Alison Gill (2:17)

Thank you for the good vibes, everyone. They totally worked. I can't, I just, I can't thank you enough. So that's what happens when you put stuff out in the universe, right? Comes back.

Dana Goldberg (2:26)

Indeed.

Alison Gill (2:27)

So later today in the show, I'm going to be joined by another good friend of mine, Adam Classfeld from All Rise News. And we're going to discuss that hearing that I mentioned in the headlines about the people removed to war torn South Sudan, which is just awful and disgusting. And the judge was very, very angry and, and took the government to task and has learned a thing or two about the government's tricks from other cases like Boasberg and Judge Sinise's case. So we going to talk about that later in the show. But first we have a lot of news to get to, so let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, first up, and this is from Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This is so gross. Throughout the LA area today. This was yesterday. But the reporter said throughout the LA area, the Immigrant Defenders Law center observed ICE agents inside immigration courtrooms detaining people after government attorneys moved to dismiss their cases. There were two ICE officers inside the courtrooms who would notify the officers sitting in the hallway when a case was dismissed. It appears the government attorneys were moving to dismiss cases where people have been in the US Less than two years. By arresting them post dismissal, they will now try to put them into expedited removal proceedings and move toward deportations at lightning speed. Aaron Reichland Melnick added that so far he's heard about this happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Vegas and Seattle. So it appears to be a nationwide operation. Absolutely horrific. They show up to court, the ICE officers are there, they tell the DOJ to dismiss the cases so they can rearrest them and, you know, multiply the expediency of their removal by many, many times.

Dana Goldberg (4:15)

Unbelievable. Thanks so much, ag. And from the Hill, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat who we love on the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday he has recordings of business associates of Trump's pick to lead the irs. That's former Rep. Billy Long is a Republic Republican from Missouri saying they expect to get favors from him once in office. Widen cited recordings of two instances of people saying they expect to receive favorable treatment from Long. And I quote, our staff investigators have on tape now tax promoters saying you met with them at the inauguration and promised them a favorable private letter ruling. That's what Wyden said Tuesday during Long's confirmation hearing in the Senate Finance Committee. That must have been embarrassing for him.

Alison Gill (5:02)

Probably not.

Dana Goldberg (5:02)

Yeah, that's fair.

Alison Gill (5:04)

You have to have shame to be embarrassed.

Dana Goldberg (5:06)

Well said, my friend. Wyden's rev actually probably just made him angry. Wyden's revelation about the recordings came at the end of Long's confirmation hearing. That seems like a great time to bring it up. And Long was not given a chance to respond, though he defended his work as a tax promoter throughout the hearing, specifically with regard to the disputed tribal tax credits, which don't exist. And I quote, my only involvement in this matter was to connect interested friends of mine, just friends, if they had any interest?

Alison Gill (5:35)

Just friends. Like, did Ron Wyden accuse him of, like, sleeping with these people?

Dana Goldberg (5:40)

I know, Seriously, it's a really weird, Like, I guess he's saying that, like, foreign interest people or these people that aren't so you can do favors for your friends. Like, none of it makes sense. That's not any less incriminating.

Alison Gill (5:51)

These men are just friends. I just want to be clear.

Dana Goldberg (5:54)

Yeah, absolutely. I've never seen him on a Grinder app.

Alison Gill (5:57)

Tax breaks. No homo. Like, what the fuck is that?

Dana Goldberg (5:59)

Yeah, both of us went to Grindr.

Alison Gill (6:01)

Yeah.

Dana Goldberg (6:03)

That'S what happens. The first recording mentioned by Wieden concerns an alleged promise made by the former lawmaker to tax promoters about a favorable ruling from the irs. The other concerns favorable treatment for a company called White River Energy that had long on its payroll regarding a tribal tax credit that is in dispute. And I quote, we also have on tape the White River CFO who gave you the thousands of dollars that he expects favor treatment of these fake tribal tax credits. I mean, how incriminating. And he brought the receipts, and I love. At the end, he was like, by the way, we have these. Have a good day.

Alison Gill (6:43)

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let's. Let's move on to some other interesting things going on with corruption, which I guess no longer is. There's a. I don't think there's any more laws against that.

Dana Goldberg (6:57)

This administration to be legal now. Yeah.

