3540 - Trump's War on Free Speech, Elon Musk is Poisoning Memphis w/ Chip Gibbons and Ren Brabenec

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder Episode 3540 - "Trump's War on Free Speech, Elon Musk is Poisoning Memphis" Release Date: July 17, 2025

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Introduction

In episode 3540 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Emma Vigeland steps in for Sam Seder to cover pressing political issues. The episode features insightful conversations with Chip Gibbons, Policy Director of Defending Rights and Dissent, and Ren Brabinek, a Nashville-based freelance journalist. The discussions center around former President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to curb free speech related to Gaza and Elon Musk's controversial Colossus supercomputer project in Memphis, Tennessee. The episode also touches upon significant political maneuvers by Senate Republicans and legal actions involving the Department of Justice.

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Section 1: Trump's War on Free Speech with Chip Gibbons

Timestamp: 22:09 – 50:30

Key Topics:

• Gaza First Amendment Alert: Chip Gibbons elaborates on his weekly reports documenting free speech violations under the Trump administration, specifically concerning Gaza. He highlights cases where political speech has been criminalized, drawing disturbing parallels to historical events like the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism.

• Case Study – Mahmoud Khalil: Gibbons discusses the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and green card holder, as emblematic of Trump's misuse of immigration law to suppress dissent. Khalil's detention was based on unfounded claims of material support for terrorism simply due to his humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza.

• Historical Parallels: Gibbons traces the roots of political policing in the U.S. back to the Palmer Raids during the first Red Scare and McCarthyism, emphasizing how immigration law has been historically leveraged to target political dissenters.

• Impact on Civil Liberties: The discussion underscores the erosion of constitutional protections, noting that such practices pose a long-term threat to free speech and democratic values.

Notable Quotes:

• Chip Gibbons (23:23): “This is part of a long-term fascist attack on our information ecosystem and comes at a time where local newspapers aren't picking up the slack.”

• Patty Murray on Russ Vogt (06:37): “Your notion of this pocket rescission defies common sense and by the way, the plaintext of the law.”

• Chip Gibbons (34:01): “The original sort of apparatus that Hoover built was based on what's called a counter subversive belief...”

Insights & Conclusions:

Gibbons emphasizes the alarming trend of using immigration law as a tool for political repression, a tactic reminiscent of past authoritarian practices. He warns of the Trump administration's potential to institutionalize these methods, thereby undermining the foundations of free speech and civil liberties in the United States.

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Section 2: Elon Musk’s Supercomputer and Environmental Impact with Ren Brabinek

Timestamp: 52:02 – 78:14

Key Topics:

• Colossus Supercomputer in Memphis: Ren Brabinek reports on Elon Musk's construction of the Colossus supercomputer facility in South Memphis. Despite permits for 15 methane gas-powered turbines, the facility is operating 33 turbines, significantly exceeding legal limits.

• Environmental Concerns: The supercomputer is accused of being a major source of smog, contributing between 30-60% more smog to Memphis. The pollutants, including nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde, pose severe health risks such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

• Community Impact: The facility is situated in a predominantly poor and African American community, echoing historical patterns where marginalized groups bear the brunt of environmental degradation. Brabinek draws parallels to global climate injustices, where the least responsible populations face the most severe consequences.

• Legal and Activist Response: Organizations like the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center are taking legal action to halt the facility’s operations, arguing that it violates residents' constitutional rights to clean air. However, Brabinek expresses skepticism about the facility's shutdown, hoping instead for operational adjustments to mitigate environmental harm.

Notable Quotes:

• Ren Brabinek (55:28): “It's likely the single largest source of smog-forming pollutants in Memphis... more than the Valero Refinery, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Allen Power Plant, the Memphis International Airport and the Drasklavska Chemical plant combined.”

• Ren Brabinek (58:00): “We are actually replicating that same model on a class basis here in the United States.”

• Ren Brabinek (62:10): “The NAACP is working with the Southern Environmental Law center to essentially try to stop South Memphis from becoming a sacrifice zone.”

Insights & Conclusions:

Brabinek highlights the environmental and social injustices inflicted upon Memphis by Musk's Colossus project, mirroring global disparities in climate change effects. The episode underscores the urgent need for accountability and equitable environmental policies to protect vulnerable communities from industrial pollutants.

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Additional Discussions and Interludes

The episode also briefly covers:

• Senate Republican Rescissions: Discussion on the $9 billion in funds rescinded from public broadcasting and foreign aid, with Senate Minority Leader Russ Vogt hinting at more aggressive budget cuts aligned with the Project 2025 Russ Vote agenda.

• DOJ Actions: The firing of Maureen Comey, a federal prosecutor involved in the Jeffrey Epstein case, raises concerns about the administration's stance on high-profile legal prosecutions.

• Public Sentiment: A Reuters poll indicates only 17% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the Epstein case, with 70% believing the government is concealing information.

Notable Quotes:

• Emma Vigeland (03:48): “And it just is another piece of evidence to show how completely beholden the Republican Party is to this cult of personality at the very top.”

• Matt Binder (14:44): “This is basic constitutionality. Congress should determine how to appropriate funds and the president shouldn't be able to come back after those agreements are made saying but not the stuff for them.”

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Conclusion

Episode 3540 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder delivers a comprehensive analysis of pressing political and environmental issues. Through in-depth discussions with Chip Gibbons and Ren Brabinek, the episode sheds light on the threats to free speech under Trump's administration and the environmental injustices perpetrated by Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis. The episode calls for heightened awareness and action to protect civil liberties and vulnerable communities from political and corporate overreach.

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For More Information:

• Defending Rights and Dissent: Defending Rights and Dissent
• Ren Brabinek’s Article: "A Billionaire, An AI Supercomputer, Toxic Emissions, and a Memphis Community That Did Nothing Wrong" - Tennessee Outlook
• Podcast Website: Majority.FM

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Thursday, July 17, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar and this is the first five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Chip Gibbons will be with us to talk about Trump's war on free speech as it relates to Gaza. And later in the show, Ren Brobinek, Nashville based journalist will be with us to talk about Elon Musk's supercomputer polluting the city of Memphis. Also on the program overnight, Senate Republicans rescinded $9 billion in funds to public broadcasting and foreign aid, sending it to the House. And they'll vote for it, too. Russ Vogt says more is coming. The DOJ fires federal prosecutor Maureen Comey, daughter of James, who also did work on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Are we still talking about that guy? The Epstein case? That stuff will not go away for Trump. A Reuters poll finds that just 17Americans approve of his handling of it and nearly 70% think the government is hiding something.

[Matt Binder]

17%? Not 17. Total.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Chip Gibbons]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. Just 17Americans. Is that what I said? Yeah, Honestly, I would believe that, too.

[Matt Binder]

17. Thank you, guys.

[Emma Vigeland]

The AP finds that only one in four U.S. adults say Trump's policies have helped them. Them. Over 1500 good trouble. Rallies in honor of John Lewis are happening today to protest the Trump administration. Zoran Momdani made his way down to D.C. yesterday to meet with Democrats organized by Bernie and AOC. He posted an interesting photo with Chris Van Holland on social media. And I'm going to bang this drum. That that's got to be our next Senate majority leader. A US Citizen army veteran was jailed for three days by ICE after they raided the California cannabis farm. Israel kills at least 22 people yesterday, including bombing the church that the late Pope Francis used to call every day. The Trump administration is being sued by over 20 states to block FEMA funding cuts. Experts warn that Trump could crash the market if he fires Jerome Powell. And lastly, Trump declares that Coca Cola will start using real sugar. And that appears to be news to Coca Cola. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. I am not a soda drinker, but I have heard that, like, isn't that the difference between Mexican Coke or Mexican Sprite? They use real sugar. Exactly. And you know, like my husband Likes the Mexican Sprite. And I, I've always felt weird ordering it, but I guess it's a different product, right? Yeah. And it's glass bottle. Right. For the hippies, right? Right. But it tastes better. Is that the thing?

