Transcript
Alison Gill (0:00)
MSW Media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Wednesday, June 25, 2025. Today, former DOJ lawyer Araz Reveni issues a bombshell whistleblower account of Emil Bovey's intentional defiance of court orders on the eve of his judicial confirmation hearing. US Intelligence assessments indicate that Iran's nuclear sites were not destroyed and they can be back up and running in just a few months. Florida is paving over the Everglades to build its own concentration camp. A federal judge has blocked Trump's termination of University of California research grants. The Senate parliamentarian nixes the public lands sell off in the billionaire bailout bill. Four tech executives are sworn in as lieutenant colonels in the Army. Senator Lisa Murkowski signals she may turn independent and caucus with the Democrats and House Dems choose youth over seniority in the House oversight ranking member election. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Hey everybody, Happy Wednesday. There's a new episode of Clean up on aisle 45 out. You can check that out wherever you get your podcasts. Also, Dana's out today. She'll be back tomorrow. She's out raising money for amazing communities. So let's support her in that later in the show. Today we're taking a wee break from politics, just for a minute, but not really so I can interview one of my sheroes, Martha Barnett, from Away with Words. She has a new book out called Friends with Words. I'm super fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with her and we're going to discuss the evolution of pronouns, the reclamation of the wor queer, and her favorite old timey word that she thinks should make a comeback. All right now, Holy y' all, this whistleblower report from Arez Riveni, former DOJ lawyer, is astounding. Now, I've been watching these oligarchs for eight years now and I've never seen anything this subversive and up. I haven't seen this like, I haven't seen anything like this in a minute. And let me be clear, when I say that I mean subversive to the judiciary and the Department of Justice, not subversive to our rights or our due process, like disappearing people to foreign gulags or yanking bodily autonomy. I don't want to compare things like that, but this is probably the single biggest attack on the judiciary since the Supreme Court crowned Trump king. So we're going to release an audio version of the entire letter in the unjustified podcast feed for all those who'd rather listen to then read it. So check that out wherever you get your podcast, it's called Unjustified. But basically back on March 14, when lawyers for five plaintiffs about to be disappeared to El Salvador filed a lawsuit and Judge Boasberg ordered the planes to be turned around, Emil Bovey saw that order coming and instructed lawyers including Drew Ensign and the now fired Arez Riveni to tell the court to fuck off. His words, by the way. Now, the letter also shows that Drew Ensign knew that the government was sending planes in defiance of a potential court order on March 15th and 16th, but lied to Judge Boasberg and said he didn't have any knowledge of whether the planes were going to take off or when, when. In fact, he knew exactly when they were taking off and that he'd been told to cover it up. Of course, we speculated that that was the case, Andy McCabe and I. But to see it in writing from a credible career professional at the Department of, with emails and texts to back it all up is really extraordinary. So hats off to Arez Raveni for his bravery and his moral courage to spill the tea again. Check out the Unjustified podcast for the audio version of the letter and for the in depth discussion that Annie McCabe and I'll have about this on this Sunday's episode. But if things go according to plan, that first episode of the audio version, I'm assuming it's going to take more than one episode. But if not, it's out now in the Unjustified feed for free. All right. In any other timeline, this would be scandalous. An administration telling the court to fuck off and then nominating that guy to become a third circuit judge. My guess is that Trump really wants this guy Emil Bovey to replace, like Sam Alito. We know Martha has been waiting for him to retire so she can play her racist flag games without scrutiny. I'm going to go out on a limb and say every Democrat will vote no on this guy's nomination, on Emil Bovet's nomination. But I'm sure the Republicans will cave because they are spineless shitheads. All right, it is time for the news. Let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, first up from the New York Times, and we said this last week, we said this would happen. A preliminary classified U.S. intelligence report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country's nuclear program by only a couple months. A few months. And that's A to officials familiar with the findings. The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings. That's what the officials said the early findings concluded. The report also said that much of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations. Some Israeli officials said they also believed that the Iranian government had maintained small, covert enrichment facilities so it can continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities. Current and former military officials had cautioned before the strike that any effort to destroy the Fordo facility, which is buried more than 250ft under a mountain, would probably require waves of airstrikes with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots. And we talked about