Stephen's great.
- [152:32]
Molly Conger
Like, no, I mean, Jason Kessler disappeared from the Internet a year ago, and they don't talk about him anymore.
- [152:37]
Michael Edison Hayden
Oh, yes.
- [152:38]
Molly Conger
It's like he never existed.
- [152:40]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah. I mean, but you know what? I hope he stays off that. You know what I mean? I try to sort of find some forgiveness in my heart. You know, maybe it's the Catholic upbringing, whatever, but I try to find some. Even though he literally. Who knows what he did that was related to threats I received because he wrote stuff about me.
- [152:58]
Molly Conger
I mean, I think that that series he put on vdare, that included information about you and your family certainly didn't help.
- [153:03]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, for sure. But, you know, if he stays offline and he stays like this, like, I. I hope that he's getting some help.
- [153:12]
Molly Conger
That's all anyone ever asked for. Me, that's all I was ever asking for from these guys. I'm not. I'm not even holding out hope that you change your heart. I just want you to stop doing stuff about it.
- [153:22]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [153:22]
Molly Conger
I mean, just stop trying to make everything worse.
- [153:25]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yes. Yeah. Really. Like, I. I mean, but if he's out there and he's like, I'm just gonna, like, you know, keep it quiet, and I have a hard time imagining that guy, like, finding any kind of change of heart, but it would be great if he just stayed. Just stayed out of everything and just lived his life. And, you know, privately, I would. I would feel some tiny crumb of respect for that.
- [153:50]
Molly Conger
God willing. God willing. And maybe. Maybe Peter Rimmel will log off forever eventually, too.
- [153:57]
Michael Edison Hayden
Well, I mean, based upon the age, that. That's.
- [154:02]
Molly Conger
Yeah, well, he's gonna. He's gonna do a permanent log off eventually.
- [154:05]
Michael Edison Hayden
He's gonna do a permanent log off eventually. I've heard all kinds of gossip about from people in Berkeley Springs that Lydia really doesn't want to be associated with the white nationalist movement and really doesn't want to be associated with the movement in general. Just if you want to give it another term that they might use, like dissident. Right. Or whatever, She's. I think I don't know this for a fact because she would never tell me directly. Think about lydia Bremlow. You're 20 years old. This very rich white husband comes by. He's old for you. He's like 57. And he's recently lost his wife. Brimelo lost his first wife to cancer. And you're in the kind of heritage scene. You're kind of conservative yourself. And this guy, he's pretty conservative. This is. This is happening around a time in which alienation is still kind of acceptable.
- [155:00]
Molly Conger
I mean, at least in the heritage front set, sure, yeah.
- [155:03]
Michael Edison Hayden
On the right, it was kind of acceptable. And. But even, you know, even if it's acceptable, the worst you could say about him, he's kind of a bad boy. Like a bat, you know, he's got. Right. So it's sort of like, ooh, edgy. He's like an edgy bad boy. And you kind of get indoctrinated into the movement that way. And you're in a marriage. You like. I don't know, like when I was like, 20 something. I don't know, I didn't know what the hell was going on. So you're in this marriage with this dude, and you have kids now, and you've seen the other side of it, the hell of it up close all the time, people shutting down the website, people. There were hackers. There's all kinds of things that they're dealing with. Constantly. Everyone is telling you, everyone other than people in the movement are finding ways. Whenever they get a chance to speak to you, they're telling you, you know, go yourself. We hate this. Right. We hate you. We don't like this stuff.
- [155:54]
Molly Conger
It's gotta be discouraging.
- [155:55]
Michael Edison Hayden
I mean, for years and then now all of a sudden you're turning 40 and you've got kids and you're looking at this. I mean, I personally would want to like, just get as far away from it as possible. I mean, it just seems like it's just a depressing, Just, you know.
- [156:09]
Molly Conger
Yeah, like I said, that's all I want for these people is that they stop doing harm in the world. And you know, if they have a change of heart, that's wonderful. Don't tell us about it. Yeah, just, just log off. Just go be normal. Go get a real job. Stop being a Nazi. Just, just go. Just go be a guy in the world.
- [156:26]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I would really like that. I think they're kind of entering now a sort of post Nazi phase.
- [156:35]
Molly Conger
I mean, because they don't, they don't have to be edgy anymore. They're the mainstream Republican politics now.
- [156:39]
Michael Edison Hayden
You can be just. You can just be a gracious Nazi at all time. And that's why it's just starting to mutate into like these like whole looks, maxing and like, you know, which is like incel. But like we're not incels anymore. We hammer our face, whatever. You know, I, I just think that they're now so they, they think they're such part of the culture and it would be. It'll be very interesting for me to see if there is a huge change after this. If we see sort of the Trump regime kind of fall, have a really hard fall and some of this really starts to break up. What will happen and when people like look back at some of the stuff that's happening over the past, like few years, even as there's been this tremendous explosion. If you look at the time from when the book ended, which is again on the election day, the day after the election on 2024.
- [157:26]
Molly Conger
I mean, what a moment to end things.
- [157:27]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, but if you look at that from there to now, you see like, that was almost like an end point before us knew culture that we're in now, where you have the shootings in Minneapolis and just the outright violence, the Blown up boats, all this stuff. I'm very curious to see our culture, if our culture can heal a little bit, how this stuff will be viewed.
- [157:51]
Molly Conger
Yeah, I mean it is like you said, it ends before the story is over. But I think, you know, as. As a portrait of that four year period in that town. I mean it's fascinating. It is, I think applicable to the world outside of Berkeley Springs. But it is a very intimate look at what it means for a weird old racist blogger to move into the castle that looms above your coffee shop.
- [158:16]
Michael Edison Hayden
Absolutely.
- [158:17]
Molly Conger
I don't want to keep you forever, but I just want to remind the listener Strange People on the How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town by Michael Edison Hayden comes out April 7th.
- [158:27]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, April 7th.
- [158:28]
Molly Conger
April 7th. You can pre order it now wherever books are sold or you can just go to a bookstore on April 7 and pick a copy up. I'm going to go ahead and contact my local anarchist bookstore to make sure they have an order in for it and I recommend you do the same.
- [158:40]
Michael Edison Hayden
Anarchist bookstore.
- [158:41]
Molly Conger
Better don't buy it on Amazon. I mean you can, but don't. Yeah, and tell your local library that you want them to buy a copy because that matters too and that gets this book into more people's hands because not everybody can afford to buy books. So. Yeah, request it at your local independent bookstore and your library if you can.
