2456 - Israel Breaks Ceasefire, Trump's Illicit Deportations ft. Austin Kocher

Summary

Summary of "The Majority Report with Sam Seder" – Episode 2456: "Israel Breaks Ceasefire, Trump's Illicit Deportations ft. Austin Kocher"

Release Date: March 18, 2025
Host: Sam Seder
Guest: Austin Kocher, Political Legal Geographer, Assistant Research Professor at Syracuse University
Duration: Approximately 75 minutes

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1. Israel-Gaza Ceasefire Breakdown

Timestamp: [07:10] - [15:54]

The episode kicks off with a critical update on the Israel-Gaza conflict. Sam Seder and co-host Emma Vigland discuss the recent Israeli military actions in Gaza, highlighting the violation of a temporary ceasefire. Israel's decision to resume bombings has resulted in significant casualties, with at least 400 reported deaths, including a disproportionate number of women and children.

Key Points:

• Ceasefire Violation: Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza, breaking the temporary ceasefire agreement, ostensibly to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages. However, Sam Seder argues that the primary motivation is political, aiming to reintegrate right-wing elements into Israel's government.

• Humanitarian Crisis: Emma Vigland points out the severe humanitarian implications, noting that Gaza has been under blockade since March 2nd, exacerbating food and medical shortages. Dr. Faroz Sidwa, a medical professional in Gaza, describes the dire conditions, emphasizing the overwhelming number of casualties and the collapse of essential services.

• International Response: White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is cited, acknowledging the carnage but deflecting responsibility by blaming Hamas and international factors. The discussion underscores the lack of accountability and the perpetuation of violence against civilians.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Faroz Sidwa [11:34]: "It was just utter carnage. Mostly children. The other half are mostly women and occasionally there's a man... it's just utter carnage."

2. Trump Administration’s Illicit Deportations and Legal Maneuvers

Timestamp: [27:21] - [72:07]

The conversation shifts to domestic issues, focusing on the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies. Austin Kocher provides an in-depth analysis of the misuse of the Alien Enemies Act and the controversial deportation of individuals to third countries like El Salvador.

Key Points:

• Deportations to El Salvador: The administration is transferring individuals, including asylum seekers, to El Salvador—a country under the authoritarian leadership of President Nayib Bukele. These deportations often bypass due process, with many deportees having no criminal affiliations.

• Legal Challenges: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to halt these deportations and provide a full accounting. Despite court orders, the administration continues its deportation flights, invoking the Alien Enemies Act in a manner deemed illegitimate by legal experts.

• Use of Alien Enemies Act: The Trump administration's invocation of this rarely used law—previously only applied during declared wars—raises concerns about executive overreach and the erosion of civil liberties.

Notable Quotes:

Austin Kocher [15:54]: "The Trump administration is trying to get around the courts... It's very concerning."

Thomas Homan [32:47]: "Once Trump gets individuals out of the United States and into another country, it's just very, very difficult for the US Courts and the US Legal system to get them back."

• Human Impact: Specific cases illustrate the arbitrary nature of these deportations, such as a tattoo artist seeking asylum and a renowned doctor being expelled, leading to personal and professional devastation.

• Complicity of El Salvador: Bukele's administration has established a maximum security facility designed to detain immigrants without due process, effectively acting as a private prison for the Trump administration. This partnership facilitates the continued deportation efforts.

Notable Quote:

Emma Vigland [28:37]: "There's been multiple stories now about these Venezuelans that indicate at least some of them are not any members of gangs... they're being deported to a third country."

3. Interview with Austin Kocher: Insights on Immigration Enforcement

Timestamp: [27:23] - [69:35]

Austin Kocher delves deeper into the mechanics and implications of the current deportation strategies. His expertise sheds light on the systemic issues and the broader impact on immigrant communities.

Key Points:

• Lack of Evidence: Many deported individuals lack any criminal background, with deportations often based on flimsy evidence or misclassification of minor infractions as criminal offenses.

• El Salvador as a Penal Colony: Bukele's El Salvador has transformed into a de facto penal colony, detaining up to 40,000 individuals in harsh conditions. The financial arrangements between the U.S. and El Salvador facilitate this arrangement, extending Trump’s policies beyond U.S. borders.

• Legal Precedents and Risks: The use of the Alien Enemies Act without clear legal justification poses significant constitutional risks. Kocher emphasizes that this sets a dangerous precedent for executive power and the rights of immigrants.

• Public and Institutional Pushback: Organizations like the ACLU and Democracy Forward are actively challenging these policies through lawsuits, seeking injunctions to prevent further deportations. Public awareness and legal resistance are crucial in mitigating these authoritarian practices.

Notable Quote:

Austin Kocher [39:59]: "The Trump administration is not really interested in respecting civil rights and due process. But we have seen evidence that's quite useful when people do understand what their rights are."

4. Strategies for Immigrants and Community Response

Timestamp: [63:10] - [72:07]

The discussion transitions to practical advice and community strategies to resist and navigate the aggressive deportation tactics.

Key Points:

• Legal Protections: Immigrants are advised to understand and assert their legal rights, such as not opening doors to ICE without a warrant, seeking legal representation, and avoiding unnecessary interactions with law enforcement.

• Sanctuary Cities: Local governments and communities play a pivotal role in providing refuge and support to immigrants, creating safe spaces that resist federal deportation efforts.

• Community Awareness: Increasing awareness about the deportation policies and the legal avenues available for protection can empower immigrants and prevent arbitrary raids and deportations.

Notable Quote:

Thomas Homan [63:58]: "ICE could release the data to the public... there's no way for us to contact everyone... So the judge is saying, you're saying this, put it on paper."

5. Concluding Remarks and Call to Action

Timestamp: [73:04] - [75:29]

As the episode wraps up, the hosts engage in light-hearted interactions and encourage listeners to become members and support the show. They emphasize the importance of staying informed and active in resisting unjust policies.

Final Thoughts:

• Urgency of Action: The administration's strategies reflect a broader trend towards authoritarianism, requiring immediate and sustained resistance from communities and legal institutions.

• Long-term Implications: The normalization of such deportation practices threatens the very foundations of justice and human rights in the United States, necessitating vigilant opposition and advocacy.

Closing Quote:

Sam Seder [75:23]: "Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye."

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Key Takeaways:

• Humanitarian Crisis: The resurgence of violence in Gaza underlines the urgent need for international intervention and accountability.

• Authoritarian Deportation Policies: The Trump administration's misuse of the Alien Enemies Act and partnership with El Salvador's regime exemplify a dangerous erosion of legal and human rights protections.

• Community and Legal Resistance: Empowering immigrant communities through legal support and fostering sanctuary cities are vital strategies in combating these oppressive measures.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Dr. Faroz Sidwa [11:34]: "Utter carnage. Mostly children... it's just utter carnage."

