It Could Happen Here Weekly 235

Summary

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It Could Happen Here Weekly 235

Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts | June 6, 2026

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Overview

This compilation episode assembles the week’s "It Could Happen Here" content, exploring the intersection of ecological crisis, labor organizing, the fracturing US political landscape, shifting international dynamics, and the rise of authoritarian systems and ideological violence. Hosts Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, James Stout, Sophie Lichterman, and guests provide deep dives, vivid stories, and sharp critique of the events accelerating collapse and stirring hope on the margins.

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Contents

1. Bears, American Violence, and Conservation Policy
2. Muji Workers United: Unionizing the Japanese Lifestyle Store in Portland
3. The 2024 Democratic Party Autopsy: Dysfunction, Denial, and Disaster
4. Iran’s War & Manufactured Fascism: A Conversation with Dr. Negar Razavi
5. Weekly News Roundup & Analysis: Border Fascism, California’s Elections, and the Death of American Science

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1. Bears, American Violence, & Conservation Policy

Main Theme

• Garrison Davis and Molly Conger delve into the "bear discourse" following several high-profile bear attacks, the reaction of US politicians (especially Ryan Zinke), the history of American attitudes to bears, ecological mismanagement, and what it means for both human and animal safety.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Bear Safety & Public Discourse

• Recent fatal bear encounters prompt political calls (esp. from Ryan Zinke) to delist grizzlies from the Endangered Species Act, arguing bear populations are "too high" [13:40].
• Garrison and Molly stress: attacks are rare—most bear/human incidents stem from unsafe human behavior or encroachment, not overpopulation.

Historical Context

• Lewis & Clark’s diaries detail early colonizers ignoring indigenous warnings (“Yo, they will kill you”), resulting in violent, needless bear hunts [18:34].
• Quote (Lewis & Clark, via Garrison): “This animal is said to more frequently attack a man on meeting with him than flee… It takes eight or ten guys, usually one of them dies” [19:27].

Bear Conservation & Policy

• Post-1800s colonization, grizzlies wiped out of 98% of original range in the lower 48; only remnant populations survive due to mountains being less amenable to capitalism [24:30].
• Bears’ retreat into mountains was not migration—plains bears perished, only “inaccessible” areas protected survivors [25:34].
• Bears’ listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting arguments ignore low actual threat rates: “Bearvault keeps an open-source collection of bear maulings—Bears, according to their data, have killed 66 people since 1974. That’s not very many” (Molly, 42:07).

Mismanagement: “Revenge” Killings & Ecological Chaos

• After attacks, bear culls often amount to “revenge killings.” Garrison: “They’ll end up killing a number of bears in an area. It’s just a revenge killing” [14:19].
• Historical and ongoing mismanagement framed as “response” is often about brute dominance over nature, not balanced ecology.
• Discussion of ecosystem tinkering (e.g., introducing myxomatosis to control rabbits), driven by capitalist/technocratic arrogance with disastrous, unpredictable results [27:43–28:40].

Bear/Human Interaction & Best Practices

• Bear encounters disproportionately happen when basic safety (group size, food storage, noise, avoiding thick berry patches) is ignored.
• Bear spray is proven to be safer and more effective than guns—but FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) spreads in right-wing substack/“outdoors” media [54:05–57:32].

  “I would suggest that writing that bear spray is dangerous or useless is akin to saying that seat belts are dangerous or useless… this is bullshit.” —Garrison, 54:41

• Key advice:
  • Keep a clean camp; store food and scented items in bear canisters (not camp “bear bells” as panacea).
  • Do not use bear spray like bug spray; only spray at the bear if necessary.
  • “If you’re touching a grizzly bear, it’s a bad day for you. Unless, I guess, it has decided it wants to be touched.” —Garrison, 15:01

Underlying Philosophy

• American psyche centering on “man Vs. nature” conquest artificial, leads to needless carnage ("If we wanted zero risk we’d go to the zoo. But the zoo sucks.").
• “If you want to keep people safe, then be concerned about free healthcare. [Bears] killed 66 people; that many died today from not being able to get insulin” —Molly, 74:27

Notable Quotes

• “Millions of people every year visit the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and very few of them see a bear.” —Garrison, 14:53
• “We need to stop randomly removing [bears]. Bears are easy to whip up fear about. I think we should just leave them alone.” —Garrison, 75:38

[Key Timestamps]

• [02:46] — Start of “bear time”
• [13:25] — Ryan Zinke’s intervention
• [18:34] — Lewis & Clark’s bear folly
• [24:30] — Population crash; ESA context
• [42:07] — Modern bear attack data
• [54:05–57:32] — Mythbusting bear spray vs. gun

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2. Muji Workers United: A Unionization Campaign

Main Theme

• Labor organization comes to Muji, the Japanese minimalist store in Portland. Mia Wong interviews Morgan and Renee from Muji Workers United about poor pay, management abuses, and their organizing journey.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Context & Grievances

• Low raises (“my raise of 65 cents last summer... was the highest by a significant margin” —Luna, 86:13), below inflation, despite "store of the year" performance.
• Bonuses for key holders/FT staff cut via raised sales targets; pay falling despite profit.
• Management abuses: emotional abuse, inconsistent policy enforcement (esp. re: uniform code, racial/fatphobic discrimination), pressure not to take sick time (even if sick in a customer-facing pandemic role), sexual harassment inadequately addressed [95:10–106:24].

Union-Building Process

• Began with wage injustice triggering initial contact with IWW (Nov 2025).
• Potlucks as core tactic: “People are going to be more willing to come... if it wasn’t just a meeting... but a way to hang out and eat dinner.” —Luna, 91:28
  • Led to deepening bonds, and natural escalation from complaint sessions to actual organizing [92:31].
• “It just feels like... this is the only option and we’re all with it and it feels good.” —Renee, 93:10

Legal and Direct-Action Struggles

• Managers attempted to split the union by claiming certain groups (merchandising, key holders) didn’t share “community of interest” or were “supervisors” — fought and won on both counts [111:12].
• “Neither of us are even law students… We just put in the work. It is something everyone is able to do.” —Luna, 117:02
• Direct Action mindset: “The goal is not a contract. The goal is to use direct action to enact the changes you want to see in your workplace.” —Luna, 121:06

Social Solidarity

• Union built as a space for genuine connection, "extreme hanging out" as resilience to isolation and exploitation [124:17].
• Practical call: Support via GoFundMe (for strike fund), follow on Instagram for solidarity.

Notable Quotes

• “If your sick hours can get rejected, you don’t have sick hours.” —Mia, 98:41
• “The law isn’t going to help us... Even Oregon law, which tends to be more protective... the bureaucracy is overwhelmed.” —Luna, 101:37

[Key Timestamps]

• [81:58] — Intro, union context
• [86:08] — Wage injustice
• [90:40] — Potlucks as organizing
• [95:10] — Management abuse
• [111:12] — Legal challenge win
• [121:06] — Direct action philosophy

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3. The Democratic Party 2024 Autopsy: Dysfunction, Denial, and Disaster

Main Theme

• James Stout and Sophie Lichterman review the widely-awaited but disastrous DNC “2024 Autopsy”: why the Democrats lost, why the report was buried for a year, and what it reveals (or fails to) about a flailing party.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The “Autopsy” Story

• Commissioned after the party’s catastrophic 2024 loss; intended as honest self-examination.
• Authored by Paul Rivera (friend of new chair Ken Martin—no recent campaign experience); written part-time, delayed, ultimately leaked due to donor and media pressure (CNN involvement) [133:42].
• Rivera presented findings at a donor retreat via AI-generated slides; huge public embarrassment.

Core Autopsy Failures

• Report riddled with mistakes: unsourced graphs, contradictory numbers, omitted whole sections, factual errors (“gets the number of 2024 gubernatorial races wrong... just small little errors like that that I’m like, how did you do this?” —James, 152:18).
• Key issues (Biden’s age, Gaza, lack of a primary) never mentioned; Israel/Palestine—a pivotal factor—nowhere to be found [132:50].
• Instead: pages of basic history, armchair analysis, cliché platitudes (“Anti-Trump sentiment has its limits”), and truisms (“To win elections, you have to win elections”) [166:41].

What Was Actually Learned?

• “Branding” and “messaging” — the same tired takeaways; anti-Trump sentiment alone not enough, but also not driven hard enough (!).
• Report blames campaigns for failing to “define” Harris, but not for policy failures or losing base enthusiasm.
• “The report never interrogates or considers Biden’s decision to run for reelection or lay blame on those who enabled that decision. Nor does it identify the lack of a legitimate primary as a contributing factor” [144:32].

Gaza and the “Rotting Fish”

• Internal campaign staff, faced with Gaza, experienced “a giant rotting fish around our neck” [181:34]. Yet DNC leadership could neither change position nor address the crisis, and wouldn’t admit it diminished turnout and energy.
  • See Flattery’s analysis (Harris campaign): “It became a moral question, one we didn’t have a good answer for... In ways that may not be reflected in a poll, it meaningfully reduced enthusiasm” [181:34].

Conclusions

• The party clings to donor/consultant self-preservation, uninterested in fixing root failures.
• Final conclusion of the autopsy is literally left blank.
  • “There is very little you can actually take away from this report positively to improve election strategy... It literally has no conclusion” —James, 186:41.
• “It’s a stunning sequence of events that highlights all of the issues that everyone already has with... the Democratic Party”—James, 140:12

Notable Quotes

• “Just some guy saying, ‘trust me, bro’...” —James, 146:05
• “This is just an op-ed.” —Sophie, 146:05
• “There’s very little you can actually take away from this report positively ... It literally has no conclusion.” —James, 186:41

[Key Timestamps]

• [127:26] — Autopsy context
• [132:50] — No mention of Gaza/Israel
• [152:18] — Factual/statistical chaos
• [166:41] — “Strategic implications” (clichés)
• [181:34] — Gaza as the “giant rotting fish”

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4. Iran’s War & Manufactured Fascism: With Dr. Negar Razavi

Main Theme

• Dana al Kurd interviews Dr. Negar Razavi about Iran’s worsening post-war crisis, how international/elite discourses justify violence, and the convergences of fascism shaping policy and public consciousness.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Situation on the Ground in Iran

• Post-war devastation: 1700 dead, 3.5 million displaced, destroyed infrastructure (hospitals, factories, desalination plants) [191:25–194:07].
• “We forget there’s an Internet blackout”; regime using moment for intensified repression [194:07].
• Repression now justified by war: “Anyone who speaks out can be made a traitor... under war, repression gets so much worse.” [194:45]

Converging Fascisms

• War on Iran made possible by multiple convergences:
  1. Longstanding anti-Muslim sentiment in global fascist movements (Europe, US, India/Hindutva, Israel).
  2. White supremacy/Aryanism—esp. among Iranian diaspora far-right aligning with settler-colonial Israeli actors and sharing anti-Palestinian racism [200:24].
  3. Settler Colonialism & Nativism—aligns anti-immigrant politics, shared “replacement” fears.
  4. Nostalgic Paternalism—desire for a “strongman/daddy” leader (Egypt’s Sisi, Modi, Iranian royalists).
  5. Techno-fascism—Palantir, AI/crowd-control systems; anti-human dystopian control [202:05–203:58].
• These blend to enable violence in US policy and in opposition/solidarity politics.

Weaponized Anti-Palestinian Racism

• “Anti-Palestinian racism is central... used by the Iranian regime and its opposition for different ends, feeding back with anti-Muslim sentiment” [204:53].
• But, Iranian suffering under Israeli/US strikes has inspired some new solidarity with Palestinians [207:00].

The Danger of Think Tank “Expertise”

• Think tanks, fueled by transnational money (from Gulf States, Turkey, Israel), manufacture “common sense” and preclude peace by framing Iran as an unknowable, irrational “enemy.”
  • “When you have Arab Gulf states, or Israel, invested in shaping the debate in Washington... they are co-constructing the imperial imagination… constructing Iran as this unknowable enemy is key to ensuring confrontation.” —Negar, 208:32

Notable Quotes

• “We need to be much more critical about who is shaping the narrative on Iran... The same people who got us into these messes are all we have... It sometimes takes five extra minutes when you’re reading a New York Times piece to just go through and highlight who they’re quoting as experts on Iran.” —Negar, 215:40

[Key Timestamps]

• [191:25] — Iranian life post-war
• [198:51] — “Converging fascism” argument
• [204:53] — Anti-Palestinian racism cycles
• [208:32] — Think tanks and “unknowable enemies”

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5. Weekly News Roundup & Analysis

Main Themes

• Executive and political “disorder”: Intellectual property violence, California’s disturbing elections, the hardening of border fascism, and the gutting of both US science and the voting rights regime.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Intellectual Property as Violence: Patagonia v. Patty Gonia

• Brand sues high-profile queer environmentalist/drag queen Patty Gonia over logo & trademark.

  “Is it okay for a company that grosses $1.4 billion a year to own the rights to a skyline? ... The system is pure violence, always has been.” —Garrison & Mia, [222:24–226:43]

US Political Landscape

• Supreme Court’s shadow-docket kills enforcement of Voting Rights Act Sec. 2, essentially ending legal protection against racial gerrymandering [261:05+].

  “This is, like, arguably the death of any semblance of multiracial democracy in the US.” —Mia, 261:51

California Elections: Reality TV Mayors and Democratic Malaise

• Low turnout, reality TV candidates (e.g., Spencer Pratt in LA mayoral race) gaining ground; conventional Democrats stir little enthusiasm.
  • “This weird, rogue, no-qualification candidate thing is working. People are like, ‘we need a change.’” —Sophie, 248:02

Border Fascism: Remigration & the Marine Corps of Internal Enforcement

• Former Border Patrol chief joins explicit “remigration” summit in Portugal, outlining plan for racial deportation at scale; frames BP as “federal law enforcement, Marine Corps”—internal shock troops for ethnic cleansing [275:30–285:55].

Death of American Science: OMB’s Bureaucratic Coup

• Proposed rule change shifts all federal grants away from peer-reviewed (scientist-led) panels to sole political appointee review; effectively enables DOGE-style purges of science, medicine, public benefits, and disaster aid.
  • “This is the destruction of the entire system of American science... and all grants (Medicaid included) will be subject to this process.” —Mia, 272:46

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Notable Quotes

• “Patagonia does millions in military contracts and wants you to believe a fancy fleece will save us—it won’t.” —Garrison, [223:04]
• “This is... the formalization of all the sort of DOGE cuts ... all grants given out by the US Government. This is the death of American science.” —Mia, [268:59+]
• “At its core, fascism blames all problems of the chosen group on the scapegoated group... If they can be removed, everything will return to glory.” —Garrison, [284:42]

[Key Timestamps]

• [219:42] — Patagonia v. Patty Gonia lawsuit
• [233:16] — Medicaid work requirements
• [237:03] — LA mayor: Spencer Pratt & political spectacle
• [261:05+] — Supreme Court destroys Section 2 VRA
• [267:12+] — OMB rule change, death of peer review
• [275:30+] — Remigration, BP as internal “Marine Corps”

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Final Thoughts

This episode underscores both collapse and resistance:

• Ecological violence is mirrored by the institutional violence against labor, science, democracy, and marginalized groups.
• Authoritarian, fascistic discourses once confined to the fringe are now policy “common sense”—from border “remigration,” to police crackdowns, to the legalized end of Black democratic rights.
• Yet, hope glimmers in mutual aid, direct action, and social solidarity—be it keeping camps clean in bear country, building unions at “no-brand” lifestyle stores, or calling out elite “expertise” justifying empire and genocide.

“If you want to be safe, care about free healthcare and collective power—not killing bears, not more borders, not more billionaire mayors.”

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[End of summary. For detailed timestamps and speaker quotes, see section headers above.]

Transcript

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[Robert Evans]

zone media 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.

[Luna]

It's bear time.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep, it's bear time. Hi, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where I talk to Molly Conger about animals. Hi, Molly.

[Molly Conger]

I am so excited to learn about bears. I've been thinking about it all week.

[Garrison Davis]

That's fantastic. Good. I hope you've had good bear thoughts because there are people who think about bears a lot and I think it's not good for their mental well being.

[Molly Conger]

I was trying to find if I took a picture of that time a baby bear was like standing on the median strip outside my old apartment and I couldn't find it, but so I was thinking about him.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay. Yeah, I hope he's okay. Hope he's found a better place to be than the median strip. I bought a show and tell item today. Molly can see it. No one else can.

[Molly Conger]

I was hoping it was going to be a live bear.

[Garrison Davis]

It's not a live bear. I don't. I'm not allowed because of woke. You can't have a pet grizzly bear.

[Molly Conger]

If you're about to tell me that those are bear antlers, I'm leaving.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, this is from. These are actually original jackalope antlers. From the California jackalope? No, it's a mule deer shed antler. I just thought it was cool. Thought you'd like to see it.

[Luna]

It's beautiful.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I think lots of people don't realize that their antlers fall off and regenerate.

[Molly Conger]

I feel like he spent a long time growing those.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he did. And then he just left them there as a gift for me in the wilderness. So I have a few of these.

[Molly Conger]

He's not getting laid this spring.

[James Stout]

Oh, no.

[Garrison Davis]

He's going to grow some more and he's going to fight another dude with them in order to get laid.

[Molly Conger]

So that fell off in a fight. So he's just walking around with one looking like a unicorn. Oh, he sheds. Okay. He sheds them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they shed them and regenerate them.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

Like this is how. That's how they get bigger and more robust antlers each time. But they put a lot of their caloric energy into growing these.

[Molly Conger]

Seems like that would really take a lot out of you.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Well, then they get horny and fight with other male deer. For quite a while.

[Molly Conger]

No, those are antlers, not horns.

[Garrison Davis]

That's correct. But the horny is not related to them. Yeah, they get. And then they lose a lot of weight in that rutting time and then they have to gain it all back before the winter.

[Molly Conger]

Just so focused on fighting and fucking, they can't even eat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep, it's the many such cases. Many such cases. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not talking about mule deer today. They are cool. First time I saw one, I was like, I see why they call it a mule deer. Really got the ears going on. I want to talk about another type of charismatic North American megafauna bears. So there are three species of bear in North America. Should we do quiz Molly? Do you know what they are?

[Luna]

Okay.

[Molly Conger]

Grizzly, brown, black, polar, close.

[Garrison Davis]

That's four. You just got to keep spraying panda.

[Molly Conger]

Those aren't even bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, nominally they are, but I think, yeah, you did get them all during your period of guessing. Brown, black and polar. Within brown bear we have grizzly bears, brown bears and Kodiak bears. We used to think that the California bears were a different species. They're not. They just lived here.

[Molly Conger]

They just have different politics.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like they, they weed have been legalized. So they just saw things differently. The brown bear is the one I want to talk about. So I'm going to use brown bear as like a, a blanket term for when they're on the coast. In Alaska they're called brown bears. Right. And those are generally the biggest ones. I don't know if you've ever seen. Have you been to Alaska, Molly?

[Molly Conger]

No, I would love to go to Alaska. I've never been.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Alaska fucking rips. I love Alaska.

[Molly Conger]

I found out recently that black bears can be brown and I just think we need, I think we need to re evaluate the naming system.

[Garrison Davis]

It's not good. Yes.

[Molly Conger]

Because like people are, you know, the advice about a brown bear versus a black bear is different. But if a black bear can be brown and you're relying on a rhyming phrase to know what to do, you don't know what kind of bear that is.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's. They call them cinnamon bears. Sometimes the, the, the brown black bears. Yeah, you can tell a grizzly bear at the bigger. They've got that more pronounced hump. They have a different shape to them.

[Molly Conger]

No, you can tell. I cannot.

[Garrison Davis]

You'll know the grizzly bear's coming. Like they don't make themselves, you know, quiet. But yeah, the big hump, they've got a more pronounced hump. Grizzly bears can also really get into like a blonde coloration even.

[Molly Conger]

Well yeah, in California. Sure. Everybody's blonde out there.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they, they get frosted tips when they live by the coast for too long and they listen to sublime here. Yeah. Let's talk about bears. My bear interactions, by way of establishing some credibility, I want to point out that like interacting with bears doesn't make you an expert. I'm not an expert. And what we're going to talk about here is non experts interjecting their inexpert opinions about bears and why that's actually a problem.

[Molly Conger]

I'm probably interacting with bears is not a desirable outcome for most listeners.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I love a bear like I see because I come from a place where there's very little that can kill you. Well, I mean there are things, right. There are cars and we have cancer in the UK as well, of course. But like animal wise you're more or less in a clear. Right. We have adders, which is a type of snake and they are venomous. But like I can't think of the last time I ever heard of someone getting killed. But I'm sure someone has been killed by an adid, but it's very rare.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah, you don't have, I mean you have a lion on like a flag or something. Somebody has one.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

But there's.

[Garrison Davis]

We have a few lions. We got some flag lions. Yeah, no, the lions, the lions. In fact we, I love the lions on a flag because they're drawn by someone who's never seen a lion. Just like a game of telephone has resulted in.

[Molly Conger]

But he knows they're very majestic.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's majestic. Kind of like a dog, longer hair. I think there was the input before he drew the lions. I kind of like being on the landscape with animals that are bigger than me and like they are the, the apex predator. First time I saw a grizzly bear I had bush planed to a lake in the Wrangell St. Elias wilderness. That's in Alaska, southeastern Alaska, massive wilderness area. And we were gonna hike around a bit and then pack raft off the end of the glacier there it goes into like a meltwater river. Right. And so the river's kind of different every year as it, as it melts and the river streams braid together. Then we were gonna pack raft for a few days and then hike out. And that was a fun adventure. So we landed, we hiked a bit, we inflated our little boats and we paddled across the lake at the end of the glacier. And then we got to a place where we were camping, went on a walk and immediately saw a sour grizzly bear and her cubs, which was sick.

[Molly Conger]

That's cute as hell. I would love to see that. I would love to see some baby bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's sick. Best to stay away from them. That's when they, they get angry.

[Molly Conger]

I would like to see them from like over here.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

And then they can be over there like maybe on the other side of a river.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, well, bears can be not afraid of water, but that's true. They do love to eat a salmon. Yeah, it was sick. That was a sick trip. Generally we got to see the glacier carving. So like that's when a little baby glacier is born. Right. But the glacier, a section of it broke off and I'm talking a section the size of like a city block here.

[Molly Conger]

But it's so shiny when it breaks.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's shiny and it's allowed. It's like an earth shattering rumble. Right. And then this thing, I mean it was, it was majestic, right? Like it looks like a mountain has fallen into the water and that was cool as fuck. And then you realize that like it has displaced a mountain sized amount of water.

[Molly Conger]

Okay, you better move.

[Garrison Davis]

And now there are like fridge sized ice blocks coming at head height towards you. So yeah, we did some fast uphill running in that moment. But it was Alaska, so it was summertime, so it wasn't getting dark. Right. You have like 24 hour sunlight, so at least it wasn't dark when that happened.

[Molly Conger]

Plenty of time to run from the glacier.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, great time to run from a glacier. Wouldn't want to do it in the wintertime. I don't think they carve in the wintertime. Maybe they still do. I think it's to do with temperature rising. So that was my. I've seen a lot of black bears. I'm a San Diego black bear truther. But it's another fun thing about me. For some reason people don't think there are black bears in San Diego and that is not true. I have seen bear footprints. People have seen bears on game cameras. Bears pop up on top of Mount Palomar all the time.

[Molly Conger]

It's like the ongoing feud about whether or not we have panthers on the east coast.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh yeah, you guys love to. Yeah, like it's like a Carolina panther or something.

[Molly Conger]

People are very sure I have no skin in this game.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I think there's a breeding family of mountain lions now maybe in Michigan. So they're getting closer. They're getting, they're coming your way. You soon Will, I've seen a lot of bears or a good number of bears. Seen a lot of black bears. Right. We have them in California. The fact that I've seen bears does not make me a bear expert. And another non bear expert has been diving into discourse on bears after a tragedy, like genuinely a terrible thing. When a hiker lost their life in Glacier. Try and say it the American way. Glacier National Park.

[Molly Conger]

I was just saying we're going to get messages about this. This British word.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, right. It's not like a buffalo issue. I'm just straight colonizing it. I'm sure it had an indigenous name and so. So are you if you're saying glacier. This is really sad. Right. A hiker from Florida was mauled by a bear and died very shortly. In relation to that, serious injuries occurred in another mauling in Yellowstone national park not so long ago. A contractor at a uranium mining site was killed by a black bear in British Columbia in Canada a couple of weeks ago, maybe 13th of May. It looks like unusual to be killed by a black bear. Probably worth pointing out that very rare for black bears to kill people. And also someone at that site clearly had a firearm because they euthanased the bear. Euthanased is a phrase they use there. They killed it. Right. Like it wasn't suffering, I don't think. But they killed the bear pretty shortly thereafter and it's undergoing a necropsy now. But that's another incident, I guess, to add to this list. And again, right there, there was a firearm present there, it seems, and that didn't prevent the person being mauled by the bear. And so former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has decided to wade into the debate. Do we remember Ryan Zinke?

[Molly Conger]

He's not the one from Real World Road Rules. Right. That's the transportation guy.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't think so. If he is, I'm not aware of what Real World Road Rules is.

[Molly Conger]

I'm just having trouble remembering which members of Cabinet have been on reality tv, and I don't think this is one of them.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay.

[Molly Conger]

Sorry.

[Garrison Davis]

No, not to my knowledge. Zinky, he was a Navy SEAL officer. He's now representative from Montana. He was Interior Secretary in Trump's first administration. He presided over a series of attacks on public lands that we saw in Trump 1.0.

[Molly Conger]

Exactly what you want to see from your Secretary of the Interior.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. He. He's trying to rebrand himself as some kind of protector of public lands. Now. He's kind of too late on that one. In my Opinion, but he's certainly not a protector of bears. Last week he tweeted, maybe he zeeted, I don't know.

[Molly Conger]

We're not doing that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we're not doing that. We're going to keep dead naming it. Last week, two grizzly bear attacks claimed the life of a hiker in Glacier national park and seriously injured two others in Yellowstone National Park. The tragedies are a sobering reminder that grizzly bear populations have recovered well beyond sustainable levels. And it is time for.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, so we should start killing them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep. It's, it's past time for the federal government to delist them and give states the management tools back. Yeah, we got to kill them back. This is what we do.

[Molly Conger]

Eye for an eye for Florida, man.

[James Stout]

Yeah, fuck off.

[Garrison Davis]

I was speaking to a bear, a scientist who studies human bear interactions this week and he referred to these as revenge killings. Yeah. Because they won't just kill. They often, in many instances, don't know which bear. Sometimes we can, we can, we can know the size of the bear, right. From like the, the, the size of the jaws. We can have several bears. There are different sizes, jaws, things, the distance between the different teeth, stuff like this. Right, right.

[Molly Conger]

Like if one bear is like, if it's like a jaws situation, like one bear just has it out for hikers. Sure, I guess go get him.

[Garrison Davis]

But that's not like, that's not what's happening. Yeah. And they will end up killing a number of bears in an area when this stuff happens. Right. Which is just a revenge killing. So we're taking out, like we're taking out our anger on that species because they came after our species.

[Molly Conger]

It seems like the problem is not that there's too many bears.

[Garrison Davis]

That is correct, Molly. That is, that is why we're here today.

[Molly Conger]

He seems, he seems to be positioning this as there's just too many bears. People just can't avoid the bears because there's so many bears.

[Garrison Davis]

That is not the case. Millions of people every year visit the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and very few of them see a bear. Right.

[Molly Conger]

And even few of them touch a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. If you're touching a grizzly bear, it's a bad day for you. Unless, I guess, it has decided it wants to be touched.

[Molly Conger]

I don't want to victim blame, obviously. Like these are wild animals. They're unpredictable. You're in their home. What'd this guy do? Why was he so close to the bear?

[Garrison Davis]

We don't know exactly what this guy did. There are a number of bear safety things which I do want to talk about. And I spoke to Tom Smith last week and I'm going to turn that into another podcast. But like this is the person who is the guy who writes the studies on human interactions with bears. Right. And specifically on how those could be like de escalated. And he said he's not aware of an incident in which someone has been killed by a bear in which they were adhering to all the best principles. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Now, I'm not blaming the victim like you, if you don't know, you don't know you're an inexperienced outdoorsman or whatever. But I feel like there's a series of just like pieces of advice. If you follow them, you're not gonna get in that situation most of the time. Most of the time.

[Garrison Davis]

Most of the time. Yeah. I think if I was going into bear country, I wouldn't take a dog. A lot of people take dogs. Dog is a great way to find a bear. If you're looking for a bear, you could go send out your dog and it'll come back to you with a bear in tow. Some, like hunting dogs can also tree bears. But that's not what I'm talking about

[Molly Conger]

here because the bear sees the dog as a delicious snack.

[Garrison Davis]

I think the dog sees the bear as a threat. Right. And it'll start and they'll get. And then like the bear then obviously sees a dog as what the fuck is this little animal? So now we're just finding the apex predator here. Yeah, like we're locked in and the, the dog can smell the bear. Right. So he's going to find it in the back. You smell the dog. So they're gonna find each other.

[Molly Conger]

I guess I was thinking of my dog, which a bear would definitely see is a delicious snack.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, your dog I could see. Maybe it'd be sub stack size, it wouldn't be worth it.

[Molly Conger]

But like a little cocktail weenie.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. A sausage dog would try it, it wouldn't give it. Like I've seen, I've sent you a video of a sausage dog chasing off a mountain lion. Like they didn't give a. Very brave.

[Molly Conger]

So, yeah, don't, don't take a dog. Don't try and pet it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, don't take a dog. Yeah, don't try and pet it. In this instance, I think the person was moving through thick country where the bear was probably foraging for berries and they probably startled the bear. As you don't want to startle the bear. If you're moving through thick country like that, that's when people will Say, hey, bear. Or they'll use a bare bell. Or they'll talk loudly and converse with people in their group. It is generally preferred to be in a group when we're in grizzly country. Right. Not on our own. We don't know the details of this incident. There have been some reports that the person discharged bear spray. And I want to get onto the bear spray topic later because I have a lot to say about that. Let's go back and talk about bears in history.

