Poking Holes in Fascism

Summary

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Next Comes What

Episode: "Poking Holes in Fascism"

Host: Andrea Pitzer
Date: December 4, 2025

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Overview

In this powerful episode, author and journalist Andrea Pitzer delves into what can be learned from the world’s history of strongmen, state violence, and resistance, mapping those lessons onto current U.S. politics under President Trump’s second term. Through case studies, contemporary reporting, and historical analogies, Pitzer argues that small fissures in authoritarian structures—driven by principled actions, public outrage, and legal interventions—can accumulate, leading to meaningful change, even if victory isn’t immediate or obvious. The episode aims to inspire listeners to take action, stressing that every small act is a potential blow against growing authoritarianism.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Latest Atrocity: U.S. Boat Strikes in the Caribbean

• Extrajudicial Killings: Pitzer opens by spotlighting a recent U.S. military operation where survivors of a drug boat were reportedly executed (00:00–01:15).
• Political Fallout: Bipartisan criticism emerges, with Senator Tim Kaine calling the incident “a war crime” (02:00), and even some Republicans not dismissing the allegations.
  • “We're going to try to get to the facts.” — Senate committee member (01:58)
  • “In one instance, there were two survivors... If they were narco traffickers, why would we do that?” — Senator Tim Kaine (02:08)
• Presidential Response: Trump responds evasively, implying the initial strike was justified but denying knowledge or intent behind the follow-up killings (02:43–03:02).

2. Signs of Institutional Resistance

• Congressional Oversight and Pushback:
  • Senate attempts to reassert war powers (03:44–04:25), aiming to prevent war with Venezuela without congressional approval.
  • Growing bipartisan opposition to U.S. military action in Venezuela: “A late November poll showed that 70% of Americans opposed the US taking military action in Venezuela.” — Andrea Pitzer (05:04)
• Manipulating Laws for Authoritarian Ends: Discussion on alleged attempts to use the Alien Enemies Act to justify mass deportations, reverse-engineering causus belli (05:26–05:45).
  • “They then realized the Alien Enemies act required a war, so then they declared a war. Then they needed a reason for the war, so then they reverse engineered some.” — Andrea Pitzer (05:38)
• Republicans Splintering:
  • Mention of key figures (Ted Cruz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene) either undermining Trump, resisting his policies, or retiring amid chaos (05:47–09:52).
  • “At some point we have to stand up... You can't validate slurs like that and rhetoric like that.” — Indiana State Senator Michael Bohasic (09:14)

3. Business and Legal Influences

• Financial Sector’s Caution: JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon refuses to fund a Trump White House project, citing ethical and legal risks (10:47).
  • “We have to be very careful how anything is perceived and also how the next DOJ is going to deal with it.” — Jamie Dimon (10:47)
• Judicial Resistance:
  • A federal judge (James Bosberg) is pressing a contempt probe against the administration for deporting Venezuelan immigrants without due process, despite political pressure and attempted overruling (11:05–13:31).
  • Controversial removals of Trump-affiliated attorneys (Alina Habba, Lindsey Halligan) over legal technicalities, hampering the administration’s efforts (13:31–14:34).

4. The Accumulation of Small Acts

• Cumulative Effect of Many Small Rebellions: Pitzer strongly asserts that these moments—whether legal, bureaucratic, or symbolic—are all “poking holes” in the authoritarian structure (15:14–15:31).
  • “Each shift against the president creates small rifts that have the opportunity to turn into large ones. One of them, or something similar, will eventually trigger an end to his power.” — Andrea Pitzer (15:17)
• Historical Case Studies:
  • Kenya’s Hola Massacre and British Withdrawal (15:31–18:01)
    • Cover-up of a prison massacre leads to British public outrage and eventual Kenyan independence.
    • “But it was the lies told about the deaths of those 11 men at the Holla camp... that turned the tide in England against the bloody suppression of Kenyan independence.” — Andrea Pitzer (17:49)
  • Argentina’s Falklands War and End of the Junta (18:11–18:51)
  • Nixon and Watergate (19:25–20:57)
    • “It took nearly two years of relentless investigation... to force Nixon's resignation in August 1974.” — Andrea Pitzer (20:27)
  • Guantanamo Bay Legal Battles (21:18–22:46)
    • Stepwise, cumulative legal challenges eventually establish limited rights for detainees, illustrating that partial victories matter.

