← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3598 - Iran War at Oops Stage; Fighting ICE; The Loss of CFPB w/ Hagerstown Rapid Response, Joel Jacobs
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- [00:00]
Sam Seder
You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show@jointhemajorityreport.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, March 11, 2026. My name is Sam Seder. This is the 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, members of the Hagerstown Rapid Response Network fighting against a detention facility in Maryland. Also on the program today, Joel Jacobs, Data reporter at ProPublica on to discuss his piece on the chaos Trump created by dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Also on the program, White House all but conceding they had no idea what they were doing when they started this war. This after Iran begins mining the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency calls for the largest release of international oil reserves in history with hopes of avoiding an international recession. Back in the states, Thune Senate Majority Leader John Thune thwarting Trump's call to dispense with the filibuster to pass the SAVE act whistleblower report. Ex doge stole Social Security data, tried to give it to its private employer and they were like, I don't think we should have that. White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations and RFK pulls back on investing. Covid investigating Covid vaccines as the Republicans start to see electoral catastrophe come into focus. That white nationalist Jeremy Carl nominated for a State Department position. He has dropped out. Democrats flip a New Hampshire state House seat in their 10th straight special election. Flip win, I guess. And Democratic Democrat Sean Harris heads to a runoff against Republican Clay Fuller to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene's seat in deep, deep red Georgia. All this and much, much more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. Emma Vigel and out. She'll be back tomorrow as well. Nassau county spokesperson says curious, why do you think Thune is stopping the SAVE act filibuster reform? Because I think they are very clear that there is a less than zero chance that Democrats are going to take back the Senate in the fall. And the thing that nobody wants, and I would include into this even a lot of Democratic senators, they don't want there to be enough of a precedent to get rid of the filibuster. Now what we have memory hold is that Republicans got rid of the filibuster like four or five times at the beginning of last year to pass different things. And I'm not talking about the reconciliation bill. There was one, the first one was they did a carve out for the filibuster on CAFE standards to keep California from raising pollution standards. So it can be done. Nobody wants to talk about it because both in both parties, there are and I would say there's more in the Republicans than there are in the Democrats. But in both parties, there are significant numbers of lawmakers who don't want to have to address the fact that they don't hold, they don't hold positions that a lot of their voters would want. So what the filibuster does, it gives them the opportunity to vote for something that they know is not going to pass. For all intents and purposes, that's a little bit of a simplistic version, but not too simplistic. That's more or less what it is. All right. Let's get to this.
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Joel Jacobs
This
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Sam Seder
we spoke with Professor Juan Cole yesterday on the program, and if you missed that for any reason, I would recommend highly that you go back and listen to that interview, because the professor made it clear, and while it was the professor made it clear that Iran is going to dictate the pace and duration of this war going forward. It was clear on Friday of last week that the White House was starting to set up a situation where Trump could announce victory and go home, regardless of what the situation was. But what has happened over the course of the weekend is that it has become clear that Iran has taken out a lot of the US Radar facilities throughout the region to the point where we have had to pull some of these, this equipment from South Korea. It will get into that. But the short, the long and short of it is in 2017, the Trump administration insisted on putting in our latest version of essentially like missile tracking devices into South Korea. It was, it came at a great cost for South Korea because China had some instituted some embargoed some products, and it cost South Korea. And we're now airlifting those things out because we don't have any in the Middle East. And rather than Iran running out of its ability to fire missiles, it seems that Iran was withholding a lot of their missiles and suicide drones till after. Which makes total sense, I imagine, to people in the military. They could have predicted this, but it makes total sense to me as a layperson, try to outlast the people to be docked. You withhold a lot of your weaponry for when you know its hit rate, its yield is going to be higher because there's no missiles to make Israel or other possible Targets aware that these things are coming. And Iran has intensified its attacks on Tel Aviv and they have begun to mine the Straits of Hormuz. And the world is in sort of coming to the awareness that the US And Israel are not in control of this war. They are not dictating the length of this war, and that Iran has every incentive in the world to make the entire world pay a massive price, like literally, economically, because they want to make sure that next time nobody attacks them, they do. They don't have a nuclear weapon, so they don't have that deterrent, but they do have something pretty close in terms of impact and that being operative control or at least the ability to stop the flow of 20% of the world's oil supply. And I don't know what percentage, but a significant one of the world's fertilizer. But fear not, the Trump administration's on it. I mean, this is honestly like, this would be like a good episode of the office if it wasn't so horrific. If we're not talking about thousands of Iranians dead, potentially millions poisoned, At least a half a dozen US Servicemen dead, hundreds injured. We don't have as much reports out of Israel because they essentially censor, but presumably dead civilians in Israel as well. And there's very likely a recession in this country, perhaps an international. We don't know what the end is. But now they're all trying to cover their asses and blame other people. And here is where the buck stops, says Donald Trump. And more or less, he says, not with me. The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return, and the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco so involved that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it. I think they had in mind to attack us. And so there it is. I mean, we know now, now we have the list of guys who are responsible for telling the President. What can I do? I just got to listen to my advisors. That was two days ago. Yesterday. Here's Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon. And I want you to think for a moment all the things that might surprise you. If you are Secretary of Defense when you engage in a war, think of all the things that might surprise you. We're now, what, a week in to the war, right? Think of all the things after a week that would surprise you about the
