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June 25, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Department is calm as I see him. Department of Consistency and Self Evaluation, Department of let's check in on the Supreme Court now. You know, I've made the point over the years, really the last year and a half when a dominant narrative has been the Supreme Court is in the pocket of Donald Trump made the point that the vast majority, or at least the clear majority of opinions have not been 6:3. It's not been an ideologically captured court as the only way to see it. There are all sorts of different constituencies forming opinions. 9o is the most common opinion. True, all true. But in the last day or two a bunch of decisions have come down and they are almost all 6:3. And the 6:3 has in those cases of these decisions been along ideological lines. Let's go through them. Actually. First, talk about one big decision that wasn't Roundup can't be sued, Roundup can't be sued, the weed killer. And that was a 7:2 decision. The two was Gorsuch and Katanji Brown Jackson, which are kind of more common than you might think. Pairing. But that was decided not along ideological grounds. Doesn't mean it was decided correctly or incorrectly. Just thwarts the common easy narrative. Here are some cases that don't. Supreme Court allowed Trump to end temporary deportation protections for Haitians and Syrians. The court cleared the way for the Trump administration to block asylum seekers at the southern border. The justices struck down a Hawaii law that banned guns on private property open to the public, where the owner hadn't said, yes, you can carry firearms. So in Hawaii, unless the owner says firearms welcomed, you could assume that firearms were unwelcomed or not welcomed. And there was also an interesting one about this a couple of days ago about a Rasta guy whose hair was shaved in a Louisiana prison violation of religious freedom. And the Aton pates case, a 20 something, maybe 30 something year old case of a missing kid that they just put on trial, the man who was convicted and then it was overturned and then it was upheld. That was all in state court. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, this isn't our bailiwick, we can't rule on that. What's interesting about all these cases, and this isn't always the case, if I had to decide what should go forward in the world, what should our policy be, I'd have sided with the three every single time. But on the law, there are a couple of these decisions where I just have to say the six does seem to be correct, such as the president has great leeway to end temporary, temporary deportation protection. Also, the Rasta guy whose hair was shaved, that's a terrible thing to have done. And he was arrested on a five month drug sentence and they put him in a chair and he's waving an order saying, this is my religion, you can't do that. And they do it anyway. Even the Louisiana prisons have changed their policy. But the justices said, look, this is an application of essentially state law or the states complying with federal law, and it's just a misreading of the law. Even if you think what happened to this guy is an injustice. And I've done a lot of reporting on the Ayton Pace case and I really don't think that guy they have in jail did it. But this is clear it's not the federal court's position to interfere in this particular state court. So those are all areas, some areas where I think the justices decided the law correctly, even if justice in the small J sense wasn't done. But then there is the Hawaiian law and gun laws. I do not think that the court is reading the Second Amendment quite accurately. I do think it's totally fine for a private business owner to say, you cannot have guns in my private business. Now, I know there was a opt in versus opt out element, but it's important to allow private businesses to say that just as with other constitutional rights, you do not have the right to free speech in my business. I can ask you to leave the business if you are, quote, unquote, exercising your right to free speech by standing on a table in my cafe and loudly proclaiming your theories about Q and on or anything else. Like, for instance, if the Supreme Court is captured by ideology. But now we come to the border question, and this is, this is an odd one, and I don't think a particularly tough one. I understand a narrow reading of the law would lead the Supreme Court justices to say that the administration, the Trump administration, any administration, has great leeway in border enforcement and they can in fact interdict before the border so that asylum seekers never present themselves in the United States and therefore don't qual as asylum seekers. They're just people who are stopped from getting into the US where they're allowed to claim asylum. However, in practical terms, this takes away the right to asylum. If you stop everyone before they claim asylum, basically no one can claim asylum. And Sotomayor talked a lot about the St. Louis, which was the boat filled with Jewish refugees that was in fact turned back and sentenced or subjected most of these World War II era refugee seekers to death. And that's terrible. And it's quite bad that that wouldn't be corrected under the law. But that doesn't mean that a past injustice has to change just because we see things differently or with clarity now. There has to be an actual reason in the law to allow that to have changed. And I think that the discussions about what the definition of in the country has, that Samuel Alito undertook to talk about, well, what does it mean to be in