5. The Importance of Persistence and Individual Action

• Persistence Pays Off: Even when victory is not absolute or immediate, blocking parts of an authoritarian agenda saves future victims.
  • “If you can't save everyone, you can often save someone. And if you can't save someone, you can prevent somebody from ending up in that same place.” — Andrea Pitzer (23:08)
• Civil Rights Movement Analogy:
  • Rosa Parks’ Bus Protest and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (23:36–25:07): Incremental steps led by “quiet people” with deep political training ultimately shift society.
    • “Her story tells us that you don't have to always have been a leader to do something important and to make an impact.” — Guest commentator (25:20)
• Call to Action:
  • Pitzer encourages listeners to take whatever actions are within their ability, from supporting candidates to opposing ICE practices to helping neighbors (26:25–28:39).
    • “There is so much money coming down to put your neighbors into camps to abuse protesters and worse. Every part of that that gets blocked is a win.” — Andrea Pitzer (27:11)
  • Community and religious leaders can also take a stand, often sparking important conversations about justice and dignity at the local level (29:59–31:48).
    • “We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.” — Minister (31:10)

6. Concluding Message: Opening Doors for the Future

• No Certainty, but Every Act Matters:
  • “The point is to keep opening doors to better possibilities. Maybe what you do will be some tiny part of something crucial.” — Andrea Pitzer (28:39)
• Do What You Can: There is value in both large and small actions, and together they create opportunities for broader change.
• Final Encouragement:
  • “Go right to the edge of what you can do, see what's possible and keep moving.” — Andrea Pitzer (31:48)

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Memorable Quotes and Moments with Timestamps

• “The order was to kill everyone.” — Andrea Pitzer quoting sources (00:00)
• “This rises to the level of a war crime.” — Senator Tim Kaine (02:00)
• “We don't just want people who mindlessly follow orders. We want people who think.” — Guest/Commentator (03:35)
• “At some point we have to stand up and you can't. You can't validate slurs like that and rhetoric like that.” — Indiana State Senator Michael Bohasic (09:14)
• “You can't save everyone, you can often save someone. And if you can't save someone, you can prevent somebody from ending up in that same place.” — Andrea Pitzer (23:08)
• “Her story tells us you don't have to always have been a leader to do something important and make an impact.” — Guest/Commentator, on Rosa Parks (25:20)
• “If you wait for the odds of certain victory to act, you'll never do anything. It all starts with smaller actions.” — Andrea Pitzer (26:25)
• “There is so much money coming down to put your neighbors into camps... Every part of that that gets blocked is a win.” — Andrea Pitzer (27:11)
• “We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.” — Minister (31:10)
• “Go right to the edge of what you can do, see what's possible and keep moving.” — Andrea Pitzer (31:48)

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Notable Segments with Timestamps

• Boat Killings and Congress’s Reaction: 00:00–04:44
• Polling and Public Sentiment on Venezuela Crisis: 04:44–05:19
• Republican Splintering and Backroom Maneuvers: 05:35–09:52
• Business and Legal Professionals Resist: 10:47–14:34
• Historical Cascades and Pivotal Moments: 15:31–22:28
• Civil Rights Case Study (Rosa Parks, Montgomery): 23:36–25:39
• Tactical Advice and Calls to Action: 26:25–32:12

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Tone and Style

Andrea Pitzer maintains a calm, deeply reflective, and historically literate tone throughout, interweaving clear, forceful moral judgment with measured, practical advice. The conversation is sober but ultimately hopeful, never underestimating the danger but always encouraging individual and collective agency.