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Joel Jacobs
enemy has been the Iranian regime attacking countries that are not attacking them. I'm curious if that surprised you as well, and general curious if you were open to the possibility of escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and if you could describe some of the challenges of doing so. Big mistake by the Iranian regime to start targeting its neighbors right away, exposing
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Sam Seder
who they are and what they're all about. Indiscriminate targeting, flailing recklessly at the beginning. I can't say that we anticipated necessarily that's exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility. And I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of that regime then and that regime now that they. The idea that now the Iranians have exposed themselves to people that they have lived with for their. You know, for their entire existence. Like, I am sure the people in Dubai are now like, oh, now we really know who the Iranians are. After 3,000 years, we finally figured out those Persians. And the idea that Iran would attack US Bases and inflict some type of, like, economic costs on these countries that have been clearly sort of supporting US Military in one fashion or another. Is that really surprising? They're indiscriminately attacking all these countries that we use as aircraft. They're. So they're flailing around. Meanwhile, it seems like they're flailing is having the exact impact that they wanted it to. The other country in the region that's bombing five, seven countries, flailing recklessly as well. Yeah, it's unclear. We're really surprised that Israel decided to bomb Lebanon when we were bombing Iran. Well, at the very least, at least the guy in charge of. And there, incidentally, there's other reporting now that suggest that Witkoff and Kushner had absolutely no idea what they were negotiating with Iran, that they had no idea what the Iranians were saying to them. You'll recall about a week ago, we played a clip, I think he was on a week from Sunday. The foreign Minister of Oman was saying, the Iranians made an offer that went further than any author, the offer they've ever made before. They said they would not stockpile enriched uranium, they would enrich uranium, but they would use it. They wanted the ability, and this makes total sense for any country. They wanted the ability to control their own energy supply because the United States was like, we'll give you free energy. And anybody who had a father growing up knows that, you know, when they're pulling the strings, like, oh, I guess I'm not getting allowance this week because my attitude was bad, that they want control of their own energy. And you can enrich uranium and then deplete that uranium by using it in nuclear facilities for civilian energy uses. But if you don't stockpile it, you can't build a weapon. And it appears that Witkoff and Jared Kushner had no understanding of that whatsoever, or they didn't want to understand that. But don't worry, Witkoff has got this handled. Here he is yesterday. So how do you see this, ending this war? I don't know, Sarah. I know this, that President Trump is the wrong guy to go up against.
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Ethan Wechaluk
That's what I know.
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Sam Seder
He. As far as I can tell, President Trump is still in the White House. He's not out there beating up Iran. I'm the wrong guy to go against. I am the wrong guy to go against. According to Axios today, Trump has said, we bombed everything there is to bomb. We ran out of targets. So I guess we'll wrap it up. Anybody, unconditionally, they surrendered. I mean, if losing basically an extra million people because of our response to Covid was not enough of a hint, but it seems that, like, you actually need a functioning president to at least help guide a country. There also appears to be a wide margin of error for this country, but we're going to start to see its diminishment, you know, over time. Later in the program, we're going to be talking to ProPublica's Joel Jacobs about just one of the implications of what Trump has done with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before we get there, we're going to be Talking to Patrick DiTillio, Claire Connor and Ethan Wechaluk of the Hagerstown Rapid Response. They've been fighting a detention center in Maryland. We'll be talking to them in a moment. Just first, a couple words from our sponsors. I. I'm in the habit of signing up for stuff and then forgetting it. Like, literally almost five minutes later. I'm fading, I'm sundowning. I don't know what to tell you, but you don't need to be sundowning to have this happen to you, because we have. Everybody here has that same exact problem faded. I mean, I've signed up for stuff that I still can't even figure out what it is. I genuinely can't figure out what it is. Like, and you get it on your credit card statement and you're like, wait, how do I even get there? But there's a way in which you can deal with all of this with just basically one click, and that's Rocket Money. 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Joel Jacobs
It.
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Sam Seder
Foreign. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Vigland out today. Joining us now Patrick Datilo. He is the founder of the Hagerstown Rapid Response which is a real time alert network for ice sightings and Community emergencies. Claire Connor, an organizer with Hagerstown Rapid Response. Ethan Wechlock, also an organizer for the Hagerstown Rapid Response and running for Congress in Maryland's 6th district. Guys, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us. Patrick, let's start with you. When did you set up the Hagertown? Hagerstown Rapid Response? What was happening with ICE at that time?
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Patrick DiTillio
Yeah, it was really as a result of what we were seeing in Minnesota. It was the end of January there. And it was really built to protect our neighbor from state terror. Like we were what we were seeing in Minnesota. You know, we started as a signal based alert system for ice sightings, but we've evolved into a full scale organizing front. We have like 500 members now in a chat. So yeah, it's, that's sort of where it was born out of and it has been growing like crazy ever since.
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Sam Seder
And Claire, So at what point did this detention center sort of come on to the, to the scene? You guys organized in prep for ice coming? Was there, I guess I should ask first, was there an ice surge? I mean, you know, even in New York we have sporadic ice sightings, but nothing like, you know, what Minnesota saw or Louisiana saw or Chicago saw. Was there anything like that? And then just tell me about the pivot to the detention center.