the country? I think that these were parsing language to the point of torture. I think this was not understanding what a claim of asylum means and obviously giving too much leeway to thwart. If we have on the books that you can claim asylum, if we allow the federal government to never allow you to claim asylum, you don't actually have the right to claim asylum. But in general, most of these six, three rulings, I'm with the three, but if I was on the court, I think I'd have to decide with the six, which is one of the several reasons I'm not on the court. They don't put people on the court who say, I don't like it. I'm just following the law. I mean, that's how you get on the court. That's what you say you're going to do in your congressional hearings, but they put you on the court when you know what you're going to do. And by the way, if in our democracy you would like temporary deportation protections for Haitians, Syrians, I don't know, name your group other than Afrikaners, if you would like asylum seekers to be able to actually claim asylum. Well, it's democracy. You could vote for the people that will institute those actions. I understand the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, and so the Constitution lays out some rules that the will of the people can't affect. But these are actually two things that the will of the people can affect by putting a different guy or woman in the White House. On the show today we play what's the Baseline? And no, it's not Bootsy Collins and Parliament Funkadelic. It's about statistics. Maybe it should have been about Bootsy. More people would listen. But first, we have talked a lot about Israel in the last couple days. We haven't talked that much about Ukraine. The war in Ukraine, though, bloody and horrible and full of hundreds of thousands of people who count as casualties and deaths. It's going well for Ukraine. They've turned the tide. They've used drones and I wanted to check in and talk about what might actually convince or compel Vladimir Putin to stop the grinding war machine that he oversees. We are joined by Anna Varfalomieva, who has written about this in War on the Rocks. I will say terrible cold at the time of this interview was very, very much a scratchily voiced interview. If you would like me to withhold such interviews, I know that it bothers some people. So the choice is either not have the interview because I couldn't do it that day, the only day we could do it, or do the interview with scratchy voice. Tell me which you prefer and maybe five minutes into the interview, if you're like, I can't listen to this, then you could email us at the gist@mike pesca.com I am open to your critiques, complaints, suggestions and advice for the correct throat lozenge. Anna Var Folomeva up next, I've been working on creating a more peaceful nighttime routine for deeper sleep. 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Download the Kalshi app and use code gist to get $10 when you trade 10k a l s h I kalshi trade on anything 18 only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/regulators Let us now check in on the war in Ukraine and joining us is Anna Varfolam Eva, who's a strategic communications analyst specializing in Russian information with the Cognitive Security Institute. She wrote up a very well documented precis in War on the Rocks, which I tend to enjoy, and I welcome you to the gist.
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A
Thank you for having me.
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B
So I will say at some points during this conversation, I will play the role of devil's advocate, and that term perhaps has never been more apt. But let's start with your assessment, just so the listeners understand how bogged down the Russian military has been. A through line or a leitmotif in your piece was the 23 meters a day statistic. To what does that refer to?
- [17:27]
A
So basically, what we've been seeing lately since at least 2023, that Russia is advancing extremely slow at a pace of 23 meters a day, what you've mentioned, and they're doing so while also absorbing a crazy amount of casualties, something that hasn't been seen in a modern conflict in a while. And it's a very dramatic situation because what the Kremlin is trying to do at the moment, they're trying to maintain this victory narrative externally, but internally, they are preparing a completely different architecture, something that's going to work for them. If the war doesn't take the turn
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B
they're expecting, why would they continue to expect the war taking a positive turn for them?
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A
I think that's how they started. You know, Putin went into this conflict thinking that they're going to take Kyiv, and three days that's definitely didn't take place. And right now he is saying, you know, we are close to victory or we are going to make this happen.
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B
And just how give us a sense, besides the 23 meters a day, give us a sense of how bogged down the Russian war machine has been. Because I think we all remember, or most of us do, that in the beginning it was quite shocking how inept the Russians were. Or perhaps, you know, you can't discount the bravery and capacity of the Ukrainians. But then there was a time of very long time where the Russians did seem to be grinding down the Ukrainians. That time has passed. They haven't had great victories on the battlefield. But give us some other sense besides territory gained about just how bad it is for the Russians.
