It Could Happen Here Weekly 252

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Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hi. You're listening to It Could Happen Here. My name's Carlos Perrios Polanco. I'm a journalist and writer. I'll be your host for today's episode, which is about the ongoing campaign of boat strikes by the US military that have turned the oceans around the Americas into killing fields. To give a high-level overview of what I'll be talking about today, since September 2, 2025, up until the time of recording, the US military has carried out at least 70 strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean Basin and the Eastern Pacific Ocean. At least 234 people have been killed by these strikes, according to reporting from The New York Times. Per Air Wars, there have been survivors almost every month of the campaign, but only 3 out of the 28 total have ever been rescued. These strikes originally started in the Caribbean following the mobilization of military assets into the region, which includes the reactivation of the once-dormant Roosevelt Roads Military Base in Puerto Rico, where I live and am currently recording from. I'm sure that I've seen some of the aircraft used in these strikes and other military operations in the region from the hill that overlooks the base's airstrip. And I've probably watched every single one of the videos the Trump administration or the US military has posted announcing that these strikes took place. You've likely at least seen one yourself. It's almost always a social media post, sometimes a press release, typically showing a black and white video of a go-fast vessel, colloquially known as a panga or a yola, depending on where you're located. They're typically sipping across the waves only for a missile to rain down from the sky shortly after the video starts, turning the boat and all the people aboard it into a giant ball of fire. Per Airwars, these posts almost always follow the same formula, naming who ordered the strike, the amount of people killed, calling them drug traffickers or narco-terrorists, saying they're part of a "designated terrorist organization," and stating the location where the strike took place. To be honest with you, even if the victims are blurred out and you rarely get an up-close look at how these people are torn to shreds, these are essentially snuff films that the Trump administration has used to hype up itself and its war on so-called "narco-terrorism." The Trump administration has been laying the fin legal justification as well as the moral and philosophical foundation for this "war" since essentially their first day in office. More than two months after the first strike, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth officially announced Operation Southern Spear as the "overarching DOW operation." Southern Spear's mission statement, as well as several documents that created the legal justification for these strikes and other related operations, are classified, in secret, from the public. However, as this Inspector General report states, "Southern Spear's mission statement as well as several documents that created the legal justification for these strikes and other related operations are classified, in secret, from the public." However, as this Inspector General report states, "Southern Spear's mission statement as well as several documents that created the legal justification for these strikes and Specter General Report states, the aim of Southern Spear is to, quote, defend the homeland, protect regional partners, and ensure stability and security across the Western Hemisphere. Operation Southern Spear has since evolved into Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, which essentially means that several partner countries in the hemisphere are working under Trump's banner of anti-narco-terrorism, whatever that means. The Trump administration has repeatedly said that the people killed in these strikes are, quote-unquote, narco-traffickers, and therefore enemy combatants, according to a January 20th, 2025 executive order that labels the groups that the dead allegedly belong to either, quote-unquote, foreign terrorist organizations or, quote-unquote, specially designated global terrorists. Two terms that sound like they're the same. But essentially, delineate groups marked by the State Department and the Treasury Department, respectively, as terrorists. There is substantial doubt as to whether the Trump administration is even able to identify these people before massacring them. However, as has been evidently clear to anyone with eyes, these people are not terrorists, and there are serious doubts as to whether they're even actually connected to drug trafficking organizations in a meaningful way. Because these strikes occur, in the open ocean, sometimes in international waters, any evidence that could help in identifying the victims sinks beneath the waves relatively quickly, making positive identification nearly impossible. A list compiled by Air Wars identifies 26 victims by their full names. A lot of these names come from media outlets hitting the ground and interviewing people in the communities where the men who've been killed by these strikes used to live. Per the list, a lot of these names come from the Los Angeles Times, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, the Associated Press, and some were identified by Costa Rican authorities as reported by La Nación, as well as a collaborative investigation project titled Los Bombardeados Sin Derecho a la Defensa, or The Bombed No Right to Defense Between Air Wars, El Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística, otherwise