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Claire Connor
Sure. Well, I think that there wasn't necessarily a surge locally here in the community, but it was the news of the acquisition of a mega warehouse and the proposed retrofitting of that location into a detention center that was startling for all of us. It happened very abruptly and it happened. Yeah, just overnight almost. And the lack of answers along the way to the questions and concerns that we voiced has further, further encouraged us to keep pressing and asking and trying to find out the truth.
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Sam Seder
So, Ethan, I mean, what do you know about that facility at this point? Like who owns, who owns it? Where in the process of the sale is it. How far down the road have they gone?
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Ethan Wechaluk
Yes, and unfortunately we are too far down the road for this. It is owned by DHS right now,
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Sam Seder
had they owned this, how long have DHS own it? Do you know?
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Claire Connor
January, since January.
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Patrick DiTillio
January 29th, I believe.
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Ethan Wechaluk
Yeah, yeah, January 9th.
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Joel Jacobs
Yeah.
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Ethan Wechaluk
And for people who are sitting there wondering, okay, well, why would the federal government purchase this? Why not have a third party and lease it? The federal government purchases and own things. They can get away with trying to circumvent certain, certain rules, requirements. That's the Supremacy clause. Nerd out on the Constitution here. But, but it allows them to avoid zoning regulations, perhaps Some building codes and permitting processes and things like that. So what you've seen is ICE has across the country and, and bought these facilities. So then the local jurisdictions can't come in and say, no, you can't do this. So that's represented a real challenge and fighting back and pushing back, because you're not just pushing back against some, you know, company, you're pushing it back against the whole, you know, entirety of the federal government.
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Sam Seder
So, Patrick, I mean, what are. And like having been aware of fights to stop, let's say a coal fired power plant in a certain area or something like that, where you can say, okay, we need these, we need to use Department of the Environmental, you know, act to see if the permitting has been done right and this and that, that the feds buy the facility, make it easier for them to bypass it. So what do you do as an organizer to push back on that?
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Patrick DiTillio
Great question. We dove into a lot of research around what, who owns what specifically. The biggest points that we were hammering was who owned the water and who owned the sewer? Because a warehouse with an estimated like 150 staff is going to need significantly more water and sewer capabilities than a 1500 person detention facility. So we took a look and the county owns the sewer. So we pushed. We've been pushing them and trying to contact them to find out more about our capability, our capacity, whether we can just outright stop them from accessing the sewer. And then the same sort of thing with the water, which we determined was owned by the city of Hagerstown, which is a little more on our side in this fight.
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Sam Seder
And so the idea is that we're just. We can't necessarily inhibit them from. They've already purchased the facility.
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Joel Jacobs
Right.
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Sam Seder
But we can essentially deny them infrastructure. Exactly. By going through entities that are still under local control. So, Claire, how do you put pressure, pressure on those local entities? And I'm also curious, I mean, just to go backwards a little bit. You've got 500 people on a signal. How does that happen?
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Claire Connor
So we, in order to put pressure on the different entities that are involved, directly or possibly even indirectly, we have been having protests. That's one way to get people to rally together around this issue to discuss their concerns. In particular, Hagerstown Rapid Response has been partnering with our local indivisible chapter to protest each week in front of the Board of County Commissioners office building. They are a group that we have a little bit of tension with at the moment, given that very shortly after they, quote, unquote, found out that the warehouse was going to happen. They endorsed its arrival with open arms and said that they were effectively complicit with whatever DHS wanted to do with it.
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Sam Seder
This is the board, our county commissioners. Correct.
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Patrick DiTillio
Okay.
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Claire Connor
So continuing to hold these protests to try to get their attention, they've also barred us from being able to speak in a public forum at their meetings. This has been ongoing for a while, but it's become an increasingly tense situation as this situation develops.
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Sam Seder
And how did you get the 500 people that you have access to on signal? I imagine there's others, too, who have, you know, that at least are rallying around this specific issue. How did you first, like, how did you build that list?
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Claire Connor
Sure. I mean, there have been opportunities at the rallies to talk to other people and get an idea that they're like minded and gauge whether they'd be interested in helping out. Because there are many ways to help out. Hagerstown rapid response. Beyond being boots on the ground or a researcher, we do things like mutual aid and also just, yeah, general social events to try to lighten the mood. So word of mouth, we, with our petitions that we've been launching, have been engag interest in the community that way, and also reaching out to our neighboring communities, maybe in Frederick county and Montgomery County, Howard County, Allegheny, going to the west, just to try to build that support around us here.
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Sam Seder
And even. Are there, like legal avenues, you know, litigation, or I imagine like there's public hearings maybe that you guys are attending when it comes to stuff like the infrastructure, what, you know, so we have on one hand just sort of like public pressure in the sense that all these people are politicians and they may not want to have such a fervent group of people who might put up a different. I mean, you're running against a. An incumbent congressperson whose record on a whole host of things, frankly, has been rather garbage. Well, we've spoken just the other day to Alexis Goldstein, who's also running for that in that primary. So, like, what, what are the different avenues that you guys are pursuing aside from, like, public pressure? Are there legal ones? Are there filings?