- [158:58]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah, I heard from friends that like at random places in Illinois and whatever that they can find the book at their local library, they will be able to get it. So that's great. Please ask for it and. Yeah. And enjoy it. I think it'll have. My hope is it has a long tail, some. Some word of mouth about the era. So something to read. Something to read. Not just now, but also in the future.
- [159:20]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [159:20]
Molly Conger
It is a fascinating picture of a particular moment in time that has broader lessons I think. But Mike, thanks so much for coming on. Where can people find you online?
- [159:30]
Michael Edison Hayden
Thank you. You're so. You're even cooler in person. I just.
- [159:34]
Molly Conger
Thank you.
- [159:34]
Michael Edison Hayden
Where can find me online? I'm in blue sky. What the hell is. What's. I hate the blue sky handles. That was the one thing that, you know, people complain about blue sky and it's like for me it's like what do you even want, dude? Like, you know, all this stuff is so bad, right? Like what? What do you even want? It's Michael ehayden.b s k y.social s o c I A L I'm still technically on Twitter at Michael E. Hayden, where I've always been. You know, when I was writing the book and I was recovering from the mental health thing, I wasn't online at all for all of 2024. And so my nice. My that like cratered my, my ex engagement. In any case, I don't like being on there too much just for, for anything other than research.
- [160:15]
Molly Conger
And people can find you every week on posting through it. JARED Halt.
- [160:18]
Michael Edison Hayden
Oh, that's true. Yeah. Just, yeah, just do that. You can listen to us talk about all kinds of things. We're talking about Kash Patel, we're talking about the, the, the AI fruits that we keep finding on our, on our feeds now. All kinds of topics.
- [160:34]
Molly Conger
The AI fruits. Oh, Mike, thank you so much. And again, buy the book. You're gonna love it.
- [160:41]
Michael Edison Hayden
Thanks, Molly.
- [160:42]
Marianne
Thanks so much. Bye.
- [160:57]
Robert Evans
Hey everybody. Robert Evans here. And this is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about, well, what, what's happening. And on March 30, 20, 20, 26, which is the day that I started sitting down to write the episode that you're listening to right now, Reuters published an article announcing the arrival of another 2500 United States Marines in the Middle east as the Trump administration, quote, considers options for Iran operations. As you all know, Operation Epic Fury, it's nothing to call it, but its name was launched a little over a month ago with the administration insists, an expected duration of foreign four to six weeks. And we're coming up to the end of that timeline. Trump announced the day I record this March 31st that he's expecting combat operations to end in two weeks or less. So we'll see what happens tomorrow. There's supposed to be a speech by the president on Iran, so we'll know more then. But relevant reporting indicates the Trump administration is at least seriously weighing the feasibility of sending Marines in to take and hold Iranian territory, namely Kharg island and potentially other islands in the Strait of Hormuz, most of which are inhabited and all of which are heavily defended. If they go through with this, we might be about to watch in real time one of the most consequential disasters in military history, a modern day Gallipoli, in which hundreds or thousands of American soldiers and billions in materiel get chewed up in an unsustainable and unwinnable war of attrition. There's no real way for the average American to know what kind of stockpile our military maintains of the most advanced munitions. We're talking precision guided missile like the Tomahawk cruise missile, but also the interceptor missiles used by our various missile batteries. Estimates suggest the US has already expended about 1,000 Tomahawks in a month of combat operations, which would be around a third, maybe a little less, of the total stockpile. That doesn't sound so bad until you realize that our present stockpile of Tomahawks was built up over more than a decade. We're only capable of making about 150 a year at present levels, which means our military already burned through around seven years worth of these things. Maybe more, because in 2025, the US defense budget included something like 56 Tomahawks, even though our largely ineffectual war against the Houthis had already depleted the stockpile. This is a story that you'll hear over and over again in this episode. The US military is actually quite bad at knowing and asking for what it will need, and even worse at predicting accurately what it's going to need in the immediate future. Each tomahawk costs around $3.6 million to produce, and these are the only long range offensive we mounted by our naval destroyers. Per a source interviewed by Military Watch magazine, quote, without intervention, the Pentagon may be left out of ammunition. Now, Tomahawks aren't the only things the US military is low on. Per that same article, inventories of anti ballistic missiles and GBU 57 bunker buster bombs are estimated to have been almost totally spent while being significantly more costly to replace. We just don't have granular data on the size of US interceptor missile stockpiles or our supply of stuff like Patriot missiles. But we do have a pretty good understanding of how badly our regional allies have depleted their stockpiles of these defensive tools. Bahrain is estimated to have expended 87% of their Patriot missiles, the UAE and Kuwait are up to 75%, and Qatar is at like 40%. Experts estimate that Iran has gone through or lost via airstrike roughly a third of their ballistic missile stockpile. This may or may not be accurate, and if it's inaccurate, it may or may not be inaccurate in either direction. Our intel and Israel's intel is often very spotty when it comes to stuff like this. A good illustration of this would be the fact that on March 20, Iran fired two ICBMs at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean that hosts a joint U.S. uK Air and Naval base. Neither missile did any damage, but that wasn't really the point. The launch of these missiles was a message from the Iranian regime to the us. Once previously, Iran had limited itself to only striking targets within 1240 miles of its own borders with ballistic missiles. Diego Garcia is roughly 2,300 miles away. Many US analysts had treated for years 1240 miles as if it represented an actual hard limit on Iran's striking capability based on what their missiles could reach as opposed to what it really was, which is a political decision made by Iranian leaders to limit the scope of conflict. When the Trump administration launched an unprovoked series of joint strikes on Iran, killing the supreme leader and many senior officials, we violated one of the unstated agreements that had held for over decades of conflict. The president's supporters and major hawks on Iran argued that these self imposed limits were allowing Iran's leadership to support terrorism abroad with impunity. The strike on Diego Garcia proved that military analysts had been wrong about the top range of Iran's best ballistic missiles. But it also served as a statement from Iran's new leaders. You've taken the gloves off and thrown out the rulebook. Now we have two. Hudson Institute senior Fellow Khan Kosapoglu published an analysis that made this same basic argument. Quote, a strike profile extending into the Indian Ocean demonstrates not merely extended range, but Iran's deliberate abandonment of strategic ambiguity. Iran is no longer signaling restraint, it is signaling reach, and doing so under live war fighting conditions. It also more subtly signaled something else. US Planners didn't know as much as they thought they did about Iran's capabilities. This has been evident since the war began, despite Trump's claims to have totally annihilated Iran's offensive capability. On March 27, a combined missile and drone attack hit Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, injuring more than 10 US soldiers too seriously and damaging several aircraft. One of these, which we have pictures of, was an E3 AWACS aka the planes with those huge radar dishes on top and at least one AWACS was destroyed. The Air Force only