[Molly Conger]

Yes. Contextualize the bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Ran Ziggy wants to delist the bear from the Endangered Species Act. Right. Bears haven't always been protected by the Endangered Species Act. That's why California has a bear on its flag that doesn't live here anymore.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, you don't have those anymore?

[Garrison Davis]

No, we killed them all. We don't have brown bears here.

[Molly Conger]

So is he on the flag? Because you're sorry about it, because you're proud of it?

[Garrison Davis]

No, I think it's more of a pride thing. I think it's more of a.

[Molly Conger]

We got him.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't actually know what. He's on the flag. I'll do some. Do some searching. I'm pretty sure it's not because we're sorry about it.

[Luna]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

We have a good source, right, of what European people did when they first encountered bears. It's not my story from Alaska.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, I bet they did not know about them.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, they did, because as it turns out, as Lewis and Clark were moving across the plains, right, they. They encountered indigenous people who very specifically told them not to fuck with bears. Let me quote from Lewis's diary.

[Molly Conger]

I feel like you would not have to tell, like, if I have never. If I have no concept of bear and I see a bear, my instinct is going to be, I'm going to leave that guy alone.

[Garrison Davis]

See? Yeah. But maybe these guys are just built different. As it turns out, they're bear poking. I don't know. Desire is extremely turns out counterproductive for them. Let's read from the Lewis and Clark diaries. A first on the podcast. Quote, the Indians give a very formidable account of the strength of ferocity of this animal, which they never dare to attack, but in parties of six, eight or ten persons, and are even then frequently defeated with a loss of one or more of their party. This animal is said to more frequently attack a man on meeting with him than flee from him. When the Indians are about to go in quest of the white bear, previous to their departure, they paint themselves and perform all these superstitious rites commonly observed when they're about to make war upon a neighboring nation. I think he's talking about brown bears when he talks about white bears there.

[Molly Conger]

But I was gonna say, is he talking about polar bears? Because you definitely don't do that. That's an even worse.

[Garrison Davis]

Do not fuck with it. Be a polar bear will end you. That was on the 15th of April.

[Molly Conger]

So he's like, yeah, it takes eight or ten guys usually one of them dies. They don't always succeed. I want to go check it out. I got it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Yep. So by early May, Captain Clark and Dreyer killed the largest brown bear this evening, which we have ever yet seen. It was a most tremendous looking animal and extremely hard to kill notwithstanding. He had five balls through his lungs and five others in various parts. He swam more than half the distance across the river to a sandbar, and it was at least 20 minutes before he died. Then they go on to say they thought it weighed about 500 pounds, but they didn't have any apparatus to weigh it. So that's their first interaction with the bear. Less than a month later, six good hunters of the party fired at a brown or yellow bear several times before they killed him. And indeed, he had like to have defeated the whole party. He pursued them separately as they fired on him and was near catching several of them. He pursued two of them separately, so close that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and pouches and throw themselves into the river, although the bank was nearly 20ft perpendicular.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So enraged was this animal that he plunged into the river only a few feet behind the second man. He had compelled to take refuge in the water when one of those who still remained on the shore shot him through the head and finally killed him.

[Molly Conger]

That's not fair. They should have let him have that guy.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it was eye for an eye. Like, it's fascinating to me, right, that, like, you do see this sometimes in, like, indigenous, like, people's records, Right. There was a guy. I forget his name. I forget. I was reading about this, this one indigenous American guy who was like, every time I see a bear, I gotta go try to take it on. But, like, he recognized that was, like, not a normal response. Right. Whereas apparently everyone in Lewis and Clark's party was immediately after killing the first bear they saw, despite having been told

[Molly Conger]

we found the murder monster.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It tells me so much about the American psyche, right, that the indigenous people were like, yo, they. They will kill you.

[Molly Conger]

And, like, how much bear meat were they eating?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, Maybe a bit. I don't know. Like, you can eat bear meat. It's kind of greasy, from what I understand.

[Molly Conger]

So they're just going after bears just because it's fun.

[Garrison Davis]

I do understand that Lewis and Clark had to collect and catalogue animals, which obviously they didn't bring them back alive. Right. They brought back skulls and hides and that kind of thing. So that the western way of understanding the world could catalog and understand these animals. And there was a great deal of knowledge that that way of seeing the world gained from that expedition. But they also mixed it up with a lot of bears. You can read more examples in their diaries. There's this idea that still exists in parts of the American sort of psyche that we don't have to live alongside nature. We have to conquer it. Right. That we have to prove our apex position. And that doesn't always go well for us.

[Molly Conger]

I don't need to prove anything to a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I'm at peace.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm happy to coexist with bears. I'm happy that they're there. They're happy that I'm here. I hope we can have a nice time. I don't want to fight with bears. Lewis and Clark, by the way, I find the Lewis and Clark exhibition fascinating. Like, at the time they were crossing the plains, they were meeting with indigenous people who had been to Paris to check it out and come home.

[Molly Conger]

I have no concept of that.

[Garrison Davis]

Right. We see them as, like, questing into the great unknown. And these people are like, yeah, no, I went over.

[Molly Conger]

But those people have. They've been out back.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. They just didn't want it.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

They came back because they liked it. They were fine. It wasn't that they hadn't been exposed to the European world. It was just that the European world had not physically expanded to attempt to colonize the places that they lived. So, like, this idea that they're going

[Molly Conger]

that really makes what they did a lot less impressive.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, it was a long journey, sure.

[Molly Conger]

But I mean, people hike the Appalachian Trail every. Every year. I'm not impressed.

[Garrison Davis]

That does go perpendicular to the.

[Molly Conger]

But I'm just saying, people walk a thousand miles all the time.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did a lot of canoeing.

[Molly Conger]

It's a weird hobby.

[Garrison Davis]

Lewis and Clark. It's a fun hobby. I like walking, but. Yeah, I mean, it's an impressive journey. But, like, I think sometimes we have this idea of them, like, questing into the unknown, and that's just not it. They'd have met people who have been like, oh, yeah, I've been there. Like, what do you think of Paris? Sadly, the Lewis and Clark expedition was not the low point for the grizzly bear population. But, Molly, talking of low points, now is a time for us to transition to an advertisement for products and services. All right, we are back. I want to quote from a federal court case here on protections for bears. By the 1930s, just 125 years after European settlers moved into grizzly country, grizzly bears were found in only 2% of their former range. Nor did this mark the low point for the grizzly. 37 separate grizzly populations were identified in the contiguous United States in 1922. Only six remained in 1975.

[Molly Conger]

So is this largely habitat encroachment or overhunting or. I mean, obviously both.

[Garrison Davis]

All of the above.

[Molly Conger]

So we were just going out there and shooting them.

[Luna]

Just.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they're bounties. There were bounties for bears by the millions. Yeah, they were paying. They were paying people to shoot the bears.

[Molly Conger]

We got a buffalo situation.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, we got a buffalo situation here.

[Molly Conger]

So this wasn't just, like, people doing hobby hunting and, like, concurrent habitat encroachment. This was like an intentional destruction of bear.

[Garrison Davis]

The bear doesn't coexist well with, like, human habitation and specifically, like, animal agriculture. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Like, yeah, it's not a great name.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't give a fuck. And it's a big animal and it will tear shit down. And people are scared of it. Bears used to live all across the plains, Right. It was only a small segment of the bears that lived in the mountains. They're the ones that survived just because those are the areas that it was harder to make amenable to capitalism.

[Molly Conger]

That never occurred to me. Yeah, that never occurred to me that they have retreated from the hills to get away from us.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I don't think it's that the plains bears went to the hills. I think it's that the plains bears are gone.

[Molly Conger]

Right. They're just the ones that survived because they were like, yeah, that's crazy. The bears just used to be roaming around down here.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, the bears would be out and about. Actually, the easternmost grizzly bear sow with cubs that I'm aware of is on the apron, like in the. The Missouri river breaks. So the American Prairie Reserve people who didn't listen to our buffalo episode.

[Molly Conger]

Callback.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that. That's what they call a callback in the industry. The bears used to be all around. Right. Like, I guess maybe at the plains. Right. Or an area that's especially kind of appealing, especially when we look at, like, the period after the 1920s, right, when people were trying to bring the planet to heal through the application of technology. Right. I think it's Aldo Leopold who talks about the way humans fuck with ecosystems as a bit like somebody who doesn't know how a watch works. Taking apart a watch, just being like, I know that fucking cocktails. Doesn't look like it's doing much to me. Let me whip that bad boy out. Like, make it lighter.

[Molly Conger]

I always think of, what was it? Somebody who's colonizing and farming in Hawaii brought mongoose, because they thought the mongoose would eat some. They thought the mongoose would eat something that was causing a problem for the crops. But it turns out the mongoose don't even eat that.

[James Stout]

So now it's just like feral monkeys.

[Molly Conger]

Sometimes, like around sunset at the beach, you'll see all these, like, mongoose just, like, coming out of the underbrush and taking over the beach.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, that's amazing because, like, they have

[Molly Conger]

no natural predators there.

[James Stout]

Yeah, right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like. Yeah. Introducing animals into ecosystems and removing animals from ecosystems has all these downstream effects that, like, we never think. Like, I talked to Sophie about this today. Like, I grew up in the uk, right, where we have tons of rabbits.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, she has a rabbit in the garden today.

[James Stout]

Did she show you?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, I've seen a rabbit. Yeah. It's able to identify it. The rabbit population is high in part because we've removed many of their predators. Right. The wolves are gone in the uk. The bears are gone in the uk. We have some foxes, but not as many because they are dangerous to sheep populations. Right. We have some raptors, but not as many. So now we have tons of rabbits. What do the rabbits do? Well, they eat crops in part. Right. Then they come in and eat your carrots as depicted in the Peter Rabbit.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, Peter Rabbit is just tearing the garden apart.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Every day.

[Molly Conger]

Mr. McGregor was right.

[Garrison Davis]

Molly. That is a bold statement.

[Mia Wong]

Molly.

[Garrison Davis]

Molly Conga. Childhood villain. Now, the rabbits have a disease called myxomatosis, which is this horrific disease where like, they sort of become almost like, zombified. Yeah. I think it came from Australia.

[Molly Conger]

They got a rabbit problem.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, they were trying to eradicate them. Right.

[Molly Conger]

So they invented a rabbit disease.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know. This is what. Now I'm wondering if they invented the rabbit disease. Let's.

[Molly Conger]

Because they did that to another invasive animal. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, they lost a war.

[Molly Conger]

They gave. They gave them all a disease.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm not even there. Didn't they lose a war against emus?

[Molly Conger]

That's right.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. The Australians really have a bad record. Yeah. So basically it is a disease that existed in American rabbits only causes mild issues with them, but it is horrific in European rabbits.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah. It looks like they did it on purpose.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep.

[Molly Conger]

Great job, guys.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Myxomatosis in rabbits is a thing that genuinely, as a kid, so I used to shoot a lot of rabbits when I was a kid, right. And you'd shoot these rabbits with myxomatosis and be like, what the fuck is this? How have we done this to a living creature? They become so incapacitated that sometimes crows will start eating them before they've died or they wander onto the road and get hit. Right. It's really, really, really horrible.

[Molly Conger]

I'm looking this up and I regret it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, no, yeah. Google makes just pictures at your own risk.

[Molly Conger]

No, don't, actually, don't.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It almost looks like they have, like, cataracts over their. Their eyes. It's. It's really, really horrible. Right. But, like, this is what happens when we continually try and mess with an ecosystem that has existed in harmony. And, like, it changes based on inputs and changes in the climate. Right. Like, it's not like it's a fixed thing. It is. It has shifted and changed through time, but it has found a balance every time. And then we come in and just keep pressing one side of the scale.

[Molly Conger]

This'll fix it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, this will fit more, but we keep chucking more on there and wondering,

[Molly Conger]

kill the bear's back. I just. I can't get over. That's just like a child's approach to things.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

This is our policy. Right. Like, okay, so let's talk about Zinke. Right? Let's talk about the protections that he wants to take away. These protections were passed into law by the Endangered species Act in 1973. 3. And the Endangered Species act lists grizzly bears in the lower 48 as threatened. If you're not familiar with the ESA, it prevents you from hunting, harming or harassing listed species without a special permit.

[Molly Conger]

Maybe he thought he's supposed to threaten them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Like, harass them. Like, maybe it's going to do it.

[Molly Conger]

Threatened.

[Garrison Davis]

These are threatening animals.

[Molly Conger]

We should threaten them.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

He was going to post a mean tweet about them. They didn't want to be accused of harassing them. And in violating the esa, one thing the ESA does not do is prevent you from defending yourself against these bears, which seems to be the implication in his post Right.

[Molly Conger]

That like, because you're allowed to defend yourself against a person. So I'm sure animals.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It's likewise a bear. There was a ninth case not so long ago about someone who had killed three grizzly bears.

[Molly Conger]

So if you get arrested for killing an endangered animal, is it like a murder trial where you have to like prove self defense?

[Garrison Davis]

I think it would depend on where you did it.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

I was standing my ground, your honor.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, sure I was. I don't even want to make jokes about stand your ground rules because. Horrible. The 9th Circuit opinion says we hold the good faith belief defense for a prosecution and then they give the legal code. Right. It's governed by subjective rather than objective standard and is satisfied when a defendant actually, even as unreasonably, believes his actions are necessary to protect himself or others from perceived danger from a grizzly bear.

[Molly Conger]

That's interesting that the language. Because you don't see that. So in self defense, in like if I harmed you and I actual. No, no, it doesn't have to be actual, but it has to be a reasonable assumption. Like my belief has to be reasonable.

[Garrison Davis]

Y.

[Molly Conger]

But in this. And they're saying it's okay if your belief was unreasonable.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. If you're just scared of bears.

[Molly Conger]

Dumb as hell.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. If you, if you have no idea what you're doing, you can still kill these bears. Right. Like it gives you a very broad remit for self defense because you could

[Molly Conger]

just say you felt that way because it doesn't matter if that's reasonable or not.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

So it effectively doesn't matter.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, effectively. If you, if you are willing to state in court that you were threatened by the bear.

[Molly Conger]

I felt that way.

[Garrison Davis]

Right. It seems like you can, you can shoot the bear. I was just scared. I'm a, I'm a scaredy cat. Maybe it relies on toxic masculinity to like self. Self police itself. I ain't scared. No. It also, of course, the ESA does not include animals based on how dangerous they are. So link Zinki's argument that we should delist bears because two people got hurt, one person got killed. It doesn't line up with why the ESA exists.

[Molly Conger]

And like, I'm very sorry for those people, of course, but like, that's not like an epidemic of bear attacks.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Garrison Davis]

Cattle kill more people by a factor of 10 than bears every year.

[Molly Conger]

Toddlers kill more people with guns.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Lightning kills more people than bears.

[Molly Conger]

Dog shot a lady with a gun the other day.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, wow. Well, good for him. It's good to see People pushing boundaries bad for her, I guess. I'm sorry to hear that. But I do think there are some best practices that could have been followed there that might have prevented the dog shooting.

[Molly Conger]

The dog was certainly not certified on the range.

[Garrison Davis]

Right. Yeah. The dog hadn't gone, taken his apple seed clinic or whatever. So the esa, Right. It distinguishes between a threatened and endangered species. An endangered species is, quote, in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant part of its range. A threatened species is, quote, likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

[Molly Conger]

Right. Like if we start killing them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Or keep killing them.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

Ryan Zinke just opens up on bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Zinke taking his Navy SEAL training and

[Molly Conger]

going Seal Team 6 is going to Yellowstone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. They're going after that bear. Then they look at reasons for this disease, predation, destruction of habitat, commercial take, inadequacy of regulatory mechanisms to protect them or natural or man made factors, including Brian Zinke killing them. Because grizzly bears in the lower 48 are threatened. There are defined ecosystems, there are six of them in which we're trying to recover the bear populations. And one of these is the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The Yellowstone bears have been ping ponged around the ESA for some time. As it turns out, bears were removed in 2007 and then returned in 2009 by a court decision. Then it was removed again under Zinke in the first Trump administration.

[Molly Conger]

I feel like if you're on the cusp like that, leave it alone. Like obviously if every time you delist them, they become threatened again, like, leave them alone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that's. Well, in this case it wasn't that the, the reason for the delisting was challenged in court and found to be insufficient. It wasn't that the population took a dive.

[Molly Conger]

We're just changing our mind about how much we care about bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Or like in this case, basically what the court said I couldn't actually read to you from the court order. It's crow Indian Tribe at Al vs USA. The policy implications of Greater Yellowstone grizzly delisting are significant, but they cannot affect the court's disposition. Although this order may have impacts throughout grizzly country and beyond. This case is not about the ethics of hunting. It is not about solving human or livestock grisly conflicts as a practical or philosophical matter. These issues are not before the court then little ellipses where I've skipped a bit by delisting the Greater Yellowstone grizzly without analyzing how delisting would affect the remaining members of the Lower 48 grizzly designation, the service failed to consider how reduced protections for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem would impact the other grizzly populations. Thus, the service entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.

[Molly Conger]

So the bears got a good lawyer.

[Garrison Davis]

There were two different court cases and they were combined in this Montana case that they got a good lawyer. Essentially what they're saying though, right, is that like, this is an issue which we have to look at, like nationally because if we have state control and Wyoming or Montana, of the three states, right, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, one of them says that we've got too many bears killing too many cows. Let's open it up on the bears. Open season on bears. The bears don't know what state they're in.

[Molly Conger]

They simply do not respect borders.

[Garrison Davis]

They do not. They. Yeah, they refuse to.

[Molly Conger]

Jurisdictional boundary is meaningless to them.

[Garrison Davis]

They engage in interstate commerce. So this one, it's got to be like a federally controlled issue. Unfortunately, our federal government right now is not one that's massively amenable to conservation.

[Molly Conger]

It's run by bear murderers.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they would love to. I mean, Donald Trump's son, right, is big into.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, he does love big game hunting, doesn't he?

[Garrison Davis]

He does, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

He goes on those like, rich boy safari.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he's got. It's funny, someone was like, oh, you should. Someone was talking to me the other day about like, you should pitch this outdoor publication and then I realized it was owned by Trump Jr. So that's a no from me. Oh, that's a clear no for me.

[Molly Conger]

I bet they love conservation.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I was going to like, I would be down to picture hunting publication about like, the damage that the border wall does to our landscapes. And like I've seen a mule deer try and get through the border wall and it's very, very. Yeah, it's really sad because she had been habituated to going that way for, for water, genetically for generations. Right. And now she can't. And yeah, that's pretty fucked up. I'd love to write that for a hunting publication. Not writing it for Donald TRUMP Jr's 1. I don't think he's commissioning it either, to be honest.

[Molly Conger]

I don't think they'd pay for it.

[Garrison Davis]

No. I think they're probably using, if I'd had to guess, some artificial intelligence. But I've never actually read it. I'm not going to. Don't care. If you're interested in the ESA and what it's done for grizzly bears, I'm going To link to a Center for Biological Diversity report, which is pretty good. This was published when the ESA was 50, so it's a few years old now that people will be thinking, I have seen pictures of people hunting grizzly bears. I thought that you couldn't do that. That's because those bears are in Alaska, so they are not considered to be threatened. Different bears. Different bears, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

Or like the same species of bear, but they just live somewhere else.

[Garrison Davis]

Arctos horribilis. Yeah, the. The same.

[Molly Conger]

Horribilis.

[Garrison Davis]

Horribilis. Yeah. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

That's bad for him.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. They really screwed him on the name. This is part of the way the colonial mindset interacts with nature. Right. Horrible bad named him Mr. Horrible Y. Horrible bear. That's mean the other, like, I'm aware of, like Ursus arctoci, which is the Syrian bear. Fine. Except that makes sense.

[Molly Conger]

That's descriptive.

[Luna]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

He also lives in other parts of the region, but that's. Okay.

[Molly Conger]

Misleading.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Yeah. We could call him Ursosaktus al Sham, I guess, if we wanted to get with it. But there are translations of the Bible that use Syria to describe the whole region as well, so it's okay.

[Molly Conger]

But like, horrible bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Horrible bear. They really did him dirty on that one. Could include it. Nice bear. Maybe I'll petition for that.

[Molly Conger]

He should call up those lawyers from Montana.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Get the coalition together again with the Crow tribe. The bear is not inherently horrible. Right. We've just been horrible to the bear. He's just doing what he does.

[Molly Conger]

Maybe that's why he's so mad.

[Garrison Davis]

Maybe.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Right?

[Molly Conger]

He's like, you know, if you're. If you're gonna call me horrible, I'll be horrible.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe he's. He's playing to the stereotype. So the Alaska bears can be hunted, right? They are hunted. Things do get a little complicated in Alaska with different rules govern running sport hunting and subsistence hunting and federal land and state land. There is a cull program in Alaska right now that is understandably very controversial. The idea is that they will cull the bear to help the caribou population recover. You are looking at a thing which is multifactorial and only. But this is like taking the part out of the watch, right. That I was talking about earlier. Like.

[Molly Conger]

Like there's other things going on for the caribou.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. It's not the bear who moved into the caribou's home. It is. It is people.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, it is not the bear who caused climate change.

[Molly Conger]

Right. Like there are. There are other factors we could address, but we're taking it out on the bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Which will be a common theme throughout our discussion here today. But I, I understand that we want the caribou herd to survive as well. But if you're trying to manage the caribou herd for hunting by controlling bear populations to allow more caribou. I know, I, I, I don't think

[Molly Conger]

that's we're modifying the wrong variable.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. There is Alaska legislation that I thought was interesting to make such programs go through peer review that, that appears to be going absolutely nowhere. Seems stuck in the Alaska house.

[Molly Conger]

So we had to get a bunch of scientists to determine whether or not there'll be environmental impact of buffalo going back to where buffalo live. But we can't get a scientific review of whether or not we should be killing the bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes. I know that there are other reasons for us to do environmental impact studies like hydrology and stuff. Thank you EIS people who reached out. We appreciate all our science listeners, but yeah, it is pretty sad that we can't get a, get a, I guess the argument would be peer review takes too long.

[Molly Conger]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

But like, you could get a couple of people to be like, you know what? It takes a lot longer to get all the bears back. Get a couple of scientists. It wouldn't take that long that they need jobs right now. Get a couple of bear scientists and employ them. See how it goes. So let's talk about, I guess, like, why Zinke wants to delist them.

[Molly Conger]

A bear stole his wife

[Garrison Davis]

in an eating way. They live together happily. She's living her best life. It seems that one incident was a sow with cubs who was foraging for berries. And so the other one was a bear foraging for berries. Who was surprised? This has nothing to do with the population levels, as I said earlier.

[Molly Conger]

Right. It's just like, it's an unfortunate thing where somebody was in a bad situation.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It's a. We live in a landscape where things can kill you. Most of those things are cars, but some of them are animals.

[Molly Conger]

Well, we should start shooting the cars.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. But we don't do a revenge attack on Ford every time someone gets in a motor accident. Right. I looked at bear vault. So bear vault. If you're not familiar, money makes bear cans. You familiar with bear cans?

[Molly Conger]

Is it like tin cans you wear around your neck so you jingle, jangle?

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, yes. You can talk to the bear. He holds one. Can you hold the other one? There's a string.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, like he's in his treehouse. You're in your treehouse.

[Garrison Davis]

Exactly. Yeah. You say I'm coming through. Please don't eat me. No, a bear can is a thing that you put your food in when you're camping.

[Molly Conger]

I was picturing like a, a big necklace made out of like old tin

[Garrison Davis]

cans, like an old timey, like a, like a lei, but for bear country.

[Molly Conger]

Made out of like canned beans.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I don't know why you, you wouldn't need to buy that. You could make that at home.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, you can make that for free. Bearvault keeps like an open source collection of bear maulings. Bears, according to their data, have killed 66 people since 1974.

[Molly Conger]

That's not very many.

[Garrison Davis]

It's not a lot of people, right?

[Molly Conger]

One a year. Yeah, a little more than that.

[Garrison Davis]

It's very, very hard to make a public health argument for delifting brown bears.

[Molly Conger]

More people, more people than that have measles, like in my immediate area.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, that's a whole other public health issue, I'm afraid. When they do ESA studies on what kills bears, it's human interactions. I noticed a lot of bears, probably guns, mostly trains. Trains kill a lot of bears.

[Molly Conger]

That's so sad.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's really sad. So maybe.

[Molly Conger]

Wait, so you're supposed to make noise so the bear hears you come in? Trains are loud as hell.

[Garrison Davis]

They come pretty fast, I think. And I think they're not like super loud if you're just like. If they're not trying to be loud, you know, like if you're in a linear direction to the train, maybe they're habituated to it because the cranes come so regularly. I don't know.

[Molly Conger]

That's so sad. Never thought about a bear getting hit by a train.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, bears get hit by cars too, especially black bears. I mean, I'm sure brown bears do, they're just bigger. I wonder if that's part of why, you know, like there's a sort of we can't afford to keep smashing our trains on bears situation here. I'm not sure.

[Molly Conger]

I think the train's probably fine.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, I think the train keeps going. Some of those bears are pretty big. I'm sure it delays their train operations.

[Molly Conger]

I mean if there was like a massive train derailment.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, that's.

[Molly Conger]

Maybe we need to build a bear fence or something.

[James Stout]

I don't know.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, well, we have these wildlife underpasses, right, that allow wildlife to go under or over freeways. While ago the right was getting really mad about one in Santa Monica, this was like a. I think Benny Johnson had done, like, an investigation into this overpass. His theory here was that the overpass was allowing, I'm not joking, terrible cougars to come into neighborhoods and kill people's children. We came into the cougars neighborhood. The cougars, Benny, are already fucking there because.

[Molly Conger]

And how many, how many children have been eaten by cougars in Santa Monica?

[Garrison Davis]

I'm aware of one person in California being killed by. By a mountain lion in the last few years and a few more people have been killed. I can think of a couple more

[Molly Conger]

people, but mostly on, like, hiking trails. Right. Like, not their yards.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes. I'm not aware of a cougar coming into anybody's house. It's not really how the. The mountain lion lives its life.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, sometimes people's Chihuahuas have lost their lives to this scourge. I understand.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

But not their children.

[Garrison Davis]

Not their children. And, like, animals aren't coming to your

[Molly Conger]

house and taking your child and the

[Garrison Davis]

idea that they're not there anyway. If they want to come into your neighborhood, they can come into your neighborhood. They're good at moving across country. That's what they do.

[Molly Conger]

This will just keep you from running into it with your Lexus.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, exactly. And it's going to allow the little mice and other small creatures that can't. So we nimbly jump over highway barriers. The obvious other argument for delisting bears is that people want to kill them.

[Molly Conger]

Get a different hobby.

[Garrison Davis]

You can even kill black bears in most states in the Western United States, if that's your thing. Right. It seems like a lot of people just don't want bears around. And that makes me sad because I think sharing our landscape with bears is beautiful. And I think it's special that we have this thing in this country that, like, it's one of our, like, national symbolic mammals. Right.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, he's like a gigantic guy who just wants to eat berries and hang out.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he wants to kill stuff. He.

[Molly Conger]

Sure. But, like, just. I love the idea of just like this huge animal just like, roaming around looking for a little sweet treat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep. Yeah, they, they. They're incredible.

[Molly Conger]

That's precious.

[Garrison Davis]

They're incredibly adaptable. Right. They can eat berries, they can eat meat, they can eat fish.

[Molly Conger]

I love when they just take one bite of a fish and throw it back. So wasteful. He's just like, me, for real.

[Garrison Davis]

It's too fishy. He wants it. Yeah, he wants it like a fresher one. The other argument, I guess, is a certain populations have recovered which kind of. It Shows a misunderstanding, the importance of having a population for genetic diversity. Right.

[Molly Conger]

But also, like, I just, I'm really stuck on, like, just because there's a lot of them doesn't mean you have to kill. There's a lot of squirrels in my neighborhood, but I'm not allowed to shoot them.

[Garrison Davis]

And you can't just do a squirrel genocide. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, there's just a lot of these. I'm gonna do violence on them. Just.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, don't do that. There are a lot of these and it's been incoming convenient for us, like. And therefore it's interesting to look at, like, the certain populations that are doing well at the Yellowstone bears. The Yellowstone bears have a much higher meat content in their diet than they

[Molly Conger]

used to from all the tourists they're eating.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, that's right. Yeah, that's mostly it. They feed them into the moor every year they drop off a bus at the bear cave as an offering. And then the bears have violated the treaty. That's why they're mad. No, it's because climate change is making it harder for them to find their berries and human pressure is pushing them further and further away from certain areas. Eating more meat is going to lead to more conflict with hunters, both in terms of them both being in the same space at the same time trying to do the same thing.

[Molly Conger]

And honestly, it's so harmful for the bears that they've all been listening to Jordan Peterson. The carnivore diet is not for everybody. Just imagining a bear, it's not good advice, you guys.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. They've become like terrible transphobes. That's really why we wanted to list them. I think we can look at, like, what happens when animals lose their protections. We can see the way that Wyoming, for instance, dealt with wolves. Right. Are you familiar with this incident last year of that wolf that was, like, horrifically mistreated in Wyoming?

[James Stout]

No.

[Garrison Davis]

That was really fucking gross.

[Molly Conger]

Did they, like, torture it?

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Molly Conger]

Why?

[Garrison Davis]

Because I guess it made them feel big and strong.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

So again, this isn't about, like, managing conflict with livestock. It's not about, like, you know, ecological management. It's not. This is about people who just want to hurt animals. Yeah, because they didn't just kill this wolf because they didn't want it around. They did something horrible to it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean, this guy. There were videos of this, right? That. This guy.