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Ethan Wechaluk
Yeah, you know, it starts with having a spine, Sam, and it sounds like one of those basic things, but, you know, to put this in context, Representative April McClain, Del Delaney on January 22, when they voted on the Lake and Riley act of 2025, 48 hours after Trump came into office, she voted to enact the Lake and Riley act, which expanded mandatory detention. So that really set the groundwork for this. And this is the environment now that Western Maryland has inherited, right. That we have a representative, we have political leadership, not just Republicans, but Democrats who are saying, well, maybe there's elements of this that are a good thing. So when it comes to fighting back, as Patrick and Claire have mentioned, it's looking at everything. Can we attack the water, can we attack the sewer, can we attack the electricity, can we attack the telecommunications? Right. Is there a way to delay being able to get Internet access, to set up security cameras? One of the biggest avenues, and thanks to the great work of the Attorney General here in the state of Maryland, Anthony Brown, has been to go after and look at an environmental review. So there's the nepa, which sets environmental reviews for projects and that part of Hagerstown and Williamsport. And it's, and it's worth mentioning, that is a historic area. I mean, Williamsport, where the warehouse is located is an extraordinarily beautiful historic town houses that go back into the 1700s. And so there's a lot of, you know, things to consider. There's also a stream that runs right by the warehouse that drains into the Potomac, major watershed. So a lot of those historic and environmental reviews were, you know, short circuited. Right. The government tried to speed through them and said they're, oh, we don't need to gloss over this. No one's gonna really pay attention. Correction. Maryland is paying attention. We pay attention to these things. Maryland is an immensely proud of our history. Maryland is immensely proud of our environment. And we don't take lightly when someone else comes to, you know, tries to come in and tell us, no, we don't have to focus on that. No, we do have to focus on that. And so, you know, the attorney general had filed, you know, a lawsuit based on the environmental and historic reviews. And then he's just requested because they've started construction. Construction contracts were awarded just in this past week. And they've already, I was out at the warehouse on Monday looking around. They're already bringing contractors around to survey the site. They're bringing in trailer trucks to, for bathrooms for the construction workers. Right. And they're just plowing ahead as if they're just going to get away with it. So the Attorney general have filed another lawsuit to put a pause on that and say, you guys have to wait until the court can rule on the other case. So we're optimistic that that's going to work and it's going to slow it down because ICE has to realize in DHS as a whole that this people just don't want this. They just don't want these facilities in their backyards. They don't want these facilities in their communities. They don't want these facilities in their states. We just don't want the period, but especially when it's in our community and destroying the very fabric of what makes us who we are.
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Sam Seder
I imagine there's also a sense that this time next year, Congress, at least, the House, at the least, will have a little bit more ability to start to tighten the sort of. The purse strings for these type of things. But in the meantime, Patrick, is there an attempt in the community to sort of also. You're looking at infrastructure, but there's. I would imagine the people doing the building of this outfit, they're from the community. I imagine that they do other commercial projects or residential projects. And like, is there an effort to also say, like, you know, I remember back in the day, if. If you were hiring scab workers, there'd be a big, fat, massive rat that people would bring out in front of the job site. I don't know if that, you know, something like that. But is there an effort to also say, like, hey, you're. You guys are working on, you know, one of the most sort of, like, despised projects in the country right now?
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Patrick DiTillio
Yeah, I think we are looking at it from all angles. Every worker, every subcontractor is definitely on our radar. We're actively looking for the likely subcontracts that are going to come out from the general contractor in Gettysburg. So, yeah, they're not going to go unnoticed. We are actively pursuing all avenues of resistance.
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Sam Seder
Claire, how can people get involved outside? Like, I mean, if we want to help in your efforts or if people locally, like, I mean, how far, you know, what's the range of people? You have that in terms of distance that are on your signal or just showing up for rallies.
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Claire Connor
Sure. It is actually a broader population than you might expect. In terms of Hagerstown rapid response, we serve the entire Washington county vicinity. We do also partner again with Frederick county, with Franklin county in Pennsylvania and neighboring communities in West Virginia, because the activity in those locations is relevant here, too, and they have concerns, too. But in terms of, yeah, active sightings, we're working within the scope of our county. If people are interested in joining us. We do have a website that has launched and it's just Hagerstown RapidResponse.com I will note that our latest petition is up on the homepage of the website. If you scroll down a little bit. And this particular petition is putting pressure on job recruitment sites, like, indeed, ZipRecruiter so on, so forth. To stop listing jobs for Department of Homeland Security and ICE in order to employ people for these detention centers. In light of these job postings for the Williamsport warehouse having gone up this past weekend, I believe on Saturday,
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Sam Seder
I imagine also people, I don't know if you have to join those sites to go and apply for jobs.
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Patrick DiTillio
It's a very good question.
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Sam Seder
I imagine that would be like really problematic if a lot of people using.
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Patrick DiTillio
If there was a lot of people
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Sam Seder
sincere about taking the job. I know when I've posted stuff and a lot of people go in there, it takes so much time and resources. Anyways, Patrick, Claire, Ethan, thanks so much for coming on. We will put a link to the Hagerstown Rapid response site and you know, I guess if folks wanted to find like where those job postings are, you know, it wouldn't be hard to search like where. I mean if I just. Because I don't know how this is going to work out for me in the event that I'm looking for a job because I understand Maryland has like crabs and like, like water around there.
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Patrick DiTillio
There's a whole bunch of.
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Sam Seder
Right. Well, maybe not if I ever want to move to that area and I was looking for the jobs, like where would I search for those jobs?