• Emma Vigland [28:37]: "Some of them are asylum seekers who were themselves fleeing persecution... it's just a wild development."

• Austin Kocher [39:59]: "The Trump administration is not really interested in respecting civil rights and due process."

• Thomas Homan [63:58]: "ICE could release the data to the public... you need to know."

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This episode offers a comprehensive analysis of both international and domestic crises, emphasizing the interconnectedness of global conflicts and national policies. Through expert insights and critical discussions, "The Majority Report" underscores the imperative for informed activism and legal safeguards in the face of escalating authoritarianism.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigland]

Whoa. Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigland]

Excuse me. It is Tuesday.

[Sam Cedar]

It is Tuesday.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh God.

[Sam Cedar]

March 18, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps on the industrial ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Austin Kocher, political legal geographer studying immigration enforcement, assistant research professor at Syracuse University, author of the Substack at Austin Kocher. Also on the program today, Israel breaks the ceasefire, kills at least 400 in bombing in Gaza and appears to be ready to launch another ground invasion. Meanwhile, stateside Judge Boasberg who attempted to stop the flight the eviction planes orders the DOJ for full accounting by noon today and Trump in response calls for his impeachment. Meanwhile, federal judge Alice from San Francisco orders the Trump administration to not only rehire probationary workers but but not to put them then immediately on paid leave. Democrats on the Judiciary and oversight committees file a FOIA to determine the legality of Doge. And Doge meanwhile literally breaks into the US Institute of Peace which contends it's not a, it's not part of the executive, it's just a nonprofit that receives funding from the government. Trump's National Labor Relations Board general counsel pick is literally a union busting lawyer for Amazon, Cornell U. Grad students and professor sue the Trump administration over targeting Palestinian descent. Thousands of FDA employees including remote workers from pre Covid forced back into dilapidated offices yesterday In Texas, a midwife, first person arrested on abortion charges. And a new memo details just how the Trump administration is going to sabotage the Social Security administration. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, it is News Day Tuesday. Newsday Tuesday.

[Emma Vigland]

Although we do have a guest today.

[Sam Cedar]

We do have a guest today. And we also. Nope, there we have. I just didn't see you on the screen, so I got a little bit nervous.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, well, fair enough. Why don't you settle down a little bit and we just do the show.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep.

[Emma Vigland]

Maybe you need some focus gummies.

[Sam Cedar]

Actually, I do.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

We're so back.

[Sam Cedar]

I really do. We are back. I feel like it was 15 minutes ago that we were here today. We live here now, incidentally, you can catch me today on the Bituation Room following this program and also tonight on the Zateo I can't even.

[Emma Vigland]

I don't remember podcast.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Livestream the livestream with Wajahad and.

[Emma Vigland]

And Francesca. So you're doing double duty.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm doing double duty.

[Emma Vigland]

Wow, Francesca, good job.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep. Lot to get to today. The. The IDF bombed the hell out of Gaza again last night, breaking a ceasefire. This is following the Israeli breaking of the ceasefire terms when they said they were not going to leave the Philadelphia corridor. Hamas has been negotiating, or attempting to negotiate in the context of this ceasefire for the next stage. And Israel decided they had enough of that. And the reason, of course, has nothing to do with the hostages, because we know from the very beginning that Hamas had offered a deal for the hostages over a year and a half ago. It has everything to do with Netanyahu wanting Ben GVIR back into the cabinet and he has joined. It has everything to do with the right wing in, well, the further right wing in Israel refusing to not have attacks on Gaza. Their delusional dream of completely ethnically cleansing Gaza, the notion of putting hotels there or whatever it is.

[Emma Vigland]

And also it's Ramadan. So the fact that Israel is bombing these folks, and it was, according to reports, mostly women and children. There are images of dead babies if you want to find them on the Internet from last night. But Israel's been blocking all aid that has been coming into Gaza since March 2nd. So like that was their attempt to pressure Hamas into basically releasing the remaining hostages without getting anything in exchange and trying to torpedo the negotiations. Cuz they know that they have the firepower on their side, but they had already been trying to starve them. And this was their basically attempt to accelerate the breaking of the temporary ceasefire, or I should Trump should refer to it as the PR cease fire cuz he got what he wanted out of the in time for the inauguration.

[Sam Cedar]

The and from the very beginning it has been clear that there was no way for Israel to kill all Hamas without essentially killing all 2 million residents of Gaza. And Blinken said as much when he left. Whatever number it was that they killed, supposedly 15,000 or so more than 15,000 have joined to Hamas to replace them, which is obvious. It was obvious. Here is White House press Secretary Caroline Levitt. Or actually here's let's first take this clip. Gaza Dr. Faroz Sidwa describes the carnage that is in the wake of the Israeli bombing.

[Dr. Faroz Sidwa]

Ministry says over 300 Palestinians have been killed after the Israeli military carried out a number of attacks overnight. I'm joined now by Dr. Farot Sidwa, who's at the NASA medical complex in Khan Younis. Thank you so much for joining us. What have you witnessed overnight?

[Caroline Levitt]

So just utter carnage and destruction overnight. I was here in Gaza a year ago during the peak of the fighting in Khan Yunis and the mass casualties back then looked exactly like the mass casualty that I saw today. Mostly children. The other half are mostly women and occasionally there's a man, but I'm pretty sure the man has nothing to do with any of this that's going on. You know, I did six operations overnight. Half of them were in small children, probably six and below. I wasn't exactly sure. Their ages was probably about 6 and below. Most of them are going to go on to die, unfortunately. The I'm told I don't know for sure, but I'm told that about 40 bodies were brought to the morgue directly and but yeah, it was just utter carnage. As usual when you drop bombs on tents, that's what happens.

[Dr. Faroz Sidwa]

Was there any warning that this was coming?

[Caroline Levitt]

Not that was given to me directly and not that our I don't think our NGO knew about it because they would have warned us. But no, I don't believe so.

[Dr. Faroz Sidwa]

In terms of your ability to act, you said you've been there a year ago, you've been there for a little while. In your current stint there, what level of supplies are reaching Gaza in general, but your hospital in particular?