Alison Gill (6:59)

This is from ProPublica. Two days before Trump announced dramatic plans for reciprocal tariffs on foreign imports, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stock in almost three dozen companies. And that's according to records reviewed by ProPublica. The February 11th sales occurred near the stock market's peak, just before it began to slide amid concerns about Trump's tariff plans and ultimately plummeted after the president unveiled the details of the new tariffs on April 2. Disclosure records filed by Duffy with the U.S. offerman of Government Ethics showed he sold between 75,000 and $600,000 of stock two days before Trump's announcement.

Dana Goldberg (7:35)

And that's a massive range, by the way.

Alison Gill (7:37)

I know, I know. It's. I think there's probably, like, boxes on the form, like, less than 50,000.

Dana Goldberg (7:43)

Oh, between 50,075.

Alison Gill (7:45)

75 and 600, 752 million. Like, I. I have to take a peep at the forum to see what that is. But he also sold up to $50,000 more that day. Now, transportation secretaries normally have little to do with tariff policy, but Duffy has presented himself as one of the intellectual forefathers of Trump's current trade agenda. That explains a lot. As a congressman in 2019, his last government position before Trump elevated him to his Cabinet post, Duffy introduced a bill he called the United States Reciprocal Trade Act. That proposed legislation, which didn't pass in many ways mirrors Trump's reciprocal tariff plan. Now, Duffy worked on that bill with Trump's trade advisor. Good old Pete Navarro of the Green.

Dana Goldberg (8:31)

Bay also knows nothing about tariffs.

Alison Gill (8:33)

Yeah, Trump's tariffs were, quote, the culmination of that work, Duffy said online, referring to his own bill in the House. Of course, you can read more about this@proPublica.org and I recommend if you can, supporting their work. It's incredible.

Dana Goldberg (8:46)

All right. Thanks, Alison. This one's from cbs. Hundreds of hospitals in rural parts of the United States, they're in danger of closing because they can no longer afford to stay open. That's according to a new report from the center for Health Care Quality and Payment Reform. The main reason, insurance companies pay them much less than their big city counterparts for the same services. So in Trinity, Texas, about 90 miles north of Houston, Mid Coast Medical center recently had to close its doors. And I quote, it's huge impact on the community. We're going to lose lives. 400 people a month come here. This is from Marjorie Pulvino, who runs the hospital's board. That's what she told CBS News in the East Texas Piney Woods. Mid coast was more than a building. It was a lifeline. Where babies were born and where the heart of Kathy Courtney's 90 year old husband was restarted. It saves his life. Now Mid coast officials told CBS News the closure was driven by the same factors that have closed other rural hospitals, low reimbursement rates from elderly patients, Medicare and Medicaid coverage, which made up most of the hospital's budget. Hospitals in urban areas, meanwhile, they get significantly more reimbursement from their patients who have private insurance. They tend to pay more. Republicans proposed cuts to Medicaid. Those could leave more than 8.5 million people uninsured, and that's according to the Congressional Budget Office, and force even more rural hospitals to close. And I'll give you one guess where the majority of those people live. Blue states, red states, blue states, red states.

Alison Gill (10:20)

What do you think? Or districts. I mean, rural districts are often red.

Dana Goldberg (10:24)

Yeah, they really are. That's why people are fired up. That's why you've got Josh Hawley, who I can't stand being like this is a bad idea. 50% of my constituents are on Medicaid or Medicare.

Alison Gill (10:36)

And he knows that he will lose his election if he kicks all these people off Medicaid. So I don't think his motives are altruistic. I think he just wants to retain power and retain his seat.

Dana Goldberg (10:48)

Josh Hawley does is altruistic.

Alison Gill (10:52)

Run away.

Dana Goldberg (10:54)

His heels didn't even hit the ground out of the January 6th.

Alison Gill (10:58)

No, sir. All right, next up from ABC, the United States officially accepted the luxury, quote unquote luxury jet to use as Air Force One from Qatar, according to the Department of Defense who confirmed it with ABC News on Wednesday, quote, the secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations. No, no, no. That's Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman who has not read the Constitution in a statement went on to say the Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States. Troy Mink, the secretary of the Air Force said in a Tuesday Senate hearing that the Air Force would be taking the lead on making sure the aircraft is up to security standards so it can transport the President. Quote, the secretary of defense has directed the Air Force to basically start planning to modify the aircraft. This is going to cost a billion dollars, y' all. Mank responded. That's how he responded when he was asked about the Air Force's role in the transfer of the Qatari owned jet to the United States. He said we're postured to do that. Are you with a billion of our dollars? Really? An Air Force spokesperson told ABC News it will award a contract to modify the Qatari jet to do so. So I guess it's not the Air Force. It'll be a company and I wonder which company it'll be. They also noted that the details related to the contract are classified. Oh, of course. Oh, why is that now?