has 16 of these, and only about half are mission capable at any given time. The army also maintains a fleet of E3s. I found an article in Air and Space Forces magazine by Chris Gordon and Steven Lossie, who interviewed Heather Penney. She's a former F16 pilot and current director of the Air Force Academy's Institute for Aerospace Studies. Pinney said. The loss of this E3 is incredibly problematic given how crucial these battle managers are to everything from airspace deconfliction, aircraft deconfliction targeting, and providing other lethal effects that the entire force needs for the battle. Space E3s provide an irreplaceable service on the battlefield. They act as both airborne radar Stations and air traffic control towers, spotting threats up to 250 miles away and providing crucial early warning to forces in combat about incoming threats, particularly missiles and drones. Drones really above anything else. In other words, the E3 is really, really useful if you're, say, planning to have troops land on islands in a narrow strait surrounded by hostile forces who can shoot at you from the mainland. Now, the AWACS themselves aren't technically irreplaceable, but they aren't easy to replace, especially on short notice. Each one costs between $700 million and a billion dollars. And we don't, like, we don't, like, make them anymore. AWACS are old. The average age of our remaining fleet is 45. Per a relevant article in Task and Purpose magazine. Nobody makes spare parts for the E3's TF33 engines anymore, which takes a toll on maintenance. In 2022, General Mark Kelly, then the head of Air Combat Command, told reporters, we basically have 31 airplanes in hospice care, the most expensive care there is, and we need to get into the maternity business and out of hospices. That's a weird metaphor for a plane designed to help you fight wars, but we'll move past that and into some ads. And we're back. So when we left off, I think mentioned how in 2022, Mark Kelly, then the head of Air Combat Command, was like, we've only got about 31 of these AWACs and they're in hospice care and we need to, like, make some new AWACS that are modern and aren't falling apart and have engines being produced. Unfortunately for our military, but fortunately for not our military, the Pentagon voted against getting into the maternity business last year. The E7 Wedgetail, which is in service currently in the Royal Australian Air Force, was meant to replace the E3s for the US Air Force. And the first of 26 new craft were supposed to arrive from Boeing in 2027, but the project was killed last summer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued it was sort of late, more expensive and gold plated. Plus, Pete warned it might not survive a war with China. Hegseth's plan was to just have the military use satellites for all their airborne tracking needs. And if we had to have, you know, a plane doing some of that, we could just have Navy E2D Hawkeyes as a tem replacement. Now, most of my listeners are not Air Force generals, and neither am I, but I've read stuff. Guys who know that kind of thing have written. And I'll tell you this, it's A bad fucking idea. Or it's widely agreed by the experts to be a bad fucking idea. For One thing, the E7, which is what we would have been replacing our E3s with, has already proven itself in combat. The Aussies sent theirs over to Iraq during the fighting against isis. And per task and purpose, it quote, was so reliable that whenever American F22 fighters were in theater, the U.S. air Force asked the Aussies to support the U.S. jets. Sixteen retired U.S. air Force four star generals took the unprecedented step of writing a letter to Congress and begging them to reverse Hegseth's decision. Their reasoning why? Boils down to this. Satellites aren't ready to track airborne targets and the Hawkeye is too small for the job. Congress ultimately reversed course, but it's uncertain when, if ever, new E7s will arrive. Certainly not in time for whatever the Trump administration is going to do next. In the meantime, the Air Force is down roughly 10% or more of its functional fleet of AWACs. And we don't even have boots on the ground anywhere. Now what I think happened here, what I think is behind all of these bad decisions, and this is not something I can verify, this is opinion, is that AWACS aren't sexy. They're not like a cool weapon system. They don't kill people directly. They facilitate other soldiers and sailors and airmen from killing people using other weapons systems. But you can't threaten somebody with just an awac. They're not like scary. And you can't show one blowing something up on the news because they don't do that. So I don't think it was a priority for Hegseth or anyone else in his administration because they're all fucking 12 year olds, previous administrations. And let me be fair here, it's not like they were any more forward thinking. Had kind of looked at our aging fleet and said, eh, good enough. It's not like anyone we're fighting has a better alternative, right? Who cares? It's the same kind of story we just heard with the Tomahawks, right? What the military was already doing was good enough to scrape by in the conflicts it was already fighting. And nobody involved in starting the next conflict was interested in making sure that the military was prepared ahead of time. Now I recognize all this talk about failures to produce war materiel in sufficient quantities may make it sound like I'm complaining that our Air Force isn't buying enough weaponry and that I'm urging us to spend more money producing arms and ammunitions. And that is not my intent. I want exactly the opposite. What I'm trying to do is to highlight how utterly unprepared our administration is for the conflict they started and how that failure to prepare has made a major military disaster for US forces not just foreseeable, but likely, if the administration makes the decision to send in ground forces or in some other way significantly escalate the pace of our operations against Iran. Now, the mainstream media has done an okay job of reporting on the ammunition shortages that I've discussed, but what I don't think has been hammered home enough is that both our expenditure of advanced ammunitions and the loss of multiple aircraft due to Iranian strikes are a kind of attrition. And they're a really serious kind of attrition. Now, you may be more familiar with the term attrition as it applies to human casualties in a war or battle, but to an extent, the attrition of interceptor missiles and hard to replace special purpose vehicles like AWACS does a lot more to damage U.S. warfighting capability than human losses. A good example of this came in March 6th of this year after Iran struck and per CNN, apparently destroyed the radar system for a Thaad missile battery in Jordan. Thaad stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. These are our absolute best, most effective anti missile defense systems. Each battery costs more than a billion dollars and each missile they fire costs like $12.6 million. These are part of why you don't have healthcare. Now we know another series of strikes in the UAE hit buildings housing similar radar systems to the Thaad battery in Jordan. It's unclear if these were damaged or how badly they might have been damaged. And it's gonna remain unclear because the workings of these systems are extremely classified. As of 2025, the United States owns and operates a grand total of eight Thaad batteries. So at least one of eight is now out of commission and two more may have suffered some degree of damage a month into this conflict. That is not the kind of attrition you want to see prior to actually putting boots on the ground. Now, US Military spokespeople will point out whenever asked that the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones are being intercepted and that Iran is currently firing few of these munitions than they did at the outbreak of hostilities. And what you're supposed to conclude from that is that they're running out because we are doing a better job of attritting them than they are doing of attritting us. And I can't tell you who's actually coming off worse in this fight. I certainly don't have good insight into the levels of Iran's stockpiles, of the weapons systems that they're using. However, there is reason to doubt that the United States is coming off the better in this conflict. Ari Ciceurel is an analyst