[Caroline Levitt]

In general, food is becoming more and more scarce. I actually haven't eaten meat since the first day I was here, which was March 6th. And that's not to complain, it's just to point it out. We've been eating rice and lentils every day and we're eating better than anybody else in the Gaza Strip. We have money. There's just not. No protein is available. Clean water is also not available. But, you know, actually before this mass casualty event, the emergency room in the hospital was starting to get overwhelmed by gastroenteritis cases, just because, again, nobody has any ability to desalinate water to get clean water of any kind. So diarrheal disease, nausea, vomiting is getting to be so severe that actually we had a patient's heart stop because of it in the ICU two nights ago. And thankfully, she's still alive at the moment. But again, she's going to go on to die because of the situation in terms of the hospital right now. The hospital that I'm at, Nasser Medical Complex, has surgical suppl. But, you know, just one. One incident like this would overwhelm any, any hospital in the United States. I was a resident during the Boston Marathon bombing. And that. It was a. It was an utter disaster. And that was. It was one tenth of what we saw here today and what we'll probably see twice today, probably three times the next day. So it's impossible for any hospital system to keep up with this, even in the first world.

[Dr. Faroz Sidwa]

The Prime Minister.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, I don't know what there is to say. This is clearly just, you know, it's, it's, it's sadistic ethnic cleansing, genocide, whatever you want to call it.

[Emma Vigland]

Genocide. I mean, this is an attempt at a final solution for these people. Like, I mean, let's be clear here. I, I don't know. I don't want to be inflammatory, but I also don't want to shy from saying what it is, because when Trump said that, when he met with Netanyahu, what was it, over a month ago at this point, and he said 1.7 million people in Gaza. And he came out with that figure, which I'd never heard before, because prior to the genocide starting, it was over 2 million Palestinians that were in the Gaza Strip, and some have fled. But that still betrays the truth that he's probably hearing behind the scenes with classified information is that hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered and now they're trying to starve them to death and doing it under a new administration.

[Sam Cedar]

Here is White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt confirming that the Trump administration was consulted by Israel and gave them the green light.

[Austin Kocher]

Well, the Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight. And as President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose. And all of the terrorists in the Middle east again, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian backed terror proxies in Iran themselves, should take President Trump very seriously when he says he is not afraid to stand for law abiding people. He is not afraid to stand up for the United States of America and our friend and our ally, Israel. And we know that these successful defensive strikes that took place over the weekend against the Houthis in the Red Sea were indeed successful. We took out some of their leaders. And the Defense Department is continued to continue, is set to continue with this campaign. If the Houthis continue with their retaliatory measures. The president is going to stand for the navigation, freedom of navigation of our seas, which is a very basic principle that unfortunately the previous administration refused to stand for. And that's why we are in this mess in the Middle east in the first place. President Trump inherited a lot of problems, Sean, because of the incompetence and the weakness of the Biden Harris administration. But he is focused on fixing them. And our allies and our adversaries better take him seriously.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, first of all, they're not our seas.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

It's funny to say that mess in the Middle east and then be like, but it's our seas. Well, it's like, is it a mess in the Middle east or is it ours?

[Sam Cedar]

And I should say, and I am in no way happy to remind people, but the Biden administration pounded the hell out of the Houthis in Yemen. And to be fair, it was in direct response to the houthis attacking some U.S. vessels. But all of this is just sort of like, you know, I guess the Trump administration trying to pivot from, we're against war, but we like to bomb. We're okay with more bombing in Gaza.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

The aggression from the Houthis doesn't come from lawlessness. It comes from them wanting to stop.

[Emma Vigland]

A genocide they are trying to use. It's not the Red Sea is not ours. It is off the coast of different countries, but that includes Yemen. So they have a right to implement a blockade, to stand in solidarity with their Palestinian neighbors who have no friends. Clearly in the west, they're going to stand up for them. And that is the Imperial. Barely any in the Middle east in the area.

[Sam Cedar]

Understand too that this really does feel like Trump gearing up for either a US Attack on Iran or an Israeli attack on Iran. There's a real sense that they're laying the groundwork. He's decided, I'm not. I'm no longer, I no longer have to pretend like I'm gonna do the peace thing.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, it's peace through strength. And by peace, I mean all these slaughtered little children. On your feet, Tucker, to your point, Tucker Carlson tweeted something out last night which normally I wouldn't take notice of, but I found it scary that he tweeted, basically saying that a strike on Iranian nuclear sites will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths and bases, basically criticizing, rightly, for the first time in his life, the idea of doing that with Iran, which makes me concerned that he's not getting through behind the scenes if he's saying this publicly.

[Sam Cedar]

In a moment, we're going to be talking to Austin Kocher, political and legal geographer studying immigration enforcement, assistant research professor at Syracuse University and author of the Austin Kocher Substack. We're going to be talking about what the Trump administration is doing in terms of deporting people who are presumably hardened criminals and doing so in many instances against the court orders. We'll talk about that in a moment. First, couple words from our sponsor. Delete Me is a service that I've been using for, I don't know, probably seven or eight years. Couldn't be more timely now, frankly. And you know, when they came to advertise, I was like, absolutely. Delete Me makes it quick and easy and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. I don't know if you've ever been on one of these data broker sites, you can find them. It's very easy to find. As soon as you try and look up a phone number or something like that, and the amount of information you can find there for free and then just maybe for five bucks is very disturbing. And what Delete Me does is you sign up, you provide Delete Me with exactly what information you want deleted. You got multiple email addresses, social media accounts. You don't want to be associated when people search for you, whatever it is, phone number, addresses, other members of your family. And what Delete Me does, they send you regular personalized privacy reports. They show you what they found, where they found it and what they removed. And Delete Me is not a one time service. It continually sweeps these sites and sends them takedown demands because the brokers, they keep repopulating them. And of course, there's so many of these brokerage sites too. This is how they, they work on phishing campaigns too, with you. Never mind. You know, you don't want people finding out where you live. They find your number, they find a data breach somewhere else. They put those things together, they send you a fairly sophisticated phishing campaign and then the next thing you know, you've lost your data, whatever it is. You lost your computer, you're locked out of your, your bank. You don't know. Want to thank our sponsor for today's episode, Delete me. Like I say, as a person who exists publicly, you gotta have it. Gotta have it. But either way, it's also a way to make sure that your information isn't stolen and you're not getting phishing. I mean, there's a lot of reasons for it. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private. By signing up for delete me now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting the word majority to 64,000. The only way to get 20% off is to text majority to 64,000. That's majority to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. Also sponsoring the program today and a couple of my meals a week factor. I want to thank factor for supporting major report this fall. This fall, this winter you got a lot going outside the kitchen. Keep your plans in turn to factor. They deliver fresh, nutritious, chef prepared meals ready to eat in just two minutes. Go to factor meals.com factor podcast and you get 50% off out of your first box plus 20% off your next month factor podcast. Put that Coupon code in 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. And factor lets you do you. You can choose from six menu preferences, help you manage your calories, maximize your protein intake, avoid meat or simply eat well balanced. And because factor meals are chef approved and dietitian approved, you're going to love how not only how factor meals taste but also how they support your goals. Here's the thing. Factor cheaper than takeout, cheaper than dining out. There's no leftovers. You don't have to go shopping. You can get guilt free foods like homestyle chicken and gravy potato pork chops. You get vegan options. I had some shredded chicken with like a mashed potato like mash up and broccoli. So I love that. And like a, I can't remember if it was like a Louisiana or Cajun shrimp and the polenta was actually cauliflower.