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Summary: Takeaway

“Poking Holes in Fascism” frames authoritarian power as something that can be eroded by persistent, principled resistance across institutions and society. Pitzer insists you need not wait for dramatic victory—every door cracked open and every small win counts. The episode is a call for vigilance, courage, and creative action, rooted in historical example and bolstered by unfolding current events.

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Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

The order was to kill everyone.

Over the weekend, President Trump suggested that at least in principle, he disagreed with any decision to kill two survivors clinging to wreckage of a boat that was blown up by the US military in the southern Caribbean Sea on September 2. The story was reported late last week in the Washington Post. And it suggested that after an initial strike that destroyed that boat, which the administration claimed was running drugs, a follow up attack to kill the survivors took place. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. The order was to kill everyone. So many people have been killed as a result of government actions since Trump took office.

[Guest/Commentator]

I was talking to Secretary Hegseth and you know what he said? He said, you know what, Mr. Vice President, we don't see any of these drug boats coming into our country. They've completely stopped.

[Andrea Pitzer]

From hundreds of thousands overseas who have died due to the cutoff of USAID.

[Guest/Commentator]

600,000 people, two thirds of them children. That's 400,000 children to those blown up.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In repeated illegal strikes on suspected narcotics traffickers.

[Guest/Commentator]

Admiral Frank Bradley is overseeing the US Military operations in the region which have killed more than 80 people, despite the administration providing no evidence illegal drugs were on all the boats.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It would be easy to dismiss the death of these two survivors as just two more humans killed in inhuman and extralegal ways.

[Guest/Commentator]

And I said, I know why I would stop too. Hell, I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But so far, the response to these deaths has been different.

[Guest/Commentator]

This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Last Friday, the Republican led Senate Armed Services Committee announced that it was committed to vigorous oversight on the strike.

[Guest/Commentator]

We're going to try to get to the facts.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Over the weekend, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said on Face the Nation, this rises to the level of a war crime. If it's true, and the questions that.

[Guest/Commentator]

We'Ve been asking for months are give us the evidence that the folks on board were really narco traffickers. In one instance, there were two survivors, one Colombian, one Ecuadorian. In a different strike, instead of arresting them and prosecuting them, the US Picked them up and returned them to their countries of origin where they were released. So if they were narco traffickers, why would we do that?

[Andrea Pitzer]

And Republican Congressman Mike Turner from Ohio said, obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious. And I agree that that that would.

[Guest/Commentator]

Would be an illegal act.

[Andrea Pitzer]

As is typical when asked about it, the President spoke in convoluted ways, I.

[Guest/Commentator]

Don'T want to comment on it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The answer is yes, but at least part of his intent seemed clear. He said, I don't know what happened. And Pete said he did not want that.

[Guest/Commentator]

He didn't even know what people were talking about. So we'll look at, we'll look into it. But no, I wouldn't have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn't happen today.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I want to talk about this incident and some other recent developments and why they should bring us a little hope. It's not that any particular one of them clearly signals the end of Trump as a political force. It's more that more and more doors are opening that could lead to that possibility. I want to talk about a pattern that's emerging and what you can do to add to it.

[Guest/Commentator]

We don't just want people who mindlessly follow orders. We want people who think.

[Andrea Pitzer]

While these boat strikes have been continuing, Senator Kaine tried and failed earlier this fall to get the Senate on board.

[Guest/Commentator]

War Powers act was passed in 1974.

[Andrea Pitzer]

To vote that there could be no war against Venezuela without Congress's approval.

[Guest/Commentator]

The Framers in 1974 of this act clearly intended that Congress should be able to have a vote and debate on this matter even before the initiation of war, so that Congress could be in a position to stop it before it begins.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And Kaine is now vowing to reintroduce that legislation in the wake of the Post report about the second tap that executed the survivors of the boat who were seen floating in the water.

[Guest/Commentator]

You're right. I, along with others, filed a resolution. No war in Venezuela or against Venezuela without congressional approval. It failed. But that was before all of these assets have amassed around Venezuela and before President Trump said that the airspace needs to be closed.