Dana Goldberg (12:29)

Ag I have a question. Is Qatar an ally of ours? Have they been an ally of the United States in the past?

Alison Gill (12:35)

We've done talks in Qatar like when we like when Biden got the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. Qatar was the go between. There's been some back and forth. You'll remember that there was a couple Qatari blockade that Kushner and Trump put into place but then was removed. So they can be at odds I think at sometimes with folks like Saudi Arabia, uae, but it's I, you know, like all our foreign policy in the Middle east, it's, it's, it's very complicated because we have people helping us on the ground to fight terrorists. But they are also usually in factions that belong to other terrorist groups.

Dana Goldberg (13:13)

Right.

Alison Gill (13:14)

So it's.

Dana Goldberg (13:14)

The reason I'm asking is I feel like it's a little dangerous to accept a plane that the President of the United States is going to fly in. Even if someone is checking this and making sure it's secure and all of this. I just. There just seems to be some sort of an issue there. Why I think they would be more concerned about the life of the President of the United States.

Alison Gill (13:34)

Well, they are very good friends with Hamas and take a lot of money from them, so.

Dana Goldberg (13:37)

And they're fine, upstanding people. Yeah, Yep, Absolutely. All right, I do have some good news from you. This is from the Associated Press. I know a federal judge has blocked Trump's firing of two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. So the ruling Wednesday from U.S. district Judge Reggie B. Walton, it ends the lawsuit that was brought by two of the three fired board members in February. The five member board, that's an independent watchdog agency, it's housed within the executive branch. Congress created the agency after September 11th attack. Now it tasks that board and the board members with making sure the federal government's counterterrorism policies are balanced against privacy and civil liberties. Like, you can't just spy on anyone you want at all hours of the day, whenever you have to. Now, former board members, Travis LeBlanc, Edward Felton, they asked the judge to find that board members can't be fired without cause. Otherwise, they said members would fear that criticizing the executive branch would lead to their dismissal, effectively rendering the agency unable to give candid, independent advice to Congress, which is what it was designed to do. The third Democratic board member removed by Trump had just two days left in a six year term and did not sue. Now, under the board seat was already vacant, leading just one Republican appointed member on the board. So it just really should make your little feelers go up when shit like this happens, especially when it's counterterrorism.

Alison Gill (15:13)

I mean, they totally gutted the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI and put all those people over helping ice.

Dana Goldberg (15:19)

Yeah.

Alison Gill (15:20)

With their mass deportations, so many of which are illegal. All right, everybody, thank you for that good news, though. I'm glad that this was blocked. Let's get to some good trouble. What are you guys doing? Getting into trouble by getting into trouble. All right, everybody. This is from an uncle anonymous listener pronoun, she and her. It would be great if you could encourage the Leguminati to leave a comment opposing Schedule F, which will convert thousands, tens of thousands of career federal civil servants to at will employees, making them easy to fire. We will have the link in the show notes to where you can leave a comment. By the way, the comment section closes on tomorrow, May 23rd at close of business and they could directly affect this could directly affect the careers of thousands of civil servants who have dedicated their careers to supporting supporting the missions of for example the National Institutes of Health. Right? She says you may know that the NIH is hurting considerably right now with billions of dollars of grants terminated patients left at risk due to prematurely ending clinical trials and the lack of ability to buy life saving supplies. Morale is at an all time low at the NIH and this move would forcibly push out some of our best and brightest at a time when we need all the capable hands that we can have on deck. And it's not just NIH everybody. This would impact our federal workforce across all agencies. So please leave your public comment using the link in the show notes by close of business tomorrow, May 23rd. All right everybody stick around. We'll be right back with Adam Klassfeld after these messages. We'll be right back. This podcast is sponsored by Peak. Peak's Radiant Skin Duo combines Sun Goddess Matcha and BT Fountain electrolytes for the ultimate in beauty and wellness. The powerful duo supports glowing hydrated skin while boosting energy, gut health and Overall Vitality. Get 20% off on the Radiant Skin Duo plus a free starter kit at peaklife.com DailyBeans I am obsessed with the Sun Goddess Matcha and BT Fountain combo. It is the ultimate glow up secret. I'm telling you, it's incredible. This is the Radiant Skin Duo and it works from the inside out. You can spend hundreds on serums and creams, but if you're not hydrating and nourishing on a cellular level, you're just putting a band aid on aging. But Sun Goddess Matcha is clean, creamy, ceremonial grade matcha that gives me sustained energy without the jitters. It's rich in L theanine for calm focus and it's packed with antioxidants that support skin elasticity. Love that. Gut health. Love that. And digestion. Love that. That means clear skin and less bloat. Now BT Fountain is a science backed electrolyte mix with clinically proven ceramides that reduce fine lines and keep my skin soft, supple and calm. It's vegan, no added sugar, no preservatives and it tastes like a ref skin boost. Together they strengthen my skin barrier, protect against dryness and redness. They give me that lip from within. Glow. Each sachet is pre measured, travel ready and dissolves easily in hot or cold water. Everything is tested for purity, potency and bioavailability, which is important. And it's sourced from the highest quality ingredients. This duo has become a necessary part of my daily routine. So if you're ready to transform your routine right now, you can get 20% off the radiant skin duo plus a free starter kit which includes a rechargeable frother and a glass beaker. With our exclusive link peaklife.com that's P I Q U E life.com dailybeans don't miss out. Glow naturally into 2025 while supplies last. Hey everybody. Welcome back. So today a federal judge in Boston said that the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them, you know, meaningful opportunity to object to their removal. And joining us today is someone who was at the hearing virtually writing for All Rise News, brand new outfit. You have to follow them on substack. Please welcome Adam Klassfeld. Hey Adam, how's it going?