- [19:11]
A
I actually have an interesting number for you. Obviously, things have changed with Ukrainian innovation. Everything that's happening with drones right now. So according to some data, right now, 80% of Russian troops are getting wiped out before they reach the front line. This happens because of the use of drones. So most of the people they sent, they throw into this war, they die before they're able to actually see the enemy.
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B
Yeah. And this war, which has gone on longer than World War I, has netted the Russians less than 1% of Ukraine a year. And most of that was the original and early victories in the eastern part of the country.
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A
Right, Right, that's right. And World War I is telling, but I think what's actually flipped the switch in the mind of many Russians was when this war lasted longer than the Second World War. Because in the mind of many Russians, the Second World War is the war. You know, it's the war of all wars. That's where they fought the Nazis, the evil of all evils. And once this war in particular lasted longer, it. It obviously flipped the switch. This victory was promised to them. They were told that they're going to repeat the glory days, achieve something that their great grandfathers did, and this never happened.
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B
So how much leeway does Putin have? Russians respond to the war call? Plus, they are in the dark in terms of media now. They know who's coming back and who's not coming back from the front. And they could see their sons and brothers and countrymen, especially in the areas outside of Moscow where a lot of the draft takes place. They could see them wounded or in coffins. But that is the question, you know, to the Russians will respond to a patriotic call that they have no way of disbelieving. But how long can it last? And how long can Putin think. Think it will last?
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A
Well, I think Putin thinks that it's going to last as long as it's needed, and that's the whole premise of my article. But the whole agreement, or informal agreement with the Russian public has been that our life continues as normal. We are not bothered by your mobilization or the war. To a great extent, everything is peaceful and continues as before domestically, and then you can do what you want, you know, with the military. Now this is no longer the case because we see that Ukrainian drones are, you know, hitting towns far away from the front lines. So for a regular Russian, this war is becoming more and more real by the day.
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B
Right. So the drones do strike inside of Russia internally, sometimes far inside of Russia, and that's noticeable. But in terms of the economic catastrophe that I interviewed some experts, some Yale School of Management experts who talked about sanctions, who talked about how this war will grind Putin down. That actually hasn't happened, has it?
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A
I believe it has. And I can put it in some real terms for you, because, for example, right now, an average Russian spends about 40% of their income on food just to survive. And the last time we saw something like this was in the 90s. And, you know, the 90s is seen as a period of utter humiliation for the nation. Things were very complicated at the time. Now you have all these people who are fighting in Ukraine and what do they get when they come back? There's no real victory to show for it. And when they return home, their families are struggling, there are no jobs, they don't know how to feed their families. And it's not clear what's going to happen in the future.
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B
And that's because of the war or because of international trends in food prices.
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A
I think it's, you know, compounding effect. Obviously, sanctions played a role and the war itself. Russia spends an enormous amount of its budget on this war. So a lot of money is going towards it. So largely it's the regions that are trying to pay for it, and they are running out of money. What we are seeing right now is that they can't pay teachers, they can't pay firefighters. That's something we haven't seen in a really long time, sometimes probably since the 90s.
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B
So there is a bad situation for Russia. They're experiencing casualties. They're not gaining ground. And we're here saying, something's going to change in Russia. Now, I want to ask you, if the year was early 2025, and I gave you a crystal ball and you could see the exact situation now in summer of 26, would you have said by now there would have been a change?
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A
Maybe not. I think what we are trying to do right now is assess the current moment. And this is obviously not the end state because things change, the environment changes. So what we know now helps us understand that something may have shifted before earlier. Right. But it's not a static situation.