[Matt Binder]

I mean, arguably. I don't know about that.

[Ren Brabinek]

I think it's significantly better. I did enough time in Atlanta, Georgia.

[Emma Vigeland]

To be a Coke expert. Okay, fair enough. Don't clip that. Yeah, clip it. In fact, you should clip it. No. So last night at like 2:00am, you know, when you're passing bills that you're really proud of, Republicans seem to be doing this. This is a very long voterama right now. Democrats appear quite frustrated, but this is what happens when you have an administration that cares about getting its agenda through. It's a contrast to many Democrats who will let things like the parliamentarian get in the way. Unfortunately for the entire country, what they are enacting is horrific. So last night they passed around $9 billion in rescissions. Functionally gutting public broadcasting, but deeply cutting foreign aid as well. The legislation moves to the House and this is a rescission of already appropriated funds. This is exceedingly rare. It hasn't happened in over 20 years. Trump tried in 2018, it did not pass the Senate at the time. And basically we've talked about impoundment on this show before. But under the Impoundment Control act passed in the 70s, the President may request for Congress because Congress has the power of the purse for the rescission of funds that have already been authorized and they have a 45 day timeline deadline to approve it. And if they don't approve it, then the money should be spent as has been allocated. But we know via these like doge cuts. And also it's really the Project 2025 Russ Vote agenda, the Office of Management and Budget that they have already just been not spending certain money cutting things illegally. This is the legal avenue by which Trump can basically gut the federal government. Public broadcasting is essential for rural communities. We'll hit on that angle in just a bit. But here is Patty Murray, Senator, confronting Russ vote. It was, this was two days ago, this, this questioning here, but she, this is June 25th. Oh, it was June 25th. I'm sorry about that. I thought she posted it yesterday or two days ago, I think so. Appreciate that, Brian. But this is just a good exchange because it explains how they're gonna move forward with these rescissions. Russ votes says more is coming and she lays it out here when questioning him in the Senate.

[Patty Murray]

You even publicly said you may well try to do an end run around Congress by requesting rescissions in the last 45 days of the fiscal year and then then pretending that even if Congress fails to approve them, you can rescind those funds anyway. So let me tell you, that is not how the law works. The President does not have a line item veto. Your notion of this pocket rescission defies common sense and by the way, the plaintext of the law. Director Vaux, will you commit to this committee that you will not attempt to do an end run around Congress with this so called pocket rescission, something members on both sides of this dice have made clear is outright illegal.

[Russ Vogt]

Senator, there's a lot of mischaracterizations into my previous comments. I would just say that we believe that we have under the law numerous options with regard to how to achieve savings, including rescissions that are timed at the end of the fiscal year. General Accounting Office has articulated that earlier, earlier in the life of the answer yes or no.

[Patty Murray]

And what I hear you is all kinds of word salad to make sure that you are letting us know that you intend to do things that are outside the intent of the law.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. So this involves basically exactly what they're doing here, where they're transmitting this precision proposal to Congress so late in the fiscal year that it kind of just basically formalizes what they've already been doing. And this seems to be something that they're going to be pursuing going forward with more of these kinds of pocket rescissions. Here is Representative McGarvey of Kentucky, a Democrat. He went on MSNBC and he spoke a bit about how this gutting of public broadcasting is going to affect rural communities that are already about to see major hospital closures. This affects things like disaster preparedness, communication in rural areas that don't have the infrastructure that cities do. And he explains that well here with devastating consequences.

[Morgan McGarvey]

And so there have been senators who have raised those kinds of concerns, not just in Kentucky, but in states like South Dakota and Maine. And that being said, it still looks like this package is going to go through. So then where does that leave your concerns? Does it mean that the state has to.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm sorry, the in is at 1 114. Yep, it's okay.

[Morgan McGarvey]

But specifically when it comes to the public broadcasting piece, you've talked a lot about the way that those kinds of cuts to radio programs in your state could hamper people's ability to even be aware of what's going on in an emergency, which comes against the backdrop of questions of Whether people were warned in Texas, talk us through the implications of clawing back this funding.

[Maureen Comey]

Yeah, this bill is another slap in the face to Kentuckians because look at Kentucky. We're a rural state. Already this year we have had 46 extreme weather events, floods, tornadoes in Kentucky. Your local news station doesn't cover every corner of the state. The cell phone reception can be spotty at best when you're in rural Kentucky. And these radio stations are the lifeline. It's the way we get alerts, it's the way we get warnings to people. And when you're talking about a tornado coming down in western Kentucky or eastern Kentucky getting flooded in between the mountains, seconds matter. This isn't just minutes. Seconds can matter. And it can be the difference between getting you and your family to safety or not with devastating consequences.

[Morgan McGarvey]

And so there have been senators who.

[Emma Vigeland]

Devastating consequences and that, that we're going to see more of this in rural areas. I don't understand. I don't. People are prepared for the, the impacts that this is going to have on places that already have such threadbare infrastructure. Like this decision essentially cuts over the entire, the entirety of the federal appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. There are going to be major media layoffs and the npr, pbs, that's going to be at the front of people's minds. But it's, it's the, the, the broadcasting in these rural areas, in these areas that need communication, that it's going to have a major impact. People will likely die because of this because there aren't going to be fair warnings about storms or tornadoes or flooding. In addition to the fact that the administration is gutting our, our ability to accurately predict the weather, cutting weather balloons, cutting staff. We already saw the deadly consequences in Texas of a austerity mindset with the Republican Party down there, exacerbated by the austerity mindset from the Department of Homeland Security and that insane rule by Kristi Noem that any grant over $100,000 has to go through her personal approval, get her personal sign off. She waited over 72 hours in that instance. There are probably kids that or people that could potentially have been saved if she didn't have that rule in place. And they expedited things. These things matter. They have impacts.

[Matt Binder]

This is part of a long term fascist attack on our information ecosystem and comes at a time where local newspapers aren't picking up the slack. They're actually folding or being bought up by giant venture capital firms or something like that. We have less and less actual Reporting from these communities. And public radio is a massive, plays a massive role in like the Grand Forks Flood, 1997, Minnesota Public Radio was all over that. But you know, you have people like Matt Taibbi saying, well, it's actually too partisan and people that don't actually know what role these, these institutions serve and can only think about it in terms of what they've meant for their career.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, right. And I should correct myself. This isn't technically a pocket rescission because the fiscal year, the next fiscal year begins on October 1st. But that's what we should expect is coming because it's a, it's a workaround to get like this radical agenda of slashing the government to the point that it doesn't function. It's a way that they feel that they can formalize it. This decision though, hey, if the House passes it and Trump signs it into law, this is like the legitimate way that you're supposed, you're able to do this. And it just is another piece of evidence to show how completely beholden the Republican Party is to this cult of personality at the very top. Like all of these, these Republican lawmakers, Republican lawmakers disproportionately represent rural communities. This isn't news to anybody. They are voting to immiserate their own constituents because of the cult of personality at the top. And these rescissions are going to keep coming as Vote has warned. So I mean, and the bigger piece of the bill too that we should definitely touch on is the $8 billion that is being clawed back for foreign aid. So John Thune was able to save the George W. Bush era program of a meager $400 million for PEPFAR, which is the HIV program that George, that, that radical Marxist George W. Bush put into place at the beginning of his or in the middle of his first term. So they did include that, but save that. They're just completely doing whatever Donald Trump says, rubber stamping this whole rescission stuff.