C (19:14)

I'm doing great, Alison, how are you?

Alison Gill (19:16)

Good. It's good to see you. So this was a heck of a hearing. The judge seemed pretty upset with what the Department of Justice was and was not telling him. So if you want to give maybe a brief overview of the case because we've sort of been tracking the plane and all this other stuff, but these basically, I think the plaintiffs are two men who were from Vietnam and Myanmar who were removed to South Sudan, war torn South Sudan instead of their home countries without any kind of due process. I think they were only afforded like 17 hours of notice, which according to this judge was not meaningful. And even though the Department of Justice cited an older case, this judge was more interested in what the Supreme Court has recently said about meaningful due process. And a couple of other judges around the country as far as Alien Enemies act habeas cases are concerned. What was your takeaway from this hearing?

C (20:13)

Well, one that the judge was very angry at the violation of his order. The hearing started out with the judge being actually accommodating the government. The government claimed that there were some secrecy issues about the men on the plane, apparently not disclosing at the time that the Department of Homeland Security on their Twitter account had done a long thread about the men's identities and photographs. So when the government claimed that they needed some secrecy, there was an extensive recess. Now we don't know what happened in that recess because that was happening privately. But. But when they came back, the judge issued an order, a scathing order, saying that they had clearly violated his order that they provide notice to the men. Now, if you look at court papers, the way that they describe the notice that happened is Kafkaesque. You have a circumstance where these men who don't speak English are being read a notice in English that they are being sent to a third country. They can't understand what they're being told, but they're asked to sign and they refuse to sign and they're hustled onto a plane anyway. Now, this judge had previously issued an order that you can't, as you told listeners in your introduction, they can't just do that without any process. And that's exactly what happened here. The government tried to say, well, you didn't say what the process was. We gave them process. We read them something in English and hustled them on a plane. Even though they didn't sign anything. The judge said, that's clearly and obviously was one of the words that he used, a violation. Now, he also said right after that, whether that amounts to criminal contempt will leave for another day. So this is clearly going down the Boasberg direction where he has established a violation and he is about to lay out the system for finding who violated it. Did someone lie to him in a declaration? If so, who did that? And so we'll see how that progresses. But meanwhile, there are these dozen men on a plane and I believe by the New York Times last account in Djibouti, it's not currently in their final destination. And the judge made absolutely clear over the course of several hours and several recesses that they need to be provided with some sort of process. He's going to hash out that process in a written order, but it's got to include access to attorneys, a credible fear interview. There's going to be, I believe the judge indicated a 72 hour period before that begins. And the credible fear interview is a 15 day process. And that leads to weird technical questions. Are they just going to be on the back of a plane for 15 days while this is happening? You're going to have to logistically find some way to accommodate people so they can be given full rights. And it seemed very clear that the judge probably seeing everything that's happening in appellate courts was being very tailoring his ruling extremely narrowly. He did not order the men immediately back, but a credible fear interview could establish the need to send them back and Their lawyers are going to be there to defend their rights. There are going to be further proceedings in the District of Massachusetts. So it's going out like we've seen with a lot of these Trump cases, in a pretty slow and methodical manner, while people are being sent to human rights abusers around the globe. But there is a clear message sent that there can and will be consequences for this. And just one more point here about the Trump administration running the board of human rights abusers around the world. I encourage people to take a look at the application, the motion that prompted today's hearing, because there was a section in the motion where the lawyers for these men discuss the situation in South Sudan and how a fragile peace accord from the country, civil war, broke down this week and just how dangerous the situation is there and how some of the clients are facing specific threats from there. And if you go down that little list of DHS identifications of the men, only one of them is from South Sudan. They're from places, as you mentioned, like Myanmar, Vietnam. And so it's. The court documents give a clear idea of just how dangerous a place and that they're being sent that they have no connection to.