[Molly Conger]

So they tormented an animal and then they made a video of it. They made, like an animal snuff film. This is just about torture.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm not saying everyone who wants to delist Grizzly bears, wants to torture them in this way. But, like. But it is.

[Molly Conger]

It's this, like, this desire to engage in this violence.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, for certain people, Right. There's an idea somehow that they can prove their, like, strength and virility and masculinity.

[Molly Conger]

Get into powerlifting.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So what this guy did, if people aren't familiar, his name is Cody Roberts.

[Molly Conger]

Never met a good Cody.

[Garrison Davis]

I've met some nice codies.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Oh, no, there's.

[Molly Conger]

Okay, we know one.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he hit the wolf on his. He ran down the wolf on his snowmobile.

[Molly Conger]

So it wasn't bothering you? You pursued it?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he chased. On his snowmobile. He taped its mouth shut and took it to a bar.

[Molly Conger]

Does this man have a wife? And is she okay?

[Garrison Davis]

That's a good question. I'm trying to work out if he went to jail. 18 months probation.

[Molly Conger]

Probation.

[Garrison Davis]

He gets a prison term if he fails. He filed a guilty plea to felony animal cruelty. I understand that there are people within the hunting, ranching, outdoor space who think this guy's a piece of shit. There are many of them. I know many of them.

[Molly Conger]

Because that's a very weird thing to do.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, yeah, it's psycho.

[Molly Conger]

It's like a thought process here. Like, what is shooting it I don't agree with, but I. I understand that you would do that. That's the thing people do. But why did you, like, chase it down and abduct it?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Why did you choose to make this animal suffer? Like. Like, did you just show no respect for life? Right. Like, we joke, like, oh, does he have a wife? She's okay, but genuinely, this is a person who is like a psycho.

[Molly Conger]

Like, yeah, no, I'm not joking. I'm not joking, actually, that, like, if you. If this is your first instinct for how you treat a living creature, like, I. I bet he's not good to women either.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like, this doesn't seem like a person who people should feel safe around.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, it was a young female wolf, too.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, no.

[Garrison Davis]

What have you found?

[Molly Conger]

Sorry, I just was. I found a picture of her.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. No, it's really sad. The whole thing is really sad. Like, to injure this animal, right, to the. To the extent that it can't get away or defend itself and then tape up its mouth and then drag it to a place where it's going to be in fear for the rest of its life before you kill it. It's. It's unconscionable. It's. It's horrific. I'm not saying that that will happen to bears, but I'm saying that, like,

[Molly Conger]

a bear would be a lot harder

[Dana Al Kurd]

to do that too.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it would be.

[Molly Conger]

You know, I think. I think as his punishment, this guy should try to do this to a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

What I am saying is that even if we, like, go ahead and delist bears without serious controls, if we start to manage them just as, like, vermin. Right. Like, as a pest, like this opens up all kinds of avenues.

[Molly Conger]

And I think a lot of people will find themselves in a situation that is beyond their grasp.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Like if. If suddenly you are. If you're a guy who's like, yeah, I'd love to shoot a bear. Now you're allowed to. I think people are going to find themselves in situations they didn't anticipate.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I know. In Alaska, for instance, if you want to hunt a brown bear and you're not Alaska resident, you have to go with a guide. That's probably a good thing.

[Molly Conger]

Right. Like, I think if we start killing the bears back, more people will get killed by bears. A lot of these guys are gonna die.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bad deaths will go up, without a doubt. Yeah, yeah. Already your. Your best chance of getting into an encounter with a bear is probably hunting. Right. Like, if you're not. I'm not hunting bears necessarily. But let's say you're out. Yeah. Because you're moving around the woods. Qu. You could start one.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Right.

[Molly Conger]

So that's already against the advice for not encountering a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

And then if you. Then you're able to shoot something and then you use. Let's say you're in a. Your backcountry hunting. Right. You have to pack, backpack. The. The.

[Molly Conger]

Now you have meat out.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So but then now you're coming back to the carcass for your second load of meat. A bear may have found that carcass. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Somebody might already be there.

[Garrison Davis]

He might not want to give that up.

[Molly Conger]

It's his now.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. That you. Yeah. You're then find yourself in a difficult situation. Talking of difficult situations, Molly, I have to pivot to advertisements again. Yeah. Hopefully this one's not for wolf tape. We are back. Let's talk, Molly, about safety in bear country, grizzly country country, specifically, right after this. This tragedy where this hiker died in Glacier National Park. I have seen a number of articles claiming that bear spray is, quote, a placebo or that you, quote, shouldn't bet your life on it.

[Molly Conger]

Well, I think if you think it's a placebo, you should taste It.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Shows a fundamental misunderstanding of not only how bear spray works, but also what a placebo is. Right. Like you. Three of the words in your title, all of the nouns you don't understand.

[Molly Conger]

The bear doesn't know what it is. The placebo effect will not work on bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, the placebo effect actually does work on bears. You can spray things that are not bear spray and they still don't bear spray before. Yeah, it's just the. I guess not maybe the placebo effect. Yeah, it's a noise. It's the cloud. Like, I guess it's not really a placebo because you're not a bewildering.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Because it's.

[Molly Conger]

It's startling to. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. But you're not saying it's bear spray will not work. Not actually a person.

[Molly Conger]

The bear will not have its sort of imaginary symptoms of bear spray exposure

[Garrison Davis]

due to their belief. Yeah, yeah. That they have been bear sprayed. I should note that most of these articles are written by the same person.

[Molly Conger]

So what's his motivation here? Why is it he's like, does he own a company that sells something that, like, rivals big bear spray?

[Garrison Davis]

No, it's the person who. It's got a guy called Wes Seiler who used to write for Outside magazine and no longer does. There's a escalating trend in the severity of his claims about the lack of efficacy of bear spray that correlates with him making income that is directly related to the number of views on the articles making those claims.

[Molly Conger]

That is really destroying the information landscape. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, I think also people not knowing what the fuck they're talking about and being given a platform is also destroying the information landscape.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

But like, both of those are at play here, really.

[Molly Conger]

See, this sort of escalating way people write because their income is dependent. Dependent on clickbait.

[Garrison Davis]

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The clicks to cash pipeline is not helping us.

[Molly Conger]

I make the same amount of money even if none of you listen to my podcast.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, you guys, you could all turn this off right now. I'd still be poor. This is not true. Right. I take really strong offense at this. I don't know quite a way to say it. This is bullshit. Right?

[Molly Conger]

Like, if bears me never worked and couldn't work, he wouldn't be the only one saying it.

[Garrison Davis]

Correct.

[Molly Conger]

There would be. There would be scores of people saying, I tried this had nothing happened.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Also, like, we have data on this. Right. This is not a thing that we need to. To pull out of our ass. This Is not a thing that we need to rely on individual anecdotes for. This is not a thing that will be determined by the outcome of a single incident in Glacier National Park. This is a thing that we have masses of data on.

[Molly Conger]

There's bear scientists.

[Garrison Davis]

I spoke to one, Molly.

[Molly Conger]

I can't wait to hear that.

[Garrison Davis]

And I had a very lovely conversation. He has the two studies and to be clear, Wes cites these. And I don't know if it's just that he didn't read them or he didn't read them well, or that he read them to the best of his ability. And this is what we're getting.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, scientific literacy is pretty poor.

[Garrison Davis]

Sure. It's always okay not to write an article making claims about something that impacts people's safety if you don't know what you're talking about. It's always okay to be quiet when we're discussing other people's well being. That's fine.

[Molly Conger]

Adults talk about bear spray.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

It doesn't impact your substack in the same way, but.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, it's a sub stack situation.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's a substack situation. I would suggest that writing that bear spray is dangerous or useless is akin to saying that seat belts are dangerous or useless. In that we can, if we, if we look hard enough, find one person who was killed by their seatbelt. And no one's ever been killed by bespray. I have been bear sprayed more than once. Didn't kill me.

[Molly Conger]

And when we were talking about this earlier, this the most shocking fact of all to me so far, Bear spray is less potent than police pepper spray.

[Garrison Davis]

I believe there's less OC in bear spray.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah, I would have assumed it's more, but it's less.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I think the idea, because bears have such sensitive noses.

[Garrison Davis]

Very sensitive noses. To be clear, it's still very unpleasant for humans. Like I consider myself to have a nose of average sensitivity. And having been a recipient of bear spray, it's highly unpleasant. Right.

[Molly Conger]

But I just, I, I thought, you know, I would have assumed you said, oh, I've been bear sprayed. Like, oh, that's like way more hardcore.

[Garrison Davis]

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the bear spray part of the reason I think that it has less of the OC oil in it is that has to be propelled out at a velocity that allows it to be used even if the bear is coming at you and the wind is blowing towards you. Right. So the bear is coming with the wind. So you're spraying the pain. And then the spray would be you don't want the spray to all be blown back to you. Right. You want it to be able to get out, to create that barrier between you and the bear. And it does. Again, Dr. Smith, studies have shown that bear spade does work even with an unfavorable wind. Right. I will link to both these studies everything he's done, which I think is really cool because this stuff impacts like your safety in Grizz country. Everything he's done is available publicly for free.

[Molly Conger]

Hell yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Very unusual in the, in the academic research space. Right. But I think it's great because it allows you to look at this bear splayer placebo article and then you can go find the study. I will link it right here and you can say, huh, sure. Seems like this guy can't read a study.

[Molly Conger]

And does he, has he read those studies?

[Garrison Davis]

He claims to, yeah. He, he quotes them.

[Molly Conger]

So it's not that he just isn't aware of them, he just doesn't believe the expert because of a personal experience.

[Garrison Davis]

I think he either didn't grasp the table or didn't grasp. So they. So I again, like, the person who wrote these studies is extremely easy to contact and anyone doing reasonable journalism would do so. Right.

[Molly Conger]

So I guess, is he saying I read this study and it's wrong or is he saying I read the study and it agrees with me?

[Garrison Davis]

He's saying I read the study and it says bear spray doesn't work. It agrees with me. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

Oh no.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

He could have just emailed the author.

[Garrison Davis]

Could have just asked. Could have just asked. Yeah. So like there are incidents in the study which are considered successful and non successful uses. Some of the non successful uses are with a black bear. When you spray it and it comes back later. That is still. The brown bear is not killing you in that situation. Right, sorry. A black bear.

[Dana Al Kurd]

It still worked.

[Molly Conger]

Like efficacy doesn't mean permanent.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And at some point when you're making a study like this, you have to decide like what a. You're trying to create a binary relationship about a theories of things. Right. The other study he wrote was Efficacy of firearms for Bear Defence in Alaska. It's worth noting that in the Efficacy of Firearms study, more than 120 bears died. Out of a data set of something like 250, none of the bear spray bears died.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, that's a lot, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's a lot.

[Molly Conger]

And I feel like it's better if everybody survives the encounter.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It's better for all of us if we use this extremely well researched tool. Right.

[Molly Conger]

And again having read zero studies. I read zero studies.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

But I know only 1.1 persons a year are killed by bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

So if this never worked and couldn't work, more people would have been killed by bears.

[Garrison Davis]

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly a lot of people who use the best spray didn't get killed by bears. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Like none of them did.

[Garrison Davis]

It is possible to use bear spray and be killed by bears. Like especially it's happened to, it's happened

[Molly Conger]

to maybe 50 people.

[Garrison Davis]

Residue residues of bear spray will attract bears in the like.

[Molly Conger]

Well, that's unfair.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, it's, it's an interesting smell. Right. And they have an amazing nose. So I'm guessing like they will come check it out. And I know that like there are instances where people have, for instance, use bear spray in the way that one might use bug spray. That is spraying that tent.

[Molly Conger]

That's not going to work.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Well you're going to bring them in.

[Molly Conger]

That's like saying I'm going to use this gun to protect myself by making a circle around me with bullets.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Smearing myself with, with the bullets in

[Molly Conger]

a circle around my tent.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. It's not quite cargo cult thinking but like it's. I know, it's like magical thought process, I guess. Like that's not how best. Very well, you spray it at the bear.

[Molly Conger]

A homeopathic gun is where you just lick the bullets.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the things that you can do.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like you can keep a clean camp. This is really big.

[Molly Conger]

Don't attract them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So if we look at like Yosemite. Right? Yosemite and that, like Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia Park System. You can't bring bear spray in there. Right. Oh, but you have to have a bear can. Like so I backpacked in that, that area. Like they have done surveys that showed that like most people were acquainted with best bear practices, but we're not following them on the trail.

[Molly Conger]

So it's not that they didn't know

[James Stout]

Butters, they just don't care.

[Garrison Davis]

I think people, it's hard to like fathom a giant several hundred pound half ton creature is going to come in and steal my Clif bars. Right. But it will. And it's hard to fathom how good

[Molly Conger]

their smell is because they love a delicious snack. Like they're berry boys. They're berry boys. They're gonna come get your little treats.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they love, they love a high carbohydrate like energy snack. They're endurance athletes. They want to eat your clif bar. If you're keto, you're fine.

[Molly Conger]

Well, I bet they would like candy.

[Garrison Davis]

Bet they'd love candy. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I know it'd be unethical to give a bear skittle.

[Garrison Davis]

Be wrong. So we want to keep a clean camp. We're in bear country. Right. That means stuff with odors. It's not just our food, but also, like, the. Maybe the clothes we cooked in, if we have a scented toothpaste, stuff like that.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Wow.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like, if I had. If I was in the habit of using a shampoo that smelled like. I think I spoke to Dr. Smith about this. Like, he said if I used apricot shampoo, probably wouldn't bring it with me.

[Molly Conger]

Wow. Because they just want to come check out that sweet treat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like, it's a. If it's kind of. If you think that they eat berries. Right. You make yourself smell like a fruit. Like it's kind of on you. Like, I get.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah. It makes that, like Winnie the Pooh. He's just, like, following his nose to find a sweet treat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I don't want to blame anyone for not knowing things, because we're not all. None of us are born knowing anything. And. And it's not like they. They issue PSAs about bears every day.

[Molly Conger]

I bet there's a pamphlet at the trailhead.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, there's definitely. Well, when you go to Yosemite, you have to sign in with a ranger for a wilderness permit, and then they'll give you the once over. But there are other things we would not do. Right. I would not sleep alone in a tent in bear country. I said, and there were two of us. I'd probably two tents.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, just gives one of us a chance to deploy the bear spray. If the bear does come in, we can get bear fences. We can try very hard not to surprise bears. Right. So I was trail running in Alaska last year in some pretty thick brush. Right. I used a little bear bell. It's dorky, but, like.

[Molly Conger]

No, it sounds cute as hell.

[James Stout]

I'm gonna look it up. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, there's an unfortunate video that you'll probably see when you Google bear bell of a hiker who thought the bear bell was a repellent. And so the black bear is charging him and he's waving his bell, just

[Molly Conger]

ringing the bell at it. No.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Molly Conger]

So it sounds like people are purchasing these solutions but not understanding the functions of them.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And, like, I don't want to, like, blame people for that, because part of the way we get to a place where we could destroy so much of our megafauna is that so few people care about or understand it. Right. That's an education issue that we can't solve quickly or like on a podcast. I think that it would behoove anyone who's going camping in especially like grizz country. Right. So in Alaska, Wyoming, not all of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and like, I've camped in those places. I've come to all of those places to learn about these things. Right. Because it's not just a negative incident for you. Like, it's also a negative incident for the bear, even if you have to bear spray a bear. Right. That fucking sucks for the bear.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, I've been, I've been pepper sprayed and the bear can't even go, like, wash his hair with dawn, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. He can't stand in the shower, like, looking down, like, I know there's this. I guess the positive outcome of that is that the bear will be, like, likely to not want to come around people so much. Right. Because they'll associate this negative attraction with the bear spray.

[Molly Conger]

Right. So this seems like it's. That it does work. And then also if we're all doing it, you'll have, you won't have to do it as much because the bears will leave us alone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. We have the solution for being in bear country. Right. Like, it's carry our bear repellent.

[Molly Conger]

Unless the bears are like me, you know, I've been pepper sprayed by all kinds of cops and I'm.

[James Stout]

I'm still going to go look and

[Molly Conger]

see what they're up to.

[Garrison Davis]

Just keep on, keep on tanking.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah, I'm a very stupid bear.

[Garrison Davis]

He's like the, the Yosemite, I guess they just keep spraying me, these people.

[Luna]

Why this?

[Garrison Davis]

There were some instance where I guess brown bears got sprayed, charged the person, but like, as they were charging, the person sprayed them and they came through to spray. But then as the spray got more condensed, I don't know anything, they knocked the person over and kept on charging. They were like, okay, I don't want any. Which is obviously not a great outcome. But it's a better outcome than you getting mauled by the bear, right?

[Molly Conger]

Better than getting eaten by a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

But, like, I really want to push back on this narrative that we should be all carrying firearms. First of all, most people.

[Molly Conger]

Most people don't need a gun.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean, like, there are reasons to own guns. I own lots of them. But, like, defending yourself from bears probably isn't one unless you're already very Proficient with firearms. And even then I don't want to kill a bear. Like.

[Molly Conger]

But I just think if you're telling every casual hiker who goes to where bears might be that they need to own a gun, a lot of those people would not have otherwise owned a gun. Are not good at handling a gun. In a situation where they need to use the gun against the bear. It's going to go badly. But also 100% now there's a gun in their home that they would not otherwise have had in their home. And the odds of a firearm accident in the home are now higher.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, well, yeah. Infinitely higher than it didn't have one. Right.

[Molly Conger]

So it's not gonna work out for you in this limited instance that you think you need it for.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And then you've introduced a dangerous thing.

[Molly Conger]

Now you have a gun you didn't need.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like it is impossible. Molly, if you are getting. If I am getting mauled by a grizzly bear and you bear spray that bear, I will have spicy eyes and hopefully survive. If you shoot that bear, it is very possible and it has happened that you will also shoot me.

[Molly Conger]

Because the average person not a good shot under controlled circumstances. Bear attack. Not a controlled circumstance.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like everyone. Like this is especially a thing with men. Right. They will tend to overestimate their ability with firearms dramatically. In my experience. This is not a fuck around and find out situation. You don't want to find out that you're not very good at shooting as a grizzly bear is charging you.

[Molly Conger]

And even if you are very good at shooting at the range, you're not in this situation. You're not.

[Garrison Davis]

You have to deploy the firearm. Right. Then we have to like your hands are shaking.

[Molly Conger]

There's piss running down your leg.

[Garrison Davis]

We're scared. Yeah. You have to incapacitate the bear. Like I've been in up close situations with big animals. It's scary. Like thinking I'm going to die now. It has a profound effect on the human body and it's. It's not one that.

[Molly Conger]

And it doesn't improve your.

[Garrison Davis]

It doesn't actually enhance your John Wick characteristics. Yeah. So I would highly recommend that if you're going into bear country, you, you get some bear spray. Don't fly. What? You can't fly with bear spray. So you're gonna have to buy it when you get. Buy it when you get there. This is not like big bear spray. This is also an accusation that like big bear spray sort of funded these studies or that. Oh my God, this is silly. Right. The death spray industry is not that big, guys. It works. It is statistically more effective than using firearms. It works.

[Molly Conger]

What does it cost, like 40 bucks?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Not even that.

[Molly Conger]

And how much does a gun cost? A lot more than that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, a lot more than that. Especially if you're going to actually practice with it. Right. If you're going to get bear spray, I would suggest you get a. You can get a dummy. It's just got water in it. And you can practice. Right. There are a couple of safeties on a bear spray. I don't know if I've got one. I do have one here with like

[Molly Conger]

within arm's reach in your office.

[Garrison Davis]

I got one over here. Yeah. I've got my racket stuff, but, like, it's safety on it. And there's actually a zip tie when you get it to stop the safety coming off, just to stop it like

[Molly Conger]

blow up in your bag.

[Garrison Davis]

Going off in the shipping container. Yeah. In the, in the Walmart or whatever. So you kind of want to remove that. Right. And then if they. They sell packs, which has the water one and the spicy one, and you're going to practice deploying the water one. Right. And like, that's smart. Yeah. When you're carrying your bear spray, if it's in the bottom of your backpack. Oh, the bear doesn't give you that much advanced notice. Yeah. So the bear spray is like when I was. When I'm running in places where there are grizzly bears, I wear a little running vest. I put it in the front here. If I have binoculars and I have a little binocular pack, I put it on the side there. I've done it on my belt before.

[Molly Conger]

I googled bear spray. And the pictures. Yeah, the pictures that are used to advertise this bra.

[Garrison Davis]

I gotta. I gotta see this. What's. What. Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

How do I send you.

[James Stout]

How do I send you this picture?

[Garrison Davis]

You can just put it in the chat.

[Molly Conger]

This is not a real picture. Is this a real picture of a man spraying a bear? Because the bear is sort of enveloped in this cloud of spray. So it just looks like one of those soft effect paintings of the bear silhouette in, like a cloud.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it looks like, Looks like, like a. I'm a big fan of T shirts of wolves howling at the moon.

[James Stout]

Exactly.

[Molly Conger]

It's like it's a bear. An old man's brain.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know why if you're staging it, this is bizarre.

[Molly Conger]

Because that's not a real picture of that happening.

[Mia Wong]

I don't know.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't think so because there's no bare body. And you can see this, you can see the bush. Right. Like it's just its head. They haven't bothered.

[Molly Conger]

It's very close.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Also. Yeah. And the bear doesn't look too upset. It's kind of. Yeah. That is a fascinating. If we scroll down, there are. There are better images of people using bear spray.

[Molly Conger]

Just incredible, incredible product photos.

[Garrison Davis]

That. Yeah, that is really quite remarkable. I would suggest everybody who is going into bear country buy bear spray and practice using it. Like it's better for you. It's better for bears. It's cheaper than a gun. You can, if you want, by a bear fence, electric fence that goes around your camp. If you're camping in the backcountry, I think that's a good idea. If you're in an area with lots of bears, they weigh very little now. I might buy myself one, actually, after talking to Dr. Smith. Well, I won't because I haven't got enough money, but I'd like to. Maybe I'll hear from the bear fence people. You can follow all the best practices. Right. And you're not just going to learn it from a podcast. You're going to, like, look up the park system. You're going to look at Dr. Smith's research.

[Molly Conger]

Ask a park ranger, he'll tell you. Yeah, that's his job.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, some of their jobs. Depends. What. Depends what kind of rangers they are. Some of them are cops. The overwhelming bulk of evidence suggests that the way to go with bears is bear spray. Until a bear kills an oil rig, we will have. We will continue to have bears on our landscape, but this is something that we should genuinely care about. The trophic cascade is not as much of a thing as it was once made out to be. I'm sure you've seen that thing about how wolves change rivers.

[Molly Conger]

No, you have to tell me about wolves, too.

[Garrison Davis]

A whole other episode. Yeah, well, fucking wolf management is a whole other thing. The bears have entered the discourse this week because of bear killed someone. We don't talk about it when someone kills a bear. Right. Like in Alaska, they're culling bears from aircraft right now. And I'm not saying that, like, a human life is equal to a bear life, but I'm saying that hunting from

[Molly Conger]

an aircraft is such bitch behavior.

[Garrison Davis]

I know. If you want to take a bear, do it with a knife like a. Like a hero or a bow or,

[Molly Conger]

you know, do it Lewis and Clark style. Use a musket.

[James Stout]

That's fine.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Try it eight of your friends and a musket at the edge of the river and you don't have bear spray. So your only option is to jump into the river 20ft off a cliff just with a bear that you could have left alone. So yeah, I want to, I guess like end by saying that like the outdoors isn't entirely safe and that's part of what makes it beautiful. There have been times when I have been in the wilderness where I thought I was going to die. And I keep going back to the wilderness because like, it's also one of the things that makes me feel so grateful to be alive. And it's okay if it isn't entirely safe. We know that when we enter the wilderness and we do our best to, to mitigate that risk. Right. We plan, we take safety precautions, we bring our first aid kit and our bear spray and we tell someone where we're going, when we're coming back and we do all this stuff. But we understand that there is some inherent risk and that's all right. If we wanted to see wildlife and have no inherent risk and have it be comfortable, we would just go to the zoo.

[Molly Conger]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

And the zoo sucks compared to the outdoors. Right. Like, I don't want to see a bear in a cage. It's undignified for the bear.

[Molly Conger]

It's so sad for them in there.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like it's demeaning to me to see something demeaned for my entertainment in that fashion. Like I, I what? And we can't comprehend animals outside of the habitat. I think like seeing a grizzly bear in Alaska trying to eat salmon or seeing a black bear in California doing its thing, having some berries, like that's cool that. And I want you all to have that. I want your children and grandchildren to have that. And so like, I think we should be very skeptical about people making safety based arguments for destroying our megafauna here. Like you'll hear it with wolves, right? You're hearing people doing it with cougars, which is absolutely ridiculous.

[Molly Conger]

Like most of these animals will not bother you if you leave them alone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And like if very, very occasionally people have been killed by cougars who are not bothering the cougar. Right.

[Molly Conger]

Like very occasionally, you know, a freak accident doesn't justify destruction of an ecosystem.

[Garrison Davis]

People get killed by lightning, but we're not just killing clouds. People get killed by cars. We don't go bombing the Ford factory. I understand the desire to be safe, but like we will take away a lot of things that are really beautiful if we just want to Be safe.

[Molly Conger]

But again, we're controlling the wrong variables. If you're worried about people dying in unfair and, you know, terrible accidents, there are things we could talk about.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

There are policy decisions that could be made that would save thousands and thousands of lives.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. If you want people to be safe, then be concerned about free health care.

[Molly Conger]

Bears have killed 66 people. I bet that many people died today from not being able to get their insulin.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. There's a perfect example.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, if you want to keep people safe and then think about things that will keep them safe. And I think we can, we can very easily keep people. Bears safe, but the threat to the bears is us. That's it. The only other thing that kills bears really is other bears. And so it's on us therefore to advocate. Right. Like the bears can't advocate for themselves. Luckily they had people who brought that court case in 2019. But like, if we want to continue to enjoy the outdoors in the way that they are, we need to stop randomly removing. And bears are one of those things, especially brown bears, that it's very easy to whip up fear about. But I think we should just leave them alone. I think we should be weary also of sort of anthropomorphizing them. Like, I see this sometimes with people and animals. Like, they don't exist for entertainment. They don't see the world in the way we do. And that's okay that they're animals. They have their own logic. We coexist with them. But like, it's not like a Disney animal. It's an animal which goes about the world using its own logic, using its own understanding, trying to pursue its own ends through its own means. Right. But nonetheless, it is. Is a majestic thing to see on the landscape and something that we should take care that, you know, we don't let corporate interests and. And people who find it entertaining destroy.

[Molly Conger]

I would love to see a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, we'll do that. We'll add that to our list. Okay.

[Molly Conger]

Take me to see a bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I am going to take Molly camping. We will go. Maybe we'll go to. We'll go to. We go Yellowstone area. Like, I've never been to Yellow. Haven't you. Have you not been to Yellowstone?

[Molly Conger]

I've never been out west.

[Garrison Davis]

Wow. Okay. I've got some friends, got a cabin outside the park. Maybe we could have a little cabin trip.

[Molly Conger]

Sophie, send me to Yellowstone.

[Garrison Davis]

We can go in there and like, look at the guys. Enjoy the Yellowstone ecosystem. No disrespect to my Like Yellowstone friends. But that's a lot of tourists. Like I ain't going outside to be around that many people.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah, like there's, there's Yellowstone style nature outside the bounds of the park.

[James Stout]

You go there.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean even if you're just, if you're getting away from, you can get it. We just get away from Old Faithful and that. Let that park road and you can get away from people just fine. But yeah, we, we can go. We could go to Yellowstone, see a bear, maybe see an elk. That be cool. Elk make a pretty cool.

[Molly Conger]

I bet that, I bet that's big as hell.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, elks are big as like, like a cow with horns. Well, not the cows. Cats have horns. Elk have antlers. Sorry, mistake. But yeah, we, we could go to. Or like that, like the greater. Yeah, like outside of the park. Like that Wyoming area just outside of Yellowstone. It's really beautiful. Be a fun place to go camping. Maybe see a bear, have a clean camp. Maybe we can find out a way to find a way to expense that bear fence.

[Molly Conger]

That's what I'm saying. We'll podcast from out there. Yeah. It becomes business.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

We will podcast from bear country proving that we can happily coexist with bears. Thank you to all the ferret people, by the way.

[Molly Conger]

I can't believe how many people contacted you.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Massive outreach from the ferret people. So yeah, if you are someone who can help me get on one of the ferret counting surveys, I will count ferrets with you. We will make a ferret podcast and we will change America's perception of the black footed ferret on your behalf.

[Molly Conger]

It's already working. You got me. I love them now.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Molly's team ferret. Yeah. You can't see this because it's a podcast, but she has a massive tattoo. It's one of the biggest.

[James Stout]

Around the neck.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Around the neck. Yeah. There's a further one in the lip, but it says Team ferret.

[Molly Conger]

Oh, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So yeah, Molly's become a fair advocate. I hope you have all become ferra and black bear advocates. Send me pictures of your bears. Molly, do you know what fat bear week is before we go?

[Molly Conger]

That is my favorite thing about bears is fat bear.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay. Sick. Good. Yeah. Bears getting plump in the, in the autumn before they hibernate is.

[Molly Conger]

I mean, how could you hate them? How could you hate them? They're just roly poly little guys hunting for a little sweet treat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Their bulking cycle is incredible to me. Like the way a bear just adds thickness In a relatively short period of time. It's remarkable.

[Molly Conger]

Powerful.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's powerful. That is the power of salmon. Maybe if we didn't have trawlers, we'd all eat more fish, but yeah, check out Fat Bear Week. If you haven't. If you're not from the U.S. i hope this has been fun little diversion into animals that live here. They used to live all the way down into Mexico, actually, but now, sadly, Mexican bears. Yeah, well, there are still Mexican black bears.