that because our friend Hugo Lowell reported it seven days ago in the Guardian. Trump knew this wouldn't destroy the sites. The administration knew. And NBC reports that Trump is not happy that Israel fired more rockets at Iran after his ceasefire, adding that he is also displeased with Iran. He said today that he believed both sides violated his ceasefire, adding on social media that the truce remains in effect. Sign what they signed at Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America and not happy is an understatement. By the way, he actually said that he didn't know what the he said these countries don't know what the fuck they're doing. Said that on live on the air he needs a nap. He didn't consult anybody about his ceasefire. He just announced it, I guess, and hoped everybody would go along with it. And then he lied and said both countries, both countries called me with tears in their eyes, begging for peace. What a mess. What. What a mess. Next up from Wired When I read a tweet about four noted Silicon Valley executives being inducted into a special detachment of the United States Army Reserve, including Meta CTO Andrew Boz Bosworth, I questioned its veracity. It's very hard to discern truth from satire in 2025, in part because of social media sites owned by Bosworth's company. But indeed it was true. According to an official press release, they're in the army now, specifically Detachment 201, the Executive Innovation Corps. Boz is now Lt. Col. Bosworth. The other newly commissioned officers included Kevin Weil, OpenAI's head of product Bob McGrew, and former OpenAI head of research, now advertising Mira Murati's company, Thinking Machines Lab, and Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir. These middle aged techs were sworn into their posts wearing camo fatigues as if they just wandered off some army base in Kandahar to join a corps that is named after an HTTP status code. Colonel David Butler, communications advisor to the Army Chief of Staff, told me their dress uniforms weren't ready yet. Detachment 201 wrote the army in a press release, is part of a military wide transformation initiative that aims to make the force leaner, smarter and more lethal. Wired goes on to say, don't blame Donald Trump for this. This program has been in the works for over a year, the brainchild of Brent Parmiter, the Pentagon's first chief talent management officer. Parmetter, a former combat soldier who headed veteran support at Walmart before joining the Department of defense in 2023, had been pondering how to bring experienced technologists and into service to update an insufficiently tech savvy militia when he met Sancar at a conference early last year. The idea, he says, was to create an Oppenheimer like situation where senior executives could serve right away while keeping their current jobs. And just a quick note here, when has good idea and Oppenheimer been used in the same sentence in the last 50 years? Now the four new officers are full members of the Army Reserve. Unlike other reservists, however, they will not be required to undergo basic training, though they will undergo less immersive fitness and shooting training after their induction. They will also have the flexibility to spend some of the approximately 120 annual hours working remotely, a perk not offered to other reservists or really anybody in the federal government right now that isn't a Trump appointee. This is just an insult to people in the army who've served their whole lives trying to make rank. These clowns come in, you know what? You know what? Make them go to boot camp and put that shit on pay per view. I would watch the shit out of that. Now the army also says these men will not be sent to battle, so they will not be risking their lives in potential theaters of war in Iran, Greenland or downtown Los Angeles, California. Their mission is to use their undeniable expertise to school their colleagues and superiors in the military on how to utilize cutting edge technologies for efficiency and deadly force, or how to use our private data stolen by Doge in a militarized way. Fantastic. So experienced trans troops out these fucks in. Got it? It's just insulting. All right, next up from the Times, Florida is building a detention facility for migrants nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. And that is the only time you will hear me say those words because I really try not to repeat Republicans dumb names for shit. They're turning an airfield in the Everglades into the newest and scariest sounding holding center designed to help the Trump administration carry out its immigration crackdown. The remote facility, composed of large tents and other planned facilities, will cost the state about $450 million a year to run. That's your taxpayer dollars, Florida. But Florida can request some reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That's According to Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. Great. So your FEMA dollars that should be spent on disaster relief are going to go to house immigrants in a gulag in Florida. Florida's attorney General James Uthmeyer, who by the way, was just held in contempt of court. A Trump ally who has pushed to build center in the Everglades has said the state will not need to invest much in security because the area is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started Monday morning. All right, let's get to some better news, please. This is from the Times. House Democrats on Tuesday chose Representative Robert Garcia of California to lead their party on the Oversight committee, elevating a