[Andrea Pitzer]

People are unhappier with the president's apparent intention to start a war with Venezuela than with all, almost anything he's done so far. Next, the desire for the release of the Epstein files. It may be the most bipartisan issue that pollsters have found related to Trump.

[Guest/Commentator]

Has the administration clearly explained its position this 3/4 saying, no, it has not.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A late November poll showed that 70% of Americans opposed the US taking military action in Venezuela.

[Guest/Commentator]

And look at the even the party breakdown here. Right. See, even two thirds of Republicans say it needs to explain that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But unhappiness with Trump extends far beyond the manufactured Venezuela crisis. My sense is that they wanted to.

[Guest/Commentator]

Use the alien enemies act to illegally.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Deport people, arrest and deport people from.

[Guest/Commentator]

This country that actually weren't subject to deportation.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They decided the Alien Enemies act was.

[Guest/Commentator]

A way to do that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They then realized the Alien Enemies act required a war, so then they declared a war. Then they needed a reason for the war, so then they reverse engineered some.

[Guest/Commentator]

Sort of reason for the war.

[Andrea Pitzer]

You might have noticed that across the last month, more and more report about Trump being a lame duck president has appeared. The White House believes Ted Cruz is working to undermine Trump due to his 2028ambitions. A source close to Trump says he's used his role to stifle Trump's priorities after trying to strong arm Representative Lauren Boebert, apparently in the Situation Room. The White House did confirm she was there, but insists the meeting was in the name of transparency rather than a last minute pressure campaign. Trump caved on releasing the Epstein files once it was clear that he would lose the vote to suppress them.

[Guest/Commentator]

You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And the president's demand to end the Senate filibuster was met with laughter by Senator Mike Rounds from South Dakota.

[Guest/Commentator]

Sometimes in politics, what is happening is clear and in front of you. And that is what's been happening this whole year.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A lot of this kind of response has been enabled by or fostered by the November election results a month ago, which were a bloodbath for Republicans in.

[Guest/Commentator]

Special elections in New Jersey and Virginia in November, in lots of other places across the country lower down on the ballot, and now here in the special election, and that is that Democrats are significantly overperforming.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They are now worried about their prospects in next year's midterms.

[Guest/Commentator]

They're doing it in some blue places where he made big grounds with voters of color, young men and the like. They're doing it in ruby red districts like tonight in Tennessee.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Seventh still, this trend began before the elections actually took place.

[Guest/Commentator]

The majority of justices appeared skeptical during oral arguments that the president can use a federal emergency power law passed back in the 1970s to unilaterally impose tariffs.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The last week in October, the Senate voted three times to limit or reverse tariffs Trump had announced earlier in the year. Joining now is the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessant. The effects of those votes are limited because the House would also have to pass any measure limiting the president's power. And even then, more Republican senators would have to defect before the legislation could have a veto proof majority. Tariffs have already brought you, what, $200 billion or so. If the Supreme Court goes against you in this upcoming decision, are you going to have to pay back. The US government will have to pay back $200 billion in tariff revenue already collected. What's the backup plan? But the number of elected legislators willing to stand in a public way against the president is growing.

[Guest/Commentator]

This is one of President Trump's signature policies. Signature policies. And traditionally, the Supreme Court does not interfere with a president's signature policy.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's a start. While the world waits to see if the Supreme Court strikes down the president's tariffs, Costco is not taking any chances. The very popular wholesaler is suing the Trump administration to get a full refund of new tariffs it paid so far this year. We see the trend elsewhere, too. Indiana State Senator Michael Bohasic has said he'll vote against the redistricting measure that President Trump has pressed a number of red states to adopt, hoping to gain Republican seats in the House of Representatives.

[Guest/Commentator]

I am, in fact, a firm no. I've seen the maps. They were just released yesterday. And it just really further strengthens my opinion that this is really not the best way the state of Indiana needs to go.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Bohasic, who has a daughter with down syndrome, has said publicly about the matter that he is doing it because of dehumanizing language from Trump himself.