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Patrick DiTillio
Yeah, I think we have a lot of really good answers to all of those questions right on hagerstown rapid response.com and, and our signal chat, which you can join from the website itself.
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Sam Seder
I really appreciate that because, you know, just in case.
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Ethan Wechaluk
You're welcome here anytime, Sam.
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Joel Jacobs
Yeah, absolutely.
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Sam Seder
Thank you.
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Ethan Wechaluk
Anytime.
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Sam Seder
I appreciate it. All right, guys, thanks so much. Really appreciate the work you're doing. Good luck. I really appreciate you guys are doing great work and really, really appreciate it.
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Claire Connor
Thank you so much.
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Joel Jacobs
Thank you.
- [42:32]
Sam Seder
All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to. Then we'll be talking to Joel Jacobs, Data Reporter, ProPublica, to discuss a. You know, I mean, Consumer Financial protection bureau gets 86 and it's hard to assess like the absence of something. So I mean, this is a tiny facet of it, but it's an important one and he'll tell us about that in a moment. We'll be right back. Sa. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin is out today. Just recalling our last segment. USAjobs.com also a place, if you're looking or just even thinking about like practice applying, what would it be like? Yes, it's a great, it's, it's always good to apply for a job when you don't need one. And so if you head over there and fill up people's inboxes looking for jobs and then I, I can, I can tell you it can be, it can be really confusing for people reading through those things. Anyways, want to welcome to the program Joel Jacobs, He's a Data reporter at ProPublica. He has written a piece about sort of like one relatively, I mean, in terms of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's portfolio, you know, a sliver of it. But it impacts so many people and so dramatically. And it's just one example of what we've lost when we lost the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Joel Jacobs, welcome to the program. First off, broadly speaking, tell us, like, what's happening at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- [45:18]
Joel Jacobs
Yeah, well, thank you for having me. Yeah. I mean, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you know, technically still exists. That's partially because of a lawsuit that has stopped some of the most dramatic cuts and kind of dismantling. But it really has been, I mean, defanged, pick your sort of description. But it is not, it's sort of a shell of a regulator at this point. Basically, the acting director, Russ Vogt, who's also Trump's budget director, basically took control of the agency in early February last year, basically almost immediately told all staff to stop most of their work, and then they tried to fire about 90% of the staff. Now, some of these cuts have been paused by a lawsuit, but basically they've been rolling back enforcement actions and people have been leaving on their own volition. And so people are basically, this agency is really not doing a lot of the work that it used to do to oversee the financial sector.
- [46:17]
Sam Seder
There's two things that I think people should know about this. One, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unlike the vast majority of agencies, is self funding. It had its funding mechanism from fees that it would collect from banks. And this was a way that was set up to inhibit Congress's ability to sort of choke it off. They have done this largely, as far as I know, through what is it, rifd, through reduction in force, claiming that they can do their job without this many employees. But Joel, just briefly, before we get into the specifics of your story, the implications of Russ Vote, the guy who really oversaw the writing of Project 2025, the Trump's first term office of Management and Budget director, and now the second one, the idea that he becomes acting head, that seems to me to be indicative of just how important it was to the Republicans plans to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- [47:30]
Joel Jacobs
I mean, it is interesting. I mean, certainly he has made his kind of views on the agency. I mean, he has a view on the whole kind of federal bureaucracy, bureaucracy in terms of, you know, his sort of distaste for it. But I think the cfpb, you know, has, is a, really, really stands out as something that he, you know, that he's called out. And I think it's also, it is a little notable also that, you know, we did have a first Trump administration. There was some, a little turmoil at the cfpb, but eventually they did nominate a director, Kathy Panninger, who sort of operated the agency as somewhat of a regulator. I mean, maybe, you know, a little more hands off, but it was not this 90% cut, try to take down the agency. I mean, this is, you know, a totally different scale in terms of what we're seeing in terms of just really trying to dismantle it. And, you know, this argument that, you know, it can arguably do its legally mandated job with very few people.
- [48:21]
Sam Seder
What is the in. In a. When the agency is operating the way it should. I think the Biden administration, it was actually sort of like maybe at its peak in terms of efficacy. It's a relatively new agency that was developed during the Biden year, excuse me, the Obama years, headed first by Elizabeth Warren, before she was into, she was involved in politics back, you know, when she was leaving academia and had been writing about bankruptcies and malfeasance by banks. And she didn't end up being the head. It was sort of an acolyte of hers, I guess maybe you could say. But what, what during the Biden administration, more or less, did the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau do?
- [49:12]
Joel Jacobs
Yeah, I mean, they were, they were pretty assertive regulator in terms of their position, trying to protect consumers. And I think that, you know, what I was looking at with credit reporting, this was one of their real focuses, right? They were trying to pressure the credit bureaus to be more responsive to consumer concerns. I mean, I think one thing notable about credit bureaus is we don't choose credit bureaus. Right. I mean, if you have a bank and a bank, you're frustrated with your bank, potentially you can move to another bank. It might be a hassle. But credit bureaus, we really don't have a choice with that. And so I think they really saw that. And that's why we have laws that give us the right to, you know, if we find an issue on our credit port, contest it. And so I think that what the Biden administration was doing, which was, you know, supervision, which is kind of regular examination through these kind of reports, pressuring the. And what my story focused on the complaint system telling the consumer bureaus to be more responsive to complaints, and then also eventually enforcement actions where they did take action against some of these credit bureaus to sort of try to push them to be more responsive and do these. The investigations that the law says that they're supposed to do. So that was kind of. That's kind of the different fronts that they were working in this, in this realm with.