Alison Gill (25:43)

Yeah, and I was glad to hear the judge hashing out this remedy. I think he might have learned some lessons from, you know, other cases that are going. They're making their way through the courts about the Trump administration's exploitation of the vagueness of some court orders that seem, on their face to folks like you and I on earth, one obvious. But they seem to be taking these loopholes and exploiting them. And so he's like, all right, so back of the plane, 15 days. Are you gonna house them? Who's gonna translate? What's gonna, you know, what's gonna happen? Of course, the plaintiff's lawyers were arguing for their return. And so I think he was taking a page out of the Boasberg and Judge Sini's book about the vagueness of these orders and even the Supreme Court to see what this administration has been doing with some of these court orders and finding ways around, like, creative language to come up with their own. Oh, well, reasonable is 20 minutes and one page in English. That's reasonable to us. You know, they've been exploiting this for a while. So I was glad to see him do that. And when you say go the Boasberg direction, you are referring to the original going back to March 15th order where Judge Boasberg ordered the planes turned around. The Supreme Court vacated those orders, but the judge wrote an Opinion, a memorandum saying that he was gonna begin contempt proceedings. Because even if an order by the court is later overturned by a higher court, you still have to follow it, and the government clearly did not. So I think that's what you mean by the going. This looks like it's going. The Bozberg direction, because he, like every other sentence, when I was reading what you were writing, he was like, all right, well, we'll talk about contempt later. Okay, we'll get to contempt soon. Like, the word contempt happened a lot in this hearing. Explain what a credible fear interview is and why this is a necessary part of due process in this case.

C (27:39)

A credible fear interview is an interview that establishes whether a person can face serious harm if they are sent in this case to South Sudan. The credible fear interview would have happened in El Salvador or with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, part of the finding of the court order that was originally preventing his expulsion to that country, which was ignored by the Trump administration. You have it exactly right. The Boasberg direction does refer to the fact that Judge Roseberg still has this open inquiry that could lead to actual members of the Trump administration being named and being referred for criminal prosecution. Now, first it would happen that they would send the referral to the Department of Justice, which would duly ignore it. And once that happens, Boasberg said what he would do, appoint a private counsel. And this is where Republicans in the Congress are coming up with a little escape hatch, hoping to circumvent that. And we can talk about that a little bit later, but right now, that option remains on the table, and it's certainly not something that was ruled out in the hearing today. And you're right, Allison, the judge, Judge Murphy, said repeatedly that we can talk about criminal contempt some other time. And you don't say that if you're a federal judge, let alone more than once, unless you're dead serious.

Alison Gill (29:24)

Yeah. And to be honest, appointing the special prosecutor, the lawyer there. I have been watching a couple of cases pretty closely that Steve Vladek has written about, even represented some people in one of these cases. I think there are five votes to tank that provision anyway. So even if the Republicans can slip that little nugget into their giant budget reconciliation bill, which would be weird to somehow get around the parliamentarian on that, because it doesn't have to do with budget or reconciliation discuss, I think the Supreme Court would got it anyways if it ended up getting up to them. So we're kind of back to square one in a couple of ways, too, because I think that the Supreme Court is going to soon come back on the Alien Enemies act legality. And they could say, sure, it's legal, but there has to be due process. And let's outline the due process. Or they may say it's not lawful as the proclamation is written. We don't know yet. The fifth Circuit is certainly not too happy that they have to come up with this stuff. And one of the judges was like, I can't believe I have to do this. This is stupid. And wrote this whole concurrence with the fifth Circuit accepting the remand. And we go over that in detail on unjustified. But the second half of this hearing had something to do with another defendant who was deported or removed through Mexico on an error. And that seemed to kind of go off the rails a little bit too, at least on the government side.