[Matt Binder]

And I don't, you know, this is basic constitutionality. And you look at like, oh, where did this start? Where president started saying, oh, you agreement that Congress had about how to appropriate funds. I don't like that anymore. Oh, how about Richard Nixon in 72?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep.

[Matt Binder]

What a great. This is again like the long term like fascist attack on this country by the right. This is basic constitutional stuff. Congress should determine how to appropriate funds and the president shouldn't be able to come back after those agreements are made saying but not the stuff for them.

[Chip Gibbons]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Especially because this was appropriated by the previous administration. But, you know, what's the point of Congress? Exactly. Trump. Trump. The Republicans have successfully corrupted the judiciary and have made Congress basically a completely immobile and incapable body, except to do whatever Donald Trump wants.

[Matt Binder]

President Nixon broke precedent when, fresh off an overwhelming electoral victory in 1972, he refused to spend money that had been appropriated for several social programs.

[Russ Vogt]

Oh yeah?

[Matt Binder]

What happened then?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep, in a moment, we'll be talking to Chip Gibbons. But first, a word from some of our sponsors. Have you ever browsed an incognito mode? Well, it's probably as not as incognito as you think. Hate to break it to you, Google recently settled a 5 billion dollar lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in in. In incognito mode. Google's defense? Well, incognito does not mean invisible. Yikes. In fact, all your online activity is 100% visible to a ton of third parties, unless you use ExpressVPN. Visit expressvpn.com majority and you can get an extra four months free. Without ExpressVPN third parties like your Internet service provider, your mobile network provider, your wi fi, etc. On school network admins, they can see every website you visit, even if you're in incognito mode. ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers, so third parties cannot see your browsing history. ExpressVPN is the best because it hides your IP address, makes it extremely difficult for third parties to track your activity online, and it's easy to use. You just fire up the app, you click one button and you get protected. It works on all of your devices, your phone, your laptop, tablets, and more. So you can just say private on the go and it's one click and you're good. ExpressVPN It's a must for me when I'm in airports. As they mentioned, I sometimes like to do some work, some in coffee shops and things like that. You got to just fire it up. But it takes a second. One click and you're good to go. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com Majority that's exp r e s s vpn.com Majority and you can get an extra four months free. Expressvpn.com Majority we'll put a link to ExpressVPN in the description, wherever you're listening to or watching this. Our other sponsor of the show today is Naked Wines. I am a sucker for wine. It's a vice of mine. 100% but it's not vice. It's just like in moderation. You're good, you're good. And especially now that the wedding's over, I'm back to like kind of my regular wine consumption and I'm not dieting anymore. And Naked Wines is really helping me out in that regard. Ever walk into a store and you have no idea what wine to get? Yeah, me too. I've stopped wasting time at the store and staring at a giant wall of wine and not knowing what to pick. And that is why I love our next sponsor, Naked Wines. There's nothing that screams summer like a good bottle of chilled rose. I love wine. You know, I may not know exactly how it's made the ins and outs of it, but Naked Wines, they figure it out for you. It's the this podcast is sponsored by Naked Wines. Naked Wines is a wine club that directly connects the world's best independent winemakers so you can get a world class wine delivered straight to your door. And if you use code Majority for the code and [e-mail], you can get six bottles for just 39.99. I had this Chianti from Naked Wines that I really loved. I think it was last week. I love cracking open the bottle of wine, putting away my phone and just being present in the moment with my family and friends and Naked Wines helps me do it. Naked brings you amazing wine straight from the winery at up to 60% less than what you would pay in store by cutting out extra costs like middlemen markups. Naked Wines has been around for over 15 years and backs over 90 independent winemakers around the world to make the wine that you love to drink. Now is the time to join the Naked Wines community. Head to nakedwines.com majority and click Enter voucher and put in my code Majority for both the code and password for six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's 100% off your first [e-mail] majority and use the code and password majority for six bottles of wine for $39.99. Check out the show notes and you can get six bottles of wine for $39,99. Head to nakedwines.com and use code Majority for both code and password and that will be linked below in the description. All right, quick break and when we come back we'll be joined by Chip Gibbon. We are back and we are joined now by Chip Gibbons, Policy Director of Defending Rights and Dissent, contributor to Jacobin here to talk about the state of free speech in the Trump era, specifically with Gaza and Mahmoud Khalil and more. Chip, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Chip Gibbons]

Well, thank you so much for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. So you've been updating people on defending rights and dissent on the it's called Gaza First Amendment Alert. You're doing this on a weekly basis, kind of collecting all of the egregious free speech violations under, under the Trump administration as it relates to speech on Gaza in particular. But, you know, obviously there is a war on free speech on multiple fronts. I mean, we could talk about the CBS thing for a while, but let's just stick to the Gaza stuff for now. The Zora Mandani, this, this victory, the fact that it's sending such, like, panic throughout Washington is hilarious to me on one side. But then you have things like as you wrote about in your latest First Amendment Alert, Representative Annie Andy Ogles calling for him to be deported. Donald Trump talking about Zoramdani being deported. Just speak about that case a bit and how dangerous it is to be speaking about deporting somebody based on their political speech.

[Chip Gibbons]

Well, I have to thank my colleague, Nathan Fuller. He's the one who wrote that article for the Gaza First Amendment Alert. He did a really good job. But no, the madame calls for deportation are part of a larger trend that we've seen. You know, it isn't just Trump. It goes back to Hoover and the Palmer Raids when we would use sort of immigration law as a tool for political policing. It's very disturbing to see somebody obviously defending rights and dissent as a C3 is nonpartisan. We have no position on the election, but it is disturbing to see someone win a Democratic victory. And the response of people who are unhappy with what the voters have done is to try to deport that person, denaturalize them, expel them, and the various things they're bringing up up as grounds for deportation. He was in DSA or is in dsa. I mean, that's, that's straight out the red scare, both of them. Or that he had a rap song where he said, give my love to the Holy Land Five. I think that's the impermissible line. The Holy Land Five were five Muslim Americans who were ridiculously persecuted for providing aid to the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people of Gaza. And the US Government has this theory of terrorism per the US Government and the prosecution. They said Hamas had three parts to it, a military wing. And of course, that military wing engages in acts outside of International humanitarian law that I condemn a political wing, a social wing, and if you give money to charity, to help orphans, to help hospitals, to help feed people, and that charity goes through a Hamas controlled charity network or charity committee, you are guilty of material support for terrorism, and we will put you in prison. The US Government never alleged the Holy Land Five bought guns. They never alleged they were involved in violence. They were literally accused of helping orphans and funding hospitals on the grounds that those were Hamas hospitals or Hamas protected orphans. And of course, today Israel bombs hospitals using that same logic that the US Government introduced in this case, in part through Israeli intelligence. And every single civil liberties group, every single human rights group, every single group that just gives humanitarian aid overseas that I know of opposed that prosecution because it is such an affront to the First Amendment, it is such an affront to humanitarian aid, and it is such an affront to, to basic human decency. And, you know, if you say, okay, give my love to these five political prisoners convicted of humanitarian aid, you have to be denaturalized and deported, that's material support for terrorism. So I think it's always disturbing to see immigration law used in a political context. Although political policing is arguably the original purpose of US Immigration law, going back to John Adams and certainly going back to J. Edgar Hoover. But it is even more concerning when the crime is basic support for Palestinian rights, basic support for political prisoners, and basic free speech. So this is an incredibly disturbing case. It is deeply rooted in the American tradition. I wrote a piece for Jacobin called Crushing Dissent Through Immigration Law, which predates this, that looked at the Palmer Raids, the attacks on Harry Bridges, a famous labor leader, the Los Angeles Eight, similar to Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinians. And it's just a long trend. And the Trump administration is able to tap into the worst parts of the American national security apparatus in order to carry out its war on free speech. And it's worth pointing out we didn't start the Gaza First Amendment Alert under Trump, we started it under Biden.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Chip Gibbons]