[Emma Vigland]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigland]

I second guessed myself. I was right the first time.

[Sam Cedar]

Austin Coker, assistant research professor at Syracuse University Substack proprietor@austin coker.substack. is that the name of the substack?

[Thomas Homan]

That's me.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, Austin, thanks for joining us.

[Thomas Homan]

Name so just went with my own.

[Sam Cedar]

All right.

[Emma Vigland]

Straightforward.

[Sam Cedar]

That's smart. Long term, that works. Let's start with what's happened over the past four or five days because there have been. Well, the biggest story right now is that supposed members of Venezuelan gangs were loaded onto three planes that were going to El Salvador. So it wasn't deporting them back to Venezuela. It was deporting them to a third country. Let's first start with what you know about those people because there's been multiple stories now about these Venezuelans that indicate at least some of them are not any members of gangs. And we have no evidence of any of them being members of gangs.

[Thomas Homan]

Yeah, that's my understanding, too. I'm reading those same stories and seeing what I've seen for years and years when it comes to immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement agencies like to make claims, not always substantiated and sometimes sensational, about who they're arresting, detaining and deporting because they know that most people wouldn't like the reality that they are detaining and deporting Asylum seekers, you know, detaining mothers and children and family, detention, things like that. So they like to, you know, tell the story of dangerous criminals, even when it's not true. And, yeah, we see cases now of these Venezuelans being deported, you know, essentially back to an authoritarian country and a big gulag, one of the biggest prisons, if not the biggest prisons in the world. And some of these individuals are asylum seekers who were themselves fleeing persecution, fleeing potential violence. And one of them, at least one of them, had an upcoming asylum hearing, which is just wild. If you imagine someone coming to the United States, a country that claims to be safe and place in the world and a city on a hill, and we arrest them, throw them in prison, and deport them, not even to their home country. It's just a wild development.

[Sam Cedar]

Is there any type of process? I mean, why is there no process for this? I mean, it does not seem like there's any process to substantiate these claims because, I mean, it seems like that ICE could just pick up anybody and put them on a plane.

[Thomas Homan]

They sure could. And in fact, They've arrested several U.S. citizens and held U.S. citizens in the country now, so they. They could. I think there's two issues with the current situation. The first is the government's not being transparent about what is really happening and who they're arresting and deporting. That's one major issue. They could, by the way, they could release more information to the public about what their information says. Not only have they refused to provide the American public with more information, but they're now openly defying, even providing a federal judge in a case that they are a part of, information about what's going on. So that is a major red flag. But they claim that they're able to do it. We'll see if this really holds up, because the President has invoked this tremendously rare law called the Alien Enemies act, which hasn't been used more than three times in our history, always during moments of declared war, even then under very worrying circumstances. It's what gave us Japanese internment in the 1940s, among other heinous abuses of power against, not just only against immigrants, but also against US Citizens, were held in those camps. And they're saying that that authority, combined with the designation of this gang as a terrorist organization, means that they can effectively do whatever they want because they're claiming that it's national security. So they've really laid the foundation. They've tried to lay the legal. Tried to lay the legal foundation that says this is a national security issue. So no one can question us. No one can look behind the curtain. Even judges don't have the authority to question us in any way. It's very concerning. But, you know, it's worth remembering that this is something that Donald Trump and politicians on the right have been laying this foundation for years. They've been using invasion rhetoric for years and years. They've been drumming up this idea, this misconception that this country is under some sort of immigrant invasion and therefore the president has wartime or wartime like authority to do whatever he needs to do. It's not legitimate. There are some legitimate concerns. You know, it's certainly not to, you know, public safety is a concern to everyone. That's not the same as what's happening. However.

[Sam Cedar]

Let'S go to the question before we get to I want to get back to this court case with Judge Boasberg because supposedly at noon today, the DOJ was supposed to respond to his demands for more information. But before we get to the sort of legal aspects, why El Salvador? Like, you know, like why not Venezuela? I mean, you can tell us, I sort of know the reason, but I mean, why El Salvador as of all places?

[Thomas Homan]

Well, El Salvador is very friendly to President Trump and the Trump administration because their president, President Bukele, has spent years cultivating relationships with that part of our political system, that part of the Republican Party. Bukele has hired lobbyists in D.C. to help build relationships with elected officials in Washington. He's very close to Trump and close to people who are close to Trump as well. Bukele has a lot of, you know, Bukele admires Trump and Trump's approach to politics, frankly. Bukele also resembles and embodies a lot of Trump's approach to politics and law as well. Bukele has, you know, dismissed courts in his own country, ignored the Supreme Court of El Salvador's decisions on a variety of matters. He has implemented this sort of criminal enforcement program, so to speak, that's rounded up thousands and thousands and thousands of people with very little due process, if any, and put them in this maximum security facility that's by my estimate, two or three times as large as Riker's in New York City. It's a huge facility. It can hold up to 40,000 people. Really enormous facility. And that's how he's been running his own country. And, you know, with Trump in power, much like the private detention contractors that make money off of immigrant detention, Bukele has also put himself in the situation to make millions of dollars off of holding Immigrants for President Trump as well. So it's really important for people to understand just how much work Bukele has put into this relationship to make sure that he is in the right place at the right time for himself. But also he's made his country and his government effectively a convenient, a carceral state for the Trump administration. So it's very worrying. And I think it's important to remember that once Trump gets individuals out of the United States and into another country, into another, you know, prison abroad somewhere, it's just very, very difficult for the US Courts and the US Legal system to get them back. So it's. It's like Guantanamo, but it's even further removed from Guantanamo Bay and the regulations, even that Guantanamo Bay, you know, has faced. And one of the reasons Guantanamo Bay has not grown as much as the Trump administration was like, because of budgetary limits and regulatory limits and things like that. None of that's going to apply in El Salvador.

[Emma Vigland]

No. I just want to ask, just really quickly, that it's been described as a penal colony. Can you just explain why that's the case?

[Thomas Homan]

Sure. So Bukele's. It's described as a penal colony because Bukele's approach to, quote, unquote, public safety and the use of police powers within his country are essentially extralegal. He's gone above and beyond the rule of law in El Salvador to arrest and detain indefinitely tens of thousands of people in that country. Some of them are criminals, some of them are members of gangs. Very many we know are not. They were just in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, caught up by police, and again, with little or no recourse at all for families to get them out, for attorneys to see their clients. So Bukele really has turned El Salvador, I think, into a kind of penal colony or a kind of carceral state, you know, at the national level.