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B
So you gave the statistic about casualties, which is wounded and dead, and it's 1.3 million. Now, Casualties is a frequently misunderstood number because people in general usage think of it as dead, but it is wounded and dead. In a military context, it's important to count casualties because when a soldier is wounded, they're taken off the battlefield. However, let's just concentrate on the dead. According to the Russian media outlets, which are not operating freely in Russia, Medusa and media Zona, Russia now has 350,000 dead fighters, Ukraine, and maybe has 150,000 who were lost in the war. So on the one hand, you could say, well, that's a terrible. Well, of course, terrible toll. But as a ratio, the Russians are having the worst of it. But when you take into account that the Russian population is 140 million and Ukraine is 40 million. The ratio of the dead is actually favorable. I guess if you're being again a devil's advocate to the ratio of the population. So is that going to have the biggest impact on the Russian psyche?
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A
It, it might. Unfortunately. Russian people are used to sacrifices when it comes to this and they tolerate a lot, which is its own tragedy. I think when, when, if we want to discuss the populations. Right. And the number of casualties, that's precisely the thing that forced Ukraine to innovate. Right. Because they don't have the infinite number of people. So they're betting on drones now, betting on technology. And this really is something that allows them to come out on top. Now if we look at Russia, there might be more people who they could mobilize, but they are not doing that. And this is one of those telling things as well, because while they could have carried the second wave of this mobilization, they choose internal stability over this action. That could have changed something on the front. Although to be fair, if you are to trust some Russian military bloggers who describe themselves as patriots, you know, who want this war to take place, they just don't like how it's carried out. They say that the number of people is not going to make any difference. You are just going to be throwing those people, you know, sacrificing them. They're going to be taken out by drones right away.
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B
So you do talk about some of the Russian military bloggers, the even more pro war faction of the Russian intelligentsia. And there is a phrase that you use, I don't dare pronounce it in Russian. Circular lying. Tell me about what that phrase is in Russian and what it means.
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A
It's basically saying that the reporting culture has replaced actual action on the field. Right. Everybody is lying about everything and keep repeating these lies.
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B
Yeah. And again, this is not the critique from the anti war factions, this is people from the pro war faction.
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A
That's right. And that's what makes it so significant. They are the one criticizing, as I said, they are not the ones who don't want this war to happen. They think that this war has to, to take place, that it's protecting Russia essentially. They're just not happy with the methods and they're the ones that are, they're poking their finger saying, you know, this could have been done differently. We are losing because we are not optimizing, because we are not doing our best and something has to change.
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B
Yeah. You also write about material incentives are structured to bind veterans to the state. What do you mean by that?
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A
Well, right now the government is trying to. Well, as I said, they don't try to mobilize more people, but they try to incentivize more people to sign contracts with the military and they are giving concessions to them. For example, in one of the latest moves, Putin signed a decree that forgave loans to those people who are going to sign contracts with the military after May. So it goes back to the question of what's going to happen in Russia once the war is over. So these veterans come back, the ones who fought for the country, spilled blood, who are not victorious, who cannot show anything for all the action that they have taken. So they need to see that all their sacrifices were not in vain. And that's where the government tries to show them that they matter, that something can be done.
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B
So they give them low interest loans. There are all these sort of incentives. But how might that conspire to hurt the war effort?
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A
I, I don't think it, it can hurt the war effort. Well, there is one way it can, because what we are seeing right now, it's not that the most capable people are enrolling. Right. Or signing contracts. It's the people who really need the money for one reason.
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B
Most desperate people. Right.
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A
Yeah.
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B
There's just a step up from the Prigozian method of clearing the jails to get people to, to fight for the Wagner group.
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A
That's right, yeah.
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B
And even though Prigozhin died suddenly in a plane accident, someone shot him down. What was the overall message of the mutiny that he oversaw where some of his troops marched on Putin? Did that show Putin to be weaker than was thought? Or did the fact that he met his end in the way he did show that Putin still has a strong hand?
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A
Well, I think the whole mutiny took place precisely because this Krugavo Vrainjo kept happening. Right. It's exposed how vulnerable this system is and what can happen if you have a well connected man who is not happy with how things are going. Right. He just needs an app, a telegram, right. His connections, and he can organize tanks and send them to Moscow. And in all honesty, seeing everything that's going on right now and reading these military bloggers, I wonder what would happen if there was still a person like Prigozhin and what he would do. Because in my opinion, we would see another column heading towards the Kremlin.