And we did so because we said we are enduring the worst crisis for civil liberty since the War on terror. Now, Trump looked at that and let's go back to McCarthyism, let's go back to the Palmer Raids. So I, you know, I no longer say it can't get worse because they always prove to me in Washington again. But, you know, yeah, so we are, we were in a war on terror like situation, and we are rapidly devolving into a Palmer Raids type situation.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, if you, if you don't mind expanding on the Palmer Raids because I think a lot of our audience are, is familiar with the parallels to the Red Scare. I mean you'd have to be blind not to see the parallels there. But the Palmer Raids and you know, there's also a lot of discussion about historical parallels. There were many to the Vietnam War in the lead up to the 2024 race, but there are a lot of parallels to pre, the Gilded Age and pre Great Depression time periods. Talk a little bit about that period of history and you know, Herbert Hoover's racism as well and how he used the Palmer Raids and immigration for similar ends.

[Chip Gibbons]

Sure. So the Palmer Raids are part of what's called the first Red Scare. The US historians generally divide the Red scares into two categories. The first Red scare, which happened under Woodrow Wilson after World War I, of which the Palmer Rays were a huge part of. And the second red scare is what's generally called McCarthyism. There's a very famous quote from Ellen Shresker, the leading historian of McCarthyism that if we knew than what we now would call it Hooverism and J. Edgar Hoover is the driving force in both Red scares. The Palmer Raids are the named after the Attorney General Palmer. They are the brainchild of J. Edgar Hoover who at this point heads a division within the nascent FBI called originally the Radical Division. Which. Why is there a radical division that should. It wasn't because they were radical. They were policing radicals. And then it becomes General Intelligence Division. And, and Hoover is really into using intelligence to spy on political speech. Some of the tasks he was given was to prove the wobblies and the Soviet Unions were behind the fact that black people were fighting back the lynch mobs. Because why else would you fight back to a lynch mob unless Lenin or the IWW told you to? You know, real, real, real galaxy brain thinking going on in the US Government.

[Emma Vigeland]

Why would you protest a genocide if you're not being funded by Qatar? Obviously. Yes.

[Chip Gibbons]

Or Cuba or Iran. Every day they pick a new evildoer who's funded this. When the Wall Street Journal came with Cuba's behind, like okay, you guys really are scraping the barrel. But he didn't have a legal basis to be doing this. And what he looked at was he said, I'm going to use immigration law. And part of the reason why Hoover liked immigration law so much was because it was outside the normal court system. And Hoover's belief was that you had no constitutional rights in immigration proceedings. So he. There's something at the time called the Anarchist Exclusion act that allows someone to be thrown out the country being an anarchist. And Hoover raids. Originally it's the Russian workers Union, later it's various communist parties because there were two communist parties who could not get along with each other. I'm sure we're so shocked that the communists could not find themselves at one party for differences that none of us can understand either now or then. And they do these really abusive raids they get at the time immigration enforcements through the Department of Labor. And in some of these situations they raid headquarters and arrest everyone and they get warrants via telegram. They telegram the names of the people after they've been arrested. In other cases I've heard they use John Doe warrants, just a warrant for no one. And they arrest these people, they subject them to conditions that are panamount to torture. And it's considered a really ugly stain on our history. Whenever you're an FBI, whenever you're nominated for the FBI director, Emma, they're always going to ask you has the FBI ever done anything wrong? And the answer is always the pomerays and King, that's how bad it is. And it's eventually ended because Hoover has no deportation authority. And the new Secretary of Labor comes in and says you guys have to stop doing this, this is ridiculous. And Hoover immediately concludes logically of course, the Secretary of Labor in the Wilson administration is a secret wobbly because who else? Who else? But what's so important to note about this is that he loses his intelligence division for about a decade but he brings it back. And this is the same division that carries out 10 year interregum tenure interviewed him that carries out COINTELPRO spies on King and that really for Hoover immigration law was a pretext for political policing. He lacked the other authorities at that time to do so. And when he expanded into broad based surveillance of what he called subversives, he moved beyond it. And I think today's attacks on these student protesters who are noncitizens or absolutely are following the Hoover playbook. A lot of this comes from the Heritage foundation who has played a very long role in formulating US national security policy going back to the Reagan administration. And they come up with the idea of going after visa holders. But they're very clear their ultimate goal is they want to come after citizens. They want to make supporting Palestine akin to material support for terrorism. And, and obviously we should not be attacking immigrants, obviously we should not be deporting people on the basis of their speech. But if you believe for a second this will stay limited to non citizen holders if it's not opposed. Just look at how Hoover used the Palmer Raids to launch his horrifying semi totalitarian intelligence apparatus that still haunts us to this day to a certain extent.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Well, can, can you expand a little bit on how these like systems of, of suppression, surveillance and you know, criminalization of speech shifted within, like federal law enforcement say from focusing on communist subversion, the threat from within, to a counterterrorism effort to suppress. But they're basically similar systems. It's just more about terrorism versus maybe like explicitly saying we're going after communist subversion.

[Chip Gibbons]

Well, I'm writing an entire book on this subject that will be out from Virgo in 2026. It's called the Imperial Bureau. But no, you're correct. The original sort of apparatus that Hoover built was based on what's called a counter subversive belief. And it's very rooted in late 19th century, early 20th century beliefs that we should spy on anarchist, communist, socialist during the Cold War period. He's able to sort of elevate it to like a foreign policy. He's able to use the foreign policy concerns with communism, sort of elevate his surveillance apparatus to that level. But in the mid-70s there's an attack on the surveillance on the CIA, covert actions on war in Vietnam. And almost instantly in the mid-70s and you'll see people talking about this, and I think it was Counterspy magazine, they shift from talking about communism to terrorism. And one of the dissenting opinions in the church committee from Barry Goldwater, this is mid-70s, says these performs will prevent us from tackling terrorism. And then the Heritage foundation arrives on the scene and they get Samuel T. Francis, who was later fired from the Washington Times in 1995 for being racist. How you're too racist for the Washington Times in 1995, I don't know. And a former House UN American Activities Committee member and they write this ridiculous white paper called the Coming Threat of Terrorism. If we don't do something about terrorism, we'll end up like Rhodesia, an apartheid state, which is an interesting comparison. And they go through all of the reasons we're threatened by terrorism. The FBI had to end its 26 year investigation of the Socialist Workers Party. The Subversive Activities Control Board no longer exists anymore. Police red squads no longer keep lists of communists. And so all of the anti communism stuff we're now being told is about terrorism. And the Reagan administration plays into this. And in the early 80s there's a terrorism subcommittee that is absolutely key to the sort of rebranding of political Policing for Communism as being about anti terrorism. The Nation magazine and places like that are writing in the 80s. They're bringing back McCarthy. This is decades for 9 11. They're bringing back McCarthyism under the guise of counterterrorism. And the big thing they wanted to do to sort of bring back the Hoover policies as far as they ever went away, and in my research, they really never did, was this argument that, shh, we have to do preventative surveillance. We have to spy on people before they become terrorists. And the way you do that is looking at the same people you always look at. And after 9 11, that became the official position of the FBI. The FBI was no longer going to use law enforcement to prosecute terrorists. They were going to use intelligence to prevent terrorism before it happened and proactively go out and find them.