C (30:53)

Absolutely. That particular person is now hiding in Guatemala. You know, talk about criminal fear. This person is literally in hiding. And there was a back in and forth between the government and saying the kind of processes that could be used to accommodate. And the. The plaintiff's lawyer, I think, at one point, shouted out, this is bonkers.

Alison Gill (31:20)

This is bonkers. I saw that. I was like, this has to be so frustrating.

C (31:25)

Yeah, because it's ignoring the fact that all of this is happening. The man is in hiding. Because it was ignored that these were the very places where the person feared deportation. And that's the kind of crux of this. So why are we talking about South Sudan? Why is Bukele naive? Bukele, a US partner in immigration incarceration, when that strong man's administration is talking about how people only leave his prison in a coffin, is one of the quotes. And it reminds me when you talk. There's another moment of the hearing where the government's attorney tried to say that it comported with due process requirements. And Judge Murphy basically repeated the statement incredulously. You're saying this doesn't. And it reminds me of when I was a kid. I was a huge fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And that novel begins with this very memorable scene that the protagonist's house is about to be demolished, and he's contesting it, and he goes to try to stop the demolition. And they talk about the notice they provided him. And he says, yes, it was down a broken staircase behind a bathroom door with a sign that says Beware of the leopard. And so that's a sort of beware of the leopard process that the government thinks is adequate here. That they can just read a simple document in a language that the person doesn't understand and that will get by a federal judge's scrutiny. And that approach hasn't worked yet, even up to the Supreme Court.

Alison Gill (33:22)

And I'm surprised the Department of Justice hasn't offered that particular passage for what they should do for due process. Very, very well cited, my friend. I think I'm going to see if I could share that on Blue Sky. Thank you so much for coming in and speaking to us today. And thanks for starting All Rise News. It's top to bottom, just so much really important information. It makes me smarter. Tell everybody where they can find and subscribe.

C (33:49)

Thank you so much, Alison. It's all risenews.com, all one word. You can find us on Substack and if you subscribe, you'll get it right in your inbox every day.

Alison Gill (34:00)

Thank you so much, my friend. Adam Klassfeld, congratulations on All Rise News. It's taken off like a rocket and rightfully and well deservedly so. So thank you so much for joining us today.

C (34:11)

Thank you, Alison.

Alison Gill (34:12)

All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back with the good news. Everybody, welcome back. It's time for the good news, everyone. And if you have any good news, confessions, corrections, shout outs to loved ones, yourself, a small business in your area, your small business, some great community activism happening. Maybe you're running for something. We want to hear from you. We also love shout outs to government programs that have helped you or a loved one or somebody that you know, friends, family, anyone, whether it's Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Affordable care Act, Subsidies, SNAP, WIC, Section 8, Head Start. I mean, there's so many free lunch, there's so many great programs out there that, that have helped so many millions and millions of Americans. Also, great VA healthcare you've received. We'd love to hear about that. Maybe some student debt relief. Send it all to us@dailybeanspod.com Click on Contact and to get your submission read on the air. All you gotta do is pay your pod pet tariff, which means attach a photo of your pet. Much easier than the Trump tariffs, by the way. Oh yeah, and far cuter. If you don't have a pet, you can send an adoptable pet in your area. We'll see if we can find him a home. If you don't have that, any animal photo will do. Seriously, we love any animal photos. And right now we're doing bird watching, which can be an actual photo of a bird or you and your friends Flipping the bird to Trump and Musk Properties. Those are also considered bird watching here on the Daily Beans. And if you don't have any of that baby photos, which you should just send in anyway, even if you don't have anything to say, send it to dailybeanspot.com and click on Contact. First up from Linda Pronouns, she and her Beans Queens Last week, while staying just north of the Port of Oakland to see Madness at the Fox, my sister and I noticed not a single ship came in or went out from the port for five days. We drove to a park next to the port and found the port deserted. We saw one security guard. You can see the photos below. Not only is nothing coming in, nothing's being shipped out either. No truckers, no longshoremen, no trains moving, no one working on the water or the land. The only silver lining to Trump killing the economy is that he won't get credit for everything Biden did to make America the strongest economy in the known universe. Wow, Linda. First of all, awesome to see madness, but then to see this eerie deserted port, one of the biggest ports we have in the country. Thank you for these photos and thanks for letting us know.