[Sam Cedar]

How much of it is also sort of like, from the perspective of the Trump administration, a private prison? Like, I mean, like, what is. I don't have evidence of this. I don't even have, you know, direct speculation about how Bukele is literally making money from this. But this is a crypto. There's. He's deep into the crypto world. They have adopted Bitcoin as their. As their currency. I don't know if he has any meme coins like the president. But what, what is your sense of, you know, what the. We can see what the give is. What's the get on his end?

[Thomas Homan]

Sure. So from pure numbers I mean, this is a $6 million deal right now. This is a deal that's already in place that Bukele is getting for holding people in his country at this maximum security facility. And let's not forget that immigrants who are in, you know, even if immigrants are in the country unlawfully, that's a civil, you know, unlawful presence is a civil offense. And immigrant detention is usually civil detention. So throwing many of these people who don't have criminal histories in a maximum security facility, very concerning. So $6 million is the current bottom line. I think that if this goes well and Trump can keep doing it, I think Bukele can expect more contracts, more agreements that come with financial incentives. And, you know, Bukele has also admitted, by the way, that it's very expensive to run this maximum security facility. So this money from the Trump administration is going to help float some of the budgetary issues that Bukele has with his massive police state that he's running. But on the longer term as well, I think it's probably not just about Trump. It's probably a lot about Elon Musk. Bukele is very tech forward. He has a real tech bro kind of attitude and disposition. He likes that stuff. It's bitcoin. It's also a lot of other technologies. And so I think what we'll see is not just about immigration, not just about detention, but I think we'll probably see closer relationship also with Elon Musk. Maybe this will be one of those places where Musk decides to invest money in some way because he sees some kind of potential there. So I do think Bukele is banking on the idea that this is a good, not just good politics, but good, you know, financial decision for him. And, you know, why not? If Musk is willing to throw money at it, and if Trump is willing to throw money at it, you know, why wouldn't he do this?

[Sam Cedar]

All right. And just staying on this one specific case, because there's other cases where they have now, you know, including Kahlil and this doctor from Brown who was deported because supposedly she had sympathetic photos to.

[Emma Vigland]

Hezbollah is the claim.

[Sam Cedar]

But we'll get to that in a second. This court case that, yes, I guess it was On Friday when U.S. district Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration, maybe, I guess it was on Saturday, to halt these planes. And the Trump administration has sort of like, bobbed and weaved as to why they didn't do it. At first they said, well, the planes are in the air, they're in international waters, and Therefore, I guess, are just doesn't apply. Doesn't apply. It's gone rogue. Which is a very novel legal theory. Then they claimed, oh, it was too late. But there have been now dockets that have shown that they lied about that. The Judge Boasberg said today at noon, what did he require of the doj? And we should just say Trump last night subsequently called for his impeachment. And just about 10 minutes ago, John Roberts came out with a pretty rare statement.

[Emma Vigland]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

Saying that for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The nominal, the normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. Roberts put out this statement, which I guess, all things considered, is probably, you know, at least a positive in this sea of not positive things. But it. What is the judge saying here? Like, what the. The administration is invoking the Illegal Aliens.

[Thomas Homan]

Act or the Alien Enemies Act.

[Sam Cedar]

Alien Enemies Act. And like you say, it's only been invoked three times. War of 1812, World War I, World War II. People will notice the pattern there of the word war in there. I made the point yesterday. It wasn't even invoked in the wake of 9, 11, when we had sleeper cells that were in the country to commit that terror attack. The idea of invoking that would have been absurd. Is there any. Are you aware of any legal rulings on this that create a criteria for the legitimacy of invoking that act? And then secondarily, like, what is this judge asking for of the U.S. government?

[Thomas Homan]

Sure. I mean, you know, I'm not an expert on the Alien Enemies Act. At the same time, I've read the law, I've read the case. I've read a lot of analysis of both. I just can't see a scenario where this is a legitimate invocation of that act in any way. So it's very concerning in that way. But, you know, the real point here is that they, you know, the Trump administration, whether it's the Alien Enemies act or some of his other legal strategies that they've used, the Trump administration is trying to get around the courts. He's trying to get around accountability and oversight of any kind. It's very concerning. It's not the first time. I'm sure it won't be the last. But what the judge is really getting, you know, what this case is about is saying, you know, is questioning the legitimacy of the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. And the Department of Justice is showing up in court making claims, as you said, which are contradictory. They're openly Defying the judge's request for information, claiming national security, but not actually substantiating that in any way. And what the judge, when you say.

[Sam Cedar]

Claiming national security, they're saying, there are secret reasons why we have this to believe. And the judge is saying, okay, well, you need to tell me them. I promise not to tell anybody, but to go forward, I need to know.

[Thomas Homan]

Right, right. And to be very specific about it, you know, literally, if you look at the timeline and you look at the timeline, if you look at the timeline of flights and you look at the timeline of court filings and court interactions, planes are taking off at the same time that the Department of Justice is fighting with this judge. It's so important to understand this timeline because the Trump administration knows this is going to be challenged and their decision is deport first, ask questions later, get people out of the country so that the judge doesn't have a reach, or we can argue that he doesn't have a reach. So planes are taking off. The judge is saying, you've got to stay. He's telling the Department of. He's telling the Trump administration in court, you've got to stop. And they say, oh, well, you haven't written it on a piece of paper yet, so we don't have to follow your order. First of all, that's not how it works. And then the judge is coming back and saying, hey, I told you you couldn't do this. And they're saying, oh, we didn't defy your order. So he says, okay, prove it. Tell me when those flights took off. And they say, oh, we can't tell you when the flights took off because it's national security. That's what they mean by national security. It's their way of getting around just answering simple questions that a federal judge is asking them in the course of discovery. So what's going to happen today? The judge said, okay, you come back on Tuesday. I want sworn statements from all of you telling me exactly what you told me in court. Basically, the judge is saying, you're saying this when we're just having a normal conversation in a courtroom around a case. I want you to put your name on a document and submit it to me as an official filing in court. That what you said is actually what you're going to stand by. The reason why this is so important and this is so important for so many federal judges to do in the context of these attorneys in the Trump administration, is these attorneys show up to court and they make arguments and claims that any barred attorney in the country would be scared to make in federal court, at risk of losing their license, at risk of perjury, at risk of giving the court false information, false testimony. So that's what the judge is really doing here. The strategy is the judge is saying, if this is really what you want to stand by, put it to a piece of paper. Because once it's on paper like that, the judge can then go back. And once we do have evidence, as is now coming out, that judge can potentially say, look, you've lied to the court. And that's gonna be really dangerous for the rest of the case and for the administration to show that Trump's attorneys are lying in court. That's where this could go.