for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or Ginsa, and he told Fox News, overall high missile and drone interception rates have been important, but only tell part of the story. Iran came into this war with a deliberate plan to dismantle the architecture that makes those strikes possible. It has struck energy infrastructure to upset markets and used cluster munitions to achieve higher hit rates. Because we simply lack good data on this stuff, I can't tell you perfectly how our rate of interceptions has changed from day one to day 30. But there is evidence in a few different places that in late March, the rate of successful drone attacks on our regional allies like the UAE increased. In other words, more drones were getting through or being launched. But I think getting through is the more supported conclusion. And they're getting through because our defenses have gotten or the defenses of our allies have gotten less effective. The Jinsa report also notes that Israeli officials have stopped intercepting some cluster munition attacks in order to preserve ammunition, basically not shooting down the cluster munitions that don't look like they're going to hit anything or anyone because they don't have the ammunition to stop everything. Now, I don't doubt that Iran is also feeling somewhat pinched in the munitions department. It would be kind of weird if they weren't, both due to how many they fired and how many have been destroyed via airstrikes. But the question isn't, are they suffering attrition, too? It's are they better able to maintain the rate of attrition they're suffering than we are? And while I can't answer that question in absolute terms, I think the answer is probably yes. Iran's ballistic missiles generally cost a few hundred thousand dollars each. Thaad interceptor missiles cost, as I said, around $13 million. Shahid drones cost like $30,000 to make and are often stopped by munitions that cost millions to make and are hard to replace. It's also worth noting that the reduction in the total number of missiles fired by Iran is not just due to the fact that they run through some of their stockpile. It's at least partly a strategic decision, as even Fox News admits. Quote, iran has adapted its tactics accordingly, shifting from large barrages to smaller, more frequent attacks designed to maintain constant pressure while gradually draining defensive resources. These persistent salvos, even if limited in size, force defenders to remain on high alert and continue expending interceptors, accelerating the depletion of already finite stockpiles. Now there's an important point made towards the end of that paragraph. Persistent attacks force defenders to remain on high alert. This is true, and it also brings us to another under discussed aspect of attrition, the energy and time of the soldiers. Our administration expects to fight this war for them. And we'll talk about that after another brace of ads. And we're back. Too often, people who want to war game out how the US Will perform in a given conflict just focus on the theoretical capabilities of the vehicles and weapons systems we own. A Nimitz class aircraft carrier has this many planes and so it can unleash this amount of firepower on a target in this amount of time. And that's a bad way to predict combat performance because it ignores the human element. The USS Gerald R. Ford. A Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier is what's commonly known as a super carrier. It can travel for 25 years before its nuclear reactors need refueling, and it has a complement of more than 4,500 men and women. It is a small city at sea, and I've talked in the past about how hard these things are to actually sink. During the Ford's deployment to fight the Houthis, there were viral rumors stoked by AI misinformation that it had been seriously damaged or even destroyed by a Houthi ballistic missile strike. Now, I pointed out at the time that this was fanciful. The defense systems on a boat like this cost billions and provide excellent proven protection against most missiles, drones and aircraft it's likely to encounter. The entire naval battle group it travels with exists to protect and enhance the carrier's capabilities. And even if it were stripped of all those things, these boats are just so damn tough to fucking sink. In 2005, the US Navy conducted a live fire test to sink a retired Kitty Hawk class supercarrier. Per an article in Forbes, the carrier endured nearly a month of intense weaponized testing and was finally scuttled via internal explosive charges. It should be added that the warship had been decommissioned nearly a decade earlier and was in poor material condition. There were also no damage control efforts to save the ship. In February of this year, just days before his own death, Iran's former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened the US carriers operating in the Persian Gulf. In a post on Twitter, because it's fucking 2026, quote, the Americans constantly say that they've sent a warship towards Iran of Course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea. Now, it's kind of unclear exactly what he was talking about. Maybe it's some sort of secret weapon that the Iranians have that we don't know about. But we do know that Iranian negotiators are currently talking with the People's Republic of China about purchasing CM302 supersonic missiles. These were developed by Chinese military planners to fly low and fast, avoiding most of the layered defenses. A boat like the Ford Joys, they're carrier killer missiles, or at least that's the idea. Beijing also has a line of land based carrier killer missiles because if you think you might wind up in a war with the United States, it probably behooves you to think about how you would kill an aircraft carrier. Now again, Iran doesn't have any of these weapons systems yet, at least not to our knowledge. But this war of choice by the United States didn't come as a complete surprise. The Iranian military and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had been preparing to fight this war for quite some time. Those preparations have included the construction of multiple fake aircraft carriers, which their forces have sunk in a variety of war games exercises. The most recent of these occurred in 2020. The Prophet Muhammad 14 exercise was meant to prepare for an attack on a Nimitz class carrier. And ironically Iran made it too easy to sink, which caused it to go down while it was being towed in an inconvenient location that temporarily blocked a canal. And that should act as a warning that just as American military planners and analysts fuck up constantly, so too do their Iranian counterparts. And we shouldn't assume our guys are a bunch of hegseth looking chucklefucks while Iran's Pentagon equivalent is staffed entirely by hard eyed professionals. Every military has dipshit officers and has to deal with bad calls made by people with political power that fuck shit up for everyone. What you should take from this though is that Iran is a country with a large, comparatively well funded and prepared military. They regularly invent and sell weapons systems that are utilized around the world. And they've been obsessively planning to kill an aircraft carrier for years. And now that doesn't mean they're gonna sink one. In fact, I still think that's pretty close to impossible, at least with the technology we know they have. But they don't need to sink one to render it inoperable. Just hitting the top of it could be enough to do serious damage that would render it combat incapable for an extended period of time. And to back me up on that point, a few weeks ago, while it was actively engaged in combat operations against Iranian forces, a fire started on board the Gerry Ford. It began in the laundry room, or at least in an area related to the vast laundry system that a vehicle like this has. It's kind of a little unclear exactly what happened. According to the New York Times, though the fire alone took 30 hours to put out. Now, the Navy disputes this, that the ship was burning for more than a day, but they provided no reason anyone should actually trust them. Here I found an article published in the National Interest by Peter Sussio. He writes that, quote, the fire caused far greater damage than was initially reported, with one sailor medically evacuated from the ship and 200 more treated for smoke inhalation. I'm not surprised