[Guest/Commentator]

At some point we have to stand up and you can't. You can't validate slurs like that and rhetoric like that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references, and his choices of words have consequences, Bohasic said. I will be voting no on redistricting. Perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.

[Guest/Commentator]

Because how do we expect our children to not use terms like this, to be respectful of each other when the most powerful person in the world is using them?

[Andrea Pitzer]

Other Republicans in the House are looking at retiring. Troy Nels of Texas has said that he will retire from his seat in the House of Representatives rather than running again in 2026. It's all so absurd and completely unserious. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her retirement as well, which will happen even sooner just a month from now. I do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president that we all fought for, only to fight and win my election. While Republicans will likely lose the midterms and in turn be expected to defend the president against impeachment and after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to Destroy me. The broadening pushback isn't just in Congress. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has announced that JP Morgan won't be funding the president's project to build a ballroom on White House grounds because, as he.

[Guest/Commentator]

Put it, we have an issue, okay, which is anything we do, since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived and also how the next DOJ is going to deal with it. So we're quite conscious of the risk we bear by doing anything that looks like, you know, buying favors or anything like that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

On the judicial front, Chief Judge James Bosberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia heard the case this spring about mostly Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to the notorious Sicot prison in El Salvador during the first weeks of Trump's second administration. In June, the judge ruled that the prisoners had to be given the opportunity to challenge their detention. He said very clearly, quote, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. However that's accomplished, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately. He also launched a contempt probe of the Trump administration's refusal to to follow his orders about turning any planes in transit around and having them return to the US the decisions that are made on deportations, where flights go and when they go are my decision at the Department of Homeland Security. In response to those and many other decisions, articles of impeachment have been introduced against Judge Westberg many times, most recently a few weeks ago by Republican Congressman Brandon Gill of Texas. So you're saying that it was your decision? It sounds like the judge wanted to ensure that people were given due process, but the effort has never picked up steam. Blasberg's call for a contempt investigation was reversed by a three judge panel from the Court of Appeals, which sided with the doj. But a subsequent review by a larger panel of judges from the same Court of Appeals ruled last week that Blasberg could move forward. Did you defy the court's order, Madam Secretary? So he's now proceeding with his contempt probe of the administration over its failure to turn the planes around and to find out whether anyone should face contempt charges for having defied a judicial order? No, Kristen. And that's one of the things that we continue to face across this country is activist judges who are using radical decisions that have no standing and no grounds to try to stop what President Trump is doing. And this week, the 3rd Circuit ruled that Alina Habba is disqualified as U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Joining us now is Ty Cobb, former White House attorney in the first Trump administration, and is likewise disqualified from the role of acting attorney, all because her appointment violates the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

[Guest/Commentator]

You know, Sam Alito, now Trump's favorite supreme court judge in 1986, shortly after this statute was, was revised and to the form it is today made it very clear that, you know, the, the attorney general and the president have 120 days to have an appointment pursuant to subsection A of the statute. And that gives them the opportunity to have whoever they want for 120 days. After 120 days, whoever is going to be the interim U.S. attorney is a decision of the federal court.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This comes on the heels of a federal judge shooting down the criminal indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. When the White House spoke about it today, Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, gave this assessment.

It's as clear as day. And this judge took an unprecedented action to throw these cases out to shield James Comey and Letitia James from accountability based on a technical ruling ruling that Acting U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was prosecuting those cases, had not been lawfully appointed either.

[Guest/Commentator]

It's silly. And, and I think, you know, I'm sure that Comey and Pat Fitzgerald and the legal team are very happy that creepy Caroline is dictating legal strategy.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This list could go on and on, but I want to underline that each of the examples I've given, from the assassination of those aboard boats targeted by the administration, funding for construction of the White House ballroom, the redistricting push in Indiana, Senate votes against Trump, tariffs, removal of Haba and Halligan, both of whom had been personal attorneys for Trump, and the contempt probe about the plane flights to El Salvador. All of these are directly connected to Trump's core policies, the ones he has demanded or most heartily embraced.