[Emma Vigland]

You go ahead, Sam.

[Sam Cedar]

I wonder if you have a sense, and obviously we're now in the realm of conjecture, but is this a, I mean, what is the Trump, what does the Trump administration hope to do with this in the sense that they have promised their people to do mass deportations. They, whether they defied the court in this instance or whatnot, like this question's going to be resolved. And even if they were able to have the ability to deport people, like they deported these people. And we should say, like, I got three stories here where at least a half a dozen people are coming out and saying like, these guys had nothing to do with gangs.

[Emma Vigland]

I'll just give it three examples that Aaron Raichlen Melnick put out that there was a tattoo artist seeking asylum who entered legally, who was taken to the Salvadoran prison with no due process. A teen who got a tattoo in Dallas because he thought it looked cool. A 26 year old whose tattoos, his wife says are unrelated to a gang. These are three people that just had tattoos that they're saying are a part of trend Aragua without evidence.

[Sam Cedar]

So, and you know, they, they just deported a. Apparently this doctor was like a, one of the top kidney experts in this hospital. And the hospital is like, you know, people are going to probably we're going to lose, patients are going to get ill, maybe someone will die because of the absence of this, of this doctor. Are they just looking for high profile cases of different types to try and communicate to their, their political base? We're doing our best and sometimes we get through, but sometimes we get foiled by these, you know, radical communist, Marxist, you know, robe wearing judges. Is that like, is that your sense? Like, are they geared? Like, do you see any indication that they are gearing up and have the capacity to do these mass deportations that they're talking About.

[Thomas Homan]

Well, not yet, but they are trying to get there. You know, many of us said leading up to the Trump administration that some of the main challenges, deportations are not just a matter of, you know, a president doesn't have the political will. There's a lot of institutional and legal process that's involved in deportation. It's a complex operation under the rule of law. Now, if you want to do deportations and you want to, you know, throw law and order to the wind and just run it like a totalitarian regime, you can do that, but you can't do that legally. So they know that there are institutional challenges. They know that there's challenges around public perception of who gets deported. Most people don't want to see families and people who are working in a restaurant or fixing your house, they don't want to see those people deported. So they've got to manage perception, and they've got to manage institutional limitations and legal limitations. So they're grasping at everything that they can to remove any barriers that exist so that they can put as many people on flights, put as many people in detention centers and kick people out of the country, no matter who they are, no matter if they're actually a public safety threat or not. It's very indiscriminate. So I think that's what they're doing. They're trying to clear the field. They're rolling out test cases to see what they can get away with, to see how far they can push it, to see what will survive the courts. And at this point, we have to say whatever the timeline was on Saturday, Thomas Homan has already said he's been asked directly on Fox News. Okay, well, what happens next after all this court battle? And Thomas Homan says more planes, more flights. So whatever happened on Saturday, we already know that Trump's border czar has said they're going to keep flying people, ostensibly, regardless of whatever a judge says. But I do think there's one point which is kind of important. There is some level of coordination at the top, no question. But I also think that what we're seeing with some of the people who are being deported, like the doctor who was deported flying back into Boston, one of the things that's happening is that Trump's approach to politics, he's very good at sowing confusion and sowing a lot of chaos. What that means is we saw this during the first Trump administration. We're going to see it for the next four years. So we may as well just understand how the game is played. Trump will Issue orders, he'll issue general kind of policy directives. And unlike a normal administration, which would sort of go through the process of figuring out, okay, how is this going to impact our regional directors? How is this going to impact frontline officers? Let's think this through. The Trump administration is not going to do that. So what that means is there's going to be a bunch of immigration enforcement officers out there at airports, at the border, arresting folks in communities, and they.

[Sam Cedar]

They're freelancing.

[Thomas Homan]

They're freelancing. Yeah, they're winging it because it's not as if they have all of this, you know, clarity. They have a lot of discretion, they have a lot of power, but they're kind of just told, hey, go look for this stuff and see what you find under threat of, you know, being fired, being disciplined, who knows what. So I think that that's an important element of how Trump's politics and how his power work is. He's also able to sow confusion even within his own enforcement agencies.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, this seems to me to be akin when Donald Rumsfeld, in regards to prisoner treatment in Afghanistan, basically said, take the cuffs off. And he was talking about not obviously the prisoners, but of the jailers and the military interrogators. And my understanding of ICE is you have a lot of these guys who basically washed out of police academies, and they're just itching, and as soon as they get the word that they're not going to be restrained, then they just go off and do whatever they want. I mean, so it's basically just unleashing the dogs, as it were.

[Thomas Homan]

Yeah. And you know what? If you deport someone out of the country, it's pretty hard to file a complaint against the officer who treated you that way once you're, you know, out of the country. So they also have the protect. The nature of deportation. Immigration enforcement is, if you are successful in abusing your power, the person that you have abused your power against is no longer around to file anything against you. So it's convenient for them. And immigrants end up paying the price and their families end up paying the price.

[Emma Vigland]

It's the same dynamic as why we don't hear about the abuses in the press is because these folks are afraid to shine a spotlight on the fact if they are still waiting to apply for more permanent status, et cetera, they don't want a media attention, and that's why they can get away with, you know, when you were last on the show, we showed some of the graphs that you have on Your excellent substack of the increase in arrests for either people with criminal histories, and then there's people with just, like, simple civil violations, and then people with no criminal histories except for the classification that the Trump administration is using, which is like, if you cross the border, this is not. No longer, according to them, a civil violation, like getting a parking ticket or jaywalking. This is something that makes you a criminal. And that classification at the bottom, you've shown on your. On your site that those. What you can document the.

[Sam Cedar]

In.

[Emma Vigland]

The increase in those arrests is wildly outpacing the other ones, and those detentions and deportations. Can you explain what's happening there and how they're able to get away with calling these people criminals when they're just not sure?

[Thomas Homan]

It's one of the simplest and oldest tricks in the political playbook. If you repeat a lie often enough, it just becomes the truth. The reality is we can look at the data. ICE could release the data to the public. I know what that data looks like. I know what they have. It's actually not hard to take a, you know, half a day to simply show the public what's really going on. They're not doing it. And no, I mean, the simple truth is there aren't enough immigrants with criminal convictions in this country that they could achieve mass deportation simply by focusing on criminal. There just aren't enough people. There are some. And, you know, it's not insignificant, but it's at a lower rate than US Citizens, and it's certainly not at the scale that would enable them to deport millions and millions of people. So they have to. What they have to do is they have to constantly represent what they're doing as if they're going after criminals, because, like I said, most. Most people are not. Would not be motivated to support deporting families and kids and, you know, work, you know, people who are just working to make a living. Most polls show this repeatedly, and most people are just not interested. People want a path to citizenship, they want a path to legalization, but the Trump administration knows that. So they have to represent everything they're doing as if they're going after terrorists, as if they're going after serious criminals. And then what they're actually doing is just kind of going after everyone and.