that the Navy wanted to hide the extent of the damage its biggest warship suffered due to a laundry fire. But this reinforces how unreliable the Navy is as an ongoing source in these matters. Sussio notes, quote, there remain conflicting accounts of the fire in the media, and the Pentagon seemingly attempted to downplay the severity of the fire in the immediate aftermath, leading to later confusion. What we do know is that the Ford, a small city on the sea, lost all ability to launder clothing, bedding and anything else. This caused an immediate hygiene issue aboard and a logistic nightmare for the Navy, which had to fly in clean clothing at terrific expense. Saying a supercarrier was taken out of commission by a laundry fire sounds silly, but you can't keep a town of 4,500 people going if no one can do the laundry. The fire seems to have also done extensive damage to crew living quarters, which forced a thousand mattresses to be flown in while the crew slept. And except, well, wherever they were sleeping, it wasn't in their bunks. Now, we don't know how the fire started again, but unconfirmed reports have blamed sabotage by members of the Gerald Ford's crew. I can't tell you if this is true or not, but if it is, it would not be the first time something like this happened. In 2012, a civilian contractor started a fire aboard the USS Miami and attack submarine because he wanted to leave work early. The fire caused $400 million in damage and led to the vessel being decommissioned two years later. The contractor was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Naval sabotage was an even bigger business during the latter stages of the war in Vietnam. In December of 1972, Jeffrey Allison, a 19 year old sailor from Oakland was sentenced to 5 years in prison for lighting a fire aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal. That same year, a sailor aboard the USS Ranger, another supercarrier, delayed its deployment to the Pacific by three months, allegedly sticking a paint scraper in the main reduction gear, which disabled an engine. Per an article in the Alameda Post. The Navy's official history of the Ranger confirms that sabotage was becoming more popular as the war in Vietnam became more unpopular. Sabotage happens every day, all day. A crewman serving aboard another carrier based in Alameda, the Oriskany, was quoted as saying. Now these sailors, the folks sabotaging their own warships in the later stages of the Vietnam War, were part of the so called SOS movement, a protest campaign launched and sustained entirely by sailors angry at being forced to participate in the war against Vietnam. The movement gained its name from an act of protest in 1971, when 40 sailors stood on the flight deck of their returning aircraft carrier and spelled out SOS with their bodies. Again, I don't know if sabotage caused the fire on the Gerald Ford, and neither does anyone else, but there are good reasons to believe it did. As Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in late March, the Ford and its crew have been pushed to the brink. After nearly a year at sea, normal deployment for sailors on the Ford is like six months. Come April, it will break the record for the longest post Vietnam carrier deployment, 294 days. Crew members have been told their deployment will likely be extended to May, at which point they'll have been at sea for an entire year. Now, I don't want or really expect anyone to pour out their sympathy for sailors on a warship that has helped to kill a minimum of 1500 Iranians so far, including 200 children. But you don't need to feel bad for all the lost birthdays and weddings and missed funerals to understand the deleterious effect that this has on morale. Fighting spirit isn't just a buzzword. When soldiers are exhausted and pissed off, they're likelier to fuck things up. And I'm not just talking about grand acts of sabotage. When it was still off the coast of Venezuela earlier in this deployment, the Ford suffered massive recurrent issues with its plumbing system, which was ripped off a design used in cruise ships, and works very badly. I can't exaggerate how bad the sewage systems on the Ford work. They are broken fucking constantly. And per the Alameda Post, some crew members may be intentionally exacerbating problems with defective toilets aboard the ship by flushing T shirts and other objects. As documented in an email from the ship's engineering department obtained by npr. Our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed by sailors on a daily basis. That March 2025 email stated, My whole maintenance technicians are currently working 19 hours a day right now to keep up with the demand. It's a lot of flushed shirts.
- [187:49]
Garrison Davis
Now.
- [187:49]
Robert Evans
What I'm building to is that there's a perfectly good chance this fire didn't even start as an act of sabotage, but because somebody up, maybe because they were exhausted, maybe because they've just been running the machines too long, the laundry is always going while this thing's underway. And if it's going for months longer than normal, shit like lint is going to build up. In fact, I want to read a quote from that article in the national if the ducts haven't been cleaned out properly, it is easy for small lint particles to catch fire, potentially leading to a larger blaze, not unlike a house fire caused by lint buildup. So again, this fire was certainly not enough to sink the Gerald Ford. It didn't destroy it, but it did enough damage that it became combat ineffective. Or at least you could argue that's the case. You know, obviously we replace it with a different carrier group. There's not. Just not a carrier now, but the Ford was not originally scheduled to leave and left as a result of the fire in order to undergo repairs. That gets at something very important, very relevant to the question of how a higher intensity war, one involving ground troops against Iran would go. Because while Iran may or may not be able to sink a carrier, they certainly have the tools to potentially hit one starting a fire or just damaging the deck badly enough to render it combat ineffective. And if these deployment cycles keep getting extended, if sailors are kept at a high operational tempo for days or weeks or months at a time, people will start fucking up. And some of those fuck ups have a chance, as we've already seen, to remove the ship from being combat capable or to remove other ships from being combat capable. If you're talking from the perspective of US Marines trying to hold onto an island surrounded by enemies, this is a really scary thing. The fact that your main source of air support might not be able to function because somebody fucks up or sabotages it. There's a fire, it gets hit. You know, these boats are not sinkable, but in certain ways they're a lot more fragile than people are used to thinking of them as being. Aircraft carriers have been gods of the sea for so long, I think it really is something people ought to pay attention to. The fact that this simple laundry fire took the Jerry Ford out of the theater matters. The longer the US Keeps fighting and the longer we keep our ships deployed chasing Donald Trump's dreams, the higher the odds that something else goes wrong get. Whether it's just exhausted soldiers screwing up, angry sailors sabotaging things to protest an unpopular war, or a damned lucky shot, the Pentagon is continuing to roll those dice every day. And I guess we'll see what happens next. That's all I've got for you right now, everybody. Hopefully we're not invading islands with ground troops by the time this episode comes out, but we might be.
- [190:49]
Garrison Davis
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder. Our week 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 25th to April 1st.
- [191:05]
James Stout
Yep. So we're all gonna do silly things that aren't really news.
- [191:09]
Garrison Davis
No, we're not gonna do us.
- [191:10]
James Stout
We're not. I love it when outlets do that.
- [191:13]
Garrison Davis
This comes out Friday. This comes out Friday. It's over. It's done.
- [191:17]
James Stout
No more. No more fish of April to April. There's French people out there now.
- [191:20]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [191:52]
James Stout
More serious.
- [191:52]
Garrison Davis
Some people are saying the Internet's obviously is more real than television. No one watches TV anymore.