[Guest/Commentator]

This is one of President Trump's signature policies.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Each shift against the president creates small rifts that have the opportunity to turn into large ones. One of them, or something similar, will eventually trigger an end to his power.

Looking at history in the US and around the world makes it clear that people didn't always know when a long fight against injustice might suddenly gain ground or be won outright. In Kenya, where a variety of concentration camps were created to interrogate, torture, detain, and extract forced labor from detainees, on.

[Historical Narrator]

A visit in November 1958 by the Commissioner of Prisons to Holler, it was decided that a new plan had to be drawn up to tackle the lack of discipline amongst detainees. This was because they refused to confess to oath taking and refused to perform manual labor. Declaring themselves as political prisoners who had.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Already served their sentences, guards committed a massacre at Hola in 1959.

[Historical Narrator]

The prisoners were shown tools and ordered to work by digging trenches. They peacefully refused to cooperate. After this refusal, one white officer then blew his whistle, signaling for the others to join in beating the 88 prisoners continuously from 8am to 11:30am the prisoners did not retaliate.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They beat to death 11 detainees in British custody who refused to do the labor demanded of them. The deaths were officially reported as due to drinking contaminated water. But the violence that had been done to those bodies emerged, and not only the brutality against the men who died. An investigation revealed several dozen other heavily injured survivors of the incident.

[Historical Narrator]

The massacre eventually became exposed and the COVID story was blown. Cowan was asked about the need to use excessive force. His chilling response was the prisoners were not violent, but they were insolent and their demeanour was arrogant.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Countless more had already been tortured and murdered in the larger conflict.

[Historical Narrator]

Newspapers compared Holler to concentration camps in Germany during the Second World War, Only worse, the Times declared that it is lawful to use such force as is necessary to prevent escape, but not to compel unwilling men to work, and concluded that the government sanctioned Cowan plan led directly to the fatal incident.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But it was the lies told about the deaths of those 11 men at the Holla camp and what had actually happened to them that turned the tide in England against the bloody suppression of.

[Historical Narrator]

Kenyan independence, the United Kingdom ceded sovereignty over Kenya, and under an agreement dated 8 October, Kenya became an independent country.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In Argentina, more than two decades later, the junta tried to bolster flagging support for its rule in the spring of 1982 by sparking a confrontation with Great Britain over the Falkland islands, which lie 300 miles east of Argentina's southern coast.

[Guest/Commentator]

As word of the Argentine defeat leaked out in Buenos Aires, thousands of demonstrators began to gather outside the Presidential palace.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Instead, the undeclared war only fueled popular unrest.

[Guest/Commentator]

President Galtieri was scheduled to make a speech trying to explain the Falkland developments. But the demonstrator, as many as 5,000 of them, began screaming, traitor, traitor. And this is the end of the military dictatorship. Police moved in with clubs and tear gas.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They dispersed the crowd, forcing elections and the beginning of the end of dictatorship. The following year, the former dictator who led Argentina during its bloodiest period, Jorge Rafael Videla, has died in prison aged 87. Bidela was jailed in 2010 for the deaths of 31 dissidents during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Thousands of people disappeared during this period known as the Dirty War. With Watergate in the US roughly a year of illegal activity aimed at re electing Richard Nixon was followed by a landslide victory by him.

[Guest/Commentator]

Nixon overwhelmed his Democratic rival, Senator George McGovern. He carried every state but Massachusetts.

[Andrea Pitzer]

By January of the following year, and before Nixon could even be inaugurated, G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord were on trial for the Watergate break in. As five of their co defendants pled guilty In July, Nixon assistant Alexander Butterfield explosively revealed the existence of of Nixon installed recording devices throughout the White House. Those tapes were subpoenaed. However, Nixon refused to release them, citing executive privilege. But it took nearly a year and a half after that for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment hearings. The Watergate tapes were finally released in July 1974. An 18 minute erased section proved controversial. In all, it took nearly two years of relentless investigation of the Nixon re election campaign and the subsequent crimes to cover their actions up to force Nixon's resignation in August 1974.