[Sam Cedar]

Just labeling, essentially labeling all those people criminals, criminalizing. It would be functionally, you know, calling anybody who got a speeding ticket as like, you know, a felon on some level or a criminal. In terms of protections for people, we have, obviously what's going on in the courts. The various, you know, organizations are bringing a suit. Who in this, in the suit that is taking place in Bozberg's court. I know that the Brennan center is involved in. In dealing with Khalil in. In Bozeman. Who is the. Who is the plaintiffs, I guess, in that case, who's. Who is attempting to stop the deportation of these people?

[Thomas Homan]

Yeah, that ACLU and an organization I'm less familiar with, I think it's called Democracy Forward. It's also a legal institute. They're bringing the lawsuit on behalf of seven or eight plaintiffs. It's common in immigration law for plaintiffs to be listed by their initials. So if you look at the complaint, it's just the initials. We don't have their full names. But it's several immigrants who, at the time of the complaint, were being held in a detention center in Texas, either the same detention center or a similar detention center that. Where the folks who were put on the flights to El Salvador, where they were being held in detention, and basically filing this lawsuit to say, hey, we are at risk of being deported under this new invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. We want to proactively ask for an injunction so that we don't end up getting put on the plane, because we know if once we're put on the plane, we can't file a. So it's sort of a proactive and protective lawsuit.

[Sam Cedar]

Injunctions are offered when they're. When, when. If there's no court action, the damage may be permanent and irreversible. And if you're flown to a jail in El Salvador, there's a good argument that it is irreversible, at least in terms of. Have they expanded the plaintiff's pool? Can they make it a class?

[Thomas Homan]

In other words, can it is filed as a class?

[Sam Cedar]

So they're not just. There's six specific plaintiffs, but they're representing everybody who might be. Essentially disappeared on one of these planes.

[Thomas Homan]

Yes, they've asked for it to be recognized as a class action suit. You know, a class action suit basically says this is going to affect a whole bunch of people, not just this narrow number of people, and there's no way for us to contact everyone, you know, in advance. So we're asking for protection for everyone. And I think that's the right decision because it is going to affect hundreds of thousands of people. You know, it's probably a good time to just mention, because it could have easily slipped by in the absolutely overwhelming deluge of immigration news, but the Trump administration has now begun to Strip Venezuelan citizens of temporary protected stats. These are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing Venezuela who as I remember, used to be an enemy of the United States. And the United States wanted, you know, was trying to, you know, welcome refugees from these quote, unquote, communist countries. Whatever we think about that, that was the history, I guess.

[Sam Cedar]

We were actively trying to destabilize the country and promoting a guy Guaido Good to be the president of the country.

[Emma Vigland]

Who wasn't elected.

[Sam Cedar]

Who was not elected.

[Thomas Homan]

Exactly. Well, guess what, you know, all of these Venezuelans who came legally under the policies of the US Government, when they came, they're being stripped of their temporary protected status. So what that means is as if temporary protected status means anything to this administration anyway. But it's so important to understand it's not just about a couple hundred guys with tattoos. This could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of people who came to the country seeking asylum. And by the way, one of the most interesting and maybe under reported contradictions in all of this is that ironically, in labeling Trendo Araguas a terrorist organization, the Trump administration had to say that they have state like power in Venezuela. They have so much power in Venezuela that they are either state sponsored or almost a state like power. Well, guess what? Our asylum laws very specifically say that fleeing persecution and seeking asylum, one of the factors that contributes to the legitimacy of that claim is when your persecutor is either the state or a state like actor. Precisely. Trenda Araguas, whom many people have fled to seek asylum, and now they're being lumped in and potentially deported. So it's a weird contradictory position that the Trump administration administration has taken. But you know, I mean, they've thrown coherence to the wind, I realize, but it's important for, I think the rest of us to remember that point.

[Sam Cedar]

So we have lawsuits as one level of protection. What are the others? As we sort of like move outside of the courtroom into, I imagine, sanctuary cities and the refusal of localities to cooperate with ICE can slow the roll. And I would imagine activists on the ground also can further contribute to sort of like getting in between ICE and them going after people, their neighbors, Their neighbors. And let's be clear, ICE does not appear to need a reason and does not need to appear to, to justify like, the only accountability ICE seems to have, and correct me if I'm wrong, is if they deport a citizen, then there's theoretically political blowback and maybe, I don't know, some type of settlement there, but just about anybody else and apparently green card people they can deport, absent like some major political pushback or something that slows their role to get this person out of the country.

[Thomas Homan]

Yeah, it's really challenging to figure out what you can do right now if you're someone who might be targeted or if you know people who can be. I mean, a lot of organizations are trying to help people understand what their rights are in these situations. Obviously, the Trump administration is not really interested in respecting civil rights and due process. But we have seen evidence that that's quite useful when people do understand what their rights are. We saw in Chicago when ICE tried to do a bunch of immigration sweeps and arrests in Chicago. Thomas Homan complained that it was harder because so, so many people understood what their rights were, and they didn't open the door when they weren't required to open the door and things like that.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, give us a little bit more of a list of what those things are.

[Thomas Homan]

Sure. So, you know, ICE will often come to residences. For instance. A lot of lawyers really encourage immigrants. Don't open the door unless it's an actual warrant signed by a federal judge. An immigration warrant itself is. Does not have the power to put ICE into your house if you don't invite them in. So keep your door shut unless you see a judicial warrant signed by a judge. Don't talk to ICE about your case. Don't answer questions without an attorney there. That's really important. Make sure that you have an attorney or make sure you have someone to call. Make sure that you understand if you are stopped for some reason. Have a strategy for you and your family to know what you're going to do next. Because, you know, the Trump administration and the way the ICE works, they can be very quick at putting someone in detention and moving them across the country without telling you. So you really want to have a plan and let people know things like that. There are some things on the back end that are kind of rare. Judges can force ICE to allow someone to come back into the country if they deport someone who does have a pending federal case. I have seen that happen. It's rare, but it can happen. And then I think, generally speaking, this is one of those pieces of advice that I think there's a lot of hand wringing about because it goes two ways. But, you know, a lot of folks in immigrant communities I know are telling folks, look, just try to avoid law enforcement, avoid emergency personnel. Try to avoid those situations where you might come into contact with any law enforcement officer. Unfortunately, that has the consequence of driving many immigrant Communities underground. And we don't always have that option. Right. So that's a scary scenario. It's scary for law enforcement too, because law enforcement very often report that they need cooperation from communities that they police to do their job. So it's a very difficult kind of thing for communities to grapple with. And then lastly, as someone at a university and who has international students, myself, you know, in my, in my classes and internships and things like that, I mean, I think it's a real question. If you're here on a student visa, do you want to risk leaving the country to go see family over a break, knowing that when you come back into the country, you could be vetted and screened and, you know, like, what happened to the doctor coming back into Boston, it just, it puts you at a different kind of risk level. So it just means that people have to make really difficult decisions that they shouldn't normally have to make. But it is tough.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't know why those students just, I mean, there's such an invasion going on. Why don't they just go in with the huge invasion and just use this invasion as a camouflage? And just lastly, because it seems to me at one point they're gonna have to justify the invocation of this alien enemies act. Where are we in terms of what they call an invasion? In terms of like any possible metric by which we talk about immigrants in this country who are undocumented, half of whom are just simply here after they have overstayed their documented period, which is a really inefficient way to invade a country, it seems to me. Yeah, but where are we relatively, historically speaking? Because if we're not at a peak right now, it's really hard to say we're being invaded. If we've been invaded for the past 50 years and we still seems to be a functioning country.