[Molly Conger]

They have bears too.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Molly Conger]

I gotta look up where bears live.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, they live. Yeah. God, we could do a whole other one on the jaguars. That they're being fucked by the Border War right now pretty badly. But that'll be a fun episode up in over in Arizona there. Yeah, bears. Pretty cool animals. Our friends. Don't kill them.

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[Mia Wong]

Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about what workers can do when they. Hi, I am your host, Mia Wong. And with me today to talk about a company known I guess in Portland for being a place where you shop and known most other places for being the people who make pens is Morgan and Renee from Bougie Workers United. Morgan, Renee, welcome to the show.

[Renee]

Thank you.

[Luna]

Hi. Thank you, Mia.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, so and obviously, I guess as you may have gotten from the word union and the title probably containing the word union, I don't know, we haven't written it yet. Is that. Yeah, one of the, one of the Muji stores in Portland is unionizing. Can you talk a little bit about like what Muji is for? People who are unaware of this slash, don't follow pens and or haven't been to the store.

[Luna]

Yeah. So Muji is probably, I would describe it as a worldwide Japanese minimalist lifestyle department store. And that's a lot of words to say. It's a department store that is for essentially basics. Muji is short for a full name that essentially translates to no brand. And that's the idea that they're trying to push for. They're trying to show to people that it's like an eco friendly company and they try and push high quality products. And at our location in Portland, it's the only one on the American west coast and we have a relatively small shop. There's only 32 people in our bargaining unit. And this is a wall to wall bargaining unit which essentially means that everyone below the lowest management level at this location is involved with the union.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Which is A really cool. And B. So you're talking about how this is the only one on the West Coast. This is mostly a Japanese company that operates a little bit in the US and does things here.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

My understanding.

[Luna]

So it is a Japanese company. It actually primarily operates all over the world. It began in Japan in the 80s, I believe, if I know my company history correctly. But they pretty rapidly expanded across Asia and Europe and then have also since expanded Into Africa and the Americas. If the Americas were relatively late, I don't think that there was a store in the Americas before the turn of the millennium. And the Portland location itself opened in, I want to say, 2018 sometime, like, just pre Covid.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So it's relatively recent. And I guess the thing that's even more relatively recent is y' all starting to organize a union. So can I ask sort of how did that start and what was the sort of things that started to get the ball rolling on it?

[Luna]

So I guess the way that organizing started was back in November of 2025, maybe shortly before that, we had a round of appraisals. These are like yearly end of fiscal year appraisals that are technically supposed to be the end of the fourth quarter. Typically, they get pushed back by a month or two. Just company practice, because the appraisals are tied to our raises. And each employee who's worked for a year or more at the company gets appraised. And so we're scored in a system of one to five. And if you get a three or better, I believe the system goes. You get a raise that is directly tied to the number that you got. They use decimal systems. So the thing is that this year, they gave us the lowest raise in memory of any of the workers that are currently there, myself included, for context. I'm one of the workers that has been at the store the longest and more than four years now. We have pretty high turnaround, which is how I ended up being the longest tenured of the lower. The management workers. And this came in a year that was the best year in the Portland locations history. Yeah. There's this competition that Muji runs internally where it puts each store under a group of stores worldwide. Almost like World cup groups in a way, where you're just kind of randomly sorted into groups. And each year, one of the groups is chosen, and within that group, they examine the performances of each of the stores within that group and select a winner to be the store of the year. So in 2024, we won store of the year. And it was kind of a shock to a bunch of us to have such low raises after that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Luna]

For example, my raise of 65 cents last summer.

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus Christ.

[Luna]

Was the highest by a significant margin.

[Garrison Davis]

What?

[Luna]

Yes.

[Renee]

It went as low as around, like, 25 cents.

[Luna]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mia Wong]

I haven't done the math, but, like, is that sub inflation?

[Luna]

Like, yes, that is sub inflation.

[Renee]

It tends to be. There are employees who have been working for more than two years who still get paid around minimum wage.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Luna]

In addition to that, the staff members who are key holders and full timers and above get bonuses. And the bonuses are directly tied to the amount of money that the store makes over the target and amount for the month. And they drastically increased the targets for the year going forward, which meant that because of that, our bonuses were getting lower. So this year, for the last month since that raise, I've actually been making less money per month than I was the year before.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ. So you're getting pay cuts?

[Luna]

Basically, yes.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ. After winning story of the year. Incredible stuff. Incredible stuff from people who are running their company in an extremely normal way.

[Luna]

That was the spark that set this push for the union ablaze. And so in November, I contacted the iww, Industrial Workers of the World, and received a response. And so at first, it was just me and one of the IWW representatives that we were meeting together to talk about forming a union. And we ended up having those meetings somewhat regularly, and the amount of people attending those meetings slowly started to grow. So it was maybe like two people, three people here and there. And then we took a break for the holidays because people were just generally unable to make it out. And everything was super chaotic at the store. And after the holidays, I had the idea of hosting potlucks, essentially, and inviting people to potlucks. I. I can't remember, Renee, were you coming to these meetings before or after the potlucks?

[Renee]

The first meeting I went to was at the hall, where it was essentially just us grieving about our working conditions while the seasonals were there. And sort of it was. I don't know how much it was in the works for you, how much stuff you had done up until that point, but I think that was the moment where we sort of became confident as a body in our prospects for unionizing. And then the potlucks thereafter.

[Luna]

Yeah, and the potlucks ended up starting to pull around 10 people. I think the highest attended one was actually 12. And so when you have a shop that has about 32 people in the bargaining unit, that is about a third of the shop attending an early union meeting while we're still in the underground phase of organizing. And we managed to successfully remain underground up until we decided to go public on our own terms on March 31, we had a march on the boss, which, slightly inconveniently, the boss had actually left the shop about 45 minutes early into her shift, and we had accounted for her leaving early, but we didn't account for her leaving that early. And so the march on the boss kind of had this anti climactic moment where the manager just wasn't in the store anymore and there wasn't anyone that actually had supervisory authority at the store for the march,

[Mia Wong]

which I think there's two things there I want to come back to. One is the like, oh, yeah, of course, management. Management never found out about the union, but just left early because their management. And it's like, oh, right, no, yeah. What happens if you leave? Just randomly walk off your job site, like 45 minutes early. You're fucked. But management is just like, yeah, fuck it, I'm just done. I'm just out. Like, I'm just, I'm just leaving. Everything's gonna be fine even if I'm not there.

[Garrison Davis]

So I'm just gonna leave early.

[Renee]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

God. I wanted to talk about the potlucks a little bit because that's a, that's a really good idea as just a way to make sure you can consistently get a bunch of people there. And yeah, can you talk about sort of what that was like and how they've been and what the effect of that has been?

[Luna]

The potlucks came about because I had the idea that people are going to be more willing to come to an event if it wasn't just going to be a meeting where they sat down and had to talk shop and they had to start talking about work while they're off the clock. But they'd be much more likely to come if the meeting was framed more as a way to just hang out with their co workers and eat dinner. So this actually came from my experience when I was a kid. I grew up Baha', I, and even though I'm no longer Baha', I, the way that our community did it back home was mostly through community feasts and prioritizing the feasts first and then the religious discussion later. So taking that sort of idea and putting more of a union spin on it was the idea behind that and it was a massive hit.

[Garrison Davis]

Hell yeah.

[Luna]

Renee, do you have any more thoughts on that?

[Renee]

Yeah, I think the fact too that our worker body is, I don't know if uniquely is the right word, but especially tight knit and supportive of one another really just sort of helped things flow in a very natural and easygoing way. It was just super, like salient for everything to come about out of these pollux. We just sort of like sat down and immediately started like complaining about work. Sort of got us going and like pretty much every meeting since, like, that's how we just, like, start our discussion or in our meetings. It's just, what bullshit have you been facing from your managers, et cetera. And we have to cut it short every time.

[Luna]

Yeah, it feels bad sometimes to have to cut these complaints periods short, because I think they can go on for two to three hours if we're not careful. And I think the early ones did actually go on for two to three hours. And we had entirely potlucks, but we didn't get any actual business done. We just spent two to three hours eating food and complaining about work with each other. And honestly, that kind of helped people get more comfortable with the idea, and it really agitated people in a way that I don't think we would have been able to do if we had just tried to talk to people at work about unionizing or had a more formal meeting, and it really just kept the momentum going.

[Renee]

Yeah, I think it has this effect of, like, realizing everything, because, I mean, even I would walk in and be thinking, like, you know, this is like such a taxing endeavor, unionizing the workplace. And, yeah, you know, every once in a while you'd have some sort of hesitation, I guess. But then every time I would leave, it would just sort of be like, this is. Like, this is the only option and we're definitely going to do it, and we're all with it, and it feels good.

[Mia Wong]

Hell, yeah. Yeah. It seems like from everything that I've heard and everything that you're saying, it seems like it's a really powerful way to sort of both combat atomization, both as a. Just like, oh, this is like a social space where you and the people you work with, who are your friends, can exist with each other. And then also in a. We can combat that sort of alienation and admonization stuff by just doing the union work of, oh, my God, we all have all of these issues with our bosses.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And when we return, we're going to start talking and going to ask about the issues with the bosses. But first, here, I don't know the products and services that support this podcast. We are back. I was like, oh, I have a good transition. I can. I can go from complaining about the bosses to talk about what the bosses are doing. And then I was like, I. I was supposed to cut an ad pivot in here. We didn't. We didn't think of that one fast enough. But, you know, speaking. Speaking of doing things fast enough. So, yeah, I wanted to ask before we get into sort of how things have been going more recently and where the campaign is going in election stuff. Other than sort of the pay raise stuff, what are the kinds of things that people have been dealing with at Muji?

[Luna]

So there's a lot of small things that have kind of piled up. And honestly, I say small things, but each one of these is kind of just like shocking on its own, but not surprising necessarily to anyone that's worked in the service industry at all. So beyond the raises, there's just been a long pattern of emotional abuse from the bosses. People have been yelled at for pretty much no reason. The bosses have directly insulted workers abilities on the floor as they're doing stuff. They've done things like pressure staff not to use their sick time, even going so far as occasionally implying that getting sick is your own fault and that people are able to perfectly prevent themselves from getting sick.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, in your job you have to be around people all the time because you're doing a service. God, I hate this like getting weird pseudo eugenicist shit about disease that's just everywhere. Now that runs the Department of Health and Human Services and the cdc.

[Luna]

Like this, this, this weekend or this last weekend at the time of recording was Memorial Day weekend. And on Saturday, the peak day of that weekend, there were 3,000 customers approximately in store over the course of the day.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Luna]

And reminder that we are a team of 32 people in total. And so of course not all 32 people are going to be at the store at once at the same time. And so when your crew is maybe 10, 15, if you're lucky, people big and handling a customer volume of about 3,000 over the course of a day, you're interacting with so many people that it's worse than. Maybe it's not worse than. Because kids can get pretty nasty sometimes. Much respect to all the teachers out there. It can get to be a bit of a biohazard. Especially when you're working in places like the fitting room that don't have ventilation and you're possibly interacting the closest with customers and you're constantly interacting with clothing that has been pressed up against people's bodies. You're interacting with people that just aren't being super conscious about the space. And maybe you're in this small confined area with two, three, even four other people for a prolonged period of time. Of course the customer service team is going to get sick more.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that's like a small medium sized convention that's just running through your store over the course of one day. It's like, oh yeah, everyone has pax pox or whatever the Convention plague is. But that's just like going to work. It's like, oh yeah, no, of course. Apparently somehow you're supposed to like magically have the like anti diseased talismans as like the plagued masses.

[Luna]

And on top of that, I've called out maybe once a month. I think that maybe there was one month where it was twice a month since January. And I've already used up all the allocated sick time that I get for a year.

[Mia Wong]

She's.

[Luna]

And that's with one of the better sick pay plans as a full timer. And so I can't imagine what people are having to go through at part time where they're already not getting enough hours to pay rent off of their job and they're having to decide essentially between coming to work sick or calling out and taking that financial hit. I know one of our staff members has actually been evicted because they were not able to make rent because they didn't make enough hours.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Renee]

Or just having your sick hours rejected on the app.

[Garrison Davis]

What?

[James Stout]

This is an app?

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Luna]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mia Wong]

If your sick hours can get rejected, you don't have sick hours. Like.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

What?

[Luna]

And there's more too. It doesn't end there. They apply policies that we have this employee handbook that has this list of requirements and expectations and it is not really a huge part of our employment typically. But the policies that they have listed there are applied inconsistently. Stuff like the Uniform Code is one of the biggest examples of this where they will more heavily enforce the Uniform Code against people of color or people with alternative styles of dress or even they can be fairly fat phobic. There have been multiple people that have said that the managers will pressure them to essentially cover up parts of their body that they will allow skinnier people to show what.

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus Christ.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God. That is so incredibly shitty. And that's gotta be illegal somehow. Even under like unhinged American labor law. That just feels like. It feels like a very open form of discrimination, but. Jesus Christ. Oh my God.

[Luna]

Yeah. Do you have anything to add, Renee, along those lines?

[Renee]

Just sort of like being asked to profile people. All employees can be scheduled to cover the security's breaks, which basically just involves standing around one of the entrances and reporting anything, quote, fishy on the radios, anything suspicious. They say suspicious.

[Mia Wong]

So wait, so they could just co opt you into being a security guard?

[Luna]

What?

[Renee]

Yeah, the security guard doesn't have any duties regarding like loss prevention. All the managers do that as part of their duties, I guess. But yeah. So they just sort of say suspicious people.

[Luna]

And on that note too, there have been times where people have been maybe not strictly disciplined. I actually don't know for sure if there's been an incident of someone being written up, but there have been times where the managers have approached people and essentially just yelled at them for allowing someone to get out of the store with merchandise. Even though loss prevention is very specifically not part of our job description and that the, the official store policy actively discourages staff from engaging in active loss prevention like that.

[Mia Wong]

So you're getting yelled at for doing the thing you were told to do that is explicitly not part of your job. That's supposed to be the manager's job. And the managers are pissed off that you're not doing what's nominally their job that you also, in the written thing you're not supposed to do.

[Luna]

Exactly.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible, incredible, incredible. Catch 22 Logic here. It's real. Just, oh, yeah, you're explicitly not supposed to do this. So you could get punished if you do it, but also if you don't do it, we're gonna yell at you. It's gone. Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah.

[Luna]

Naturally, there's not really anything that we can do about this besides unionize and besides start taking actions on our own because the law certainly isn't going to help us for this. Even Oregon state law, which is. Which tends to be more protective of workers than other states are. They're incredibly overwhelmed right now with requests. And going through the Bully Bureau of Oregon labor and Industries, I think is the acronym going down the bully website lists. There's a complaints box, but it says on the website that they have an incredibly high backlog of complaints that they're trying to process and that they're going through a triage system. And, and none of the things that we've listed so far would be placed very highly on that triage. In addition to that, we don't have access to like direct access to our HR department at work. They ask us to go through a third party reporting company called Lighthouse. And as far as I know, no one has ever heard anything about Lighthouse doing anything to resolve a situation between them and management when management is treating them unfairly.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible.

[Luna]

And it essentially feels like just shouting into the void, interacting with Lighthouse because you're just sending a complaint to a body that you don't have any access to and just hoping that they fix something.

[Mia Wong]

So they've contracted out their HR department. So you're just like talking to their. Or is it that you can't communicate with them directly. And that's very weird.

[Luna]

So they have an HR department. The workers at the physical location cannot communicate with hr. We are not given their phone numbers or their emails or anything like that. All of our HR communication has to be done through our general store manager. So when we have problems with the general store manager or assistant store managers, we can't really go to HR because we have to go through the very people that we're having problems with in order to reach our hr.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible. It's all meant to make HR even faker, which is incredible. Oh, good Lord.

[Luna]

It would also be remiss, I guess, to forget about the sexual assault.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Luna]

Maybe not specifically sexual assault, but definitely sexual harassment. Possible sexual assault that has been raised to management before where the management supposedly pushed those complaints to hr, but then HR would wait for weeks before doing anything about it.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Luna]

This happened a year or two ago. No, it was probably more in the realm of two to three years ago, if my memory is correct, where we had a co worker that was not just profiling people and calling security on people that were doing nothing, but he was also sexually harassing other coworkers.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Luna]

And the store managers told us that they had pushed these complaints to hr, but HR wasn't doing anything. And it took them about a year, month, I believe to fire this person. And essentially what they were doing before is they were telling people that if they talked about the situation or created drama about the situation that they would retaliate against the people that were talking about the situation.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus.

[Luna]

They didn't say outright, but they implied everything up to job loss for the people that were talking about this.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Luna]

And they started pulling people into the office and essentially having one on one conversations that were honestly quite scary to the people that were trying to spread the word about this. And it created quite a hostile store environment for a long time around that time was actually the first time that we had attempted to try and get a push to unionize, but that ended up dissolving and that was essentially the end of that up until this most recent push.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. God, that's really hideous. Both the way in which they just pushed it up the ladder to HR and then just didn't do anything about it for like a fucking month. And that also just the only thing they did do about it was retaliating against the people who were trying to talk about it. That is. Jesus, that's disgusting.

[Luna]

Yeah, about the most that they did during that month to the actual co worker in question that was doing the harassment was. Was they tried to maintain some degree of physical separation between him and the other co workers and that was it. They kept him on the roster. They kept him at the same positions that other people were working. He had essentially all the same job responsibilities as other people and still had a pretty high degree of contact with other co workers during this whole time.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. So the people who were trying to speak out against it until this guy was fired were getting punished more than he was essentially.

[Luna]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Luna]

All the way up until he was finally fired. And I don't know what it was that actually got them to do it this time, but they wanted to wait until they had got something actually on camera, I believe. But it's kind of hard for you to catch something like harassment words on camera.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Luna]

If their bar for sexual harassment is stuff that they can catch on camera, they're never going to get most instances of harassment and they're not doing their proper job investigating these accusations.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And that also means that their deliberate strategy is to wait for someone to get hurt again.

[Luna]

Exactly. That's right.

[Mia Wong]

They're just throwing them to the fucking lion's den. Your strategy to detect that a bus is about to hit someone is to push someone in front of the bus and take a picture of it, which is just so unbelievably unacceptable.

[Luna]

Yeah. And I want to be clear too, that, that this whole list is very much non exhaustive. There have been so many cases of just patterns of abuse from management and it's not possible for me to go down the entire list of things. I mean, as I mentioned previously, it would be two to three hours of people complaining about stuff that they had gone through at work during these meetings. And occasionally you get some repetition. But this is something that is very consistent. It's just a part of working at the store.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Every day there's just another unique horror that someone is experiencing. And I guess this brings us to. Okay, so how do you make the horror stop? And that is unionizing. So yeah, let's talk about what's been happening recently in terms of like how the union is immobilizing and about the upcoming election, which will be a few days after you're hearing this, assuming you're listening to this the day it comes out.

[Renee]

Yeah. So we've been sort of ramping up a little bit. It's been ebbing and flowing since. Yeah, we started, you know, last like November. But we're really trying to kick it into gear, get people aware, get, get people Back engaged. So we have a few things we've been doing. On May 1st for May Day, we tabled with the IWW and just started a petition just for signatures from the community for support, for acknowledgment, if we ever need to, you know, pull it out and show our bosses that, you know, this is no light endeavor. This is not like something they can laugh off.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Renee]

But it ended up being sort of successful beyond what I imagined. We got lots of attention. Lots of people saying that they didn't know that we were unionizing. People taking lots of pictures of us, our big banner. We got one inquiry for a journal report that I think is out now. And we were also written about in. What was it? Was it Oregon Live or was it the Oregonian? Do you remember, Luna?

[Luna]

We had a small article published about us by the Northwest Labor Press that was then picked up by the Portland Mercury.

[Mia Wong]

That's right.

[Renee]

Yeah. So we did that. And then other than that, we're sort of fighting some recently published propaganda from our boss with just a hilarious amount of misinformation.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, no.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Average boss communication.

[Luna]

The other big thing that's been happening is that the reason that the election is happening so long after our initial march and declaration of intent to unionize is that the bosses have been trying to divide up the bargaining unit in a fairly strange case where the employer has been contending that the merchandising staff, staff, which is essentially the back of the house staff, but only like a subsection of the back of the house staff, are not eligible for unionization under the same union as the rest of the staff are. They did this under the notion that the merchandising staff don't share a community of interest with the rest of the staff. And the other thing that they tried to do is they tried to take the key holders, which are sort of like a shift lead position, away from the bargaining unit by trying to get them designated as supervisors, specifically Section 211 supervisors under the National Labor Relations Act. And we managed to shoot down both of those contests in a board hearing with the National Labor Relations Board.

[Garrison Davis]

Hell yeah.

[Luna]

And the process took a little bit over a month, if I remember correctly. And without going too heavily into detail about it, the community of interest rule basically says that if employees don't share a community of interest with members of a bargaining unit, they have to unionize under a different union. And then the other thing is that the NLRA says that if you have supervisory authority and there's a whole laundry list of Authorities that are defined in the act. If you are a supervisor, then you don't get to unionize legally, period. And so what made this case strange is that typically employers try and add groups of employees onto the unit that they believe are on the side of the employer, the anti union side. And the union generally has to contend that these people don't share community of interest or are supervisors or whatever. So it was kind of a bit of a strange situation where it's turned on its head where instead the employer is having to prove that these people are not sharing community of interest or are supervisors. And so even though we couldn't afford proper legal counsel, and so the union representatives were, myself and a friend of ours who is a member of the iww. We were able to essentially represent ourselves in this board hearing and the case was decided in our favor on both counts.

[Garrison Davis]

Hell yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That rocks.

[Luna]

It really does. I was not shocked to find out that the case was decided in our favor on the community of interest issue because that would be like saying that the back of the house workers at a restaurant can't unionize with the front of the house workers just because they have different job descriptions.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, gibberish, right?

[Luna]

However, I was surprised at first. I was surprised at least that we managed to win on the issues of supervisory authority with the key holders. I thought that it would take a pretty solid case in order for us to defend against that. And huge props to our friend who I'm not sure if they're comfortable being name dropped as an iww member like 5 to the world. So I'm not going to name them, but it is large thanks to this friend of ours that we won that case. So that's where we stand now. The board hearing was decided in our favor and the election has been decided for next week and both sides are now just trying to have our campaigns in preparation.

[James Stout]

Yeah, hell yeah.

[Mia Wong]

It's a sort of different version of like the very common tactic of. Because bosses want there to be more time in between when you like file your paperwork to unionize and the election because it gives them more time to do intimidation and fear tactics. And like that period in between deciding to unionize and getting to actually do the vote is one of the periods where a union is most vulnerable. And it's also really impressive that yeah, you just sort of walked into the board hearing and beat them by just reading a bunch of labor law.

[Garrison Davis]

Stop it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Workers of the world too fucking anti union lawyers? Zero.

[Luna]

Yeah, basically, yeah, it Was very strange. Cross examining my manager under oath.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[Luna]

And then going to work. I didn't manage to attend the entirety of. Of either of the days of the hearing because I had to close. I had to go to work at noon on both days that the hearing was.

[Mia Wong]

That's so nuts.

[Luna]

Which is why I wasn't there for the full hearing for either of the days. So I ended up having to log on in the morning onto the Zoom meeting and attend the first two and a half hours and then hop off, call and leave, and then go to work and see my managers at work.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

After you bit her.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

It's also.

[Mia Wong]

That's so nuts that you didn't get time off to go to the union hearing.

[Luna]

Exactly.

[Renee]

Yeah. I mean, they were getting paid, right?

[Mia Wong]

That's wild.

[Luna]

They were getting paid.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Luna]

The managers that were. That were testifying in favor of the employer capitalism.

[Mia Wong]

Bad system. Wow. Who could possibly have expected this?

[Luna]

Yeah, it was actively a challenge to find witnesses to testify for us because the people who would be able to call us witnesses or co workers are people who are maybe working the days of the hearing and can't actually get time off to come testify because they have to be at work.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

That's so fucked.

[Luna]

There was one person who we approached because we were hoping that they would testify for us who couldn't because she was working that day.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Oh, my God.

[Luna]

And it's too complicated of a process to want to try and like subpoena them and illegally get them to have the time off to come to the hearing.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Luna]

So we ended up just having to figure out a way to present different witnesses and have a slightly weaker case because of it. And thankfully that didn't end up mattering. But for a minute I was worried that we wouldn't be able to have as good of a case as we could have because we were not able to get a key holder on the stand like we were hoping.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you were able to pull it together. That's really impressive. And yeah. That you still just beat them even though they had. And I guess that is one of the lessons of this is like, yeah, if you're willing to put the work in and work together and figure out how to navigate the system and figure out where you can apply pressure. Like, yeah, you can beat a bunch of people who have way, way, way, way more resources than you do because they're usually just. Just wrong.

[Luna]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Luna]

I want to actually really drive that point home that neither I or my co representative have experience in any sort of legal fields. Neither of us are even law students. We are just the people that decided to step up and take on this role. And I don't think that there is some special unique quality about us that allowed us to do it. It was just putting in the work that was required. And it's a scary thing being asked to essentially represent yourself in a legal setting. And I think it's a testament to how people are capable of things that they're not necessarily trained to do, and that this whole process of unionization does not necessarily require the vast resources that you might think it entails. It requires some planning, it requires some tactics, but it is something that everyone is able to do.

[James Stout]

Hell, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I guess if I was really on my game here, I would have something about, like, the concept of the organic intellectual, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't even think that's really what's going on here. It's just like, in the same way that, like, economics is designed to be esoteric and, you know, like, finance is designed to be difficult to understand. But in the immortal words of Dan Olson, there are plenty of C students who've gotten economics degrees. Like, you can understand this. It's just. It just takes some work and it takes some dedication to fighting together. And it takes, yeah, people working together. But these people are not smarter than you. They're not better than you. They have more money, but that's ultimately not the factor that decides everything.

[Luna]

And I don't want to discount the amount of support that we receive from the rest of our co workers as well. Yeah, this was truly a group effort and everyone helped out in their own small ways. Whether it was helping take care of social media posts, whether it was helping cook for us host meeting locations. I've been dealing with a pest problem at my apartment, so I've been unable for about the amount of time that all this legal process has been going on. So I haven't been able to host potlucks anymore. And a former co worker of ours has been hosting instead and putting in the work for that. It really is something that works when everyone comes together and takes part in the process.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah. So speaking of everyone coming together and helping to work for the process, if people want to help y', all, what can they do?

[Luna]

We are looking actually at a bit of a financial struggle right now. The biggest thing is that, that we don't have the funds at the moment to go on strike. Not for Any significant duration at least. Yeah, we have a GoFundMe Muji Workers United.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, we will put that in the description.

[Luna]

The other thing is that we are looking for a lot of social media support. Actually. Muji is a very media driven company and we are trying to set up an Instagram account that has a lot of visibility. You can follow us. Also Muji Workers United on Instagram and it seems like people have been sharing our articles and across the Internet, both the NWLP article about us and then now you're interviewing us, which is an enormous help to us. Mia, thank you. We super appreciate it.

[Renee]

Yeah, thank you so much.

[Mia Wong]

Of course, Happy to.

[Luna]

I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Renee.

[Renee]

Yeah, just the Instagram. We have lots of very talented artists working at Muji. Like everyone, great graphic designers, a lot of just very fun and cool people. So yeah, I'm sure that will be expressed in our future social media posts. But yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Oh yeah, we'll link that in the description too.

[Luna]

Awesome. Thank you, Mia.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. One final thing. Do you want to plug direct action?

[Luna]

Yes, I do. So we've spent a lot of time talking about the legal side of unionization because our union is currently seeking federal recognition with the nlrb. I want to emphasize that this is not the end of unionization. The goal is not a contract. The goal is to use direct action to enact the changes that you want to see in your workplace. For what are probably obvious reasons. I don't want to talk about specifically stuff that we have planned, or maybe not even stuff that we've done in the past. But for example, one thing that I can talk about is that we have an ICE response plan. Like what do we do if ICE shows up at our workplace and tries to raid us? We have a plan for that. And I obviously don't want to go further into detail about that, but that is something that we did as an example of a direct action. There's also other stuff. There's lots of historical examples of workers getting gains in their workplace. You have examples of stuff like Just a Simple March on the Boss has historically worked to sway the boss, even without necessarily a change in the contract. Or you can have stuff that's all very legal and above board, obviously of people just agreeing to not be as friendly with their boss at work and emotionally sway their boss that way. Or having smaller outside of work actions where people are helping each other out and having a workplace mutual aid project, or even something as simple as implementing a workplace fitness plan. That's Something that we've discussed a couple of times at meetings very loosely, like just going on hikes together or having the community sports and stuff just to keep each other in shape and keep our communities healthy. All of this stuff is stuff that exists beyond the contract. We're currently emphasizing the contract because that's what we are at the moment seeking, because the contract helps this feel more real for people who aren't quite on board with the idea of unionization yet. But unionization at a workplace gets you much more than just a better contract with your employer. And you can enact changes at your workplace faster if you work together with your co workers and organize your co workers. Hell yeah. Anything to add, Renee?

[Renee]

Everyone in the union is very aware regarding their respective capacities to help what they can and cannot do, their limits. And I think just after working together enough, everything marries in a very effective way. And yeah, even just like all of these sort of direct actions that Luna was naming just came out of our meetings. Just ideas that people think might be fun to do or people sharing their hobbies and want to share them with other people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Renee]

And so, yeah, it really is just sort of a fun hangout. I don't want to trivialize it, but it's like extreme hanging out.

[Mia Wong]

Well, yeah, I think it touches on something that's really important about all of this, which is people will in the abstract talk about unions as social institutions, but what that actually means is, yeah, it's a place where you and your friends and the people you work with with go and do stuff together. And, you know, I, I, I guess, I guess I want to wrap up on, like, if you want a, a way out of the stultifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the modern capitalist experience, you too can create. You two could create a union and resist all of those things simultaneously.

[Luna]

Yeah.

[Renee]

Yeah.