[Guest/Commentator]

I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The result hinged on a series of improbable events and discoveries and simple persistence.

[Guest/Commentator]

In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And these cases are ones in which a situation flipped completely to a new dynamic leading to Kenyan independence, the fall of a dictatorship and the resignation of a president. Far more often, doors open to limited progress. And that's valuable too.

In Guantanamo, the Supreme Court deferred mightily to President George W. Bush and his treatment of those he claimed were detained as enemy combatants, even where no evidence had been presented for any classification. Three years into war on terror detentions at Gitmo, the Supreme Court established that US courts did in fact have jurisdiction there and could rule on the detainees who were held.

[Guest/Commentator]

More importantly than our position being vindicated is a repudiation of the position of the government that they could have a lawless zone where they could do what they wanted to. And in fact, as we have seen, one of the results of that lawless zone was the treatment of those detainees which was then transferred to Iraq. And we've all seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib that resulted from that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Four years after that, in 2008, the court ruled that detainees had a right to the writ of habeas corpus to have their claims of unlawful detention heard, as well as declaring part of the Military Commissions act unconstitutional.

[Guest/Commentator]

It's the third high court ruling on the subject. The previous two times, the administration, the Republican controlled Congress, changed the law to block detainees from court.

[Andrea Pitzer]

President Obama took office the following January and declared torture off limits and began his failed attempt to pressure Congress into closing Guantanamo.

[Guest/Commentator]

The original premise for opening gtmo, that detainees would not be able to challenge their detention, was found unconstitutional five years ago.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Hundreds had already been released under Bush, and Obama continued that trend, as did Biden. Yet the detention facility was never closed, helping to lay the groundwork for the kind of fusion of military bases and concentration camp style detention we're seeing right now in the U.S. nevertheless, those court cases and presidential actions laid the ground for the freedom of a lot of people who had been detained without due process. After more than 20 years of being in prison without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay, The Pentagons transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman to restart their lives. This latest push at the end of the Biden administration brings the total number of men detained at Guantanamo down to 15. A total of 780 men have been detained at Guantanamo since 2000 too. I think sometimes people forget about the value in jamming a bad process for the additional people who never got caught up in it in the first place, those who would have been caught up in it if it hadn't been stalled. If you can't save everyone, you can often save someone. And if you can't save someone, you can prevent somebody from ending up in that same place. And given that it's the 70th anniversary this week of Rosa Parks refusal to leave her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. The conventional wisdom about her is, oh, this was just a, you know, a woman who got on the bus, she was tired, her feet hurt, she didn't want to get up. I want to mention that that action and the bus boycott as a whole. Rosa Parks had been involved with social justice issues for years before she refused to give up that seat. But that does not take into account her incredibly amazing political consciousness. The training that she had, the boycott by African Americans afterward destroyed the bus line's profitability.

[Guest/Commentator]

She had been trained as a political activist, working as field secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the naacp.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The company capitulated, but the state and local authorities tried to strengthen laws to maintain segregation anyway.

[Guest/Commentator]

She was part of a community of women activists at local colleges who were organizing to take on segregated buses for the purposes of ending that practice.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The courts weighed in even as the state continued to appeal the court decisions. The Supreme Court's final ruling declaring bus segregation unconstitutional was handed down in November 1956.

[Guest/Commentator]

Her story tells us that you don't have to always have been a leader to do something important and to make an impact, that you don't have to be a big personality or a loud person to take a stand, that you can be a sort of quiet person of principles.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet that wasn't even the first bus boycott, and though it sparked the public rise of Martin Luther King Jr. The matter was far from settled. The wave of freedom riders wouldn't take up the mantle for desegregation on interstate buses until 1961, and much of the hardest work of the civil rights era lay ahead. So I don't want to pretend that all victories are definitive or that in most cases you can even identify a singular turning point that marks the downfall of authoritarian abuse, as the publicizing of the Hola massacre did for Kenyans. Even in that case, it was years of torture, censorship, forced relocation and death that kept the struggle alive in the first place.