known as El Clip, and several other Latin American or Caribbean media outlets. The Air Wars list includes names from the first strike up until strikes in May earlier this year. This doesn't mean that they've stopped working on it, just that they haven't been able to identify anyone by their full name after that. In other cases, these outlets and others across the Western Hemisphere have been able to find nicknames and general descriptions of these men. Air Wars keeps list of these in their individual trackers per strike as well. I have all these sources linked in the episode description. I've tried to include English as well as some Spanish language news sources. The list by Air Wars, the Los Bombardeados investigation, and the killing spree report by the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, were huge sources for this piece. So if you're at all interested in learning more about this topic, please go read those. The evidence found by these outlets points to the killed victims being a mix of fishermen, motorcycle or bus drivers, and boat captains. The men are mostly from some of the poorest areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, and when they are connected to drug trafficking organizations, they appear to be among the lowest ranked members per Air Wars. Among the identified, there's a quote-unquote local crime boss, a fisherman pressured to get on drug trafficking boats because they had no other options to make money to feed their children, an indoor soccer player, people who'd left home in search of work, and fishermen who appear to have been stalled at sea fixing their ship's motor. The majority of the men hail from Venezuela and Mexico, while a few are from Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and St. Lucia. The Los Bombardeados investigation has been able to geolocate seven of the boat strikes, three in the Pacific and four in the Caribbean. Of the two in the Pacific, two took place broadly near the Mexico border, and one strike occurred about halfway between Mexico and Ecuador. Of the four in the Caribbean, one took place in the open ocean between Venezuela and the island of La Española. Another appears to have taken place broadly near the Gulf of Venezuela. One took place in the Gulf of Paria between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, and another took place along the spine of the Lesser Antilles, close to Martinique and St. Lucia. El Clips reporting identifies other strikes, including one off the coast of Costa Rica, one off Ecuador's Santa Cruz islands, and another about halfway between Santa Cruz and Ecuador's coastline, and one near Mexico's coasts. Although the strikes originally started in the Caribbean, only about a third of these strikes have taken place here. Meanwhile, the other two thirds have taken place in the Pacific. I'm going to talk more about the identities of these men later on as I talk about the individual strikes, but before I keep going, I want to take this moment to say that it does not and should not matter whether these men were simply fishermen or if they actually were drug traffickers. Any level of criminality, whether real or perceived, does not in any sense of the word justify the murder of defenseless people on a boat who had no way of fighting back against a missile coming from the sky. As many experts on U.S. maritime international and humanitarian law have noted, these strikes on civilians, because they absolutely are not combatants and the U.S. is not at war against the groups that they pretend that these people are a part of, are basically murder. As Ben Saul, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, wrote in a briefing note, the attacks are, quote, in violation of the right to life, the right to life, and the right to being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotic suppression conventions, or international counterterrorism law. Later on in that same document, he wrote that there is, quote, reasonable ground to believe, end quote, that the United States strikes, quote, constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law. Before I can talk about any boat strikes, I need to explain how, according to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has been pushing for these strikes on drug traffickers, on alleged drug traffickers, I should say, since they took office and how they repeatedly sidestepped, purged, fired, or steamrolled any lawyers who questioned their plans. First, I want to broadly talk about why the U.S. is doing this. The Trump administration essentially believes, or purports to believe, at least, that since these alleged drug traffickers, which they have not published any evidence that these people are who they say they are, aka alleged drug traffickers, are poisoning the U.S. with drugs, then it's fair game for the U.S. to kill them. To the U.S. government, this is, quote, unquote, self-defense. However, as U.N. Special Rapporteur Saul highlights in his note, even if, and there's a big if there, if they're actually drug traffickers. This is in no way comparable to a direct military action. Drug trafficking and military actions could never amount to be the same thing. They are simply incompatible. To quote from Saul's note, drug trafficking is not force at all. The Trump administration also alleges that these non-state actors are not force at all. They are not force at all. are being sent by states, namely Venezuela. After putting Tren Daragua on the FTO list, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to declare that Tren Daragua was engaged in a, quote, unquote, invasion of the U.S. on