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[James Stout]

Welcome to It Could Happen Here. A show about things falling apart. The thing falling apart the past few years, the Democratic Party. That's what we're gonna be talking about today. I am joined by Sophie Raylicterman. Hello.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Hi. I'm not excited about this.

[James Stout]

This is great. Because last time we were on an episode together, we were talking about our two favorite Democrats, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Ah, yes. They gave me Covid at the dnc.

[James Stout]

I'll never forgive them not talking about them today. But we are talking about the dnc. The other dnc. The one who puts on the dnc, the Democratic National Committee. Because we're going to be talking about the DNC autopsy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh, boy.

[James Stout]

First, some background.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yes.

[James Stout]

After the Democrats lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency in 2024, if I'm reading that correctly, including losing the popular vote, something that has not happened in 20 years. The Democratic National Committee, the DNC wondered, why did that happen? So the DNC commissioned a report on what happened with the 2024 election. And this report came to be known as the 2024 autopsy. The newly elected DNC chair, Ken Martin, pledged to make the upcoming report public, announcing after his chair election, quote, there has to be some lessons that we glean on that so we can operationalize it not just here in D.C. but through all the 57 state parties. We have to look backwards and look forward at the same time. The 2024 election autopsy was commissioned in early 2025 and was supposed to come out later that spring, but got pushed back to the end of summer and then the fall. And finally In December of 2025, Ken Martin announced that the DNC would not, in fact, be releasing the autopsy report. In Martin's brief statement, explaining, or rather not explaining, why he's backpedaling on his promise to make the report public, he claimed that the committee is, quote, already putting our learnings into motion.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Who votes Ken Martin in to be the chair? Because I know his career is basically Minnesota guy.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Interning government jobs, vice president, chair.

[James Stout]

And then basically around 400 members of state party chapters are chosen to be members of the Democratic National Committee, who then in turn vote on national party leadership and decide how primaries operate.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[James Stout]

Though if a sitting president is a Democrat, the president can effectively choose the chair. CNN reported that DNC officials had concerns that the report would, quote, inflame ongoing tensions within the party at a time they felt they had begun to generate winning momentum, quote, and the committee officials decided that it would be a, quote, unquote, strategic failure on the part of the DNC to publicly look backward. That was their reasons for not releasing the report. We're already winning elections in 2025, so there's actually no point in just looking back at why we lost to 2024. And this was alluded to in Ken Martin's statement announcing that he would not be releasing the report. Quote, we are aligned on what's important, and that's learning from the past and winning the future. Here's our North Star. Does this help us win? If the answer is no, it's a distraction from the core mission. So the report would just be a distraction from letting us currently win going forward, per the DNC chair.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That logic is ridiculous.

[James Stout]

No, because that's not the real reason why the report wasn't released. We'll get to why the report wasn't released.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Okay. Very soon, that Sounds like a majorly half assed last reason. So. Okay, say more, say more. I'm listening.

[James Stout]

As the public release of the autopsy was continuously delayed in 2025 and just eventually canceled, speculation about the contents of the report grew. That the DNC must be hiding the report because its findings on why the Dems lost so bad in 2024 must run contrary to the interests of party elites. So by burying the report, the DNC must be trying to protect them. The future political prospects of Kamala Harris obscure the misuse of massive funds donated to the DNC and election campaigns. Or the report must actually definitively prove the Biden Harris administration's failure to act on the genocide of Palestinians while aiding and abetting Israel must have played a significant factor in the election, possibly the determining factor. So if the report found such things, then the DNC might want to suppress the report to not have that information be public. But now we know that's not the reason the report was not released. The autopsy finding that the Democrats pro Israel position cost in the election was not the reason the report was buried. Because last month the DNC begrudgingly released an incomplete version of the election autopsy which actually does not contain a single mention of Israel, Palestine or Gaza. It is not discussed in any way in a 192 page report.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Then what, what is, what is in this report?

[James Stout]

Oh, we will also be getting into what's in the report. Okay, yes, a lot of bad statistics for one. Unsourced graphs and discussions on, on whether you should spend more money on digital ads or TV ads is really, really the bulk of the report, honestly. But before we get more into the report's findings, let's discuss the circumstances that led to the publishing of the unfinished autopsy nearly a year after the finished version was supposed to come out. So this autopsy was authored by a guy named Paul Rivera, who's a longtime Democratic strategist and personal friend of DNC chair Ken Martin. Now Riviera has not worked on a presidential campaign since 2004.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh wow.

[James Stout]

And despite being the sole person like tasked with running the report, and it's unclear how many people actually worked on it, but it was led by Riviera and seems to be mostly be done by him. And despite that, Riviera only worked on it part time while managing other contracts with CNN reporting that Riviera would say that he would only be available to conduct autopsy interviews before 9am or after 7pm or on weekends. That's when he conducted interviews for the report was only before 9am in the morning or after 7pm in the evening on weekdays and then also weekends.

[Sophie Lichterman]

What's this weirdo doing?

[Dana Al Kurd]

What's his problem?

[Molly Conger]

Problem?

[James Stout]

Not much. Yeah, apparently not not much, sir, because, yeah, this report was like delayed almost a full year.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Luna]

Sheesh.

[James Stout]

Now, only after his initial spring 2025 deadline did Riviera actually reach out to state party chairs in battleground states to interview them for the report. And he did not contact, like key Harris campaign staff until September. And many were not even asked to be interviewed. Portions of the autopsy were first revealed at a DNC National Finance Committee retreat for top donors held at a hotel in Milburgh, Virginia last October, per cnn. At the donor retreat, Riviera himself gave a quote, hour long presentation with slides in part drawn directly from the report, in part via running his findings through an AI engine, unquote, there was AI generated slides. He ran his report findings through an AI engine, according to cnn, which also generated slides. And that was what his presentation on the report at the Donut retreat was based on, was the AI's regurgitation of report findings.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Hold on, hold on a second. So he's not willing to do work work after 9am or after 7pm, cannot

[James Stout]

conduct interviews in that time? No, too busy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Can't do any of that time. But yet he's just like using AI.

[James Stout]

Yeah, great.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Dnc, feeling really hopeful. Continue. What did CNN find?

[James Stout]

So one of the slides that Riviera presented at this, at this donor retreat attract the candidates, quote, unquote, area of focus by quote, unquote, content, slash theme, theme. CNN notes, quote. Riviera used an unclear methodology for the breakdown, assigning percentages to 10 categories of content or theme. For Trump, Harris and their running mates, the percentages in every column, one for each candidate, added up to well over 100%, unquote. What he was trying to do here is like measure campaign themes. Like, you know how much Trump focused on immigration compared to Harris, right? So he had had these like 10 categories of like what the campaigns were focused on. But the percentages did not actually add up to 100%.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Of course they didn't.

[James Stout]

So he's just like making this stuff up, right? Like it's, it's again, they know there's like an unclear methodology for the breakdown. The fact these add up to over 100%. Like you cannot trust the legitimacy of any of this research now. So after parts of the presentation were leaked to cnn, CNN then obtained even more information about the contents of the shelved autopsy. Before publishing their findings, CNN presented the DNC with what they knew about the report, prompting the DNC to just release the full report as submitted by Paul Rivera. And around this time, donors were also threatening to withhold funds for not publishing the report. So that probably also Contributed. One of CNN's sources said that after the autopsy was published, Ken Martin informed DNC staff that Paul Rivera was no longer associated with with the committee.

[Sophie Lichterman]

These people. These fucking people. I mean, I did not read the entire report intentionally so that you could tell me about it, but the highlights that have been spread across the Internet is did not mention Gaza, did not mention Joe Biden's age, and did not mention when Joe Biden dropped out late, effectively.

[James Stout]

So we'll get into some of some of those in a little bit more detail. I think one of the most interesting parts about the DNC's publishing of the unfinished report is that the published version of the autopsy contains annotations and corrections marked in red that the DNC added to the copy of the report as submitted by Riviera. And these were added for its public release.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Okay.

[James Stout]

At the top of every single page, all 192 pages, reads a disclaimer, quote, disclaimer, this document reflects the views of the author, not the dnc. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented, unquote, that is in red at the top of every single page. Ken Martin did issue a statement when the autopsy was published reading, quote, when I was elected DNC chair, I commissioned an after action review of the 2024 election that I wanted to be honest and transparent and with actionable and specific takeaways for the future of the Democratic Party. When I received the report late last year, it wasn't ready for prime time, not even close. And because no source material was provided, it would have meant starting over. I could not in good faith put the DNC's stamp of approval on the report that was produced after last November's massive Democratic wins. I didn't want to create a distraction, but by not putting the report out, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize. For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged. It does not meet my standards and it won't meet your standards. But I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word, unquote.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I don't know, man. That doesn't really sound Very trustworthy, bro. Sounds pretty bad. Sounds pretty bad. Here's a half assed report. I didn't, it's, it's not very good and I've delayed it for over a year, but yeah, I, I guess here it is. No, it doesn't include any of the big issue things. Enjoy.

[James Stout]

It's a stunning sequence of events that kind of highlights all of the issues that everyone already has with, with the Democratic Party. Like the guy who was chosen to do the autopsy just happens to be a personal friend of the DNC chair. And said friend then fails to interrogate the institutional bias of the party. It is such a condensed, condensed little version of why the party has had so many, so many troubles. And the report as published seems unwilling to actually be able to learn from successes that have been happening since the 2024 election. Effectively what this report actually is is a poorly sourced opinion piece. Yeah, that's dressed up as an election autopsy. It misspells names, it has typos, factual and statistical errors, and unsourced claims. Multiple key sections are left completely blank because Riviera never submitted them. The report is less interested in collecting data and interviews to inform analysis, but rather starts with certain assumptions and then cherry picks data to support this assumption. But it doesn't even do that well because the included data is often inaccurate and at times the analysis contradicts itself.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Jesus Christ.

[James Stout]

A state party chair told cnn, quote, it was very clear that it felt like Ken's theory of the case for the future of the party through the lens of 2024 as opposed to a quote unquote autopsy. And after reading the report, I agree this is very much a report that's designed to fit in with what Ken Martin wants the message of the last election to be. And it, it tries to squeeze that into these like very rough shape of like an after election report. But it's really not.

[Sophie Lichterman]

This just like reeks of like lazy AI work with all the like left out sections that the things that don't add up.

[James Stout]

The misspellings specifically the statistical and like factual errors. Yeah are, are really confusing and it feels like someone's getting if not the actual writing, but it feels like, like the research was like AI assistant in the way that you know AIs will shoot out different answers for the same question.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Sure.

[James Stout]

So it, it feels like that in a few areas and like, like you've already mentioned. Right. The report never brings up Biden's age or mental state state as a factor contributing to the election. And in as much as the report criticizes Biden, it critiques the Biden administration's failure to adequately prepare Harris to be a viable candidate.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Does it discuss the debate? No, it doesn't bring up the debate where now we know that, like, from an interview from Dr. Jill Biden from a few weeks ago, that she legitimately thought that Joe was having a stroke on stage during that debate with Donald

[James Stout]

Trump, even though she took him onto a different stage afterwards to tell him how good he did. And then they went to a Waffle House.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I mean, the things you do after

[James Stout]

you go after you after you believe your husband has had a stroke.

[Sophie Lichterman]

When shit has hit the fan, Garrett, you go to Waffle House.

[James Stout]

Maybe. Maybe the Waffle House actually is the move.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That's what I'm saying. The Waffle House is the least shocking of the entire situation. But that's not mentioned in there at all.

[Jacob Goldstein]

No.

[James Stout]

It says, quote, the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and a half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch, unquote. That's all it says about. About switching from Biden to Harris. That's all it says.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I don't. I don't disagree with that statement because, you know, the amount of people that we spoke to when we went to both political conventions, one of the common things that they said about. About Kamala Harris is like, how ineffective she's been and how they don't use her and how. How can we trust her when they don't even trust her to do basic things for the administration, which was one of the main, like, Republican talking points about her, is like, she has no skills, which is not true. But that was a position that was against her, is not utilizing her enough. And then, you know, they're like, bibbidi bobbidi boo. She's your candidate without.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

A primary. Do they mention anything about there not being a primary?

[James Stout]

No.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Okay.

[James Stout]

The port never interrogates or considers Biden's decision to run for reelection or lay blame on those who encouraged and enabled that decision. Nor does it identify the lack of a legitimate primary as a contributing factor leading to the results of the 2024 election.

[Sophie Lichterman]

We're going to take a quick break while I have, you know,

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

an attack

[Sophie Lichterman]

of my mind your ads. And we're back.

[James Stout]

Let's now pivot to how the report describes its own research methodology.

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus Christ.

[James Stout]

This is quoting from the start of the autopsy. Quote, the report analyzes a range of publicly and commercially available data to identify actual investments, actions, and eventual voter behavior. The analysis also Includes qualitative data obtained in the form of in person and virtual interviews with more than 300 organizations and individuals. After this sentence, the DNC has highlighted and annotated a little note that reads, no source material or data provided. Unsourced claims cannot be independently verified. So despite claiming that 300 people or organizations were interviewed, which may be true, the report never says who these people are nor does it allude to their relevant expertise.

[Sophie Lichterman]

This is just an op ed.

[James Stout]

A source at the DNC told CNN that Riviera did not even provide a list of names of, of the people he spoke to to the dnc, nor did he submit interview notes or recordings. So there's no record that we have of like who these people are or why they were interviewed or what they actually said. And it's not like he's like quoting from people like with quotation marks. It's like regurgitating maybe portions of interviews into different text.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Right.

[James Stout]

Riviera also failed to provide data that he said was given to him him by senior campaign leadership that he says is influencing the report. But we don't see it and he did not provide it to the dnc. So like they don't know. It's just, it's just some guy saying, trust me, bro, that's what it sounds like. So after the introduction to the report is a section called the Executive Summary. This section was not provided by the author. This section is completely missing.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Great.

[James Stout]

After the missing executive summary section, the report moves on to the electoral landscape which has just very basic stuff. Quote, millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to health care, manufacturing and job losses, and failing infrastructure, yet continue to be persuaded to vote against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party. Unquote. Just really basic stuff. Very like average a 10 year old can say this. Next, the report talks about, about how the Democratic Party rebuilt itself in the 90s, how after three consecutive presidential losses, the Democrats embraced a new strategy which got Clinton elected in 1992. And we all know how well that went. Then there's seven pages of summarizing party history from 2008 to 2024. I don't know if he was getting paid by the word, but that's just like. It's just seven pages that just don't need to be there, there. And then the report reads, quote, we must be careful to draw the right lessons from this experience and not miss opportunities to identify and build upon some of the positives of the 2024 cycle. We must acknowledge how close the margins actually were. The report then goes on to misstate how close the margins were, but. But on the other hand, it goes on to say that in the past 16 years, quote, Democrats have lost ground at every level of government. This remains true even in the face of the blue wave. In the Most recent elections, 2025 Gubernatorial and mayoral wins in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, Detroit and elsewhere may lead to a false sense of security and a belief the Democratic Party has again found ways to bring voters back to the booth with their messaging. While these wins are welcome and point to optimism entrenched in the major party strategy, a dive into the details shows some of these elections were tighter than Democrats should be comfortable with with, and points to room for improvement in future efforts, unquote. It never gives this dive into the details. So we don't even know what it's taking there. And to me, this paragraph just demonstrates an unwillingness to understand why some of these elections went the way they did, especially the one in New York City. It doesn't want to acknowledge why someone like Zoran ran such a successful campaign. And claiming that the margins were tighter than what Democrats should be comfortable with with also ignores the fact that Zoron's biggest opponent in both the primary and general election was another Democrat who ran as an independent, someone who was associated with the Democratic establishment. It's a bizarre little tidbit that they throw in there.

[Sophie Lichterman]

This is so weird. Just like a highly unnecessary tangent.

[James Stout]

And it, it just shows this, like, uncomfortableness and, you know, on one side being uncomfortable, on the other side just, you know, also being incurious about why those elections have gone the way they did.

[Luna]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And what you can actually learn from them.

[Sophie Lichterman]

This is baffling.

[James Stout]

I'm not gonna go over every single section of the report because there's a lot. And the way that DNC annotated it gets interesting because at a certain point they stop actually trying to address or annotate specific claims. Yeah. And instead, just to annotate the titles of entire sections, writing no sourcing provided for several claims in this section, and no evidence provided for many claims in this section. Public reporting and data contradict several claims.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Wow.

[James Stout]

The introduction for the what Happened Electoral Overview section is also completely missing, as well as the National Review section. These are just not included. The author did not provide those sections. The next section, the one on battleground state outcomes, contains very basic factual errors. In just the second sentence, quote states which had consistently and reliably voted for Democratic candidates, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin voted for Trump, unquote. All these three states voted for Trump in 2016. I don't know if Riviera has a different definition of consistent or reliable, but these are, these are notably swing states and swing states that voted for Trump in 2016. Yeah, just like a lot of little details like that just don't make sense. And later on in this section and beyond, it gets dates wrong. It gets the percentage of votes wrong. It falsely claims that a Capitol Police officer was beaten to death by insurrectionists on January 6th. That's not true. That did not happen. An officer killed himself a few days later, but he was not beaten to death on site at January 6th. The report uses the word gaslighting, which I think is funny.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I, I just kind of wonder if you, like, uploaded this, this to one of the, like, AI softwares to tell you if it's AI or tell you if it was, you know, plagiarized and those kinds of things, how much of it would be flash flagged?

[James Stout]

Yeah, who knows, right? Like those, those sorts of tools aren't the most accurate themselves.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No, but it's just crazy.

[James Stout]

The, the level of errors is, is shocking.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Like, for instance, the report claims that in the 2024 election, Democrats netted two seats in the House, flipping 10 seats from Republicans while losing eight. This is not true. This is just not a true claim. Democrats netted one seat rather than two, flipping nine Republican held seats while losing eight Democrat seats. It's like, there's just small little errors like that that I'm like, how, how, how did you do this?

[Sophie Lichterman]

Unbelievable.

[James Stout]

There's also a bunch of just unfounded claims about the intentions or assumptions coming from the Harris campaign, which may be true, but they're not supported in the actual report.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Report.

[James Stout]

Like, you're not providing evidence, you're not providing citations for some of the claims about what the Harris Party intended in some of their messaging or stances. But I want to move on to one of the biggest takeaways that the report had. It argues that anti Trump sentiment was assumed by Democratic campaigns and that campaign ads should have hit Trump harder to remind voters of how bad he is. Is, quote, the national campaign did not effectively drive Trump's negatives. The retrospective job approval for Trump was too high, and the campaign and allies failed to remind voters of his incompetence. The idea Trump's negatives were, quote, unquote, baked in is a major failure of analysis and reality, given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term, unquote. The DNC notes that no evidence was provided for these claims and that this claim contradicts claims elsewhere in the report. Because a lot of the report also criticizes Harris for only defining herself as not being Trump, as focusing too much on Trump and not defining herself. So the report kind of tries to have it both ways here. The campaigns did not hit Trump hard enough. Enough, but we're also too focused on Trump never illuminating what attacks against Trump should have looked like. Exactly.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Is there any mention in these reports about Epstein?

[James Stout]

No, no, no, no, absolutely not.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, because it was baffling to me that because they needed to have Bill Clinton make the worst speech at the dnc that they didn't target Trump over his relationship with Epstein at all during the campaign. So, you know, of course it's not in there.

[James Stout]

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of things that you could hit Trump on and a lot of, yeah, Democratic ads like, did maybe not in ways that people found convincing. You know, like when we were at the dnc, a lot of the anti Trump stuff was based around like the horror of January 6th.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

Not his regular failures as president. Right. Like, like, like, like the day to day incompetence that he showed as president. It was like Trump is threat to democracy, which just did not turn out to be a compelling enough reason to vote against Trump.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh, my goodness.

[James Stout]

The report claims that Harris struggled with defining herself beyond not being Trump and just framing the race as prosecutor versus felon ballot. The report notes, quote, the truncated campaign timeline didn't help, but the campaign did not quickly resolve on how to tag Trump and define Harris. The report says that the enthusiasm gap was predictable. That Trump just generated more enthusiasm than Harris does not provide evidence to support this claim, though some people may believe this to be true. But this claim is not supported in the actual report. And it reads, quote, anti Trump sentiment alone was insufficient to motivate voters. The Harris campaign appears to have relied on Trump being unacceptable rather than building an affirmative case for Harris base. Voters needed reasons to vote for Harris as well as vote against Trump. DNC notes, no evidence provided for these claims. So, like, I kind of agree with portions of this. I think, I think, yeah, you do need reasons to vote for Harris. You cannot be just defined as not being Trump. This does contradict the previous takeaway that anti Trump sentiment was not driven hard enough into voters. So perhaps this claim isn't necessarily wrong, but it is armchair analysis. It's not actually attempting to substantiate its claims. It's lazy and sloppy. And it ignores that there were also reasons to not vote for Harris. It's not just that the campaign needed to generate reasons to vote for Harris, but it also should have addressed or changed its course to address the reasons that people might not want to vote for Harris, which we will get to at the end of this episode. In terms of the election analysis included in this report, a lot of it is focused on comparing Harris's performance to state level races where, where Democratic candidates outperformed her, but also where she outperformed them. And the analysis often conflates the two. It reiterates that, quote, lower profile races needed affirmative cases to vote for candidates, not just opposition to Trump. And it credits successful state campaigns to local name recognition and digital presence, things that Harris was not necessarily lacking in. Harris spent a decent amount of money on digital presence and as vice president had a degree of name recognition. There's more just odd errors here. The report gets the number of 2024 gubernatorial races wrong. It forgets that Delaware had a gubernatorial race. And it focuses much of this section of the report on Josh Stein of North Carolina, who's the governor. Yeah, quote, while Stein was able to keep the governor's office under Democratic control, it is concerning how Robinson was able to capture 45% of the state's vote even after his repudiation of equal rights for everyone and proudly and loudly asserting he was a black Nazi, unquote.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Man, I forgot about that guy. I'm mad that you brought him up. I forgot he existed.

[James Stout]

A lot of the section of this report is actually praising Josh Stein for how well he ran his campaign, while also finding it concerning of how much the vote Robinson was able to still get. Except it gets the number wrong. Robinson did not get 45% of the vote. He got just over 40%. And later in the report, it says he got 42.7%, which is also wrong. So it has two different numbers. The report says 45 and 42.7, neither of which are correct. The correct number is 40 people. There's a lot of stuff like this. This is just kind of baffling. And it's even more baffling because of how much of a load bearing section this Josh Stein bit is. All right, it writes about how Josh Stein ran almost eight points ahead of Harris. And it says that, quote, Stein didn't just win by default. He addressed the exact problems Harris did not. But it never actually explains what those are. It doesn't actually explain this. It just says it in a sentence. Later on it says that based on the North Carolina governor's race, Democrats should, quote, focus less on abstract issues and identity politics and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most, including the economy, disaster relief and addressing housing affordability, unquote. But they, the Harris campaign was not actually focused on abstract issues and identity politics. They were trying to address these things often inadequately, especially on the economy because of how much Harris had tied herself to Biden. But she did address housing affordability for like a decent bit of the campaign. Whether voters actually knew that, that's a whole other question. Right? It's whether they were successful in communicating her platform on housing affordability is a different question. But it's not that Stein's success was focused on this as opposed to focusing on abstract issues, which is not really what the Harris campaign was actually focused on. The report continues, quote, Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young black men compared to Biden's 2020 performance. However, Stein recovered significant ground with both groups, suggesting his campaign found effective ways to reach these voters. Stein's results suggests it's possible to win women and compete with men with the right approach, unquote. Does it explain how Stein did this?

[Sophie Lichterman]

No.

[James Stout]

No, it doesn't.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Of course it doesn't.

[James Stout]

It doesn't say. Now, the report also praises Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, who was elected in 2024, quote, running on a platform of housing affordability, reducing costs for families throughout the state and improving public safety allowed him to easily capture the governor's office. His message resonated with voters concerned about how biodynomics failed to lower the cost of eggs and how the Trump administration would gut avenues of education and upward mobility. Stein and Ferguson, notably both then incumbent attorneys general for their states, had a definitive strategy to approach voters. Their wins provide a blueprint for candidates in other states seeking to align themselves with their voters, unquote. So Ferguson's win in Washington state is presented as a blueprint for candidates as compared to Harris's field strategy. But in fact, Ferguson ran almost four points behind Harris. Harris did better in Washington than Ferguson did. But the report promotes Ferguson's strategy or its, its opinion on Ferguson strategy as to winning blueprint. Despite it doing worse in Washington.

[Dana Al Kurd]

It.

[James Stout]

So that's what I mean in terms of there being lots of self contradictory claims.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Did nobody proofread or edit or peer review?

[James Stout]

Well, no, I think that is a big part of this, right. Is that once the DNC received this, they saw how bad it was and it was like, we don't even want to proofread and edit this, like, this is just so bad. We just don't even want to deal with it anymore. Like, it's just done. Right? We're just putting on the shelf.

[Sophie Lichterman]

But dude released anyway.

[James Stout]

Well, I mean, they released it after public pressure because of, you know, accusations that they were hiding certain findings that were damaging to the Democratic Party or the interests of party elites.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No, it's just, it's just that somebody did a bad job when in fact

[James Stout]

it's just like, oh, this was just like a massive fuck up. Like, that's, that's why you're hiding it.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Right, right.

[James Stout]

Like this, this, this section that I just like read. And the section on like Stein. Yeah, that's the only time where the word cost is used in relation to prices. This is, this is the only mention of affordability.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh my God.

[James Stout]

The report does not a single time mention inflation.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh my God.

[James Stout]

Except in adjusting like donation numbers for inflation. But like, it does not, it does not mention inflation as an issue. It does not mention the causes of inflation messaging around inflation and how that may have been a factor contributing to the results of the election. The economy only gets mentioned six times.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Okay. Just thinking back to when we were at the RNC and I. I'm sure you had the conversations with, you know, newly eligible voters, young males.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And you asked them, you know, why they were voting for Donald Trump. They would always say the economy is the first thing.

[Garrison Davis]

Thing.

[James Stout]

It's the first thing.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And that's the core of Trump's ad strategy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

How are they not understanding that, you know, bringing out Oprah at the DNC instead of talking about how you're going to lower the price of milk and eggs and gas and help people get jobs. Like, how are they not realizing that you're not reaching normal human connection?

[James Stout]

And this like, continues to be a problem now. Right. People will look at macroeconomic factors.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Sure, sure.

[James Stout]

And be like, by some accounts the economy is actually not doing terrible. But those sorts of statements don't reflect the reality of Americans who are dealing with rising prices and may not be experiencing the same wage growth that some statistics show in the macro sense. And specifically the way that there's this like condescending messaging around macroeconomics.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

That really like polarizes people against you because they're having a very hard time. They don't have a lot of hope for the future. And just asserting that actually on a macros level, the economy is doing well. It feels like you're gaslighting them. Right.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

You see this in like the discussion of like, you know, the vibe session. Yeah, which I mean, I have a lot of opinions on, but that's, that's, that's another episode.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, man.

[James Stout]

And right now we're gonna go to ads.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh boy. Foreign.

[James Stout]

Okay, we are back. So after this section talking about the gubernatorial races and stuff, it has a list of strategic implications for Democrats based on these state level races. And these implications are, quote, anti Trump sentiment has its limits. Irregular voters are swing voters. Candidate definition is essential. Clear accomplishments and concrete plans matter more than vibes. State parties matter. Voters are sophisticated. The 8 to 10% who split tickets are decisive. They evaluate candidates individually. Geographic formula is non negotiable. Strong urban plus competitive suburbs plus limited rural losses. You need all three. Unquote. Yeah, no shit. In order to win elections, you must win elections. Yeah, that's what this is saying is that in order to win elections, you have to win the election. Yeah, we know, we know.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah. There's this, there's this announcer in the NBA that got slammed many years back for stating, well, you know, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. And that's exactly what this is, is they're like, hey, if you get more votes than the other guy, you win. It's, it's crazy, it's lazy that this whole, this whole thing reeks of just like.

[James Stout]

Yes.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Lackadaisical, insufferable laziness.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[James Stout]

And I, I want to mention two. Two other strategic implications, please. One, elections remain winnable with the right candidates and strategies, even in difficult environments. Demographics are tendencies, not destiny. And voter support is impacted good and bad through campaign choices, unquote.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Wow.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Thank you so much for, for saying that. If people.

[James Stout]

Genius.

[Sophie Lichterman]

If people believe in and like the candidate, maybe they'll vote for them.

[Garrison Davis]

Wow.

[James Stout]

Voter support is impacted through campaign choices.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Just, just. Oh my goodness.

[James Stout]

So that's obviously laughable.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yes.

[James Stout]

This last one is more interesting. Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns and don't assume identity politics will hold male voters of color.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Men hate. Women.

[Garrison Davis]

Men hate.

[James Stout]

It's not the messenger. It's not the messenger. It's the message. It's not about who the messenger is. It's the message itself. And they can't grasp that.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Why is that their take?

[James Stout]

They're doing the same. Identity politics.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yes.

[James Stout]

That it's, that it's like trying to critique. It's like, no, we need men to talk to male voters. That's the only way that's also identity politics. You don't understand that. It's not about who's giving the message. It's about what the message actually is. How did white dudes for Harris work out? You literally tried this. You literally tried to do this. It did not work.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Carson, once again, I did block that out of my brain. I did not like hearing it. Yeah. Their take is, sorry, if you want to talk to the boys, you also have to be a boy.

[James Stout]

It's crazy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

What? It's lazy. It's stupid.

[Garrison Davis]

God.

[Sophie Lichterman]

All right, what else hit me? I know that you're saving some of the worst for the end.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I am saving some of the bad stuff for last. There's a few other small errors I want to go through. Like, let's do it. Like, it claims that tens of thousands of voters in a handful of states are who sent Trump back to the White House. That's not, that's not inaccurate.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Accurate.