- [50:21]
Sam Seder
Let's, let's just step back for a second and just give us a brief description of what credit bureaus are. There's Equifax, there's Experian, there's TransUnion. Those are the big ones. But I know there's like one or two other ones now. And for folks who are like in their early 20s or younger than that, maybe even through their 30s, I don't know. Like, I don't know when I became aware of them. But these are, like you say, we don't choose them. They oversee us, essentially. I mean, I don't know how else to express it. And they essentially determine our eligibility for loans, our eligibility to rent an apartment, our eligibility to buy something on layaway. I mean, a whole host of things. What do they do and who are they and what's involved with it?
- [51:16]
Joel Jacobs
Yeah, so the big three credit bureaus are Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. And like you said, they really do kind of, in some ways, control our financial lives without maybe us knowing a little bit. So they collect information about whatever debts and kind of obligations you might have, and they put it together in this credit report. And this credit report is offered to, you know, if you want to take out a mortgage or something like that. Right. They're going to check your credit report. You know, we have a credit score that is often used to kind of measure credit worthiness. You know, that's, that's generated from. From. From these companies based on the information they. They collect. So, you know, it really does have serious consequences. And so, you know, you don't. You don't pick what's on your credit report. And so, you know, you might not realize that you have an issue with your, you know, that there is a mistake, potentially even until you try to apply for something and then, you know, comes up and they say, you know, we're turning you down for whatever reason. And it can be really difficult to try to get those issues Fixed. So that's what kind of my story focused on.
- [52:16]
Sam Seder
And people should also understand too, like if you have a bad credit rating, the credit card that you may get, you may only be eligible for a credit card that like you have to put money up front in first or you get a, you know, because you're deemed a higher risk, your interest rate might be double what it is another credit card, it may inhibit you if you're trying to buy a house, etcetera, etcetera. So this is, these are really important things. And with all of the data leaks that we have, which is constant, I would say I don't go more than two weeks without getting a letter from my insurance company or, you know, whatever, some utility provider. A year and a half ago we had a massive data leak. And sorry about that, but we'll offer you one free year of credit protection from like Experian or something like this. But meanwhile, maybe my identity has gotten stolen. Maybe somebody stole my credit card. Maybe maybe they just made a mistake. And so it is absolutely crucial that people have the ability to contact these entities which are like sort of behind this sort of like incredibly veiled wall and say, hey, wait a second, you got to change this because this isn't a reflection of my actual credit. Right. And what has happened since the Republicans have destroyed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to that, to that ability. Right.
- [53:50]
Joel Jacobs
So, so basically what's happened and kind of what we looked at was, was data from the CFPB complaint. So, you know, a person can dispute directly with the credit bureau, but they also, a lot of people, especially when they might be frustrated with what happened from that, you know, they went directly to the credit bureau, it didn't fix their issue. Then they go to the cfpb. And the cfpb, one of its legal mandates is actually to operate a complaint system. And basically what happens with that complaint system is, you know, a consumer goes to the CFPB on the website, they type in their complaint, it's forwarded over to a company in that company, then has to respond. And so is there a, is there
- [54:25]
Sam Seder
a certain amount of days in which they have to respond to by.
- [54:28]
Joel Jacobs
So they get 60 days is the maximum amount. And you know, they can provide different responses that they, they can close it sort of with an explanation. Or they can also potentially provide relief now monetary relief or kind of what they call non monetary relief. And that's what the credit bureaus in theory can provide is, you know, changing something on your credit report that that may fix your issue and really what we looked at is the CFPB posts data about how many complaints come in every month. And again, I mean this system has been growing, it's been more popular, but the credit bureaus are far and away the most complained about entities. There were more than 4 million credit bureau complaints last year.
- [55:09]
Sam Seder
That's incredible.
- [55:11]
Joel Jacobs
It's a lot of complaints.
- [55:12]
Sam Seder
I mean how many adults do we have in this country, right? We have 330 million people or so. And I don't know what is it like half of those people are above the age of 20. More, slightly more. But that's a, that's a high percentage of problems for something that's so crucial.
- [55:29]
Joel Jacobs
Right. And it could be people, you know, people may submit multiple complaints because their things don't get fixed. Right. I mean I will say the credit bureaus, what they say is there's a lot of spam complaints and, and, and we can get into that, that it's these third party credit repair and they're flooding it. I mean which, you know, some of their claims maybe are maybe a bit over overblown there. But you know it is a lot of complaints and certainly a lot of people do have issues with their credit reports and they get a lot of disputes. And basically what we saw though is that, is that the relief, you know how often these companies, two of them in particular TransUnion and Experian, had declined significantly over the past year or so. Experian was in 2024 was giving relief to about 20% of complaints that went to actually under 1% last year. And then TransUnion which has actually been quite high around 80 to 90% where they were making some kind of change maybe didn't exactly, but they were doing some, in theory some kind of change to your credit report that went dropped by about half over the summer. And so basically it just shows, it seems to show that before and this kind of reverses a trend where during the Biden administration they were really pressuring the credit bureaus to give more substantive responses. Right. To not just give a can response to look into this stuff maybe a little closer and those relief rates had gone up. And now we see a little bit of a reversal here.