Dana Goldberg (36:58)

Yeah, absolutely. Oh man. All right, this is from Suzanne Pronouns she and her hello Beans Queens. Thank you for being my daily gaslighting antidote. First, an aside. If I recall correctly, Alina Haba was the one who said back in March that veterans who lost their jobs may you weren't fit to be working. Delightful. My main reason for writing, though, is to thank you for your interview with Felipe Torres Medina a few weeks ago about his immigration experience. I thought I knew a little bit about the topic, but the interview and book gave me a lot of fresh insights. As part of Good Trouble, I bought multiple copies and put some in little free libraries in my greater area.

Alison Gill (37:38)

Yay.

Dana Goldberg (37:39)

Yep, he reviewed some of the legal, AKA medium to hard levels of difficulty ways to immigrate to the United States. As we have seen, that's not a guarantee in this regime. For description of one person's very hard experience, I recommend Solido by Javier Zamora about his trip from El Salvador at age 9 to join his parents in the United States.

Alison Gill (38:01)

Wow.

Dana Goldberg (38:02)

Yeah. For my pod pet tariff, I submit our unexpected kitten. Now a grown ass cat. This is Keely now, though, he's modeling a cozy book. He's not a cuddly kitty, but I love him anyway. If you look closely, you can see a rogue white whisker on the right side of his face. It recently fell out, but it gave Me several weeks of joy.

Alison Gill (38:24)

Awesome.

Dana Goldberg (38:25)

If you look at my face. I also have a rogue white whisker that you're welcome to marvel at if you name the rock. Have you named it? I usually call it Betty.

Alison Gill (38:34)

Okay, Betty White. I have Arthur.

Dana Goldberg (38:36)

Oh, nice.

Alison Gill (38:38)

After Bea Arthur.

Dana Goldberg (38:38)

That's hysterical. I'm Betty White.

Alison Gill (38:40)

We have the Golden Girls. We do.

Dana Goldberg (38:42)

We have two out of four of the Golden Girls. If anyone wants to join our little posse with their unexpected menopause whiskers, you're welcome to do so.

Alison Gill (38:50)

If you have a blanche, let us know.

Dana Goldberg (38:52)

Yeah, we'll take a Sophia.

Alison Gill (38:54)

You can join the group. Oh, what a great kitty. Thank you so much, Suzanne, for that entry. Next up, anonymous pronoun. She and her. Hello. I'm new to the podcast, but I find myself looking forward to it each day. I wanted to reach out to share that without the help of many government assistance programs, including housing and food assistance, daycare vouchers, healthcare assistance, and Pell Grants, I likely wouldn't be here to write to you. I was raised by a very young single mother who decided to put herself through the rest of high school and nursing school while raising me and my sibling. Due to the robust government assistance programs and Pell Grants for college that Maryland offered, I did not experience hunger or homelessness as a child living in poverty. My mother was able to graduate nursing school, purchase our very first house when I started middle school, and has worked tirelessly as a nurse for those in need because of the help we received. I am lucky to have had these programs for low income families to ensure I had the essentials when growing up, I was the first in my family to earn a bachelor's and a master's degree in education. There's no doubt that my government assistance programs that were available saved our lives. They're vital and it breaks my heart to see them being cut. I'm including a photo of my beloved rescue hound, Finn, short for Phineas. He's 13, we think, and he's one of the greatest loves of my life. I'm so lucky to have this sweet baby. Oh, man, what a great submission. And it's just. It breaks my heart that everyone has to work so hard and put in so many hours and like, like, break their backs just to get by. And right now they're sitting in Congress marking up a bill to cut these earned benefits to give themselves, those super wealthy, a massive tax break. Yeah, it just breaks my heart.

Dana Goldberg (40:47)

This is also the sweetest picture. My gosh.

C (40:49)

I know.

Dana Goldberg (40:50)