[Ren Brabinek]

And.

[Chip Gibbons]

And, you know, part of the FBI guidelines now are that FBI agents have to engage in proactively finding terrorism. And in order to do that, they're allowed to open investigations into American citizens called assessments, with no factual basis to believe that person has committed a crime or threatens national security. And of course, the FBI defines terrorism in ideological terms. The terrorism categories are anarchist extremist, Puerto Rican extremist, black extremist. So if you're trying to find an anarchist extremist before it becomes a terrorist, you look for an anarchist or a Puerto Rican or a black person who doesn't want to be killed by the police. It's fascinating, right? Whenever black Americans don't want to be lynched or murdered by police, we treat that as some sort of national security problem as opposed to stop killing people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I mean, we have the reporting from Trevor Aronson, and we had him on the show about how it's been documented that the FBI infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests via this shady character in the instance that he kind of highlighted as well. But I mean, bringing it back to the terrorism piece, because I think it's just so important to nail this down here. Like the fact that it went the turn maybe happened on terrorism earlier than I thought. Right. I would have said that this is when it's kind of like formalized in the post 911 War on Terror era. But is your contention that it kind of just more expanded and exploded and perhaps the surveillance technology to deploy these tactics that it just kind of grew out of was an outgrowth of the. Of the war on terror and was less like just. It didn't begin basically under Bush.

[Chip Gibbons]

No, it didn't begin under Bush. I mean, I have documents that I Got through a lawsuit that show what the FBI were doing right before 9 11. They're spying on World bank protesters. Right. The same JTTF Joint Terrorism Task Force that are gonna be investigating the Pentagon plane and the Twin Towers are spying on World bank protesters. And what my contention is is that there was a very deliberate project. And again you can go back, read what they were saying in the nation and elsewhere in the 70s and 80s to rebrand counter subversion, McCarthyism, anti communist counterterrorism. And 911 really escalates that project. I think the analogy would be the Iraq War. Iraq had nothing to do with 9 11. Clinton was bombing them once every three days. They were being sanctioned with all of these people sort of advocating for bombing Iraq and going in there. And after 911 they were able to sort of use that to make that the policy. So the lie we were told after 911 is that the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, et cetera, couldn't stop the attacks because of the church committee restrictions, the protections of civil liberties. And that narrative, even though I have files that show them taking pictures of everyone who attended a college meeting about the World bank and identifying them. And if you can do that, you can certainly find Al Qaeda. I think so. Right. You have the authority to do so. That became the official narrative. And then.

[Emma Vigeland]

Which is quite convenient, which is quite convenient given what we know, that basically Bush hand waved away in the months leading up to the attack because of his own incompetence, then the answer is just more surveillance, which is what they always wanted, and invading Iraq, which is what Cheney always wanted to do anyway.

[Chip Gibbons]

Yes. And the thing with surveillance is every time it fails, they get more powers. And I mean the surveillance fails to prevent terrorism for two reasons. First of all is incompetence. They're not very good at looking at terrorism. The second reason is, I think political bias and purpose. I mean, if you have people from Al Qaeda in the country plotting 911 and you're too busy looking for Quakers who might do a sit in about Mumia Abu Jamal. Right. Which is your priority. If you pick the second one as your priority, that's a problem. But I also think the problem goes back to the fact that the preventative policing mindset that they embrace is a project for political surveillance. It's not a project for keeping us safe. So FBI surveillance is very good at finding Quaker, it's very good at spying on Black Lives Matter. It's not very good at stopping terrorism, it's not very good at stopping spies. And the reason why is it's designed for the first purpose, not the second one. But no one ever talks about that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. Just to bring it kind of full circle back to we started talking about Zoran Mandani, the threats against him. But this is not hypothetical for many people in this country. I mean, and we have obviously Mahmoud Khalil, who missed the birth of his child because he was locked up for months over his political speech. You've written about him fairly extensively. Can you speak about that case and its role in this, like, overall mosaic of suppression of free speech under the guise of counterterrorism, et cetera?

[Chip Gibbons]

Yeah. Mahmoud Khalid Khalil. Khalil is a Columbia graduate student and a green card holder who was arrested and detained initially under a determination by Rubio that his presence in this country posed a threat to U.S. foreign policy or consequences to U.S. foreign policy. He's one of several noncitizens, including Ramessa Azturk, Moshe Madali and Batar Khansori, who have been subjected to similar treatment or similar persecution. He's sort of come to symbolize the Trump administration's ideological deportation policies and the way that Eugene Debs came to symbolize the abuse of the Espionage act during World War I. But there's other individuals as well. And what we know is that Trump campaigned on deporting student visa holders who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about Israel's genocide. Who can believe such people can exist? And in this sort of lame duck period of the Biden administration, these far right groups like Qatar start boasting that they are preparing dossiers, including using face recognition technology. Then Trump comes into office. He signs a series of executive orders clearly aimed at removing individuals from the country who support Palestinian rights, as well as creating this vast social media surveillance apparatus, again aimed at non citizens. But once we start spying on people on social media for their political views, I don't think it ends with non citizens. And then we start to see these arrests. Khalil, Asturk, Madali, Khansori, and they're all initially brought under this Rubio determination. And it's very interesting because it's a Cold War era law and it allows the Secretary of State to throw some out of the country. If they make a determination, they have consequences, adverse consequences for U.S. foreign policy. And thanks to a Bill Clinton era ruling of the Board of Immigration Appeals, once someone makes that, once the Secretary of State signs that piece of paper, an immigration judge has to rule that person removable. There is no defense. Immigration courts aren't real courts. They work for Pam Bondi or the attorney general, who is right now Pam Bondi. And over the years, people have tried to challenge these sorts of immigration enforcement in federal courts, and Congress has responded by stripping the courts of a lot of their jurisdiction. But what Khalil, Azturk, Medali and others have done is to file federal habeas petitions. And these sort of are challenges to their detention, but they allow them to challenge the constitutionality of the order. So you basically have these systems where you have one proceeding going on in immigration court and and one proceeding going on in federal court. And it can be quite contradictory. For example, a immigration judge refused to grant Ozturk, who is accused of writing an op ed, terrible, terrible crime, writing an op ed, refused to grant her bail, but a federal judge did grant her bail. So it gets like this weird legal whiplash that's hard to follow. But in Hoel's case, the immigration judge who works for Pam Bondi and previously was an ICE lawyer, real neutral party, ruled he was removable. They went to a federal habeas. They filed a federal habeas court petition, which is in New Jersey, asking to prevent Rubio from making the foreign policy determination, from stopping the Trump administration from enforcing the policy of arresting, detaining, removing noncitizens who criticize Israel. And the judge gave them a partial victory, stating that he could not be detained based on the Rubio determination. The Trump administration then turned around and said, actually, now we're detaining him on the basis that he refused to tell the immigration officer he was a member of a student group at Columbia. Again, real serious crime here. Student clubs at Columbia or had an internship at the United Nations Refugee for Palestine program. And the judge eventually releases him. But both the habeas petition hearings in New Jersey and the immigration hearings are ongoing in their separate sort of court systems. And there's a fight right now about whether or not the injunction that says he can't be removed on the ruba determination means they have to stop the immigration proceedings to remove him for doing so. And the immigration judges totally interested in continuing on these unconstitutional proceedings. And the other interesting thing is when they slap down the foreign policy grounds, the Trump administration always runs and says, oh, but there's this second charge of him not telling the immigration officers about his student club activities or internships. The immigration judge has made no ruling on that. She's refused to hear evidence countering it or offering relief from it on the basis that the sole reason for her finding of removability is the Rubio foreign Policy determination, which is this is incredibly Kafka esque proceeding. We bring two charges against you, one of which is unconstitutional and not permissible. And you know, but we base it off of that one. Therefore you can't challenge the evidence under the second one. And when we can't get away with it under the first one, we go for the second one. But you can't challenge that one because they're doing the first one. It makes no sense. It's just, it's Kafka esque.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I mean it's, it's also just, I think notable that the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9 11. Ice was created after 9 11. And that perhaps in terms of what accelerated this level of just straight up fascism, honestly, is that merging of that kind of nebulous immigration proceed, those nebulous immigration proceedings with a, with like the nature of homeland security. Right. So it exploits this broken court system, if you can even call it that, in order to suppress free speech under the guise of national security. It's, it's operating outside of our Constitution, Constitutional protections in almost every conceivable way.