[Thomas Homan]

Yeah, it's a terrible time to claim that we are experiencing an invasion. Border encounters along the US Mexico border are at a multi year low. It's been declining for months and months. Unlawful crossings, illegal crossings at the US Mexico border has been down considerably, especially after the Biden administration created lawful pathways for humanitarian reasons to lawfully seek asylum, which is what our immigration law says that people can do. They created lawful pathways that allow the mechanism for that. People aren't crossing the border unlawfully. They're coming into the country following protocol, following the law and policy. So this is not a good time to claim that we're under invasion. We've been, you know, if you just look at the numbers. We haven't been less under an invasion in years and years. So not really great timing when you look at the data.

[Sam Cedar]

Austin Kocher, the substack is austincoacher.substack.com I messed you up.

[Emma Vigland]

It's my fault. It's my fault.

[Sam Cedar]

Was her fault.

[Thomas Homan]

I have one of those hard to pronounce immigrant names, one of those for that. So you know.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes. You know we know you're leading the invasion brigade as well. So yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Research professor, Syracuse University. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. We'll put a link to your substack at the in our podcast and YouTube description.

[Thomas Homan]

Thanks. Thanks so much, Sam. Thanks so much.

[Emma Vigland]

Thanks, Austin.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, we're going to take a quick break, head into the fun half of the program wherein we will take your IMs, maybe probably your phone calls. We will feature clips of news and other things around the Internets. That's it.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. There was more juice to get to, I think.

[Sam Cedar]

Folks, if you want to be a member, you want to IM the show. For instance, what you would do is you would pick up the app for free majorityapp.com wherein you can listen to the live show. Listen to the live show. You can watch the live show through the link to YouTube. You can of course watch it on Twitch as well. But you can IM the show if you log in as a member and that'[e-mail] and you can become a [e-mail] join the majority report.com if you listen to the show. Watch the show a couple of times a week. Support what we do here. It's your support that makes this show possible. You will also get the free half free of commercials. Also just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Matt left reckoning yeah.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

Sunday we had Dr. Abdul El said on talking about the attack on public health and the need for Medicare for all. A very good speaker to those issues is Dr. Abdullah said. And tonight Kowalski coming to give us a farm report. Patreon.com left reckoning will be live on YouTube and Twitch at 7:00 Eastern.

[Sam Cedar]

Skid Mark Twain says what do you say in response to individuals that all time low, low number of border incidents is a sign of success of Trump's immigration policy. I would say look to the numbers in November and December and in October and September and you will see that Donald Trump was not president at that time and were equally low.

[Emma Vigland]

There's no doubt that you know When, When Trump is in office, there's going to be some sort of chilling effect on the effect on people trying to come here because they know that he's going to be extremely brutal with them. That doesn't mean that this is a policy that is effective or working well.

[Sam Cedar]

Because, like. But even. Even in their own look, I mean, even in their own metrics, which is they don't care about being vicious, they don't care about intimidating people. All they want is less immigration. That was achieved during the Biden administration at the end. So there you go.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

And you see massive rises in immigration because it's not all down all tied to the tone of the American government. It happens to do with maybe how we're destabilizing countries and that sort of stuff.

[Sam Cedar]

Hack. All things say says. Say poggers, you monster. I did for Twitch. And cognitive Dissident says first half free of commercials. Fun. Half free of fun. We will see you there three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, what? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on.

[Thomas Homan]

Hold on for a second.

[Sam Cedar]

Emma. Welcome to the program. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun path. No, Mickey, you did it. Fun path.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Thomas Homan]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Cedar]

Fun path. Bradley, you want to say hello?

[Thomas Homan]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy.

[Sam Cedar]

It's all the boys today.

[Austin Kocher]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigland]

No. I'm sorry.

[Sam Cedar]

Women's talking for a second. And let me finish.

[Austin Kocher]

Where is this coming from?

[Emma Vigland]

Dude?

[Sam Cedar]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.

[Thomas Homan]

Hi. Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Is it? Yes.

[Thomas Homan]

Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Is it me? It is you?

[Thomas Homan]

Is this me?

[Caroline Levitt]

Oh, I was this me?

[Sam Cedar]

I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Thomas Homan]

Sports. We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Emma Vigland]

I'm going to go star life.

[Sam Cedar]

Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Emma Vigland]

Gobbledygook.

[Thomas Homan]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigland]

So what's 79, 21.

[Sam Cedar]

Challenge. Man, I'm positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say 857. 2, 2, 1 0.

[Thomas Homan]

35.

[Sam Cedar]

5011 half. 3, 8, 9, 11. For instance.

[Emma Vigland]

$3,400. $1900. 5, 4.

[Sam Cedar]

$3 trillion.

[Emma Vigland]

Sold.

[Sam Cedar]

It's a zero sum game, actually.

[Emma Vigland]

You're making me think less.

[Sam Cedar]

But let me say this.

[Thomas Homan]

You can call it satire.

[Austin Kocher]

Sam goes to satire.

[Sam Cedar]

On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day. Like every thing you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Emma Vigland]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I don't know. But you should know, people just don't.

[Francesca Fiorentini]

Like to entertain ideas anymore.

[Sam Cedar]

I have a question. Who cares?

[Francesca Fiorentini]

Our chat is enabled, folks.

[Sam Cedar]

I love it.

[Emma Vigland]

I do love that.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. 2:00, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, what is wrong with you?

[Austin Kocher]

Love you.

[Caroline Levitt]

Bye.

[Sam Cedar]

Love you. Bye.