[James Stout]

That's just, that's just not inaccurate. And the DNC notes this.

[Sophie Lichterman]

What happened at all? Okay.

[James Stout]

And out of 34 Senate races, the report only reviews six of them, which it attempts to extrapolate a pattern from. And it does not review Wisconsin, a key swing state. And the author also just did not include this section on House races. This section is completely blank. It's also missing.

[Garrison Davis]

Cool.

[James Stout]

Now it does have a list of, you know, lessons that we can learn from Senate level and state level races. The positive ones are that, that Democrats should maintain a year around presence. We should kind of always be campaigning. Don't just wait till the end. Just always keep a level of engagement. And that engagement should be community oriented. It should be grassroots in nature. You should be establishing partnerships with local community organizations and groups in working class communities because member to member outreach is more effective. Rather than having strangers do door knocking, you should have people will from that neighborhood be door knocking in their own neighborhoods. And their messaging should be bilingual and culturally competent. So like all this stuff is like, yeah, like I, I sure. This is like, I kind of agree. Right? This is like, yeah, very, very basic. But yes, this is, this is a good idea. You should strengthen your connections in Latino neighborhoods and with unions and you should lean on those to help win elections. Yep. That's how politics works.

[Sophie Lichterman]

You learn very young. Stranger danger. And so it's like if you are someone like me who has cameras at their house and you see a strange person coming to your door, you're not necessarily going to answer that.

[James Stout]

No. Someone with a clipboard is, is, is going to approach me it's like, oh, no way, I'm not doing it.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I, I can't. You're, I'm already overstimulated. Please leave me on. But if it's like, oh hey, it's my neighbor, yeah, I'm gonna open the door for them and hear them out.

[Luna]

Out.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That's. I fear that's just common sense. I don't think that was necessarily needed in this report. That's common sense, but it's something I don't disagree with for like the first time in all these things that you said.

[James Stout]

Now the sort of negative things that the Democrats can learn from.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Include what the report calls the leadership voter gap. The fact that the Democratic Party leadership seems increasingly alienated from the priorities of, of voters. And voters may still support their local Democrat on the state level or local, local races, but maybe we'll vote for Trump because he's offering an alternative to the stagnating corpse of the Democratic Party, even if that alternative turns out to be also terrible and in some ways worse. So this is what they call the, the leadership voter gap. They also identify late engagement, doing the bulk of your campaigning from like September to November, ceding the entire summer for the Republicans to establish kind of the territory of the race, like what the issues are. The report mentions messaging misalignment. This is similar to the leadership voter gap, where there's tensions between the leadership of the party or the concerns of the president and what working class Americans are, are concerned about. Quote, the Bidenomics framing emphasized macro statistics rather than the micro realities voters experienced daily and specifically tied President Biden by name to actual economic anxiety, unquote. I think that's completely fair. Another of the key challenges is Republican inroads with working class voters. This section has a typo, so it's kind of hard to read, but it essentially states.

[Sophie Lichterman]

There's so many typos.

[James Stout]

But it essentially states that the Trump campaign targeted working class households with populist messaging which distracted from his anti worker record. And working class men, particularly manufacturing and construction, saw Trump as more aligned with their cultural values than Democratic candidates. To condense these down, Democrats need to have a year round presence, more economic messaging and address cost of living concerns that resonate more than quote, unquote, identity politics. This is kind of where the actual election analysis portion of the document ends. The rest of the document is on how to more effectively spend campaign funds. Debating door knocking versus text and phone banking, addressing dropping voter registration rates, comparing media and ad spending, digital versus TV ads.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Is there anything interesting in those findings?

[James Stout]

No, not really.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Okay.

[James Stout]

It's filling. It's filling the page count down like the Democrats got a lot of money. The problem isn't the funds. We have the funds. It's that there's small ways that you can use them better. And sure, yeah. But all of this is just treating the symptom, not the problem. The problem wasn't that you were spending more on digital and not enough on broadcast. The problem was the candidate and the message, not differences in ad spending.

[Sophie Lichterman]

It's not that you. You had ads running. It's that the ads you had running weren't connecting with the people whose votes you needed, the people that were going to vote for you already. That's who those ads were targeting to. As opposed to bringing in voters who were like, oh, man, I'm really not sure. Trump was pretty bad last time. I'm on the fence here. Or just first time voters.

[James Stout]

The first time voter registration was. Was down significantly.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah. The fact that you ran ads in certain places, that was not the problem.

[James Stout]

No.

[Sophie Lichterman]

You weren't advertising to the people that needed to be advertised, too. Your messaging was wrong.

[James Stout]

And there's. Yeah, there's this more core issue that people did not get to actually pick the Democratic nominee. And the Democratic nominee had a lot of issues and direct ties to the many failures of the Biden administration. Which brings us to our final section here.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Here, I'm afraid.

[James Stout]

Based on three polling studies, the campaign pollsters concluded that it was, quote, important for the vice president to find separation from the status quo. They recognized voters were looking for change and felt it was necessary to find ways to demonstrate how a Harris Walls administration would be more effective in addressing American needs. The pollsters acknowledged the loyalty demonstrated by the vice president, but also suggested it was contrary to strong signals in their data about how even measured breaks would help position the vice president to win, unquote. And the vice president. Harris did not do these measured breaks. She remained extremely loyal to the legacy of the Biden administration while she was vice president and while she was campaigning for president in 2024. Now, these campaign pollsters were also part of discussions on how to respond to Trump attack ads. Quote. In particular, the attack ad focused on the vice president's prior statements on transgendered Americans. You can't call them that, bro. They all recognized the attack as very effective and felt the campaign was boxed in. The ad was a video of her saying what she said, and it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities parties. If the vice president would not change her position and she did not, then there was nothing which would have worked as a response, unquote. This polling section's also missing its conclusion, but let's get into that a little bit more, okay? Before the autopsy was released, Rob Flattery. I'm gonna say flattery. I don't know what it actually is, but I'm calling it flattery. He was Harris's deputy campaign manager, and he wrote an article in the Bulwark about what he said in his autopsy interview, also noting he was one of the few Harris staffers who was actually interviewed. Flattery argued the main issue of the 2024 campaign was branding, and he clarified that the Kamala is for they them ad was not actually the most effective attack ad. According to campaign data, it was the Trump ad from July 2024, with clips of Harris saying that, quote, unquote, quote, bidenomics is working. Flattery wrote that, quote, the brilliance of the Trump team's ad strategy was that everything was a proof point that leveled up to a core narrative. She cares about liberal shit, not you. Her position on immigrants, she's focused on the wrong thing. Harris talking about trans prisoners focused on the wrong thing. Says, bidenomics is working. Focused on the wrong stuff. It was brands, not messages. The trans ad worked because of what it implied, not what it said, unquote. Rob Flattery, like the autopsy, insists that there was no way to directly respond to the Kamala is for they them Trump is for you ad, claiming that they tested five to six response ads against ads about the economy, and the economy ones tested better, quote, so, not wanting to make the fight about an issue we were losing, we talked about the economy more. A literal rebuttal would have been a loser. I absolutely stand by this decision. Look at the 2025 elections in Virginia where Republicans made trans issues the core of their advertising strategy. It failed because voters didn't find it relevant, unquote. Except that's exactly what Trump did with the they them ad. That was a big part of his ad strategy as well. So there's this sort of learned helplessness with how to address both, like, the trans issues as well as the Israel, Palestine stuff, which we'll get to in one sec. Like, Harris not seriously addressing the they them ad also did not seem to help. And you don't need to run an ad directly opposing that slop, but through media appearances, you can pull the old uno reverso while affirming that you'll stand up for the rights of all Americans, no matter their gender or race. And that includes Making health care more affordable and more accessible. And it's Trump and the Republicans who are focusing on bullying a disadvantaged small minority of Americans to distract from the fact that they have no real economic plan. You can talk about the economy while still standing up for trans people. It doesn't need to be the focus of your campaign, but it sure as hell was a key focus of Trump's campaign, and you not addressing it did not help and contributed to real harm and negative polarization against trans people.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, I mean, a trans person did not speak at the 2024 DNC, which was weird and not normal. Trans people have spoken at many DNC conventions in the past, but in the 2024. Nope. And trans issues were. Were barely even mentioned. Largely absent.

[James Stout]

And like, it doesn't need to be a key issue, but the fact that Republicans made it, made it a key issue means that it is worth addressing in some way and affirming that you will actually stand up for the rights of trans people. Beyond making very kind of vague, confusing statements like Kamala made, that she'll follow the law. That's which just does not make sense to anyone. This sort of learned helplessness around, like, not being able to address these issues. This is the same thing with Palestine.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yes.

[James Stout]

Altering course is simply not considered possible. And in par with Palestine because Harris was the vice president. Flattery wrote, quote. Given the Biden administration's position, Gaza was an impossible issue to communicate around. Protesters drove coverage away from campaign events. Digital creators or even supporters were afraid to say anything nice about Biden because their comments sections would get rocked. For many voters watching the horrific, painful footage out of Gaza, it became a moral question, one we didn't have a good answer for. In ways that may not be reflected in a poll. It meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. As one person from the campaign told me, we spent the entire election with a giant rotting fish around our neck.

[Molly Conger]

Necks.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Is Joe Biden the giant rotting fish?

[James Stout]

Well, no, I mean, it's. I mean, in part, yes, but like the genocide in Gaza, like, like this, like, you know, well documented mass death.

[Sophie Lichterman]

They didn't let a Palestinian person speak at the DNC either. They had. They had one panel on it, which I attended. It was phenomenal. It was the largest attended panel of the convention. And then they refused to let a Palestinian person speak.

[Luna]

Speak.

[James Stout]

I mean, and even beyond just letting people speak, it's like there was no real plan to actually stop this from happening. Like, you can, you can cut off a Israel. You can do serious things. You can, you cannot send them weapons you can take away weapons. You can do more things. As we've seen, America is not afraid to occupy territories in that region. You could literally invade and be like, no, you have to stop. But, like, the. Not being able to. You even consider that you could have an answer for this moral question. You. You could just change your position. Not being able to even consider that. And the compounding difficulty of Harris being in the VP role made this the giant rotting fish around the campaign's neck. Yeah. And the fact that the autopsy does not actually address this question, and flattery does, I think, is another damning indictment against the autopsy and its sheer incompetence of the deputy campaign manager himself acknowledging that this was a serious. A serious issue that meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. And like, the whole deal in this bulwark article is that politics is now about brands, not messages. And this is kind of silly, right? Because these two things are related. Yeah. But the brand of the Harris campaign was largely defined as not being Trump and just being more of the same.

[Luna]

Same.

[James Stout]

Which in 2024 wasn't exactly great.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

No.

[James Stout]

Another of Trump's main ads featured a clip of Harris saying that she wouldn't have done anything different from Biden. So the branding issue certainly wasn't helped by the campaign's unwillingness to sever ties with Biden and criticize his policy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No.

[James Stout]

Flattery argues that would have been hard, if not impossible, because of Kamala's position as sitting vice president. If she doesn't go against Biden's policy, it puts fractures within the party and the White House itself. But also it would demonstrate how she effectively held no power as vice president. So, like, there is. There is these issues, but if you actually have principles, that would not actually be an issue. You could just blaze through that. You could actually take the real correct stance on issues like Palestine and acknowledge the massive failures that the administration had. And you are now going against the status quo of the administration, despite being the vice president. Right.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That.

[James Stout]

That could have been an option, one that. That was just never actually considered for whatever reason. Right.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I mean, statistically speaking, at that time, Joe Biden was. Had a very low approval rating. And so, you know, Kamala running as the pro Joe candidate doesn't really resonate with voters because they're unhappy.

[James Stout]

Yeah, exactly. Right. And if your message is just more of the same, then it seems pretty easy for your opponents to define what your brand is.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And whenever she tried to say, you know, I'm going to change this, I'm going to change that, they were like, but you're in office now, like Harris

[James Stout]

herself did not actually campaign on like progressive immigration policies. She did not campaign on trans rights. She didn't campaign on identity politics.

[Molly Conger]

No.

[James Stout]

But in absence of a real message, it's all too easy to associate the campaign with the concerns of like liberal elites disconnected from the economic realities of most Americans. And her previous statements on Bidenomics and how she wouldn't have done anything differently. Absolutely Compounded this flattery, wrote that the campaign underestimated just how disillusioned people were and the widespread degree of anti institutionalism. But unlike the autopsy, he at least acknowledges Biden should have never have run for reelection in the first place and that Democrats should have have run a real primary which would have provided an opportunity to actually address all of these, you know, issues about feeling tied to the death worshiping aspects of the Biden administration with Kamala being the vp.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Now, speaking of the autopsy, let's get to the final sections of the autopsy.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Near the end of the report, a paragraph reads, building to win requires new thinking and building to last requires thinking about more than the next election. It requires finding the best way to connect with the right voters in the right places. And if 2024 has proven anything, there is enough money to do it all the right way. And that's kind of the end. That's not the conclusion of the report because the final conclusion section is left blank.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Super.

[James Stout]

It's missing as well. So that sentence is kind of the last piece of analysis.

[Dana Al Kurd]

This.

[James Stout]

Because it actually has no conclusion. I think that's the perfect, the perfect representation of what this report is is that it does not have a conclusion. It's literally missing the conclusion. There is very little you can actually take away from this report positively to improve election strategy going forward because there is no conclusion anyway. That's the, that's the 2024 autopsy that it turns out was real, but was

[Sophie Lichterman]

just really bad and didn't address anything real.

[James Stout]

No, did not address what I, I would argue were the key issues affecting the campaign, Biden's decision to run again, his age, the lack of a primary and Israel, Palestine.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, that. And honestly, people like to choose their

[James Stout]

candidate in a democracy, really.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And, and this entire thing really is very frustrating because who knows when a non CIS male will be the candidate again after that.

[James Stout]

Yeah. I mean at this point I think anyone who can address serious economic as well as these moral issues around like imperialism and the US military is going to serve a better, a better chance. Chance.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Because that is the, the situation we have. We have found ourselves in.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, the Democratic National Committee. It's a bummer.

[Garrison Davis]

Hey, it's Rach.

[Rach]

And if you're like me, you want treats that are simple and taste amazing. And that's why I love Johnny Pop. They're deliciously made with simple ingredients and no artificial dyes. Whether it's a quick snack for the kids or a sweet moment for yourself, Johnny Pops are the perfect treat. And there's a kind deed on every stick to encourage everyone to share a little kindness. So next time you're in the freezer aisle, grab a box of Johnny Pops and feel great about what you're sharing. Johnny Pops. A better Pop for a better world.

[Ad Voice]

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[Garrison Davis]

be unique, not anyone else. Express it now. Just pop yourself.

[Podcast Announcer]

That's Funko.com youm've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella Eduardo to learn more.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out [e-mail] that's odoo.com

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. And today I'm joined by Dr. Nagar Razavi. She is a political anthropologist at the I'm going to get this right. Mossavar Rahmani, center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University. And her work is on the role of think tanks in shaping US Security policies towards the Middle east and Iran specifically. And I've recently had the pleasure of being at a symposium with Dr. Rossavi and I thought she would be a really welcome viewpoint for our audience. Thank you for for joining us.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

So I think in regards to the war in Iran, there's been such a focus on the Strait of Hormuz and the economic impact of that that conditions on the ground have really slipped from our radars. Like I don't see it as often and I think I'm a very well plugged in person. So can we start there? Can you tell us more about the situation and what it's like for like the average Iranian right now?

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah. Thank you so much for leading with that because I do think that is absolutely missing in not only mainstream media, but in much of the policy discussions that both of us follow closely. It's very bad on the ground for ordinary Iranians on all fronts. Economically, it is very dire at the moment. Inflation is now at unbelievably high rates. The level of damage that happened to the country, the physical damage, caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, if not their lives because they hit hospitals, they hit schools, they hit factories. These are places where people work. So now all of those people are without a job. The cost of living again has skyrocketed. People who depended on the Internet somehow to do their work are also now out of a job because it's been the longest Internet shutdown in Iran's history at this point. So that's the economic aspect that implicates every single person inside Iran at the moment. And we're hearing that even people can't exchange the dollar. So things are really, really bad at this point. And then you add on the layer of the number of people who have been killed. By the latest count, I think I saw 1700 civilians have been killed. 3.5 million Iranians were displaced. And this is mainly people trying to escape major city centers. They went to areas that were very under resourced and so they were also suffering from lack of water and electricity wherever they were going. Those people have now slowly been coming back to the major cities. Many more thousands of people were injured or maimed. And then of course, the entire population has been terrorized by this war and the uncertainty of whether it's going to start again. I mean, the threats that Trump has given up until just a few hours ago was at any moment the bombings could start again. And then lastly, I want to say in terms of, I touched on the infrastructure, but they hit desalination plants, they hit hospitals, they hit oil depots. People's quality of life right now inside Iran is pretty bad. And then you layer onto that a now even more repressive government that has been executing people they accuse of being traitors at unbelievable rates. A total clampdown on levels we haven't seen previously. So again, short story, it's very bad inside of Iran right now.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, I really wanted to make sure that people got that full scope. You know, we forget that there's an Internet blackout. We forget that Iranians have already dealt with such a repressive crackdown right before the war started. You know, like, I want people to make the connection that, like, conditions are super, super dire. You know, since you did mention that point, maybe we can elaborate a little bit. How do you think the Iranian regime is using this moment? I know short term they are utilizing it to just crack down on any dissent, but how do you think it'll be used kind of medium and long term?

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah. So, you know, in our line of work, it's always hard to make predictions, but we can use past experiences as a somewhat of a guide here. So just to remind your listeners, in January, there was a major uprising of Iranians against their government. And there was one of the most massive crackdowns since the 1980s when there was a massacre against political dissidents. And so going into this war, there was already one of the most brutal crackdowns happening. And then what people who are much more knowledgeable about Iran's domestic politics are telling me is that the people who are essentially replacing the leaders that were killed by US Israeli strikes are more hardliner and are more aligned with the hardline factions of the IRGC, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is one branch of the military in Iran that is very, very powerful and is loyal to the supreme leader, who is now the son of the previous supreme leader who was killed on the first day of the war, actually. And so using the last time Iran was at a war, which was in the Iran Iraq war, repression is going to get so much worse under war conditions because anyone who they don't like or who, anyone who speaks out can then be made a traitor and an enemy of the Iranian people. And so they can use warfare as the grounds to essentially go even further in their oppression. And that's what a Lot of human rights activists and people on the ground are worried about.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah. I also read a really interesting article. I'll put in the show notes about the popular mobilization that the Iranian regime has like, really fostered over, you know, many years through a variety of ways, whether it's through inserting, you know, their forces in universities or through particular kinds of cultural practices around like, martyrs and things like that. So, like, the Iranian regime is also kind of, of mobilizing its supporters in a way that, I mean, obviously for people who like, want democracy and freedom, like, this is. This is the worst case scenario. We, as in the United States, I shouldn't take responsibility for that at all.

[Dana Al Kurd]

But neither of us should.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, neither really. It's not our fault, but we really have, you know, given the worst actors, a huge victory.

[Dana Al Kurd]

And also to that point, if you don't mind me jumping in.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Dana Al Kurd]

It's also, you know, triggered nationalism among segments of the population. The war has made many people who were even protesting in January against the government now coming out and defending at least not the, the sovereignty of their country or the integrity of their country.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

I mean. Makes sense.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah. So there's all these strange. Now alliances forming and the government is actually playing some parts of it smartly, where you'll see them having women without hijab coming to pro government rallies and having a Lebanese woman singer's voice. Voice at their rallies, which for those of you who don't know, women are not allowed to sing as solo artists in Iran. They can be part of a chorus. So they're. They're also playing this interesting imaging game where they want to also show, look, we can also be open and inclusive at the same time that they're executing people at the highest rate since the 1980s.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, I'm going to have to look for that video of the Lebanese singer.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

So we participated, both of us, in a symposium at Princeton, I think was titled like the Long Arc of Fascism. Very interesting set of presentations. And your presentation was about the different kind of political strands that facilitated this war on Iran. So I just, I just wanted to just start off with. Could you outline the argument of your presentation for our listeners?

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yes. What I argued in the conference, which was fantastic and I really learned so much from your presentation as well, was the idea that this war was made possible, in a sense, because several different strands of fascism have come together in this moment. And I called it converging fascism. Just to go quickly through it, because I don't want to drill on and on, but the idea is that one of the core strands has been this growing anti Muslim sentiment that really goes across so many different fascist movements that we see whether it's the far right in Europe. Here in the United States, Islamophobia is so central. And of course the shootings at the mosque in San Diego is just the latest of long string of violence. The Hindutva in India, anti Muslim sentiments racism is central to the fascism that we see there. And then of course in Israel, that's been a core element of their anti Palestinian racism generally, but also specifically anti Muslim racism. So that's kind of the big strand that I identified as coming together. And within that there's an inflection of anti Shia sentiment. And there's lots of scholars who have talked about how really the anti Muslim project starts with the 79 revolution, this like modern manifestation of it. And so it's always had this anti Shia sentiment to it.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Inflection.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah, inflection. Thank you. The second strand that I wanted to highlight was this white supremacy and Aryanism, which is interesting because it actually loops in the far right of Iranian actors and Iranian diasporic actors in particular, those that are tied to the former Shah of Iran's son, Reza Pahlavi, who are really linking their wanting to overthrow the regime in Iran to restoring this Aryan nation that existed before. And this is their words, not mine. The Arab invasion of Islam. And this is really important for the far right movement that supported this invasion was this idea that they're going to save Iran from Islam, which again, the Islamophobia, but also the racialized violence against Arabs in the region and particularly against Palestinians. There's this very strong anti Palestinian current in this movement that I'm talking about where they are actively recruiting and aligning themselves with Israel in the genocide, which is so horrible. The third strand that I wanted to talk about was settler colonialism and nativism. And I think your listeners probably know enough about this, but this is essentially the bringing together of both the settler colonial violence that we see in Israel, the United States, Australia, et cetera, with the anti immigrant sentiment that has swept across much of the world, including in

[James Stout]

places like South Africa.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Then the next strand that I talk about is nostalgic paternalism, I call it

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

that you always need a little bit of patriarchy.

[Garrison Davis]

Right, right.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dana Al Kurd]

And it's basically like the people who call Trump daddy, you know, this idea that, that we need some strong man in our lives. And like Egyptians had this with Sisi, you know, this. This idea that we just need this Strong man to guide us forward is, is so dominant in a lot of these fascist groups. Modi is somebody's, you know, paternal figure. And again, Reza Pahlavi, this, the self proclaimed leader of the Iranian opposition in exile, has numerous times called himself the father of the Iranian people. And he's used really cringe language around how Iran is this abused woman and he's going to come in and save it. And completely out of touch with this amazing feminist movement that came out of Iran organically in 2022 called the Woman Life Freedom Movement. He's put himself in direct opposition against that movement, which is wild to think about. And then the last kind of fascist strand that I identified, and this really also links to Naomi Klein's work, who was also at the conference, are these techno fascists. And that's like the palantirs, the anthropic dystopian future that a lot of these techno bros want to impose on the world. That is very anti human. And so all of these strands come together at this very particular moment to justify and advance a war that some actors have wanted for a long time. And I say that it's kind of the blending of these at this particular moment that enabled this war.

[Molly Conger]

Effy?

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, I think the convergence is an apt description. And yet especially the patriarchal stuff like cringe is the right word, like it's extremely cringe, but also, you know, dangerous, that all of these things are coming, coming together to facilitate this kind of violence and then the, the war in Iran is facilitating the expansion of fascism here and vice versa. I wanted to just kind of get your opinion of something. I read this article by Mustafa Bayoumi in the Guardian about how in the United States, what actually drives Islamophobia is, is at its root anti Palestinian racism. I mean, and you certainly, you know, in your presentation talked about that strand as well in the Iranian context. Is the anti Palestinian racism kind of tangential to the kind of broader racialized Islamophobia? Yeah. How would you see that?

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah. No, I agree to a large extent to what Biomi is saying. I think anti Palestinian racism is central to how the opposition in Iran views itself. This hasn't been helped by the fact that the Iranian government, the current Iranian government, has been, at least materially and ideologically one of the biggest supporters of Palestinian liberation and has used the issue as many other dictators in the region have, by the way, have used the issue to actually suppress and oppress their own people. And so for a long time, there was a sentiment inside Iran that the Iranian government is sending its resources, sending its weapons, making Iran an isolated rogue state on behalf of the Palestinians, while we, the Iranian people, suffer. And so this created this people to people tension where anti Palestinian sentiment grew inside Iran and outside Iran, obviously, in these. In these fascist movements. And then that feeds back into the Islamophobia, this idea that we have nothing in common with the Palestinians because they are part of a religion that has also oppressed us or a part of a ethnic group that has oppressed us. So it's this feedback loop that's pretty horrible.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good that we outlined kind of the different mechanisms there. And it's really, you know, it's. It's so unfortunate because, like, you see polling of, like, Palestinians, and Palestinians were very much against what the Iranian regime did in Syria, for example.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

But like you said, there's a weaponization of these. These different causes. Just like the United States weaponizes the woman life freedom movement. You know, every regime uses things for its benefit.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Just to add, like, a slightly hopeful note is that I actually think, think the experience of this war has actually made more thoughtful Iranians see more of themselves now in the struggle of Palestinians.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Interesting.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Because they are actually seeing the hollowness and hypocrisy of what the US And Israel say and do. And so now I think there's been a little bit of a shift back in the direction of solidarity with the Palestinians.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Oh, that's. That's excellent to hear. You know, we could talk about this all day. Like, there's such a disconnect between diasporas and what happens on the ground. And this is not specific to the Iranians, but I imagine even if you lean that way, but you're in Iran being bombed by Israel, that's going to change your opinion in a way that, like, if you're in Los Angeles waving the Israeli flag, it's a little bit different.

[Luna]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

There's kind of stakes there.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah, yeah. You're like, who's the one dropping the bombs?

[Sophie Lichterman]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

That is actually a very hopeful note before I turn it to a less hopeful one. So your research is on, as I said earlier, like, kind of the think tank landscape in D.C. i remember, by the way, finding out about you back in the heydays of Twitter and being like, somebody's studying think tanks. Like, that's so cool.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That's so clever. Like, yes, we should be studying them in this way.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

And basically, like, your research is like, the types of knowledge and the sources of knowledge that become hegemonic. In these spaces. And then that of course, impact American policy. So could you, I know this is kind of a hard ask, but could you tell us like some basic findings of your, of your research the past couple of years?

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah, so thanks for that setup because I actually have a book coming out on this and it's called the Geopolitics of Expertise Space. And that's one of the central findings of the book, is that this think tank landscape needs to be understood as a transnational space. That's one of the key findings in which a lot of actors and stakeholders, especially from the Middle east or Swana region, are invested in shaping the narrative from the inside out. And this is something that I think traditional models of understanding US Empire, for example, failed in understanding, which is that, you know, when you have Arab Gulf states or Turkey or Morocco or Israel invested in ensuring the debate in Washington is shaped in a particular way that meets their interest, which is not always aligned with the US they're going to throw millions of dollars into think tanks to essentially shape what I call the common sense on any number of issues. And so they are co constructing the imperial imagination. And this is one of the key findings. And then when it comes to Iran in particular, they paradoxically want to ensure that Iran remains an unknowable enemy. That's the other key piece of the book, which is that this constructed unknowability is key to ensuring that the US maintains a posture of confrontation with Iran. And that means that you want to have this enemy that you can never fully figure out, or this enemy that's always unpredictable, this enemy that never follows the rules, because if you had a predictable, rational enemy, you'd eventually have to make some type of peace with them, because that's actually the rational course of action. But when you have weapons manufacturers, when you have foreign governments, when you have all kinds of interests shaping the debate in Washington, you don't actually do what's, quote, unquote, the rational policy for US national security interests as narrowly defined. So, sorry if that was too rambly of a explanation of the book, but.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

No, not at all. I mean, it's interesting because we come at it from different disciplines. I'm a political scientist and, and in the international relations landscape there was, you know, well, first and foremost, like, American empire is not really recognized in like, American political science. But there, there was this argument that percolated and like, I remember going to grad school and learning this is that like the United States is hegemonic and we can like study hierarchy and there have been political scientists who have studied like global hierarchies. But it's a liberal hegemon and it can't be considered an empire because it does provide these, these voice opportunities for our subordinates essentially to come and shape policy. And so it's an interesting, not a flip on its head, but it's like a kind of a nuancing of that argument here is like, yeah, they are here and they are shaping policy and shaping kind of US empire which I think, you know, poses some questions about like the agency of these actors, of course, but also like what is the broader project of US empire? Like, yeah, we don't need to think of it all the time as like kind of top down in a way.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Exactly. There's lots of actors implicated or coherent or right.

[Molly Conger]

Or right.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Or you know, even the Iran war is a clear example. Right. There's been winners and losers, as people in D.C. like to say of this war. Oil companies are reaping the greatest profits of like the last decade because of this war, because of the shortages coming through the strait of hormones. Weapons manufacturers are doing really well right now. Private equity and AI are doing well. But the damages that we are now seeing coming out of the production side across the Gulf, including inside Iran, is going to have very long term detrimental effects for all of these same industries, paradoxically. But in the short term they're winning. Meanwhile everybody else is losing. Food prices are going to up, gas prices are going up. I have a friend who works in research with helium. There's no helium in the world right now. So if you want to go get an mri, good luck. Because there's not much helium. Most of it comes out of this one facility in Qatar.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

And I was just reading an article about how Qatar has lost so many billions of dollars as a result of this war, as a result of the attacks on some of its facilities. And it's like Doha is a ghost town. And I used to live in Doha and for anybody who has, you know, been there or whatever, I mean Doha, like, like at its best is a ghost town. Like often it is a ghost town if it's not like a busy season. So like what even does it mean that these places, I can't even fathom what's going to happen long term given the impact of this war.