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B
You know, it strikes me that Putin's trap and Putin's the arrow in his quiver is the same thing, which is the successful manipulation of public opinion. So in both the war in Iran and in Russia's, the US War in Iran and Russia's war in Ukraine, there were assumptions that it would be quick. There were stated objectives. Like with Ukraine, it was denazification, which is, you know, just a phrase. With Iran, there's the equivalent rising up and some sort of democratization. And then those objectives were quickly abandoned and basically the war continued. Because we're going to do next week what we did last week. But look at the US War in Iran. I mean, Donald Trump is not one to bow to public pressure and he's a stubborn man. But the United States still is able to register the opinion of a more or less informed public, and Russia is not able to do that. Now, does that help Putin? Well, you could argue with if Russia had the sort of population that America did, given its information and its ability to have elections, no, the war would be over. So Putin might say, well, that's what allows us to fight. But then we could look at it in retrospect and say, how did this disaster go on so long? It's the exact same thing that allows him to fight.
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A
I think it's a good observation. I think definitely the Russian public is, is isolated in, in the way we are not here in the United States. Unfortunately, what we are seeing is that Russia is turning into a version of North Korea. I would just put it this way. It was extremely tight environment internally. And what happens and how propaganda works over time, you know, it's able to corrupt opinions of even those people who were against the war in the beginning, because that tends to accumulate. So definitely, if the circumstances were different, the outcome would have been different.
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B
Yeah. So what you do is you give a very thorough assessment of the pressures on the Russian state. But let's for a second pivot to the adversary, which wasn't what you were trying to do in the article, I'll acknowledge. But what's your assessment of what the pressures are on them and how might this war be affected if they succumb to their pressures before Russia and Putin does?
- [33:11]
A
Well, Ukraine has a very unique challenge. I know they're handling a lot of things domestically, some institutional challenges.
- [33:20]
B
And for ye Pesca plus subscribers, we have more with Anna. And you could access all of that@subscribe.mikepesca.com and get the show ad free that subscribe.mikepesca.combus segments. An ad free tier. An ad free and bonus segment tier that we call Pesca Plus. I'll say it again, subscribe.mikepesca.com thank you. If you're a business owner, you know that missed calls and slow follow ups are silent killers. That's how businesses leave money on the table without ever realizing it. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The business communication system. Built so you never miss call. Quo works wherever you are, right from your phone or computer. Keep your existing number, add teammates in minutes, sync your CRM and let the call routing handle itself as you scale. It's easy. Calls, texts, voicemails, transcripts and contact details all in one clean view so your team always has the full picture and can show up for every customer conversation, ensuring a seamless and more personalized experience. Money is online. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com gist that's quo.com/gist. And now the spiel what's the baseline? That's what I find myself asking myself because it's an important question to ask. It's some would say a vital question in evaluating claims about phenomena that might be considered unusual or alarming. Specifically statistical phenomena. So a few months ago, Candace Owens began talking about a new conspiracy. This was about the number of Israeli registered cell phones present at the Charlie Kirk assassination site. Yes, I know, Kansas Owens, Wyvern quoter. Well, I've seen this tidbit that I think she invented or started spreading insights that are even more respectable if it can be imagined, than Candace Owens. But here is Owens giving voice to that particular point. Not only can I confirm this, but I can publicly challenge the very Zionist occupied Trump administration who is aware of this to deny it, to come out and say no, that's not true. There were for whatever reason Reason 12 Israeli cell phones on the ground at Utah Valley University. Okay, but what's the baseline? How many in a crowd of thousands of people might have a cell phone that pings as having some sort of Israeli connection? I don't even know what that means. I'm sure that Candace Owens doesn't know what it means that it might not even be true. What if the baseline is there normally be about five people. What if it's 15? Without knowing the baseline, you can't know what to make of the so called phenomenon. I was reading a piece in the New Yorker about Linda McMahon. What she had done to suppress discrimination complaints at the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The thesis is that she had been uniquely hostile to valid complaints. But I kept asking what's the baseline before McMahon, what percentage of complaints were dismissed? Luckily there was this sentence. 