less experienced member over an older and more seasoned one to a key post as younger Democrats seek more influence influence over the party's future. Yay. Mr. Garcia, 47, four years younger than me, second term lawmaker, emerged from a field that had initially included three other contenders in an internal contest for a position that will make him among Democrats most visible foils to Republicans and the Trump administration. His selection suggested a rebuke to the seniority system that Democrats have traditionally used when awarding powerful positions in Congress. The secret ballot vote was 150 to 63, according to members. I wanted Jasmine Crockett, but she withdrew her candidacy along with the other two before the vote. So she gracefully she said, I gracefully withdraw. Next up from Courthouse News, A federal judge in California Monday said that the University of California researchers are likely to succeed on their claims that the Trump administration's mass termination of research grants involving certain blacklisted topics like diversity and equity are unconstitutional and antithetical to Congress's directives. And U.S. district Judge Rita Lynn granted a preliminary injunction to a group of researchers whose grants were terminated following executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion research. The judge also provisionally certified two classes of UC researchers, one consisting of researchers who lost their grants due to DEI and one whose grants were terminated without any specific explanation. Two putative classes. The plaintiffs are six UC researchers who sued after losing their multi year grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation. Their projects had been addressing issues including wildfire, smoke, related health risks in marginalized communities, landfill methane emissions and racial equity in STEM education. So she this judge said that money has to go to them for their research. Good news also from Politico. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of Trump's most vocal critics in the Senate Republican caucus, said in a podcast on Monday that there are certain situations in which she'd consider becoming an independent and caucusing with the Democrats, quote, that may be that possibility. That's what she told Galen Druke in an interview excerpt of his GD Politics podcast scheduled to post in full on Tuesday, which is yesterday. If you're listening to this Wednesday, Druke asked Murkowski how she'd respond If Democrats won three seats, netted three seats in the 2026 midterm election, quote, and they say we're going to let you pass bills that benefit Alaskans if you caucus with us. She said you've started off with the right hook. Here is if this would help Alaskans. That's what she told Duke. Interesting. I'm sure there are tons of Democratic agenda items that would help Alaskans. All right, I got one more story for you. This one comes from NBC Montana. The Senate parliamentarian stripped in addition to the billionaire bailout bill that would sell off public lands, the original plan was to have 250 million acres of public land that could be sold off, land owned by the U.S. forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. It all would have been up for grabs as an addition to this mega bill. But on Monday, the Senate parliamentarian pointed to several inclusions to this bill that would violate the Byrd rule, the rule that prohibits extraneous insertions into budget reconciliation bills, ones that don't have to do with the budget. Those listed as irrelevant included removing the Secretary of the Interior's discretion to reduce fees for solar and wind projects, a provision that deems offshore oil and gas projects is automatically compliant with the National Environment Policy act and the mandatory public land sales. Quote, Democrats continue to show up and fight every position of this bill. What the quote here says, big, beautiful betrayal of a bill because this bill is an attack on workers and families everywhere. That's ranking member Jeff Merkley. In a press release, he went on to say Democrats will not stand idly by while Republicans attempt to circumvent the rules of reconciliation in order to sell off public lands to fund tax breaks for billionaires. We will make sure that the Byrd rule is followed and every review change Republicans attempt to make is reviewed by us. Excellent. Well said. All right, everybody, your good trouble today is going to be in the good news. So we're going to wait for that because right now is my interview with Martha Barnett. It's a little political, it's a little about language. I think you'll enjoy it. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages. We'll be right back. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Because I work online and I engage with a wide audience, I've always paid close attention to how much personal information of mine is floating around on the Internet. Visibility should not come at the cost of privacy. And that's why I signed up for Deleteme. It helps me protect my identity while keeping my professional life secure. Deleteme makes privacy protection easy. When you sign up, you tell them what information you want to remove, like your addresses and emails and phone numbers, and the team takes care of the hard part for you. 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She is the longtime journalist, dynamic public speaker and co host of the popular radio show and podcast Away With Words. She has a new book out called Friends with Words Adventures in Language Land. Please welcome Martha Barnett. Hey, Martha.