Yeah. All right, the next one's from Sam Pronoun she and her hey there Bean friends. I'm a new to the podcast. Within the last month I had been floundering trying to keep track of the news without losing my mind, and I'm so grateful to have found your mix of honesty and morality and the realistic optimism that comes from as solid belief that individual people will keep waking up and committing to do the best that they can. They can't take my most human impulses and I will embrace kindness and truth and I will protect the people in my reach. And that's not nothing. I want to recommend Carsey Blanton for some people who like their protest songs with swearing in addition to their news. Everything on the Red Album is great, but I have special love for rich people and ugly nasty commie bitch and the song My Good Friends makes me ugly cry about the importance of community. I also would love to tell you about the amazing work being done in my area. I live in the rural outskirts of Corvallis or Oregon. Please correct me if that that's wrong. Corvallis, Oregon and I work for Benton County's Health Department. Aside from the work people know about in disease prevention, food safety, mental health promotion, WIC or wic, excuse me, and our Community Health Centers, which really caters to the needs of underserved people, we're out here building programs to address homelessness, emergency preparation, climate change, social media disinformation, and dei. All these systemic issues need big systemic solutions. But my colleagues weren't ready to wait for sweeping solutions from big Power. We examined our locus of control and decided to pursue whatever micro wins we could, confident that they would aggregate into a better experience for the people in our community. And they have. One program has just finished housing 50 families who were unsheltered in our community. This new administration threatens to take away the funding we need, and it's threatening to hold our work hostage if we don't abandon the equity and accessibility services we've built into our bedrock. But I'm so proud of the work that we've done leading from the center, pushing forward with our commitment to serve every member of our community. Thanks for letting me brag for my POD pet tariff. Please accept this polydactyl screen climber. He's come to our farm via the cat distribution network. I'm sure he would assert he keeps us safe by escorting us as we do our chores. We haven't been able to make him understand that the safest place is to be not directly under our feet, but his dopey Little heart is in the right place. His name is Toes.

Alison Gill (43:25)

Yes, A polydactyl named Toes. Look at. See him on the screen? Look at those.

Dana Goldberg (43:29)

He's so cute.

Alison Gill (43:31)

Look at those thumbs. So some cats have thumbs like that. Some cats have, like, eight toes.

Dana Goldberg (43:37)

I had no idea.

Alison Gill (43:38)

You know, they're called polydactyls. The Hemingway cats are all polydactyl cats. Look at those giant feet. I love that he escorts you around and keeps you safe. What a great submission, Sam. Thank you so much. All right, from Tom, from Cincy. Pronouns he and him. Hey, AG, DG and JC When I think of protest songs, Billy Bragg is the man I think of. So the perfect protest song for today is the Billy Bragg cover of the Woody Guthrie song all you Fascists bound to Lose. I hope that fits the category your listeners were asking for, since I've already sent you my beautiful doggies and kitties. My pod pet tariff is a sculpin from Lake Erie and a basket of cicadas. Okay. There could be no better representation of Ohio unless you have some midges in there, Tom. I think you're right. Ha. I also included my oldest with Coco. Look it.

Dana Goldberg (44:30)

Oh, my goodness.

Alison Gill (44:32)

Look at that picture. The oldest with the baby kitty.

Dana Goldberg (44:36)

Sweet.

Alison Gill (44:38)

Okay.

Dana Goldberg (44:39)

No, isn't that fish?

Alison Gill (44:41)

Well, the fish are. Those are the little fish.

Dana Goldberg (44:43)

Oh, they catch. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Alison Gill (44:46)

Yeah.

Dana Goldberg (44:47)

Yep. Okay.

Alison Gill (44:48)

Bugs.

Dana Goldberg (44:49)

Yep. Bugs. They're so loud. Oh, my God. They're an orchestra of noise when they're all together.

Alison Gill (44:54)

Yeah, they are. They certainly are. We had them all over Phoenix. I remember learning about them from the movie Lucas, if you remember that film with Corey Haim and Winona Ryder, and I can't remember the girl's name, but she was in Goonies. Anyway. Yeah, go watch Lucas. So your good trouble is to do that thing with leaving comments before tomorrow and watch Lucas if you get a chance. I love it.

Dana Goldberg (45:19)

Definitely do it.

Alison Gill (45:21)

All right, everybody, thank you so much, and thank you for the good vibes. I'm so excited to host the no Kings rally on June 14th. It's going to be incredible. Huge, massive march of. You know, we start at Waterfront Park. And if you're a patron, keep your eyes on your inbox and look in your junk, because sometimes our stuff goes to your junk. Junk mail. But we'll keep you posted on the. The Patreon VIP meetup in person where we can have some lunch after we go out in March. All right, everybody, we'll be back in your ears tomorrow. Any final thoughts, my good friend?

Dana Goldberg (45:57)

Not today.

Alison Gill (45:58)

All right, we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health health and take care of your family. I've been AG and I've been DG and them's the Beans. The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg. Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarlane with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios. Music for the Daily Beans is written and performed by they Might Be Giants and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice. For more information please visit mswmedia.com msw media.