[Chip Gibbons]

Yeah, I mean, and there's a long march to the sort of national securitization of immigration law. Initially when Hoover did the Palmer Raids, immigration was the authority of the Department of Labor. And because they wanted to make it more what we would now call national security focused, they move it to the Department of Justice in 1940. And then that gets a lot of bad things going. And the Reagan administration creates this committee called the Alien Border Committee that brings what was then the ins. I think that was a precursor to ice, CIA and FBI together and announces that immigration enforcement is now the front line of terrorism enforcement. And the people who worked in immigration enforcement were very surprised to learn this. And then, you know, after 911 we put the final nail in the coffin and we put it in this new thing called dhs, this new thing called Homeland Security, which sounds a lot like the fatherland. You know, I don't know who picked that term, was not a good one. But yeah, no, there is a long march of sort of first using immigration authorities because of their low constitutional protections to attack political speech and then increasingly putting immigration authorities in the national security realm in order to further expand the use of this.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, Chip Gibbons, really, really fascinating stuff. People should check out Defending Rights and Descent and also all your pieces in Jacobin. We will put a link to that in the description down below and wherever people are listening to or watching this. Chip, thanks so much for your time. Today.

[Chip Gibbons]

Thank you for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. Quick break. And when we come back, we are going to be speaking to Ren Robinek. I'll confirm the pronunciation in just a second. About Elon Musk's supercomputer poisoning mantis.

[Ren Brabinek]

It.

[Emma Vigeland]

We are back and we are joined now by Ren Brabinek, who is a Nashville based freelance journalist, wrote a piece for the Tennessee Outlook entitled A billionaire, An AI Supercomputer, Toxic Emissions and a Memphis Community that did nothing wrong. Ren, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Russ Vogt]

Thank you for having me. And just real quick, it's the Tennessee Lookout.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, I'm so sorry. Look, lookout. I appreciate that. The Tennessee Lookout. So Elon Musk, he is basically poisoning this community. I've been, you know, reading about this in bits and pieces for a few months at this point, but your piece just laid it out really well. Tell us a bit about Colossus and this supercomputer facility that has been constructed in, in Memphis. And it's, I think the, it's going to be the world's largest supercomputer. What are, what's the state of things down there in Tennessee?

[Russ Vogt]

Yeah, I mean you really have to love the dystopian names that the tech guys give all of their various things that they come up with. Colossus. Elon Musk started building it in 2024. It's in South Memphis or southwest Memphis more specifically. He really fast tracked it. It's already up and running, it's already completed. He only had a permit for 15 methane gas powered turbines to run it, but he's actually using 33. And we were able to find that out by the Southern Environmental Law center. Actually going up in the sky and using thermal imaging to look at the center and find out that there are in fact way more turbines being utilized than what was allowed for. And he's essentially pulled this off with almost no public comment or decision making from the actual communities that this center is located in. And it's kind of following this technocratic ideology of move fast and break things while paying very little attention to the communities affected along the way. And I can get more into like the specifics on the effects of the outputs of the facility and also the inputs as well.

[Emma Vigeland]

Please do. It's incredible that he is just completely violating the permit. I'm sure that he could just eat whatever. Fine. Later. Right. This is very Elon Musk move fast and break communities, I guess. But talk a little bit more about that impact then.

[Russ Vogt]

Yeah. So the outputs is obviously the Most concerning thing right off the bat because it's affecting the communities themselves. We don't have the exact specifics because it's an unpermitted structure and inspectors haven't even been in yet. This is all like a very rapidly developing situation, but it's likely the single largest source of smog forming pollutants in Memphis, Tennessee. It's estimated that the smog from this one plant or the smog is increasing, adding to the total smog in Memphis by somewhere between 30 and 60%. And what that's made up of is nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde, which obviously pollutes the air a lot. There's a direct connection between those pollutants and cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease. It's estimated from the plant by itself is producing more nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde than the Valero Refinery, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Allen Power Plant, the Memphis International Airport and the Drasklavska Chemical plant combined. So it's this massive industrial creator of these pollutants. Yeah, I know, it's huge. It's huge. Which are also. Planetary warming, by the way, doesn't get as much attention as CO2, but these pollutants do warm the planet. And it's all placed in a predominantly poor, predominantly African American community as well.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And you write well in this piece about class dynamics and climate change. Right. And internationally. I hadn't seen this map, but you cited this anthropologist, Jason Hickel, who has an estimate showing that by 2072 billion people are going to be in areas that are extreme, where there will be extreme heat and it might be unlivable. And that's almost 100% of that area is in the Global south, in areas like Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia, that total, as you write, less than 20% of historic carbon dioxide emissions. Not the pollute. The wealthier countries, they're the big polluters, like the United States, I mean, China too, and others. And the people that are going to that 2 billion figure is just this is going to be more and more displacement, more and more refugees. But this is being basically replicated even domestically is also what you talk about.

[Russ Vogt]

And that was kind of the point behind the piece because it's so frustrating reporting on environmental issues in the US because a lot of these, particularly as it pertains to the class dynamics, because a lot of this we hear all the time about how the Global south contributed the least to climate change, historically at least, and now they're going to suffer the most from it. And pretty much everybody in the US is comfortable talking about that, excluding maybe climate deniers. But you don't really talk. You don't really get a lot of attention paid to how we're actually replicating that same model on a class basis here in the United States. And that's kind of why I wanted to report on this, because it's really that kind of same situation of you have this predominantly very poor, very underprivileged neighborhoods in Memphis who are being affected by something that they contributed very little to in terms of their own emissions and their own contributions to pollution and global warming and stuff like that, but they're the ones who have to suffer the most from it.

[Emma Vigeland]

And this supercomputer, is this for his Grok thing?

[Russ Vogt]

Yeah, it's for Grok, which obviously Grok has been in the news a lot lately for some pretty controversial stuff. Yeah. So it's kind of silly because we don't really need it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry to interject, but I'm just. The incredible villainy of polluting not any community that's polluted. It's a. It's a tragedy. But Memphis is like this historic city that is like, for. For music purposes, for American culture, for civil rights, and the guys. Mecca, Hitler, AI is poisoning it. I mean, I'm just. I'm just trying to highlight the insanity of it and continue around apologies. No.