[Dana Al Kurd]

And that was with just 60 days of war, right?

[Molly Conger]

Yeah.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

So we don't know.

[Dana Al Kurd]

It's like in such a short amount of time. The amount of damage it caused is unbelievable.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, like you said, it's good to start to disentangle who's. Who is benefiting in service of which actors here are we attacking Iran. Yeah. And this is, like, the most corrupt administration imaginable. It really is, like, kind of breathtaking, the. The level of corruption. So, yeah, hopefully, you know, historians and political scientists and political anthropologists will have years and years of research to study this moment. All right, well, is there anything else you think people should keep an eye on when it comes to the situation in Iran moving forward?

[Dana Al Kurd]

I think we need to be much more critical about who is shaping the narrative on Iran moving forward. A lot of the figures who are now disavowing the war in these think tanks and saying war was such a bad idea, Trump fumbled it, and this was a terrible idea, had essentially been, I say, hedging for this war for a long time. Time, which is that by constructing Iran as this unknowable enemy, you can't negotiate with an enemy that you can never predict. You can never negotiate with an enemy that lies about everything. These are the narratives that these Iran experts have been advancing for years, and now we're expected to go and turn back to that same group to get us out of this mess. And that's what I would urge all of the listeners is be much more critical about who is analyzing Iran in such a moment. Look at who they work for. Look at what types of analysis they've done in the past. How do they access Iran? How do they know what they know about Iran? It sometimes takes five extra minutes when you're reading a New York Times piece to just go through and highlight who they're quoting as experts, for example. And New York Times has all kinds of problems, but pick whatever. Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and just do five minutes of due diligence on who that piece is citing as an expert on Iran. And that's my key takeaway for people.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Yeah, that's such a good takeaway. I mean, I think there's so many aspects of our politics in which people are trying to convince us. The same people who got us into these messes are. Are like, all we have, like, Democratic Party operatives that, like, led us to Trump.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Exactly.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Are the ones, like, now pretending they really dislike the genocide in Gaza and whatever. And it's the same thing. These Iranian experts, they're not even Iranian. Sometimes it's just Iran experts claiming expertise. And it's like the way that you have shaped this discussion is why we're at this point. So. Yeah, that's a very good takeaway. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much, Negar. This has been really enriching.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Thank you so much, Dana.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

I will put all of the things we talked about in the show notes. Does your book have a publication date yet?

[Dana Al Kurd]

No, but I signed the contract, so.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, good, good.

[Sophie Lichterman]

So people be on the lookout.

[Dana Al Kurd]

But it'll be with Stanford University Press, so, yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Excellent, excellent.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

So I will make sure to note

[James Stout]

that and flag that.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

[Mia Wong]

Of course.

[Rach]

Hey, it's Rach. And if you're like me, you want treats that are simple and taste amazing. And that's why I love Johnny Porn Pops. They're deliciously made with simple ingredients and no artificial dyes. Whether it's a quick snack for the kids or a sweet moment for yourself, Johnny Pops are the perfect treat. And there's a kind deed on every stick to encourage everyone to share a little kindness. So next time you're in the freezer aisle, grab a box of Johnny Pops and feel great about what you're sharing. Johnny Pops. A better Pop for a better world.

[Ad Voice]

This year, it's Pop's turn for a laugh. So celebrate Father's Day with a gift that really pops. A customized Funko Pop of him. First, think of all the things that make your dad the man. Then turn those ideas into a personalized Funko Pop. Select hair, clothing, and skin tone options to match his fit. Don't forget to show off his favorite hobbies and sports with amazing accessories. You can even add his best friend. Start creating [e-mail].

[Garrison Davis]

be unique, not anyone else. Express it now. Just pop yourself.

[Podcast Announcer]

That's Funko.com youm've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing. Because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella Eduardo to learn more.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save Money. Without missing out on the features you need, check out odoo@o d o o dot com. That's o d o o dot com.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome back to Executive Dysfunction. Could happen here. Nope. No. Is that all right, Garrison?

[Garrison Davis]

I thought we were.

[Robert Evans]

That was pretty close.

[James Stout]

There's another, like, show or column called Executive Dysfunction now.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, is that there? Yep. Sons of they Stole It From Us.

[James Stout]

That covers, like, legal issues relating to the Trump administration. So.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, well, that brings us neatly into our first story.

[James Stout]

This is it. Could Happen Here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening, the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, joined by James Stout, Robert Evans, Mia Wong, and Sophie Lichterman. We're covering the week of May 27 to June 3.

[Garrison Davis]

Let's talk about intellectual property lawsuits.

[James Stout]

Let's.

[Garrison Davis]

Right, right off the bat, anyone who is in any capacity using Ed, you're on notice. It's going to be us against the Viagra people. I'm talking today about Patagonia, the brand suing Patagonia, the drag queen. God damn it.

[Sophie Lichterman]

This is.

[Garrison Davis]

God damn it. Yeah. I've successfully walked you into my little world. This is a situation very reminiscent of. People remember, the north faces lawsuit against the South. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

I would argue it's actually kind of different, but. Okay, I get what you're saying.

[Garrison Davis]

The butt lawsuit was funny. If people aren't familiar, it's really funny. They were bound to arbitration. They arbitrated, they settled, and then the guy turned around and launched the butt face, like, a few weeks later, and they sued him again.

[Robert Evans]

That was a beautiful case of somebody trying to troll a company and also, like, trolling the concept of, like, intellectual property laws in, like, a really creative way, which is different from what's happening.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Yes. What is happening here is that Win Wiley, whose drag Persona is Patty Gonier. Right. Does a lot of fundraising for outdoors causes, environmental causes, public lands, that kind of thing, has attempted to trademark their use of Patagonia for clothing. Patagonia is suing Wiley to protect its trademark on its logo. Because some of the logos that Patagonia has used are very obviously like, they're mirrored Patagonia logos. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

She's trying to get a trademark for her Patagonia logo, which is just Patagonia instead of Patagonia in the company logo for Patagonia.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I'm not sure. She tried to try to trademark, like, the. It's the Sarah Fitzroy. Right. Like, it's a mountainscape or she just tried to trademark Patagonia.

[Robert Evans]

It looked like it. Well, I'll double check that right now.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Because I think what she has offered as a settlement right now is to stop using the logo but continue using the name.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. The seconds were they're Patty Gonia should be entitled to trademark registration and at least they have a picture in the trademark application of her Patagonia logo.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And they've claimed it's confusingly similar.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And you made, you made a good point when we were talking about this earlier, James, that I hadn't thought of because you are better mind than I am in this way, which is that it is because my initial thinking on this was like, when I saw that she was trying to trademark just like her version of the Patagonia logo, I was like, well, you just took their

[Garrison Davis]

logo and put your name on.

[Robert Evans]

Like, that is fucked.

[Garrison Davis]

Up, up.

[Robert Evans]

But you pointed out well Patagonia's logo includes this, like actual mountain range that she includes. And Patagonia doesn't really have the right to trademark the silhouette of a mountain range. It is a little more nuanced than I thought initially.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. There are a couple of things at stake here that people perhaps don't understand.

[Robert Evans]

One, like, I'm at a moral level, not a legal one, folks, but, yeah,

[Garrison Davis]

morally, I think we should be asking the question, is it okay for a company that grosses 1.4 billion a year to own the rights to a skyline? Yeah, like, I think we should be asking that. I think also, like, people maybe should look a little bit deeper into. I've written about this a bunch in a bunch of outlets, but, like, Patagonia has millions of dollars of military contracts that they don't like to talk about and they did through a different company called Lost Arrow. And like, people just need to stop seeing a giant company like this as woke. That's like, the companies ain't going to save us. The sustainable shorts aren't going to save us. Like, buying a fancy fleece is not the way that you're going to make the better world that you want to live in. That's my take.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I feel like Patty was kind of

[Garrison Davis]

poking the bear here 100%.

[Robert Evans]

Like, in a massive way.

[Mia Wong]

Really?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, clearly she knew what she was going for here. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Patagonia clearly doesn't want to be fighting this lawsuit.

[James Stout]

Where are you seeing this stuff? Is this like a blue sky news story? Like, where are you seeing this?

[Robert Evans]

No, this is like a big. This is. I came into it, like, I saw at first on Reddit, but it's also just been pushed into minute newsfeed. Like, I've never heard four or five different articles. It's a big story right now, unfortunately.

[Garrison Davis]

I followed her just like, generally. Been aware of her for probably six or seven years.

[James Stout]

Six, seven.

[Robert Evans]

The New York Times has a feature that's just on this right now. It's a sizable tale.

[James Stout]

Interesting.

[Garrison Davis]

I did note that most of her merch is sold out. So the structure effect, it's in full force here. Yeah, yeah. If you wanted to find a way to sell as many Patagonia stickers that look like the Patagonia logo as possible, you would sue her.

[Robert Evans]

This is the way to do it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. They're suing her for $1 plus legal fees. People don't seem to have grasped that. That doesn't mean that all that is at stake is a bug here. The fees will be very substantial.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Although the fees will be substantial. That said, this is clearly a fight Patty wanted to have. So, like, I am not in a situation where I feel particularly angry or disturbed about this lawsuit. Like, this is. Is something that any company would have done some version of this in response.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It's not good that Patagonia's doing this. It's just what any corporation would do that has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. And that shouldn't change your opinion of Patagonia from what it was previously. But your opinion of Patagonia should never have been that it's like an altruistic entity. Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, yeah. 2% of its shares are held by its Purpose Trust, which are all the voting shares, and 98% of its shares are held by the Holdfast Collective, which is a 501. So, like, I think people see that as, like, you know, they'd like to say that Earth is our only shareholder, but like the. The Purpose Trust is, as you say, Robert, duty bound to make a profit to give to the C4. This is not the same thing as, like, activism. It's different. It's a company. It's a company that has to make profit, like you said, Robert. And I think people need to grasp that. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

And if they. I mean, literally, if they were not. If they were to not fight what she's doing here, like, this could cause serious issues for them.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I think someone tried to put their logo on a gun or. I've heard. I couldn't find reporting on this, but a couple of people have mentioned it to me and obviously they'd sued about that and they Go, you know, so if they didn't. If they hadn't done this one, they couldn't do that. Right.

[Robert Evans]

And it's. Again, this should not. I'm not. You shouldn't be like, well, Patagonia's in the right. And. But also, you shouldn't be like, wow, I've completely changed my opinion about this company, you know.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. It's just that they're doing what they do.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I think the underlying structural thing here and something we've talked about on this show at some length is just the underlying violence of the intellectual property system. Like, irrespective of this case, this is a kind of silly case of it, but, you know, like, there are a lot of people in the world who are dead right now because a bunch of corporations get to hold like patents on vaccines, for example.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Or insulin.

[Mia Wong]

This has always been an extremely violent regime that is enforced by quite one of the most powerful international bodies that has ever existed. And yeah, if you want to hear more about this, friend of the show, Vicky Osterweil released a book called the Extended Universe about how Disney pioneered a whole bunch of this that, yeah, you should read about because the entire system is just pure violence and always has been.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. We have some episodes from years ago that I made about drug IP and evergreening as well. That's a very good point, Mir. Moving on. We learned this week that the F15E pilot who was shot down over Iran in April had been shot down the week before over Kuwait.

[Sophie Lichterman]

What

[Garrison Davis]

horrible, horrible week.

[Robert Evans]

I think you've had a bad week at work.

[Mia Wong]

This person is joining just the list of all timers. Like that guy who got nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's that guy who got sunk on four consecutive ships.

[James Stout]

Is there such thing as a reverse ace?

[Robert Evans]

Like if this guy gets shot down

[Garrison Davis]

three more times, is he like an anti ace? If he gets shot down three more times, he ain't going to be able to reach the controls of the plane. Like he's already compressed his spine so much.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I'm surprised.

[Robert Evans]

I didn't think they would let them. I didn't think, period, after getting shot down and ejected, you would be allowed to fly a plane at all like that quickly.

[Garrison Davis]

No, I was not aware that there was a prototype.

[Robert Evans]

My understanding is you're not normally supposed to. I don't think this is how normally things would be done. Which kind of suggests that they didn't have enough pilots.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, right. It's kind of remarkable that they were able to get him another F15 that quickly, I guess. But, yeah, he probably not flying any more planes for a while.

[Robert Evans]

I would imagine not.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean, who knows? Maybe. Maybe the F15s are free. I found.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it sounds like he's just feeding F15.

[Garrison Davis]

He must. Yeah. The desert gods demand an F15 sacrifice every six days. Marco Rubio in the house has claimed that Africanas. We spoke about this first week, Right. The raising the cap to admit Africanas as refugees. Africana should be admitted and others not because they, quote, have a high likelihood of assimilation. We have gauged that there is real interest from a unique subset who would be interested to coming in the United States and who we assess have a high likelihood of rapid assimilation and success in our society. And hence this program was created. Now, that's not a program that's going to exist in perpetuity. It's a program that's designed to the fact that we are seeing the demand. We are seeing applications from South Africa of people willing to enter the United States. And we think this is a group of people, potential refugees.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

Our Afghan allies are refugees. They have been vetted. 1100 versus this new 17,000.

[Garrison Davis]

But it's more than just vetting. We're also trying to determine against the immigration policy of the United States. Like everything we do has to be geared by the national interest, and it is in our national interest. If we are allowing people to enter our country, be people that can quickly assimilate into society and be successful, why

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

can't they assimilate into society?

[Garrison Davis]

A background check.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

They've been to their centers in my district in Queens. They have assimilated and contribute and pay taxes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, but we've already assumed a lot of Afghan refugees, as you said. You have them in your district. We've already assumed a large number in the past. The point is that the general policy has been to limit the entry of refugees from all over the world and then to create the special track because of a unique circumstance in the short term of a high demand from a number of immigrants that we have determined if they pass the vetting and the checking very quickly assimilate and contribute to our society. I think it's really interesting. It's one of the more clear elucidations of the way they see immigration that we've had. Yeah, like he said, it's not about vetting. It's not about background checks. It's specifically about people who can, quote, unquote, assimilate.

[James Stout]

I wonder what the economic strata of the Afrikaners getting, Getting, getting refugee status

[Mia Wong]

are I mean, it's. In terms of the way that Rubio is looking at it, their economic strata is white, which.

[James Stout]

Yeah, well, I wonder what, I wonder what their actual economic strata is. That is an interesting aspect.

[Mia Wong]

Like South Africa is a place where that maps on very, very cleanly.

[James Stout]

Yes, right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, that's, that's what I'm saying.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, it's like, that's what I'm saying.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like, definitely a lot.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And I think just having the means to apply for this.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, that's, yeah, clearly like Rubio saying, like he's doing this because there is a demand, Let me tell you, there is a demand all over the world. Like, I, I have seen demand to live in the United States in every continent on the planet, apart from the ones that are covered in ice. This is as clear as you're going to get to them saying, these folks are white, they're coming to America and we're going to lock out the folks who are not. Like. I thought it was very interesting to see him go right up to that line. Next, I have Medicaid work requirements. Work study of volunteering requirements of 80 hours a month will be imposed by the 1st of January for the 40 states who expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. This is according to a notice published today in the Federal Register, today being Wednesday. This will impact millions of Americans and the speed at which this is being done will also be very hard for state bureaucracies to keep up with. Right. We have have less than six months for a massive change and that like the requirement for states to monitor this, it's going to be very difficult for them to retain the stability and pivot to this. And that's going to impact people whether or not they are working. Yeah, which sucks.

[Mia Wong]

This is something that like particularly impacts trans people because there are a ton of trans people on Medicaid and yeah, a lot of those people are also disabled and that's just been an absolute nightmare for them. If you are in a position where you can hire someone for, I think the work. What's the word is like 30 hours a week, I think is the requirement

[Garrison Davis]

80 hours a month?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, 80 hours a month.

[Garrison Davis]

20ish a week.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Like if you're in a position to just hire someone for that, you should do it. Because that's the difference between these people, people having food and not having food.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. This is a potential. This will kill people. Just the fuck ups in the bureaucracy. Even if people are able to find the work or volunteer or study or Whatever. But the delays that that will cause will kill people.

[Mia Wong]

This is also a thing, by the way, that some unions have historically done like WW has done this, which is getting people positions to be able to do volunteering. And if that's a thing you can do, you should do this because this is a, a unfathomable humanitarian crisis for a bunch of the most vulnerable people in the US and yeah, it's real bad.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's not good at all. I think that is a good point, Mia, that if you're in a place to help people coordinate their volunteering and document that that's a good thing to start thinking about. Garrison, you got any small things?

[James Stout]

Few more small things. Trump signed an executive order to expand and AI cybersecurity capabilities and protections. And last Friday, Tulsi Gabbard resigned as Director of National Intelligence, citing her husband's recent cancer diagnosis. Trump has selected Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte is a Trump loyalist with no intelligence background. And even Republican senators don't seem too keen on this choice. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, quote, well, we don't need a weaponized dni. We need professionals there. If he's somebody, they wanted that position permanently. He's got, as you know, a lengthy road ahead of him.

[Garrison Davis]

Let's catch up with the war in Iran. Iran this week hit a commercial vessel with an anti ship cruise missile in the Persian Gulf as well as firing at US Facilities and hitting the international airport in Cuba. Wait, they've killed at least one person there. This comes as talks are continuing to fail to reach a resolution, at least in part because Israel refuses to stop attacking Lebanon and committing war crimes. Axios is reporting that Trump said in a call to Netanyahu, quote, you're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. Sure. In recent days, the IDF has explicitly threatened Beirut and further expanded its ground campaign again. Right. Like this war is now becoming very much a regional thing. Has been a regional thing since it started. But like the peace deal is also a regional thing. And the fact that Israel refuses to do anything other than exactly what it wants, which seems to be killing more and more people in its neighboring countries, means that it's going to be very hard for this war to come to an end, which is going to have long term economic consequences for the whole world. NBC has also reported talking of the whole world that it was a Chinese MANPAD that shot down the F15E. That's for the second time in April that such equipment, along with long range radar, was possibly supplied to Iran in the early days of the conflict by China. Obviously this, this makes any kind of detente with the US and China more difficult. Right? It's not clear if the particular actual manpads man portable air defense system. People aren't familiar if the particular service to MSR used had arrived recently or have been in stockpiles for some time. But it appears that China, at least right before or early on in the conflict, was perhaps supplying some air defenses to Iran. Maybe this can explain just a little bit about how the bombing campaign has been relatively unsuccessful in its objectives in many ways.

[James Stout]

Let's go on a break and then we could talk about the California elections and the Supreme Court. Okay. Elections in California. Why is California like that? What is going on over there?

[Sophie Lichterman]

It's because I left. It's my fault.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we're all grieving, Sophie.

[Robert Evans]

That was the last thing holding it together there.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[James Stout]

Let's start with the LA mayoral race.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I want to talk about it. It's my duty to talk about this. I would like to talk a bit about Spencer Pratt, who may.

[James Stout]

May be advancing.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Who may be advancing. That's what I'm saying. At time of recording, which is Wednesday, June 3, at around 3:30pm Pacific Time, Pratt is currently in second place with 30% of the votes. Bass is at 35% and has already been guaranteed to move forward. And Nithya Raman is in third with 22%. And like I said, there's 60% of the votes counted. So why the is Spencer Pratt a former reality TV cast member? I'm not even going to give him star running for mayor. Pratt grew up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and lived there until the fires happened. And he and his parents houses were unfortunately burned down and he started making videos on TikTok, was getting a lot of attention for it and decided that it was his destiny to it was his, according to his website, his mission to run for mayor, per his own campaign website. Pratt is a media entrepreneur, questionable outspoken advocate, depends on who you're talking about. And an emerging political leader. He does have a political science degree from usc, I will say that. But he, he does claim to be Karen Bass's worst nightmare. Now, if you're not a millennial who had television in the late 2000s, you're probably unaware of how unhinged Spencer Pratt is. Here are some highlights.

[Robert Evans]

Listeners, we apologize for what Sophie's about

[Garrison Davis]

to make you experience.

[James Stout]

This is a lot of audio, Sophie.

[Sophie Lichterman]

We need all of it.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, God.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no.

[Garrison Davis]

Just do it, Garrison.

[Mia Wong]

Just getting a copyright.

[Luna]

Strict.

[Sophie Lichterman]

We'll just do it.

[James Stout]

Just do it for me. That was the best. Like, I was proud of myself for not doing what I wanted to do to you. Because what I wanted to do and

[Garrison Davis]

say to you, dear.

[Mia Wong]

Whoo.

[James Stout]

I didn't. Because I was praying. Praying like I do every day to not say the things that I want to say to you, to your mom. No, I know I do.

[Luna]

I'm not.

[James Stout]

That's why.

[Garrison Davis]

Do you see how I'm not saying them? Yeah.

[James Stout]

I'm very proud of myself.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like your head's about to explode.

[James Stout]

So I am sorry if I disrespected

[Garrison Davis]

you, but I'm very emotional these days. Very, very.

[James Stout]

So I say things that I feel.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

I was the one that wanted to

[Garrison Davis]

kill anybody that would ever talk like that about my sister. And I still would.

[Dr. Nagar Razavi]

But that goes for my mom too. And as a family, that's how we all should be.

[James Stout]

Well, I didn't say anything negative about your mom. Your mom is just the vagina that made Heidi come on to earth. Your mom is not Jesus or God or the creator.

[Garrison Davis]

So why can't I say that? So why can't I say that? Why can't I say that?

[James Stout]

No, it's not. It's my opinion.

[Garrison Davis]

It's my opinion. Come take your.

[James Stout]

Hey, preacher. Preacher. This isn't Bible study.

[Garrison Davis]

This is Earth. No one's preaching. No one's preaching.

[James Stout]

No one's preaching here.

[Garrison Davis]

This is life. Take a breath.

[James Stout]

You're not her sister. You're not her friend.

[Molly Conger]

You're a liar.

[Mia Wong]

And I'm going to walk away from

[James Stout]

these lies cuz she's going to sit

[Garrison Davis]

here and keep lying to you.

[James Stout]

You're the biggest poser in this town. You know what? You're going to burn for me.

[Molly Conger]

Stop it.

[Mia Wong]

You're going to burn.

[Garrison Davis]

I know. That's so Adolf.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No, I know.

[James Stout]

She's a. Go back to your real estate job, you liar.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, that was Spencer talking to his sister in law about his mother in law.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, wow.

[James Stout]

But all this is fake. This is all acting like this.

[Dana Al Kurd]

This is.

[James Stout]

I don't.

[Molly Conger]

This.

[James Stout]

This doesn't move me at all.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Half of this is acting. Half of this is not acting.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Yes, that is. That is here.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Here he is talking to his own sister.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, okay. Oh, no, we've already catalogued this shit.

[James Stout]

I'm gonna leave. But I didn't get to say hi.

[Sophie Lichterman]

How are you guys?

[Garrison Davis]

Good, how are you? Excellent.

[James Stout]

How are you?

[Garrison Davis]

What are you crying about, 70? What the are you crying about?

[James Stout]

That's why you're not in my life, you crazy bitch. Because you come to barbecues and just start crying. I was just enjoying myself and my wife and I get crying sister in front of me.

[Garrison Davis]

She just wanted to say hi, but

[James Stout]

that gets us crying away.

[Garrison Davis]

What the do I need to do to you,

[James Stout]

Drama?

[Garrison Davis]

He just ignored me at the party much. What just happened? We're over here having a little conversation and then all of a sudden they got people storming out of here and

[Dana Al Kurd]

I can't even talk right now.

[Garrison Davis]

I know it's your better, but. But he's off his rocker. I don't know what's wrong with him here.

[James Stout]

I'm talking about my little sister who's not relevant to my life. Oh, God. Oh, no.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay. I like to fade out.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And just to say. Just to say she has told people not to vote for her brother in modern times.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Just to say.

[Robert Evans]

That's shocking. Shocking stuff.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

He seems like he's a even tempered guy.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah. One. One last clip. Just because I'll. I never want to talk about him again. So I'm going to get all of that.

[Garrison Davis]

So deep on this.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I am the managing exact executive producer of this podcast. Let me have this. Thank you.

[James Stout]

Girl in this club.

[Garrison Davis]

Dude, relax, bro.

[Sophie Lichterman]

What the hell is wrong with you?

[James Stout]

I hate that.

[Garrison Davis]

Excuse my French. Hey, you're crazy. You're being a weirdo, bro.

[James Stout]

You just yelled at me.

[Garrison Davis]

Very gnarly. That's the loudest somebody's yelled in my face in three years. I'm over it. I don't want to hear anything you have to tell me. Get up in my face, son. Walked away from me before.

[James Stout]

We have a problem.

[Garrison Davis]

Walk the away. God, people don't know how dangerous I am. Like, I just really had to like

[James Stout]

hold myself smashing his head off, you know?

[Garrison Davis]

Like, this is like.

[James Stout]

All right, so this is so. So this is like if like clavicular run, like ran for office in like 10 years, right?

[Garrison Davis]

20 maybe, but yeah, 20 years.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And you know, it's a reality TV show. You're. There's parts of it that are scripted. There's parts of it that are enhanced. There's parts of it, but you can't. You can't fake that fucking vein popping out of his head.

[Robert Evans]

A lot of it's Scripted. But you don't get cast so to speak to be that kind of character if you're not already a giant asshole.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[James Stout]

I mean yeah, it's in some ways less explicitly scripted than like wwe, but you fall into certain roles because that's what you are getting paid to like that is your job is contingent on performing this kind of real, not real thing. And I honestly, you know like the, the sort of like, like IRL streamer thing is. Is a very similar version of that for the contemporary age and I think so it really. There was. There was one specific like like line there that really reminded me of like one of one of clavicular's like on camera meltdowns and like. Oh, this is really just if. If what if you had a guy like that just run for office for like the mayor of whatever city in like 20 years. Yeah, yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Well, I want to talk a little bit about his shared this, this video on X, the Everything app and it got millions and millions of views with people saying it's the best campaign video of all time. And so we're going to play it for you now.

[Garrison Davis]

This more of him than I've ever seen.

[James Stout]

This is the Batman one.

[Garrison Davis]

I haven't seen this.

[James Stout]

To be clear, he did not make this video.

[Sophie Lichterman]

He did not make this. He shared it and he, he's big on the AI sharing video trend.

[Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Sophie Lichterman]

His website is filled with it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, there have been a lot of AI videos in the LA race this time.

[James Stout]

There's been a lot of these LA election like Batman videos.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, yes.

[James Stout]

Let's. I guess let's watch this one.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Sure. Until, until we get bored with it. Yeah,

[Garrison Davis]

Wait, hang on. Let just, just break that down.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I think this makes sense to watch a little bit then pause and talk.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

We have to explain first. We start with the entire Hollywood sign of flame.

[James Stout]

And the next thing you see is these, these goons dressed in all black tactical gear with white that says dsa, which is one of the best things I've ever seen that my favorite part about this video.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

The paramilitary DSA forces in Los Angeles.

[James Stout]

And then it goes into the sort of Dark Knight Rises like courtroom. Karen Bass in the middle, except Karen Bass, Joker makeup.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And Kamala Harris is I think drinking alcohol on one side. And that's new.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh yeah. She's like straight from the bottle too. Is that I'll say too.

[Robert Evans]

I think there's a little bit of District, Hunger Games. Hunger Games. The Hunger Games capital in that design too.

[Garrison Davis]

Anyway.

[James Stout]

Yeah. And. And Gavin Newsom's in, like, you know, like.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Aristocratic garb.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

That's Gavin. Okay. Please, I'm begging you.

[Sophie Lichterman]

There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools.

[Molly Conger]

My children aren't safe.

[Garrison Davis]

Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy.

[James Stout]

All right?

[Garrison Davis]

Wow. Wow.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I know.

[Garrison Davis]

Holy shit. Holy sh. I'm fascinated by what we've got here.

[Robert Evans]

Amazing.

[James Stout]

James, have you not seen this before?

[Garrison Davis]

Absolutely not.

[Mia Wong]

No, I haven't seen this either.

[James Stout]

I shared this video in our work chat. Like. Like a month and a half.

[Garrison Davis]

Like.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, wait, no shit. I have seen it. Oh, God.

[Robert Evans]

I. I didn't watch it.

[Garrison Davis]

I gotta control my exposure to this shit. It's made me very angry. So we now have a marionette of, like, a Latina Nithya Ramen. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

God. Yeah, that makes sense. But no, there's.

[James Stout]

There's, like, DSA people. DSA thugs and tactical gear, like, push.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. They throw the woman on the ground who's complaining about. Yeah. That the homeless drug addicts.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I think we're good.

[James Stout]

It's all that kind of stuff. Like, it's.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, whatever. There's like a fake Batman scene. They asked for Spencer. Spencer in a fake Batman costume. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

[James Stout]

I mean, yeah, Spencer Pratt is Batman. That's what. That's Spencer Pratt's Batman.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yes. You know, that's the kind of stuff that he's sharing. And, you know, one of the biggest things he's run on is that his house was burned down and he was. Didn't have a place to live, and he claimed that he was living in a trailer on the property where his house used to be. And then it turned out out that he was actually not staying in that trailer, but he was staying at the Hotel Bel Air, which is one of the nicest hotels in Los Angeles.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Oh, yeah, I bet.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And. And in response to. To that, he made this video.

[James Stout]

Now, this is a story all about

[Garrison Davis]

how my life got flipped, turned upside down.

[James Stout]

The prince of a town called Bel Air.

[Garrison Davis]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, God. Oh, I don't want to.

[James Stout]

I don't want to.

[Robert Evans]

Get me. Get. No, no, no, no, no.

[Garrison Davis]

Millions of views.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Millions of views. And.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And this, like, weird, rogue, no, no qualification, political candidate thing is working people

[James Stout]

are like, we need a change.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And I'm per the BBC in terms of fundraising. During the race, Pratt has blown away the other 2. He raised $2.7 million between April 19 and May 16. That's nearly 10 times what Bass, a longtime politician raised in the Same period and approximately seven times what Nithya Rahman raised.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, no one likes Bast, Right. It's the other thing. Right. The Democrats have like doubled down on doing exactly the same shit they've been doing for decades across California.