- [56:48]
Sam Seder
We don't have a sense of how many of we have an inset we have. Do we have a sense of like what's inputted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and then do we have a sense of how many of those get forwarded or do we just know that the first number and the last number which is how many of those get resolved. Yeah.
- [57:09]
Joel Jacobs
So I mean, they, they don't. They. So some of these complaints have narratives that are public published. So you can see what people might be saying. Somebody has to opt into that. There are attachments and documentation people send that aren't included, obviously, because that's more sensitive. So, you know, and the companies do have to give some response. They just may give kind of a more canned response or they, if they don't make a change, they'll just kind of. They close the complaint and they say, here's why we did didn't. And I will say, you know, just kind of the MO of the credit bureaus in general is sort of, they go, you complain to them, you say, you know, there's this debt that's not mine, right? And then they go and they turn around to whoever furnished called a furnisher, whoever sent them that information, and they basically say, is this different than your records and the credit. And the company basically says, yes, usually, or no, you know, our records are accurate even if the, if, even if the customer sent documentation that's a contrary. And then, you know, they come back to the customer and say, you know, we verified. We verified your. That debt is yours, or we verified that's correct. And, you know, I've spoken with, you know, several folks, as one couple people, my story where they sent a bunch of documentation and really just got, you know, these sort of canned responses of we verified this despite, you know, pretty clear evidence to the contrary.
- [58:25]
Sam Seder
Okay, wait a second. So I go to, I get a. I go to Experian and I see like, hey, wait a second. My credit rating is a 200. Why is that. That's bad. And it says, oh, because you didn't pay your rent for three months. And I'm like, I did pay my rent, but Experian contacts the landlord and landlord says he didn't pay his rent. I don't have records for it. And then he just moved away. And I'm like, well, I moved away, but I had paid everything. And so, but experiences, we're not. We can't do anything about it. So then I go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I say, here's all my documentation. Here's my new lease. Here's my old lease, you know, here's my canceled checks, whatever. Where is the breakdown? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau passes that on and gets no response. And where do you, as a data reporter see when. At what points along that trajectory do you see that information?
- [59:25]
Joel Jacobs
Right, so the CFPB passes along and they Kind of monitor it. I mean, not every single complaint might have a, you know, someone@the CFPB following up on it. Right. Obviously there's so many complaints that, that come in, but kind of where I see the data. Right. Is when you went to Experian. We don't see that, you know, and that's something that's pretty notable. Right. We don't see how many people, you know, send a dispute directly to the credit bureau, what they say in return, that kind of thing. But what we can see in the data from the CFPB is how many people send a complaint, some general information, what state it came from, what the general topic was, potentially what you wrote, if you agree to include that. And then we see basically what kind of several categories of responses. The big one being either you closed it with an explanation, which you didn't do anything, or Experian didn't do anything, or you close it with sort of a, with some kind of non monetary relief, which we can't see exactly what that is. But, you know, that's intended to mean, you know, they have updated something on your credit report in response to, in response to your complaint.
- [60:28]
Sam Seder
And so all of those rates are down dramatically according to your piece. And so what is the incentive structure here for the experian's or the transunions or I should say Equifax and TransUnion. Is it just like we don't have to hire as many customer representatives? Because we don't. We're not getting any pressure to fix these things. So it's much easier to go like, sorry, looks good to us, or we just, we're gonna. If we can, if we can make the time in which somebody examines this down to one minute as opposed to four minutes. We've saved 75% on that division, essentially.
- [61:13]
Joel Jacobs
Yeah. I mean, and one rare kind of peek into this, there was a House subcommittee report back a few years ago, and it kind of showed the credit bureaus gave some numbers on their employees and the number of disputes they got. And TransUnion had 171 employees in 2021. And they had 38 million line items that were disputed. And that's just direct disputes. I'm pretty sure that doesn't include complaints. So you just get a sense of like, how many these people are dealing with. And it's largely automated, you know, and so it's not. I mean, the credit bureaus will say, you know, we want everything to be accurate. But I think that, you know, you talk to a consumer advocate and they'll say, you know, we are, we are the product. Right. You know, we are not the customer here. And so, you know, we don't have a choice to go to somewhere else. And so there's a certain level of quote, unquote accuracy that maybe is acceptable. And then, you know, they. Otherwise it's extra money to spend on these disputes. Right. It's extra people to hire. And this is not where they get their money from. They don't get their money from you and me as much as they get their money from selling our data, basically. And so I think that's where the incentive structure comes in. And that's why the CFPB had brought enforcement actions right before the Trump administration to try to kind of pressure the credit bureaus to reform things. And in fact, we did find, though, while they brought two right before the Trump administration, there was one more against TransUnion that they were in settlement talks for months. They'd gotten approval to bring this enforcement actions. And, and the settlement talks had basically been abandoned once the new administration came in.