90% of the 7,000 cases that the OCR, which is the Office of Civil Rights, resolved during McMahon's tenure between March and September were dismissed. Wow, that sounds bad. But this is the next clause. An increase from an average of 70 or 80% under Biden. So yeah, a bit more were dismissed. But the baseline indicates something is broken in how the Department of Education runs its Office of Civil Rights Department division. Or maybe an 80% dismissal rate because they weren't filed correctly or because people don't understand what qualifies as a complaint to be looked into. Maybe that is optimal. I would tend to think not. There could be a good article on what the hell's going on with the Office of I sound like Trump now. What the hell is going on? But what's going on about that Office of Education's Office of Civil Rights complaint? Why was it said to be working when there were 80% dismissal rates? I actually looked into it. I won't bore you, but a lot of it had to do with mass filings by certain groups. And a lot of those filings were about disabilities and web access, how computers looked. And then Trump in 2018, his first term, issued a ruling banning those mass filings. But you know, Biden didn't change it. There was something about those mass filings that was actually weighing upon and just being a bummer to all the people who worked in the Office of Civil Rights. This brings me to France and the heat wave. This water body on the outskirts of Lyon serves as a makeshift beach as temperatures continue to soar. It's here where a 21 year old promising footballer was rescued but left in a brain dead condition. Residents have been flocking here to cool off even though they're prohibited from swimming, with many unsurprised at the the risk of drowning Times headline To escape record heat, the French are taking to water. Both have been deadly. Both the French and water now both taking to water and escaping the heat wave. So 40 people drowned in France between June 18th and 23rd, the government said. The Prime Minister called it a tragic scourge. 40 deaths, tragic confirmed. Unlike Israeli cell phones bought. What's the baseline? France loses roughly a thousand people to drowning every year. Half of those deaths, about 500 occurred during summer. All right, 500 divided by 13 weeks of summer is 38 deaths. So 40 deaths over those six days would be pretty much in line. And by the way, the 500 deaths during summer, that includes all those non heat Wave days. Historically, more people swim during heat waves. Last summer there was a three week window that coincided with a heat wave and drowning incidents spiked 135%. And deaths during that heat wave went up 172%. The drowning tally presented without the heat wave sounds like a unique epidemic. But the hotter it is, the more people swim. The more people swim, the more they drown, of course, but not so disproportionately so. And they quote the France sports minister as saying too many people were trying to cool off in rivers and canals without necessarily taking the risks into account. But there's no evidence that that happens more during a heat wave than usual. Just more people swim. And when they swim, I guess a bunch of them don't take the risks into account. Then I read an article also in the New York Times, about Pete Hegseth and military promotions. The piece was very good. I came away convinced that Hegseth is on a nasty snipe hunt against anyone who said anything positive about dei, which was the policy of the military. So all these one or two star general or admirals aren't getting promotions they deserve for doing the things they should have done. But the statistics there begged the question, demanded the question. What's the baseline? They said that half of the people up for promotion to hire star service as a general or an admiral, the 08 to 09 designation, they were women or minorities. Oh, so wow. Half of them were women. And what's the baseline? What is the pool that they're drawing from? I of course had to do the research by myself, for myself, and I found that in this case, the baseline was very much in line with the narrative of the story. They're drawing from a pool where 75% of the applicants are white or the available candidates are white men. And if half of them being dismissed are women and minorities, that's disproportionate. So on the narrative, I was convinced that their main character, this one guy who seems to be an American hero and did what he was asked and cleaned up Hawaii, but then also said something favorable about empathy and inclusivity. This guy got a very, very raw deal from Hegseth. The Hegseth disqualification was unjustified to this one black admiral. But a little more context, a little more curiosity, and not assuming that a 50% figure says all it needs to say. It brings me around to that conclusion even more powerfully. That is the story. Give me the baseline. It allows me to see these things and allows you to see these things more clearly. That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist. Jeff Craig produces How To. Kathleen Sykes is out with along with Me, her collaborator. A new Gist list. Go to Mike pesca.substack.com Ben as their books the Gist and Michelle Pesca, COO of Peach Fish Productions. And thanks for listening.