- [191:57]
James Stout
Yeah, it's. It's like the Emmys, people who aren't boomers.
- [192:00]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [192:52]
James Stout
Yeah, Pokemon, go to those links and vote for us.
- [192:56]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [193:16]
James Stout
Vote early. Vote often.
- [193:17]
Robert Evans
Vote early.
- [193:17]
Garrison Davis
Vote often.
- [193:19]
James Stout
Vote with your spare email address.
- [193:21]
Mia Wong
Look virtually Vote often. The great slogan of my home state of Illinois.
- [193:27]
Garrison Davis
Everyone take this liberal direct action very seriously. Let's start with some actual news getting serious here. Kristy Noem's husband was outed as what I'm going to call a sissy cross dresser 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, etc. Etc. Representatives for Nome released a statement after this news dropped. Quote, Ms. Gnome, which is interesting. Quote, Ms. Noem is devastated. The family was blindsided by this and they ask for privacy and prayers at this time.
- [194:09]
James Stout
Yeah, cool.
- [194:10]
Mia Wong
I think we need to expand the right to arm bears to the right to arm dogs. This is my final statement on this matter.
- [194:18]
James Stout
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.
- [194:31]
Marianne
Jesus Christ.
- [194:35]
Garrison Davis
In other important news, 413,793 Kit Kat bars were stolen in transit from Italy to Poland.
- [194:45]
James Stout
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?
- [194:58]
Garrison Davis
No, it's each packaged bar including some of the new limited edition Formula 1 and chunky bars.
- [195:05]
James Stout
Oh, that's been a thing in the UK for like 20 years. KitKat, Chunky.
- [195:09]
Garrison Davis
This is a new version. This is a new version according to a press release from KitKat. Okay, so if you want to argue
- [195:15]
James Stout
with KitKat, 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.
- [195:25]
Garrison Davis
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. Joe 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.
- [196:40]
Mia Wong
Oh my God.
- [196:41]
Garrison Davis
While working to implement Trump's immigration policy.
- [196:46]
James Stout
I think it's specifically like because they're shouting him for not hitting the targets. Right.
- [196:51]
Garrison Davis
Because Stephen Miller has been calling Lyons, yelling at him, quote, unquote. Yelling.
- [196:55]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [196:56]
Garrison Davis
About not hitting certain immigration targets.
- [196:58]
Robert Evans
Yes.
- [196:59]
Garrison Davis
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 meeting.
- [197:17]
James Stout
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.
- [197:29]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [197:30]
James Stout
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. What? Javelin? Yeah, yeah. Just for those who are not familiar, Javelin. I'm not talking about like a spear here. I'm talking about a guided anti tank missile.
- [198:00]
Garrison Davis
Holy shit.
- [198:02]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [198:05]
Mia Wong
Who was he trying to sell them to?
- [198:07]
James Stout
So he selled them to two people who acted as brokers, the 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.
- [198:36]
Mia Wong
Great.
- [198:37]
James Stout
It's not clear if There are still Javelins in circulation, basically.
- [198:40]
Marianne
What?
- [198:41]
Mia Wong
They don't know where the Javelins are. They lost it.
- [198:45]
James Stout
They recovered a Javelin. They don't know if they recovered all the Javelins.
- [198:50]
Mia Wong
So potentially there are just anti tank rockets out there.
- [198:54]
Garrison Davis
Wait a minute, wait a minute. They're with the KitKats. This is a joint operation.
- [199:00]
James Stout
Maybe that's how they stop that large Kit Kat truck. They hit the vehicle with jabs, Javelin got in there. 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 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. Right. 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 weapon 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. The.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 that 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 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.
- [201:47]
Mia Wong
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.
- [202:06]
James Stout
Yeah, this is their thing.
- [202:07]
Mia Wong
And in support of this. So it really, truly cannot be clearer what this is about.
- [202:13]
James Stout
Yeah, no, that's their. Like their version of the MAGA hat, I guess. Like, their branding of their movement is this loose pin.
- [202:20]
Mia Wong
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.
- [202:32]
James Stout
Yeah. It's pretty disgusting. Jesus Christ.
- [202:35]
Garrison Davis
There's 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.
- [202:45]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [202:45]
Garrison Davis
That carried the headline, quote, bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson.
- [202:53]
Mia Wong
God.
- [202:55]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [203:38]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [203:38]
Garrison Davis
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 it was foreign ties. That's. It's a very, very popular thing right now on the Internet.
- [204:02]
James Stout
The grassy knoll theory of Charlie Kirk.
- [204:05]
Garrison Davis
Yes. That basically, like a Mossad agent was hiding somewhere 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.
- [204:22]
James Stout
Yeah, Daily Fail.
- [204:24]
Mia Wong
And also I think it's worth mentioning that 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.
- [205:05]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yep.
- [205:05]
Garrison Davis
We will certainly follow this case as it actually reaches trial as there will be many interesting things that come out through the course of that trial.
- [205:13]
James Stout
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 a New York court suit filed by the ACLU on behalf of advocacy groups which had challenged the courthouse arrest suit. Those have been happening for about a year now, as I'm sure most people are aware. 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 was specifically informed by ice that the 2025 ICE guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests. In addition, we discussed and obtained the approval of a signed 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 plaintiffs 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. We saw this happen in some of those cases in Minnesota and then the judge rejected that. 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.
- [207:35]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [207:36]
James Stout
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. 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 protective status for Burmese people for some time. But even with the tps, it's worth noting that people, some people who've been convicted of crimes and 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 US Government is talking to us. This has downstream effects. Right. I think the world is Naji not taking that seriously. But nonetheless, they are using that, whether it's for external or internal signaling. The last time it's 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. The majority that comprises most of the armed forces is. Or certainly most of the high ranks of the armed forces are Bama 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 ear.
- [210:58]
Garrison Davis
Some people actually like culture.
- [211:01]
James Stout
Just to clarify, Garrison, I don't think this is the kind that people like.
- [211:06]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [211:20]
James Stout
Yeah, it is funny to look at the old ads. When I was doing my archival research, I'd find, like, 1920s and 1930s, and you're like, oh, what you're selling is drugs.
- [211:28]
Garrison Davis
But so true, so true.
- [211:31]
Mia Wong
Yeah, it's like the. The truth. The two kinds of early 1900s ads are drugs. And you should buy this because it has a swastika on it.
- [211:41]
James Stout
Yeah, it's just like some form of racism in marketing.
- [211:43]
Mia Wong
Well, it wasn't even racist in, like, 1905. I mean, kind of.
- [211:47]
James Stout
Yeah. And, guys, it's a Buddhist symbol originally. Guys, it's fine.