- [62:51]
Sam Seder
And lastly, we're not the client, right. So they don't feel like they have to provide us customer service, which is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau basically served that function. Like we're the leverage essentially for all of the, for all Americans, because you don't serve them. But on their client side, I would imagine there is a significant incentive or incentive or disincentive, depending on which perspective you look at it. But if I'm, I don't know, whatever, a landlord or I am a credit card company and I'm going to Equifax or Experian or TransUnion to assess somebody's credit worthiness or their credit score. There's no, like, I'm not necessarily upset if the person has a 500 credit score. I mean, maybe, you know, maybe if I'm, you know, renting out my room in my house, I'm a little bit nervous. But beyond that, it just means that I can jack up the prices here. And I know, like, I can, I can charge a 25% interest rate on this credit card. And I know this person not going to be able to go anywhere else and get a significantly better rate because I can see their credit score. So lower credit scores, damages to people's credit report is actually in everybody's best interest except for essentially American citizens.
- [64:29]
Joel Jacobs
Yeah, I mean, I think that you do end up just a bit trapped. Right. And so I think that that's why, again, you know, I think that's why the cfpb, why these laws exist, to try to make sure the credit bureaus are accurate, make sure there is, you know, the incentive is kind of or the disincentive is, you know, if you're not doing this, you're going to get sued potentially, right? And there you can do a private lawsuit, right? You can sue potentially if they've ignored you and if you have an error, but nobody can replace the federal regulator that was really pushing these companies to be more responsive.
- [65:07]
Sam Seder
Joel Jacobs, Data reporter at ProPublica we will put a link to your piece. Really appreciate it. We're in an era where there's less and less reporting and I really appreciate the work you're doing.
- [65:18]
Joel Jacobs
Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
- [65:21]
Sam Seder
All right, folks, that's it for us at least in the free show today. But for members, it's just beginning. You can become a member by going to jointhemajorityreport.com and when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. And most importantly, you help this show survive and Thrive. Join the MajorityReport.com Join the MajorityReport.com today. Also just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code majority. You'll save 10% on coffee that is roasted by a co op and really takes care of its farmers, whether it's in Chiapas or in West Africa or East Africa. I think it's East Africa now that I think about it, Ethiopian. I'm not sure where else, but that's and it's a co op. They got great politics and they also have great coffee and they also have the majority port blend and you save 10% with the coupon code majority. It's a win. Win, win is what we call it in the business. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, yesterday left Reckoning we had Cuba, deep state Cuba peers on this is Revolution with Jason Miles talking about how a former Pentagon analyst looks at this
- [66:48]
Ethan Wechaluk
sort of thing and what the view
- [66:49]
Sam Seder
looks like from Europe and why, for instance, Spain has been breaking with American Israel on this recent war. So check that out. Very in depth discussion yesterday at left reckoning. Patreon.com leftrucking Also, I should tell you yesterday after the show I went on and had a talk with Wajahat Ali on his sub stack. So check that out if you want. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't Think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow.
- [67:40]
Joel Jacobs
What?
- [67:41]
Sam Seder
What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program. Fun hack. Matt. Boo. Fun hack. What is up?
- [67:57]
Patrick DiTillio
Everyone?
- [67:58]
Sam Seder
Fun hack. Nomi Keen, you did it. Fun pack. Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon. Fun pack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. So the boys today.
- [68:14]
Claire Connor
Fundamentally false.
- [68:15]
Sam Seder
No. I'm sorry.
- [68:16]
Claire Connor
Women.
- [68:17]
Sam Seder
Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.
- [68:19]
Joel Jacobs
Where is this coming from?
- [68:20]
Sam Seder
Dude?
- [68:21]
Joel Jacobs
But.
- [68:21]
Sam Seder
Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A. Yes. Hi, me.
- [68:30]
Joel Jacobs
You're safe.
- [68:31]
Sam Seder
Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. Is this me?
- [68:41]
Claire Connor
Hello?
- [68:41]
Sam Seder
That's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.
- [68:54]
Joel Jacobs
I'm gonna go snow white.
- [68:55]
Sam Seder
Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course. Gobbledygook. We nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men.
- [69:04]
Joel Jacobs
Power.
- [69:05]
Sam Seder
Positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say. 8 5, 7, 2, 1 0. 355-011-SH. 3, 8, 9, 11.
- [69:13]
Patrick DiTillio
For instance.
- [69:13]
Sam Seder
$3,400. $1900. 5, 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.
- [69:21]
Claire Connor
Actually.
- [69:22]
Sam Seder
You're making me think less. But let me say this poop. You call it satire. Sam goes satire on top of it all. Yeah.
- [69:30]
Joel Jacobs
My very favorite part about you is just like every day, all day. Like everything you do.
- [69:34]
Sam Seder
Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, Folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously. Yeah. Sun's out, Guns out. I. I don't know.
- [69:54]
Claire Connor
But you should know,
- [69:57]
Sam Seder
people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it. I do love that. Gotta jump.
- [70:10]
Joel Jacobs
Gotta be quick.
- [70:11]
Sam Seder
I gotta jump.
- [70:11]
Ethan Wechaluk
I'm losing it, bro.
- [70:15]
Sam Seder
Two o'. Clock. We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.
- [70:22]
Joel Jacobs
Outrageous.
- [70:23]
Sam Seder
Like, what is wrong wrong with you?
- [70:26]
Claire Connor
Love you.
- [70:27]
Ethan Wechaluk
Bye.
- [70:28]
Sam Seder
Love you. Bye. Bye.