[Guest/Commentator]

You know, these sort of quiet people and people who work behind the scenes are important to the history of social change.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If you wait for the odds of certain victory to act, you'll never do anything. It all starts with smaller actions. It starts with going against the odds, and the strangest possibilities can sometimes lead to the biggest gains. So open every door you can to the future that you want to see. One thing I'd like to add about the Venezuelan boat story is that nearly three months ago it was Nick Turse of the Intercept who broke the story that the September 2nd boat strike had included follow up strikes killing survivors. That story made a small splash, but one that was not nearly as large as the response to coverage from the Washington Post late last week. The worst secretary of defense in history.

[Guest/Commentator]

And I think that's unquestionable, is having.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The worst week of his career. And that, my friends, is saying something. Sometimes you might be on the first wave of people calling attention to law breaking or a growing crisis or an inhumane policy. And it might not be your action that breaks through to popular perception, but it still paves the way for someone else to pay attention, to report or to take action. I've written before about remembering that one day Trump will be gone, and lately it seems as if some of his allies are finally becoming aware of that eventuality, I refuse to be a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better. But my point today is more not only should we be trying to build the world we want to live in after he vanishes from the scene, but we can also be taking small actions that poke holes in the network and the structure and the corruption that are expanding right now. There is so much money coming down to put your neighbors into camps to abuse protesters and worse. Every part of that that gets blocked is a win.

[Guest/Commentator]

A federal judge says ICE must obtain a warrant to arrest non citizens and only when the immigrant is deemed a flight risk can they arrest without a warrant. The nursing student detained by ICE after this traffic stop in Mesa county last June was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the ICE practice of warrantless arrests.

[Andrea Pitzer]

All this is not to say about any individual moment like the boat strikes or the Epstein files. Here we go. This is definitely going to be what ends him. Sit back and watch what happens now. The point is to keep opening doors to better possibilities. Maybe what you do will be some tiny part of something crucial, or maybe you'll just provide a distraction while the seed someone else has planted can take root. There are people who are not ready to be brave or to take physical risks, but who are ready to do something. And sometimes one thing becomes the other when you least realize it can make a difference. You can feed people. You can accompany people who have been arrested for doing the things that you might be afraid to do when they go to court. You can support the organizations that are doing the hardest work by backstopping their needs for skilled volunteers, for simple tasks or for money. What door that is cracking open matters to you today. Is it the beating that Democrats gave Republicans in elections a few weeks ago? Then team up with a great candidate, one you really admire, one who's running in 2026, or cajole that great candidate to run for office in the first place at any level where you think they'd do good. There is no reason to settle right now. None at all. Get involved in the amazing stands against ICE and Border Patrol abuses they are unfolding around the country and doing important work in New York, Chicago and coast to coast. Local government and community action is still a place where you can make a huge difference. I was talking to a minister just the other day, and while he doesn't preach party politics from the pulpit, he talked about how he focuses on the biblical aspect of helping neighbors and getting the church involved as pastors, we, the.

[Guest/Commentator]

Bishops of the United States, are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in our Lord Jesus Christ.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Even that simple message, when applied to issues like immigration and homelessness, does good while sparking conversations among the congregation.

[Guest/Commentator]

And we are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Because if church members find themselves resisting those missions in the community, he wants to encourage discussion and contemplation about why.

[Guest/Commentator]

I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He is trying to save souls, literally.

[Guest/Commentator]

And metaphorically, when people are living good lives and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely difficult, disrespectful to say the least.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And his mission may be to tend to his flock while serving humanity, but most of us have a lot more flexibility.

[Guest/Commentator]

I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said, and I think that I, I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We can go be part of whatever cause most beckons to us in this moment. Do the big things where you can, and if you can't do those, the small things are really important too. Go right to the edge of what you can do, see what's possible and keep moving. And that's it.

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