- [211:52]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [213:12]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [213:12]
James Stout
Because you can obtain United States citizenship through a number of means. Means. Right, yeah. 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
- [213:32]
Garrison Davis
up monumentally 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.
- [213:44]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. And just every part of everyday life. Right, yeah. Not least to add that, like, one of the, 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.
- [214:00]
Garrison Davis
There was nothing about that in the, in the order.
- [214:03]
Mia Wong
I legitimately do not think the people who are pushing this understand that that's a thing.
- [214:07]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. They don't think about it.
- [214:08]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not a group of people who they care about. Right.
- [214:12]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [214:38]
Mia Wong
Oh, my fucking God.
- [214:41]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [214:46]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [214:47]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [214:59]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [215:00]
Garrison Davis
Which is like an odd part of the Trump administration has, like, not everything bad. They're doing is necessarily has. Has every single specific implementation pathway in mind.
- [215:10]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [215:11]
Garrison Davis
But when implemented is, like, still is still devastating to people's lives.
- [215:16]
Mia Wong
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, like, hack apart different people's citizenship, right.
- [216:03]
James Stout
You try to.
- [216:03]
Mia Wong
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, Right. 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, 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 birthright citizens. That's every single person in the U.S. yeah.
- [216:41]
James Stout
Unless they naturalized, Right. Unless you're a naturalized citizen.
- [216:44]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Unless you're naturalized.
- [216:44]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [216:45]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And even then, you're still just a citizen. Yeah.
- [216:48]
James Stout
Then you become a citizen. You just go into the citizen bucket. That's warm.
- [216:50]
Mia Wong
But then you are now citizens.
- [216:52]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah.
- [216:52]
Mia Wong
And the moment you cut that apart, like, it's terrible. Terrible things happen.
- [216:56]
James Stout
Yeah. 2024, I made the episode with Robert and Sophie in which we discuss potential attacks on citizenship and potential ways of Trump. And we get into the birthright citizenship and the. 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 them quite literally decades, if not centuries.
- [217:26]
Mia Wong
No. Yeah.
- [217:26]
James Stout
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.
- [217:38]
Mia Wong
It's just in the Constitution just says that. It just says that.
- [217:42]
James Stout
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.
- [217:50]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [217:50]
Robert Evans
And.
- [217:51]
James Stout
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.
- [218:01]
Garrison Davis
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 election, 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 that'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.
- [219:09]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [219:10]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [219:34]
James Stout
Yeah. I should just clarify that, like, not all tribal members are necessarily US Citizens, but tribal membership documents can sometimes be used, like Garrison was saying. Right. As a way to prove United States citizenship. It's just more than 100 years now since the Indian Citizenship act of 1924.
- [219:50]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [219:50]
James Stout
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 that.
- [220:01]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [220:20]
James Stout
That's what we call a chilling effect.
- [220:22]
Garrison Davis
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 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. 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.
- [223:11]
James Stout
What's that sound? Oh, no, it's someone desecrating the legacy of the Clash by singing their worst song with different lyrics. Rocky Caspar Tyree don't like it.
- [223:31]
Michael Edison Hayden
Rocking Caspar. Rocking Caspar.
- [223:35]
James Stout
Seriously though, I'm still angry.
- [223:38]
Mia Wong
To be fair to my entrance music. The Clash desecrated themselves by making that song.
- [223:45]
James Stout
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.
- [223:54]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [223:56]
Mia Wong
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.
- [224:56]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, I bet.
- [224:56]
Mia Wong
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.
- [225:07]
Garrison Davis
They have to pay interest.
- [225:08]
James Stout
That's funny.
- [225:09]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [225:09]
Robert Evans
Plus interest.
- [225:10]
Mia Wong
This is the whole thing, right. They have to do interest on all of this, which is a nightmare.
- [225:13]
James Stout
It's the interest accruing while they bungle setting up their Squarespace site or whatever.
- [225:17]
Mia Wong
Yep, it' still going every second. The interesting thing is ticking on this. So I'm going to quote here from Bloomberg, Brandon Lord, executive director of the Trade Programs Directorate, 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, 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.
- [226:14]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [226:23]
Mia Wong
It's going to be so good. And again, I can't emphasize how much catastrophe this is. The government has said in court that their portal set up for two thirds of the money.
- [226:32]
James Stout
Right?
- [226:33]
Garrison Davis
There's still another third that they're like,
- [226:34]
Michael Edison Hayden
yeah, I don't know.
- [226:35]
Mia Wong
We're working on it. Who knows when it's going to happen. So there's just again, like a third of that $166 billion that they don't have a plan to refund.
- [226:44]
James Stout
Amazing.
- [226:46]
Mia Wong
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, if you were doing, like, FedEx, for example, they use, right. FedEx has, like, a number, right, because they just, they pass the cost directly onto 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, 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 formal 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, Molly, I bet that they're gonna start selling securities based off of these pools of tariff money. So this is.
- [228:44]
Garrison Davis
Oh, my headache.
- [228:45]
Mia Wong
This is going great. What's what I gotta say about the tariff refunds?
- [228:53]
James Stout
Amazing.
- [228:54]
Mia Wong
Oh, it's so good.
- [228:55]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [229:04]
Mia Wong
Hey, you. You know, 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.
- [229:17]
Marianne
It is.
- [229:18]
Mia Wong
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.
- [229:28]
Garrison Davis
That's funny. Yeah, I'm not doing that shit.
- [229:30]
Mia Wong
That's so good.
- [229:31]
Garrison Davis
Too much work.
- [229:31]
James Stout
No, we'll include the GoFundMe link for Garrison's constitutional lawyer.
- [229:35]
Mia Wong
If so, if so, if someone takes a $20 bill from you, you can go fucking sue them in court.
- [229:41]
Garrison Davis
That's funny.
- [229:41]
Marianne
It's beautiful.
- [229:44]
James Stout
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.
- [229:55]
Garrison Davis
Thank you. Yes.
- [229:56]
Mia Wong
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.
- [230:19]
Robert Evans
Great.
- [230:20]
Mia Wong
Things happening for international trade as we, yeah, increase the price of oil to like $200 a barrel and I don't know, finally get our Calvin and Hobbs $8 gasoline. It's great. Long live the cycler.
- [230:37]
James Stout
Yeah. The national price of gasoline is now at four bucks, I think.
- [230:41]
Garrison Davis
And that's why they call him the Affordability President.
- [230:44]
James Stout
Uh huh, yeah. Has anyone checked on the egg prices, though? Because that's, that's how we do things now.