[Russ Vogt]

It'S sort of like I just saw a headline the other day about how the Onion is, like, having to do, like, rituals to come up with new, different ways to actually make funny posts that are not real. Because the reality is so crazy. But, yeah, it's insane that that's what's happening. I mean, it would be devastating in any community, obviously. But there is a historical analog here that the communities that tend to be devastated the most in the name of progress and development tend to be poor communities, because poor people don't have a voice, they don't have political strength, they don't have money, they don't kind of have the power to influence policy. And historically, those sacrifices were made inequitably in the name of progress, but now the sacrifices are being made exactly like you said, to power, Mecca, Hitler, Grok. Yeah, it's pretty wild.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's incredible. Can you speak a little bit more about the racial and political dynamics in Memphis and, like, what the state's relationship with the, you know, predominantly black areas of the community are?

[Russ Vogt]

Yeah, it's a little bit. I mean, it's unfortunate because the city of Memphis itself is predominantly a black City, it's run by Democrats, it has a black mayor. You know, all these factors involved with that. And Elon Musk essentially cut deals with the city's leadership, some of which were unelected individuals. There are some representatives who, like the state Representative, Justin Pearson, who was able to get some comments from him. And also he also published my article on his feed as well. He's sticking up for the communities there because he represents them. And unfortunately it was kind of some unelected or appointed city managers that approved this. And it's sort of like this community box town and this area that's as it kind of always has been. And there's been some good opposition that's kind of coming out now. And there may be some good developments on the horizon that I plan on reporting more on in the future. But it was that move fast and break things that just happened so quickly. This facility, they broke ground on it just over a year ago with very little public comment. And now it's already up and running and using more methane powered turbines than they even had permits for.

[Emma Vigeland]

And lastly, what I saw that the NAACP has filed and so other environmental groups are trying to stop the usage of these like turbines in the supercomputer facility. They file like what? Is there any recourse? Is there any kind of, Are there mechanisms right now to slow this in any way? What's happening in terms of fighting back against it?

[Russ Vogt]

Yeah, the NAACP is working with the Southern Environmental Law center to essentially try to stop South Memphis from becoming a sacrifice zone. And I use that term like for example, Cancer Alley, Louisiana's Cancer Alley, the Flint Water crisis area from my home state in Michigan. They're basically trying to step in and stop this from happening. And the way they would do that would be putting in inspectors and managers on the facility. There's talk about shifting the way that the facility does its outputs and its inputs as well. It's unlikely that the facility is actually going to get shut down. I hate to be pessimistic, but I highly doubt that would happen. It is possible though, that with the lawsuit, because the lawsuit basically contends that the facility is basically denying South Memphis residents from their constitutional right to clean air, which is a constitutional and human right. So it's possible we may be able to get some adjustments to how the facility operates and actually get them up to code and kind of push back on that move fast, break things ideology. That's kind of what I'm hoping to see in the future.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I really appreciate you coming on to tell us a bit about this. And update, folks. Ren Robinek. Apologies if I butchered it. Okay, I got it.

[Russ Vogt]

You nailed it. You nailed it.

[Chip Gibbons]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. You can read his piece in the Tennessee Lookout. A billionaire, an AI supercomputer, toxic emissions, and a Memphis community that did nothing wrong. We'll put a link to that down below. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Russ Vogt]

Thank you for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun part of the program where we will read your IMs, take your calls and more and.

[Matt Binder]

Talk about Jeffrey Epstein.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, I'm enjoying that story. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, Left Reckoning. We'll have a Sunday show for everyone this patreon.com reckoning Sunday show. Patreon.com left reckoning to get the Sunday show.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right. And we're going to bring in Brandon in just a second. But. But this show relies on your support, people. If you like it, you like listening to us, you enjoy us telling you the horrible news. Well, if you become a member, you can keep us afloat, keep us doing what we do. Join the majority. Report.com Kyle Lex says, Excuse you, Emma. They identify as Mecca Hitler, not Grok. Yes, I did correct myself to make sure that Mecca Hitler was named accurately. 502, Drew. Morgan McGarvey was my state senate representative. He's great. He has a big future in politics, I hope. That's good to hear. There he is. It's me, Brandon. How are you?

[I]

I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm doing well.

[Matt Binder]

I just realized you can kind of say, let's go, Brandon. And people don't even think about Joe Biden anymore. It's just.

[I]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Brandon Sutton.

[I]

It's just become part of, like, the little lexicon. It's become part of the community of practice. People just say it now. And now that Joe Biden, he's rolled off into the sunset like the elves at the end of Lord of the Rings. So, like, you know, it's just. It's just me. I'm Brandon last.

[Emma Vigeland]

Last Brandon standing.

[I]

Last Brandon standing.

[Matt Binder]

His appearance on the View with Jill was sort of the last time anyone seen him, isn't it?

[Emma Vigeland]

He was at the, unfortunately, to his credit, at the Minnesot, like, funeral for those victims of political assassination. Yeah, he was like. I saw him kneeling down. I was like, boy, you may not want to do that. But he was, you know, I guess he had some help getting up as.

[I]

A, as a former president of the United States of America, we just simply don't have the net worth to ever see him again. Like, you know, you have to be earning at least six figures consistently to see Joe Biden anymore.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

The first funeral when Trump became president and it was the Obamas and George Bush, and Bush was like, drunk and sort of dancing on the. I think it was the funeral for, like, the Dallas cop that got shot. Am I remembering all this?

[Emma Vigeland]

Really? Bush doesn't drink.

[Matt Binder]

Well, he seemed drunk, I guess. Well, he was sort of dancing on stage at a funeral and people didn't yet sort of remember where he was.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's pretty great. What's happening on the Discourse, Brandon? And hello to Matt Bender as well.

[Russ Vogt]

Hello.

[I]

Yeah, you know, we're streaming every day, enjoying, you know, going over the news, going over some conspiracies. I think tomorrow we might be learning about how, and I really want to emphasize we're learning how the pyramids have been used for human sacrifice, time travel in the past and also present. It's just hard. I feel like every day now I kind of devolve into ranting about Epstein and the lawlessness of our government because something like just, like, triggers me. So.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, no, the Epstein stuff is fun. And I think it's also just like, look, after this video was doctored, I don't understand how anybody can have a question anymore about, like, what happened or, I mean, about foul play at the very least. And it's just, like, amazing. We'll talk about this in the fun half, but how they're just the more incompetent, deep state. They, they're having trouble covering it up because they're just stupid.

[I]

As a conspiracy theorist, online is big time for me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, yes, Very much so. All right, guys, check out the Discourse. Matt Bender, what's happening on your shows?

[J]

Just check out Leftist Mafia Tonight, live at 8:30pm Eastern Time at YouTube.com mapinder and I'll see you all there tonight.

[I]

All right, Matt, I want people are asking me in my chat to ask you to be back on Left Reckoning. So I'm going to humble myself by challenging you to have me back on Left this Mafia.

[J]

Wait, which you said, you said Left Reckoning. Reckoning once and then left this Mafia the second time.

[I]

Actually, everyone, everyone is saying I should go on both shows. And so I, I, I'm, I'm humbling myself by challenging you both to have me on.

[J]

Okay, let's do it. And you know what? I'm gonna, I'M gonna UNO card that and say I'll be happy to be on the Discourse if you would so kindly invite me.

[Emma Vigeland]

You pulled a reverse on him.

[I]

Okay, well, stream or podcast? Because I. I would love to have you on. I think that, you know, you were ahead of the curve when deciding that we live in a scam economy. And I think the scam has become the entire economy now. Like, now it's just, you know, there's. There's scams all the way down.