[James Stout]

Yeah, it's this like feckless moderate liberalism.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like carceral libs would be how I described, describe the Democrats.

[Molly Conger]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And just to say like Nithya Ram did enter the, the race late and she is far, far left from Karen Bass. So we're seeing that. But the thing that's really interesting to me about this is there's 9.69 million people in LA County. And you know, I, I'm comparing it to what I think will probably be about what it'll be for 2026. But in 2022, you know, Karen Bass got 278, 000 votes, Rick Carruss so only got 232,000 votes and Kevin de Leon only got 50,000 votes out of 9.69 million people. That's the amount of people that actually voted in the primary in 2022. And it's. And it's looking to be very similar for 2026.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Maybe even a little bit lower. I mean, I agree.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I think it might be a little bit lower.

[James Stout]

That only has 150,000 votes. But he's, he's in second place.

[Sophie Lichterman]

But he's in second place. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Again, this is interesting because you're seeing higher than analog places, higher than average turnout. And I think part of why is just because most people voting know that like with both the California mayor and gubernatorial elections, the likeliest outcome is like someone who isn't the worst possible choice but isn't going to like make things better. Like LA is not going to have a good mayor. Most people are fairly confident of that. And so there's just not a lot of. There's not. I don't think people are very motivated because they feel like what the fuck is the point of caring about this? You know, And I don't. I'm not saying that's the right way

[Garrison Davis]

to look at it.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just saying that that's what I think is part of what's going on here.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, like, I know, like just from the discourse around San Diego, like people they're tired of being shamed into vote for like some mediocre ass candidate who will just give all their money to the cops like the last five mayors have done.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, we're going to keep seeing these kind of candidates. It's going to become a regular thing. We even have know Jersey Shore star Mike the Situation. Sorrentino saying he's thinking about running for New Jersey governor. I hate this trend. This trend sucks. And in the the words of Lauren Conrad, he's a sucky person. He's a sucky person. I hate Spencer. I've never gonna like Spencer. Please don't make him your mayor Los Angeles. Do better. He's awful. He's horrific. He hates unhoused people. Terrible person. No. Bad shame. I'm done. I hope to never have to talk about this person ever again.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

So in case people don't know that the two top winners of the LA mayoral primary advance to a runoff. So Bass is going to be there. She is. She is in the lead. And right now it is between Pratt and Ramon. And Pratt's lead in second place has been sliding as more and more votes come in. But as of Wednesday afternoon, he's still in second. Second as for governor.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Steve Hilton, Republican is in the number one spot with 1.3, almost 1.4 million votes as of Wednesday afternoon. Sarah is in number two with 25% of the vote. Tom Steyer is in number three with almost 20% of the vote. And this is about 55% of the vote in. Becerro is a former Biden cabinet member, Health and human services secretary.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

So more of kind of moderate liberal, sty stier. The more progressive candidate. But it seems because he is a billionaire that did in some ways affect like enthusiasm to vote for him on the Democratic side.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

There's another Republican candidate who's in fourth place with over half a million votes.

[Sophie Lichterman]

But again, the amount of votes that are actually happening compared to the amount of people. People is insane. It's so low.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's really bad.

[Garrison Davis]

There's a massive field of candidates, but no one really captured the imagination of people here. No one was enthusiastic for this.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Garrison Davis]

I guess I can cover a couple of small San Diego things quickly. San Diego measure A, measure A was a tax on second homes defined as unoccupied for the majority of the year.

[James Stout]

Eat a tear.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Looks like it's going down the nation.

[James Stout]

Oh, it's not souping. Sorry.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Unfortunately not like it's. I mean there is nothing that unites San Diegans more than hating tourists. But I think you have this interesting alliance of like boomer homeowners thinking this will mess with their property prices and generally not wanting to pay taxes. Yeah. And people who understand that any money we give to our city is just Going to go directly to the cops.

[James Stout]

Where do you get that idea from that, that is a sentiment among the people who voted for this. Like, is this like demonstrated anywhere?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, like if you go, if you look on social media, right, like let's say San Diego nextdoor, Reddit, etc, Right. And then from meetings, like we've had discussions within unions, I'm part of like. So if you look at what our city's doing right now, it's slashing the arts budget, it's slashing the park's budget. Yeah, it's slashing everything apart from the police budget, which is continuing to increase.

[Luna]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Most notably in San Diego, they have started to try and charge for parking at the park and at the beach and on major thoroughfares, which, like charging San Diegans to go to the beach is, is the most radicalizing thing that any politician could ever do. It's incredibly stupid as a revenue generating measure. Like people have, people have vandalized parking machines in very bougie neighborhoods because this is just like so offensive to people. People. And I think there's like a, just a growing disgust with a mayor. And then like the idea that giving them any more money would result in better outcomes for people just isn't gonna fly anymore. If that makes sense. Like they've, they've done all these revenue generating measures.

[James Stout]

It's, it's like a lot loss in faith that any revenue will actually just go towards improving their like, standard of living.

[Garrison Davis]

Our city spent I think 100 million on a building filled with asbestos, which is worth less money than the land would be if the building wasn't on it. And from years and years tried to kind of play political football with the fact that they bought a cancer tower. Like.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

There's a reason that San Diego is sometimes referred to as Enron by the sea. And I think folks are, folks are kind of having enough of it. They're reissuing under the perfect sun. For folks who want to read more about San Diego politics, this sort of

[James Stout]

like alliance between like, small capital, you know, people who don't want to pay for attacks on the second home. That alliance with people who've like lost faith in services. Right. Who are going to oppose funding because they don't think it's actually like worthwhile. That's an interesting coalition of the modern moment.

[Garrison Davis]

Right? Yeah, yeah. And it's definitely like a creation of like specifically in California. Right. This idea that we don't get to choose, basically we're going to get a Democrat and that Democrat will just do whatever they want. It's made that position very appealing to people, I guess. Moving on from California, I do want to mention just briefly that Sam Forstag won the Democrat primary for Montana's House district. District. This is really interesting. He's a progressive union organizer. He used to be a smoke jumper, Forest Service firefighter. He is one of those folks who was like, I guess his entry into national politics came from Doge. Doge was cutting all these guys like GS2 people. Right. People. People at the Forest Service, people at these big public lands management agencies who are making barely making a living.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And who have struggled for a long time in places like Bozeman. Right. Where second homeowners have driven up the prices. Significant. That sort of pathway to progressive politics is one that's very interesting to me and one I want to do a lot more reporting on. But I thought it was a positive sign to see see him winning that primary.

[James Stout]

Speaking of elections, before we go on break, I do want to talk about the Supreme Court following up on a story from last week. Last week our final segment on the show was on the five year battle in Alabama over two different House maps, or technically three. But the Republican ones were very similar. It was about these Republican drawn maps that have only one black majority district and a court ordered map that has two following the Supreme Court's weakening of Section 2 of the Voting Rights act earlier this year. Late last month, a federal district court ruled that the GOP drawn map in Alabama intentionally discriminated based on race and diluted the voting power of black Alabamans. So they placed an injunction on that map and ordered the state to use the court approved map that was already in use in previous elections for the upcoming primaries. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court who on Tuesday night overruled the district court issuing a four page unsigned shadow docket ruling allowing Alabama to use the GOP map that eliminates a black majority or a black opportunity. District Supreme Court said that the state is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim claims. Quote at this preliminary stage, the state has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the district Court's injunction, unquote. So this is the first time the Supreme Court has evaluated another court's interpretation of their Louisiana ruling. And in this case, the Supreme Court is saying the district court got it wrong in the updated rules for section 2 as a part of the Louisiana ruling. In order to succeed in arguing a Section 2 violation, plaintiffs have to submit an alternative map that must, quote, meet all the state's legitimate districting objectives, just as well as the state's own map, including, quote, unquote, the state's specified political goals and any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

So the alternative map that plaintiffs need to submit when challenging a map based on section 2 has to have the same, like partisan goals represented is, is what these updated rules. In the Louisiana ruling stead and Supreme Court said that this was not followed by the district court's ruling. Section two challenges must also, quote, provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation and quote, show that voters engage in racial block voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation, unquote. So basically, the Supreme Court claimed that the district court ordered map fails to do all this by not maintaining the state's, quote, constitutionally permissible community of interest on the Gulf coast by cutting into a section of the Gulf coast in the Black Opportunity district, also failing to avoid contests between incumbents. The Supreme Court said that the district court's ruling, quote, unquote, departed from the updated standards set in the Louisiana ruling, quote. As to intentional vote dilution, the district court did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith because it interpreted the state's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus, unquote. SCOTUS is basically saying that just because it was was definitively demonstrated to Alabama Republicans that their map had a discriminatory effect and then they pass it anyway, that itself does not qualify as intent. So showing, quote unquote intent is effectively impossible, like at this point, because maps can be sliced up like crazy and they can just do that based on party. And this is what the Supreme Court is saying, quote, quote. The district court also failed to follow our instructions that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns, unquote. This was specifically the thing I was most curious about is if if this idea that the district court wrote, if this idea that showing someone that their map is doing discrimination, if you show someone that and then they pass it anyway, does that, does that prove that that person then had intent because they knew it was discriminatory and the Supreme Court is saying, no, that does not, that does not actually show intent. That is the main way that the Supreme Court has, has overruled the district court ruling. If they also argue that the district court meddled in the state election too close to the primary, even though it's actually the Supreme Court ruling that is green lighting this redistricting Midway through the primary process. Process. But that's kind of the added on at the very end of the, of the four page unsigned shadow docket ruling.

[Mia Wong]

The, the macro level implication of this is that the Voting Rights act is unenforceable. Like the, the parts of the Voting Rights act that are supposed to protect from literally this specific thing, this specific thing of intentionally diluting black people's votes so that they can't elect candidates. Was the Jim Crow practice at this part of the.

[Luna]

Yep.

[Mia Wong]

Of the Voting Rights act was specifically designed to do. And you can't do that anymore. It is just the Supreme Court has decided that this part of the Voting Rights act doesn't exist.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And they've decided this because they want to like, they want to do racist gerrymandering so Republicans can win elections. And that's, I don't know, I mean, like arguably the death of multiracial, like any semblance of multiracial democracy in the US which is not great.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

I don't know.

[Mia Wong]

It's, it's really, really bad.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I mean it's, it's, it's what they've been working for for decades.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's what Yarvin's always talking about. Right. It's the repealing the 20th century, you know, like that's, that has been the goal for a very long time. And they see this as one of the most important steps towards doing that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. This is pretty devastating.

[James Stout]

I think there is a way to do, I think some more in depth analysis like on this topic that might have to be in the future.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I mean, I did a full episode on this like a couple weeks ago.

[James Stout]

I mean, specifically the way that the interpretation in the shadow docket ruling, how it clarifies certain things, like, you know, just because statistically different races may vote for different parties, that does not actually prove racially polarized voting pattern. Like there's, there's certain things here that we can do a lot more analysis of. And like in terms of proving intent, a lot of states don't even need to do like mustache twirling. I'm going to look at race maps and draw it based on race maps. They can just draw based on party affiliation. And that is going to get the party the actual effect.

[Luna]

Right.

[James Stout]

Because these maps are passed by the party that's in control of the state legislature and they want to maintain power with their party. So that's going to be the most effective way to do that. And if they just do that, then there's leaves very Little ground for these maps to be challenged on any sorts of racial ground grounds, even if there is racial discrimination as an effect. Right. And this. This was the. The biggest change of the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana. It was Alito.

[Luna]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Who.

[James Stout]

Who technically wrote that one.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

But being like. Like, we are in a different place. We are in a different social. Social place now than when the Voting Rights act was passed. And so therefore, we are going to update these rules accordingly. Even though literally, you know, three years ago, the Supreme Court was ruling in the opposite way in Alabama in a very similar situation, the change in those few years is very stark. And this is all goes downstream from the ruling in 2019 that specifically allows partisan gerrymandering because there's no law in the United States disallowing that. So, like, the Supreme Court is like, we cannot make a new law by saying this isn't allowed because there's just no law in the books. So if the legislation wants to pass laws against that, then they can't.

[Luna]

Can.

[James Stout]

But we cannot disallow partisan gerrymandering in the courts effectively, because there's no law preventing it.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And it's worth keeping in mind that the specific standard in the Voting Rights act literally says effects, which was specifically an effects based test and not an interpretation or not a proving intent test. And the Supreme Court was just like, no, fuck you. So that's sort of just where we are now legally, is the. That they're just making up what they think the test should be and making everyone else follow that.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I mean, three. Three justices did dissent in this recent ruling. Sort of more Kagan and Jackson. They wrote, quote, before the court are two paths down. One lies an orderly election held under a tried and tested congressional map that protects black Alabama's right to vote and with which all voters, election officials and candidates alike are familiar. Clear down. The other lies a chaotic election held under a never before used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against black Alabamans that Alabama adopted in unabashed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this court. And that will require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters in just days at best, a task Alabama previously represented would take months. The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully dissent. We'll go on a break now and conclude with one more. One more section of this.

[Mia Wong]

And we are back. So. All right, we need to talk about a fairly obscure bureaucratic rule change that is being rushed out by The Office of Management and Budget, omb, which is where it's the like management bureaucracy office that's currently headed by like one of the guys who wrote Project 2025. This change that they are proposing right now is effectively the formalization of all of the sort of DOGE cuts and then sort of post DOGE departmental cuts of grants from the US Government. The way this is largely being covered right now, and I understand why we're going to run through that one first, is that this is effectively the death of American science. Because one of, one of the things that, what this does, it's like a 400 page document. One of the early sections of it is that instead of the current system where grants for scientific projects go before a peer review committee of scientists that are usually independent, and then those scientists give their recommendations to the department on whether or not this is a good use of funds and then the department executes those recommendations.

[Garrison Davis]

Right?

[Mia Wong]

So grants, grants are determined by scientific, by a scientific peer review process. This kills that and says that instead of the way that it has worked, which is that agencies adopt the recommendations of it, this has not been how it works formally. Like it hasn't been a legal stipulation that this is how it works, but this is just literally how all science has worked since World War II, basically, with the exception of the McCarthy era, is that these independent committees do the review of the grant and then the federal agencies submit the grants. Instead of that, the heads of federal agencies will appoint one person who will individually look through every single grant and approve or deny them. So this is, this is the formalization of the DOGE process. This is the administration basically centralizing control of the entire scientific grant process. And this actually turns out, out, it turns out is for all grants, which we'll get to in a second. But what this means is that instead of again like scientific peer review being the thing that decides what science gets funding, it's now political appointees and specifically Trump administration political appointees. There are a whole, in this ruling, there are a whole bunch of. Absolutely or not this ruling, the proposed change, there is just a bunch of just absolutely unhinged screeds about, about the U.S. anti AIDS programs turning into woke left mobs in Africa that support like gender politics and stuff. I sound very incoherent explaining that I, I swear to God I am more coherent than actually reading out the quote. It's just, it's completely unhinged, like weird right wing conspiracy stuff for like half of it and half of it is like extremely technical. Budget change stuff.

[James Stout]

I know that in the DOGE stuff, this has been talking about, like, you know, sexual health clinics in, like, a country in Africa that's supported by the US Government, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

They're, they're, they're pulling all these examples and then just like, screaming stuff about how they're like, abortion centers and, you know, like, doing, like, genital mutilation or whatever. There's been some good reporting on this by Elizabeth janexi, who used to do, like, program reviews for, for the NIH before a lot of things, including this administration took over. This is effectively the centralization of all of the grants given out by the US Government, Right? If you remember, if we think back to, like, the early days of doge, right, you'd find these giant lists of grants that they'd gone through and just cut. And they had absolutely no legal authority to do that. They just did it. This is the formalization of that process, right? This is setting up the bureaucratic apparatus to allow gdp just one random griper they've, like, hired and stashed off in a room in, like, the NIH or something to just go through and cut whatever grants they want. They also have the power to terminate grants that have already been given out at will. There's other even weirder things where they're also very paranoid about, like, scientific collaboration with other countries, which is just the basis of how all science is done. There's, like, restricted countries, effectively, where you can't collaborate with scientists from those countries, which even by US Standards is, like, not how things work. That's, like, messed up by the standards of, like, American foreign policy. And then also, if you are doing any collaboration with any scientist from a, from another country and there's money involved in it, that grant has to be individually approved by, like, this person that they've sent set up. So this makes scientific collaboration effectively impossible.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Mia Wong]

Because most of those things aren't going to happen because this is going to, you know, reproduce the sort of DOGE bottlenecks that we saw where suddenly all these grants are disappearing, even ones that would eventually get approved. The people who were supposed to be getting them are completely screwed because their reliance on that grant coming in in order to do their research and the pivot in control of, of how, how these grants are being given out from people who are, at the very least, scientists to, you know, just the people who are currently running the NIH, who are like RFK Jr. Right? It's those kind of people who are going to be running these kinds of grants. And they are going to be able to do damage to this that is, quite frankly, incalculable. This is the destruction of the entire system of American science. Like, almost like it. Vast, vast percentages of all the science in the US Is done off of government grants. Either it's. Either it's done by like the NIH or like by. By government institutions or not entirely all, but a huge portion of science is done at research universities, which is again, how, like, most science happens, is also supported by these grants.

[Dana Al Kurd]

Grants.

[Mia Wong]

And if we're in this situation now where all of these grants are again going through one person who is solely motivated by political factors as to whether or not they're going to approve this, which is what the system are attempting to set up, this is the death of American science. And it's worse than that too, because. And this is the thing where I'm going to do a full episode about this next week because there are a lot more implications. But the section of rule sets being changed here by. By the Office of Management and Budget. This is not the session for the grant allocation for science. Right. This is the section for all grants given out by the US by the US Government. So, for example, Medicaid.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, wow.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. So all of that is now subject to this stuff.

[James Stout]

Right?

[Mia Wong]

Like disaster aid. Yeah, you know, like any money the government is giving out. Right. That is going through the grant system is now going through this process.

[Molly Conger]

This.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, there's, I think, public comment on this ends July 7th. So I guess if you want to scream at them, that's technically possible. It's really not clear if democratic politicians are going to actually try to substantively do something to stop this, which there's no direct legal mechanism for them to stop this. They could do another government shutdown or something.

[Garrison Davis]

Right. But.

[Mia Wong]

But yeah, this is just sort of the state of things, which is that. And a lot of this stuff has already been happening, it's worth saying, right? Like, a lot of these funding for everything from like, vaccine programs to like the very small amount of research that was going into trans healthcare or like queer healthcare in general, like, those grants are just gone. And, you know, we've already seen a whole bunch of chaos from the interruption of the grant system on the sort of university level for scientists. But this is all just going to get significantly worse as this rule change rolls out. Yeah, yeah. So on. On that happy note, last week the

[Garrison Davis]

former chief Patrol agent for the El Centro sector and also commander of Border Patrol's operation at large, Gregory Bevino, took to X The Everything app to announce that he was on his way to Delaney hall wasn't exactly clear why, because Pavino is no longer a serving law enforcement officer. In fact, he was en route to a remigration summit in Portugal. At the conference, Pavino joined politicians from Fox and afde. They spoke sort of behind closed doors. Journalists who wanted to cover the event had to stay in a car park outside where they were harassed by a drone. He's not listed on the website, but as like a sort of mystery speaker. And I'm guessing that that was him.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Remigration, if people aren't familiar, we're going to do a whole episode on this next week. But the. The website for the conference sets it out as a set of fiscal, cultural, economic, social, political and logistical policies whose objective is to prevent population replacement through the reversal of migratory flows. It is very explicitly about undocumented, documented and naturalized people. It's not about following the law. It is explicitly racial. It's about race, ethnicity, religion, and the idea of, like, national purity. Purity and cleansing the nation of people who it considers not to be pure. If you think this is something that has maybe happened before in European history, you would not be alone. Greg Bervino took the chance to compare himself to Rommel in one interview.

[Mia Wong]

Great.

[Garrison Davis]

Also compared himself to T. Lawrence and Patton, which is a fairly remarkable set

[Robert Evans]

of Rommel and Patton. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, right. Without skipping a beat. Maybe he's one of those guys who's like a clean, fair, marked guy. He also sort of. It was interesting, like I said, I'm going to break this down more next week. I think what was more interesting than Greg Pavino talks to Nazis about Nazi shit, which. Come on. What does one expect is the way he talked about stuff in terms of the role he sees Border Patrol having. He referred to them, he said they're often referred to as federal law enforcement, Marine Corps. The Border Patrol can operate anywhere in the United States and associated territories and simultaneously fulfill all enforcement missions. It goes on. He goes on to talk about them. He says that they are the only organization capable of planning and executing this type of operation. He's not wrong. They are the only agency that could do something like a mass deportation campaign like we're seeing, but like this, this Marine Corps of the internal Marine Corps is interesting, right? That is how they have been used, especially by the Trump administration, Right? Think of Portland in 2020, right? Like, yeah, these are the government's goons. Like, when they need a hit squad to fuck people up, this is who they go to yeah, yeah. And that identity is something that Bevino et al have clearly embraced. Right. But Bevino was in BORTAC not. Not extremely recently, but he has points in his career been in bortac. He also kind of tried to set distance between BP and ice, which is interesting.

[Robert Evans]

He.

[Garrison Davis]

He called them. He said the New York fiasco last night in New Jersey illustrates what happens when untrained investigators are sent to handle a situation that it's the responsibility of uniformed specialists. He's there suggesting that the ICE employees lacked the necessary training to do what I guess they would call crowd control.

[Mia Wong]

Which is really funny because that's also the Democrats line

[Garrison Davis]

stuff. It's identical.

[Mia Wong]

It's like, oh, no, these people aren't trained well enough.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, well, his line is therefore, like, turn it over to the people who are well trained enough so we can fucking him up. Which I guess is also kind of what the Democrats are at. It's not a million miles apart. But Vino has also been doing some right wing podcasts. He went on a Border Hawk podcast where he appeared seemingly from his office. Behind him, he had a shadow box. Does anyone want to hazard a guess what was in the shadow box? Military memorabilia of a certain kind. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Is it German Nazi crosses?

[Garrison Davis]

It is contemporary. It pertains to his career. That's good.

[Robert Evans]

Is it his. One of his challenge coins that he got from Chicago or wherever.

[Garrison Davis]

They're probably smart enough not to put their challenge coins on. On public display anywhere. Yeah. No, it's a bunch of left lethal grenades.

[Robert Evans]

Ah, okay.

[Garrison Davis]

Of course, like the thing with which I guess he wishes to be associated.

[Robert Evans]

I have a lot of those at my house too. The used ones.

[Garrison Davis]

It's just like taking pride in being the guy who stamped down harder on the First Amendment than anyone has in recent history Tool. He's also been very critical of current DHS leadership. Right after Pavino and Gnome took to the national media to lie about Alex Pretty. In the hours after Alex Pretty died, they both became too toxic, even for this administration. And he clearly has some hard feelings about this. He mentioned the 20 million figure. My figure is 100 million.

[James Stout]

His is 20 million. Now let's take a look at that number, Dan.

[Garrison Davis]

So we've got, by Tom Holman's estimate, 20 million illegal aliens. If that's the case, then he's already arrested 1/10 of all illegal aliens present in the United States. Do you see that with your eyes on the streets? Do I see that with my eyes on the streets? If it's really going that good a Tenth of all illegal aliens. And they're all legal aliens. They're not immigrants or anything else.

[James Stout]

Illegal aliens. A tenth.

[Garrison Davis]

If there were a tenth already deported, the rest would be buttoned up tighter than you can imagine. Those lines southbound for self deportation would

[James Stout]

be out the door.

[Garrison Davis]

That's not happening.

[James Stout]

This is really interesting.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. We'll go into this in our specific episode. The way he arrives at that number is through the number of traffic delays in Charlotte, North Carolina during the Border patrol operation there. What? This is the evidence he cites? Yeah. Okay. It's fascinating. Like, like he talks about how he thinks a number is higher because of his time at Border Patrol. Right.

[James Stout]

He may think there is like 100 million illegal immigrants.

[Garrison Davis]

He believes this in his. Yeah, like deep down in. Yeah, like, interesting. This is 100% what he believes. And he wants to deport that many people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I don't know if it's that he believes there's that many people who are illegal in the way.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. He doesn't differentiate or he's just considering

[Robert Evans]

everyone who is not, you know, white here.

[James Stout]

Yeah, well, I mean, he, he did differentiate in this video, which is interesting. He. He did.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no, that's not what that meant. But yeah, yeah, he was making the case that anyone border patrol goes after after is an illegal alien, I think.

[James Stout]

I mean, but that's not what he said.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I mean, what he said was the term that you should use for these people is illegal aliens, not migrants or something like, he, he does not like that. A lot people of, of folks think it's wrong to refer to a human being as illegal. That's specifically what he's saying. Like, he's not making a deeper point than that. But I do think his belief is that that hundred million number includes a lot of people who were, for example, naturalized or who were made citizens through like ju. Solely, which we've seen. Like he thinks should go away and so does the administration.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Or indeed like people on visas. Right. Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Well, but I mean more like, like

[Garrison Davis]

if you're, if you want to get

[Mia Wong]

to 100 million, you're. You're deporting people who are just non white.

[Robert Evans]

Like, you can't.

[Mia Wong]

There aren't million, like natural.

[James Stout]

Like, but it's, it sounds like he just believes there is like way more undocumented immigrants in the United States than what there actually is. Like, that is. Yes, he does in this short clip. But that is what he's like referring

[Robert Evans]

to in part because he believes a lot of people who everyone else would consider Legally immigrating have not. Like that is part of why he's saying that. Now, there's also a belief that, like the num. That the government's lying to you about how many of them there are. There's vastly more, but part of it is he does not believe a lot of the ways that people become citizens who are not white are. Are legitimate. Like that is an aspect of what he's saying.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, He. He spoke about this at length in his interview. Right. He was saying how many people he'd seen come. He talks about whole villages in Mexico coming across the border. Like, lots of this is fairly familiar rhetoric. Right. I can. I'm just scrolling down here. If I can find his. His hundred million million claim. 100 million, Pew researchers figure hasn't changed since the 1970s. He said. He says 30 years ago, illegal immigrants were absent from large portions of American territory. I don't know where he's getting that information. He said he began seriously examining these numbers in 2008. He then says that around 2006, he found some information from Bear Stearns. That's a bank. They're like an investment bank, I think he claims that drove his number. He saw an uninterrupted flow of illegal immigrants across the border without any internal application, capable of producing mass expulsions. From 2006 to 2026, our borders were nothing but speed bumps. Illegals and smugglers knew that once they crossed the border, they were virtually safe from any consequences. Of course, that does include Trump's first term. But then he. He goes on to cite these bizarre statistics like. I'll just. I'll give you the Charlotte traffic example.

[Mia Wong]

Example.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the indicators we're looking at is commuting times. For these times to be considered, quote, unquote, good, between 15 and 20% of commuters must be taken off the road. In Charlotte, there are 153,000 commuters per day, approximately as soon as we launched Operation Charlotte's Web. Travel times did not move into the good category, they moved into the excellent category. Estimates indicated that 30% or more of commuters were no longer traveling. This means that at least 30% of them were most likely illegal immigrants. That is a logical. Yeah. Across the Grand Canyon of logic. Jesus Christ.

[Robert Evans]

I'd read that that's how he's calculating. Which, you know, cuts out a lot of obvious reasons people might not drive during this who are legal. Like the fact that ICE has undeniably deported citizens and taken people into custody for long periods of time who were citizens, you know, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

That they've pulled random brown people out

[Mia Wong]

of cars, that they've shot and killed people.

[Garrison Davis]

Like. Yes. Yeah. This happened also in late November of 2025. A time where people travel, a time where people get sick.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Commutes generally go down in late November.

[James Stout]

Commutes just fluctuate. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Like, that's just gibberish.

[Robert Evans]

It's an insane way to draw the conclusion he's drawn.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. It's bonkers.

[Mia Wong]

It's also this thing where it's like, in order to, like, think this is what's going on. Like, one of the premises of this is like, oh, it's like the illegal aliens that are, like, making every single problem bad. Like, you see this with the people who support this online who are like, oh, the housing crisis would end if we just deported everyone. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously. No, but like, they're coming at it from the motivated reasoning of I want to do an ethnic cleansing. And then they're sort of post hoc creating justifications for it.

[Garrison Davis]

This is what fascism does, right? It blames all the. All the problems of the chosen group on the scapegoat group.

[James Stout]

Blames these economic problems.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. Like the scene in Qua Non of fascism, at its very core is this. This idea of a chosen group and a scapegoat group. And the scapegoat group are responsible for the dec. The chosen group. And if they can be removed, the chosen group will return to its former glory. Like that is. Yeah. Fascism in five minutes. And that's what we're seeing. Right. Unsurprisingly, given that he's at a conference with straight up Nazis. But I think this 100 million number is interesting. And what's interesting is him talking in a way that he didn't talk to the press when he was in charge of Border Patrol patrol, but that he probably did believe. But Vino is popular among Border Patrol agents. Right. There are a number of them who feel that he was the leader that they needed. He showed up in the field. Right. He had the support of agents because he was there with them. And like, him believing this tells us a lot about the agency. And I think that's something I want to dive deeper into next week. Okay. And email us with your news tips. Cool Zone tips. And at Proton. Me. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Put a trans girl on your couch.

[Robert Evans]

Well, friends, that's going to be it from all of us at. It could happen here.

[Garrison Davis]

Ed.

[Robert Evans]

This week we'll be back with more episodes on the normal schedule that we put out episodes and you should keep listening to them because we love you and we reported the news.

[Sophie Lichterman]

We reported the news.

[Garrison Davis]

We reported the news.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Sophie Lichterman]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Description. Thanks for listening.

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