- [230:49]
Mia Wong
Expensive as shit. Expensive as shit, James.
- [230:51]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [230:52]
Mia Wong
Not cheap.
- [230:54]
James Stout
Let me divert new listeners to our, 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 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.
- [232:33]
Marianne
Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited.
- [232:37]
James Stout
Why is the President threatening what would
- [232:39]
Marianne
amount to potentially a war crime with the US Military?
- [232:43]
James Stout
And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying, saying that the US does not target civilians? Miss.
- [232:48]
Molly Conger
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 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.
- [233:32]
James Stout
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 under war crimes free 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's 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 several factors, including this incredibly rapid disinformation campaign, strongly point to this being an IDF job.
- [234:39]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Also, who else? Like, what are you two. Bob, Dick.
- [234:43]
Molly Conger
Like, I don't know.
- [234:45]
James Stout
Yeah. What are you going to do lately? Yeah, come on. There have been attempts to. Several attempts over the last month to suggest that 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.
- [235:23]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [235:23]
James Stout
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 state as he appears to be doing from Delsey and Venezuela. Now 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.
- [236:24]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [236:24]
James Stout
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.
- [236:55]
Mia Wong
Aircraft.
- [236:55]
James Stout
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 seemed 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 we're recording this is it has not been one so far.
- [237:18]
Mia Wong
Christ.
- [237:19]
James Stout
Yeah. I mean, every war is an ecological disaster, right? But this one could re a particularly remarkable one. And then I just do briefly want to mention the economic impacts. Of course 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 the never raising the word and anger against us.
- [238:18]
Garrison Davis
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 alleged 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.
- [239:20]
Mia Wong
Look, I. I am stunned that these people didn't accidentally blow themselves up.
- [239:24]
Garrison Davis
Well, the reason why is because it's actually very hard to build a bomb.
- [239:27]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Oh.
- [239:28]
Marianne
So, yeah, I guess.
- [239:29]
Mia Wong
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,
- [239:42]
Garrison Davis
that last one's the hardest part. The hardest.
- [239:44]
Mia Wong
And it's. You're pretty likely to blow yourself up or fail to build a bomb. So I get. I guess they never got to the threshold of bomb building where they would blew themselves up because they just didn't
- [239:56]
Garrison Davis
produce a viable device in this next bombing plot plot. The suspect did actually construct what could be considered a bomb.
- [240:06]
Mia Wong
Oh, good Lord.
- [240:07]
Garrison Davis
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 Nadine Keswani.
- [240:24]
James Stout
Jesus Christ.
- [240:25]
Garrison Davis
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 a extremist group.
- [240:49]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [240:50]
Garrison Davis
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. Things that aren't those things.
- [241:14]
Mia Wong
Okay. Great things happening here.
- [241:16]
Garrison Davis
And Heifler later specifically mentioned that he was looking for somewhere to throw Molotovs.
- [241:22]
James Stout
Oh, boy.
- [241:23]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [241:41]
Mia Wong
Incredible operational security happening here.
- [241:43]
Garrison Davis
The next day, the two met in person. Heiffer told the undercover that Molotovs were easy to make and they discussed targeting the home of pro Palestinian activist Nurdine Keswani. Heifler talked about 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 Zoram Hamdani clarified online that Heifeler intended to flee to Israel.
- [242:08]
Mia Wong
Great.
- [242:09]
Garrison Davis
To quote Heifeler in the criminal complaint, quote, I'm thinking like, if we wanted to go after Kiswani, we have Kaswani's address. So it's like that. That would be easier if you'd be more comfortable with that. That drive down to Kaswani's home, middle of April, no IDs, no phones, in and out, unquote.
- [242:27]
James Stout
Great.
- [242:28]
Garrison Davis
A few weeks later, they met up again and drove to Kaswani'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.
- [242:46]
Mia Wong
Oh, my God.
- [242:48]
Garrison Davis
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 Heifler's home to start making the Molotovs. And after the assembly, law enforcement searched the home and Heifeler was arrested and has since been charged with unlawful possession and making of a destructive device.
- [243:14]
Mia Wong
Great stuff. I very glad they didn't pull this off. And also, Jesus Christ.
- [243:20]
Garrison Davis
You know, something like this. It is interesting that, yeah, 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.
- [243:29]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [243:30]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [243:43]
Marianne
We.
- [243:44]
Garrison Davis
We don't know if, if this guy would have done this exact attack.
- [243:47]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [243:47]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [244:05]
Mia Wong
Oh, my fucking God. Yeah.
- [244:06]
Garrison Davis
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 room.
- [245:05]
Marianne
Incredible.
- [245:06]
Mia Wong
And just one of the most Orwellian things I've ever heard.
- [245:09]
Garrison Davis
Just, holy fuck.
- [245:11]
Mia Wong
Just, just on a base level of like, just, oh my reporter free newsroom.
- [245:18]
Garrison Davis
Because of this change, one of the. One of the journalists there have already quit.
- [245:21]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [245:21]
Garrison Davis
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 wanker. 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 Pink 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.
- [246:28]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [246:30]
Garrison Davis
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 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.
- [247:02]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [247:02]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [247:23]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [247:23]
Garrison Davis
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 claims name. 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.
- [248:06]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [248:07]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [248:22]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [248:23]
Garrison Davis
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, 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.
- [248:49]
Michael Edison Hayden
Yeah.
- [248:49]
Mia Wong
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.
- [249:26]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [249:27]
Mia Wong
And like that shit is like actually happening. And then meanwhile, we have the same, like, panic slop bullshit that people are using to get money. And it's incredibly frustrating.
- [249:36]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [249:37]
Garrison Davis
It makes it harder to actually evaluate the news as it's happening and trust certain. Certain news from certain sources.
- [249:43]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [249:44]
Garrison Davis
Because we all know that these attacks are real. Like, there are real attacks going on
- [249:47]
Mia Wong
that are really bad.
- [249:48]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [249:56]
Mia Wong
Gas. Yeah.
- [249:56]
Garrison Davis
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.
- [250:04]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [250:05]
Garrison Davis
Well, on that note, I think that does it for us here at it could happen Here.
- [250:09]
Mia Wong
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.
- [250:22]
Garrison Davis
We reported the news.
- [250:24]
Michael Edison Hayden
We reported the news.
- [250:32]
Robert Evans
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [250:38]
Molly Conger
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.
- [250:40]
Marianne
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,
- [250:42]
Molly Conger
Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us
- [250:46]
Marianne
out on the iHeartrade radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [250:50]
Molly Conger
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [250:57]
Garrison Davis
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [250:59]
James Stout
Guaranteed Human.