[J]

Yeah, no, everything's a scam.

[Emma Vigeland]

Every. Yeah, we're a scam country now. I saw a viral, like, article that said UNO was going to be in Las Vegas. And then I just look it up and of course, course it's fake because I saw Twitter, so.

[I]

They don't have the courage. They don't have the courage. They know I would. They know I would. I would own the town by the end of the weekend.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah, right.

[J]

I think UNO is trying to do their own thing. That's why they. They knocked that down. Like, they're trying to set up their own, like, UNO playing locations, like UNO bars or something like that.

[Matt Binder]

We're talking about the card game.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[I]

Yeah, yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

But now we're talking about.

[I]

We're talking about the Spanish word for one, not the.

[Matt Binder]

I was thinking there was some, like, Spanish Spanish pop star that was doing something like. I don't understand.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, it's like a thing now. They're trying to make it. They're. They're at their. There was a viral rumor that it's going to be on Las Vegas, like, tables, but it's not going to be.

[J]

I guess when you have these online gambling sites where you could literally bet on absolutely anything under the sun. Does an UNO card game table at a casino sound that out of the. Like.

[Emma Vigeland]

It does not.

[I]

Yeah, anything. It sounds too cool. Because in reality, we live in a world where, like, we people bet on slap fighting and, like, sperm racing, like a competitive uno.

[Emma Vigeland]

We had people placing bets on whether or not Kamala put ads on our. On our stream. It was insane.

[I]

The only thing.

[Matt Binder]

The only thing being democratized by capitalism right now is gambling addictions into younger and younger people. Like, why not just have. I don't know. Is it Bluey? Is Bluey the child star cartoon?

[Ren Brabinek]

Yeah, that's a gambler.

[Matt Binder]

Have Bluey slot machines. Like, who cares?

[I]

I mean, honestly, I disagree. I think that capitalism is also, like, democratizing being in a cult with AI. A lot of people are, like, getting into, like, one person cult between them and, like, ChatGPT models that they trick themselves into thinking are alive.

[Emma Vigeland]

One person.

[I]

Yeah, it's like a one person cult.

[J]

I think that's. That stuff is the most, like deranged stuff out there right now. Like the people who treat the chat bots like they're sentient and fall in love with them. Like, I think it is the most bizarre, weird, creepy, unhealthy thing I've ever heard of. Like, just literally just do drugs. Just please just do drugs.

[I]

Well, I have a hot take about that because a lot of times people, when you watch like the specials on it, they will highlight loneliness. And when you watch the specials, they don't have the courage to say what I have to say. It's not loneliness that's driving people to this. It's like narcissism. Because a lot of the people who go into these, like, chat bot relationships are like in full other relationships. They have friends and everything. But there's something that the chat bot provides that like real people can't provide constant validation in the same way that people like, get scammed online by like pig butchers or other forms of like, romance scams, like, they don't resemble real relationships. They resemble someone having 24, 7 time for you and all your problems and even also reflecting your values back at you. So it's not really like, like traditionally what we would think of as loneliness as opposed to like deep alienation from one another that is like, you know, driven by, I think, a narcissism.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's like if Nate, if you made navel gazing, like, have carbon, like catastrophic carbon emissions.

[Matt Binder]

That's so true. Because the one that. The story that I saw, like, I watch it for like 45 seconds or ever. This guy who was just convinced like a chat bot was like his God slash girlfriend, and then they're like, oh, yeah, and his wife can't get. It's like, wait, he's married?

[I]

Yeah, his wife and 2 year old. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. They go to CNN like, he's his wife and 2 year old, like Candace, like, okay, I mean, you can definitely be in a relationship and still be lonely. But that doesn't seem to be what this is. It seems to be like, you know, yeah, the chat bot has him convinced that he's like the messiah or something where, like, your wife just wants you to take. Your wife just want you to take your kid to the park. So like, that's just not. It's not loneliness.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep.

[Matt Binder]

This is what people should be saying.

[I]

What kind of Bull. Is this.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, exactly. By the way, Chuck Schumer. I mean, I don't.

[Matt Binder]

Bailey. AI.

[Chip Gibbons]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

What's he. What's he up.

[J]

Wait, what.

[Emma Vigeland]

What's going on?

[J]

Why did we say, what a Chuck Schumer just now? Is he doing something with you?

[Matt Binder]

Can't stand him.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's just. Yeah, it's just like I.

[I]

Okay, Yeah, I agree.

[Emma Vigeland]

Ken Klippenstein posted something like he had some health episode in late June, and he's hasn't, I don't think, done a media appearance since then. Not saying God did that. I believe that. I mean, I think he's in. I think he's in the same Senate, so I don't think he's on, like, Death's Door or anything like that, but it would be helpful if we had a Senate majority or minority leader who was, like, actually doing, you know, using the bully pulpit to beat back fascism. But I guess we won't rest.

[J]

What are you talking about?

[Emma Vigeland]

In the House.

[I]

Sorry.

[Matt Binder]

It was on repeat.

[J]

In the House, we have Hakeem Jeffries using his media time to say that he won't endorse Mom, Daddy.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly.

[J]

What?

[Emma Vigeland]

You're knowing very well. He's going to meet him tomorrow. It's only been nearly a month since the election.

[Matt Binder]

Three times a week, I want to go on cable in front of millions of people and see. I don't know that guy that well. Yeah, I just haven't had time to, like, have a conversation with him. I guess we're meeting in New York.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, we're cutting you off. I'm cutting you off. We'll see you on the other end. Aside.

[Chip Gibbons]

Okay, Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.

[Ren Brabinek]

Wait, look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday.

[Matt Binder]

I think you need to take over for Sam.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, please. No, no, no. I'm.

[Ren Brabinek]

I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour, sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Ren Brabinek]

Sushi and poker with boys. Sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tim's upset.

[Ren Brabinek]

Twerk sushi and bulker with turkey. Boys was offered with twerk sushi and that's what we call biz. Sushi and poker with. To the point.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. Sushi and we're going to get demonetized.

[Ren Brabinek]

I just think that what you did to Tim Pool was mean.

[Emma Vigeland]

Free speech.

[Ren Brabinek]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Ren Brabinek]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wow.

[Ren Brabinek]

Sushi. I'm sorry.

[Chip Gibbons]

I'm losing my.

[Emma Vigeland]

My mind.

[Ren Brabinek]

Someone's offered with twerk. Sushi and poker with boys. Logic. Twerk. Sushi and poker with boys. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Had this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the us should be combining me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here. All right?

[Ren Brabinek]

It's not a fun job. Twerk. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. Willy Walker. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing that's offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing.

[I]

I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.

[Ren Brabinek]

Real thing. That's poker with the boy. That's a real thing. That's poker. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker. Take it easy. Twerk. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Night Live. YouTube.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.

[Ren Brabinek]

Anymore.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.

[Ren Brabinek]

Let's change the subject.

[J]

Rangers and Knicks are doing great now.

[Emma Vigeland]

Shut it up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Ren Brabinek]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is a pro killing podcast.

[Ren Brabinek]

I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best trump. Violet.

[Ren Brabinek]

Twerk. Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't the way Emma has cucked all of these people.

[I]

Love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Ren Brabinek]

She wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to the right of the unforeign policy.

[Emma Vigeland]

We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against that?

[Ren Brabinek]

That's a tougher question I haven't answered. Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hi, bumbler.

[Ren Brabinek]

Emma Vilan. Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game, like period.