behalf of the Venezuelan government. It used this as pretext to send 147 Venezuelan men with seemingly no connection at all to the gang to El Salvador's Secat prison in March, where they suffered from torture. Along similar lines, November 2025, the U.S. listed the Cartel de los Soles as an FTO. The Trump government had, for a long time, contended that Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelan president, was the leader of the Cartel de los Soles, even though experts, like those of Insight Crime, claim it was more like a loose network of cells inside the Venezuelan armed forces. Also, going out of timeline here, but the U.S. government dropped the accusation against Maduro that he led the cartel, earlier this year, during his court case in New York. Shortly after Trump declared several of these criminal groups FTOs, HEGSEF began purging the DOD of any lawyers or commanders who would serve as, quote, unquote, roadblocks to Trump's orders, according to The Hill. A similar thing was occurring at the Justice Department, per The New York Times. And this is, like, absolutely the type of thing you do when you're planning to break the law or do something evil. The top echelon of the Trump admin has done stuff like this across all avenues available to it. Imagine someone breaking a key in a door lock so that no matter how much you want to lock the door, it's impossible unless you change the whole mechanism. This is what they were doing, essentially. Staying on this door analogy, the Trump administration essentially just made it so that the door to doing something wildly illegal and immoral could never be fully closed to them by the people who would actually stop them from opening. These strikes were originally supposed to be carried out by the CIA, but lawyers at the spy agency questioned whether killing civilian drug traffickers was legal under domestic law. One person familiar with the debate told The Washington Post that, quote, there is no actual threat justifying self-defense, end quote. This is perhaps the first time the CIA has said it didn't want to get involved in Latin America directly. That's a joke, of course. The CIA is also providing the targeting assistance and intelligence necessary to conduct these strikes, according to The Guardian. Per WAPO, the Trump admin quickly moved on with an alternative plan to use the U.S. military for these strikes. During the summer of 2025, the Justice Department signed a secret opinion justifying the boat strikes by saying that the U.S. was in armed conflict with, quote, unquote, narco-terrorism. The U.S. was in armed conflict with, quote, and that using lethal force against them was okay because it protected national interests and because they were a, quote, threat to the U.S. akin to a foreign nation attempting to invade, Senator Mark Kelly told WAPO. However, this was in a capital W war, so they didn't need congressional authorization. Instead, it's a, quote, non-international armed conflict, end quote. Per a separate WAPO article, the Trump admin's legal justification, quote, does not stand up to the facts, end quote, to lawyers inside and outside the government. While this memo was produced during the summer, it was not signed until September 5th of 2025, after the first boat strike occurred. According to The Guardian, the memo states that these groups are using the proceeds from drug trafficking to wage war, which is something that the Taliban did, but that experts have said these cartels designated as F. T. O.s or D. T. O.s are simply not doing. Also, you have to remember that these people, if they're connected to the cartels, are at most low-level members, and their deaths, while extremely gruesome, have little impact on drug trafficking in the region. Per WAPO, the strikes have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the U.S., according to a drug enforcement administration assessment. Also, did I mention that Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras for the use of cocaine in the U.S. as a means to protect the country from the U.S. us who'd been sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2021. after being convicted of importing more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. between 2004 and 2022. I'm again stepping out of timeline here, but I wanted to jump ahead to illustrate how this anti-drug policy is pure farce. It's fake and violence seems to be the point of these boat strikes for the Trump administration. Sorry to digress. Anyway, in mid-2025, Trump signed a classified directive that authorized the military to use force against a secret list of 24 DTOs. Not to be left behind, Higgs have followed this up with an execute order in August 2025 that contained targeting instructions that didn't require positive identification of a target. Instead, quote-unquote reasonable certainty that a person is a member of or affiliated with a DTO, per the Washington Post. I want to stop right here and say that under Obama, the standard for drone strikes in the Middle East was quote-unquote near certainty and they still struck a marriage possession in Yemen. There is serious reason to doubt the U.S.'s ability to know the certainty of any target they're planning to hit. Earlier this year, a joint U.S. and Ecuadorian operation on an alleged narco-terrorist compound actually raided a dairy farm with no arrests, but the Ecuadorian military did allegedly torture some folks, per the New York Times. Meanwhile, according to reporting in Bloomberg, serious issues with the AI-assisted quote-unquote kill chain used by the U.S. military led to the strike that killed at least 120 free children at a girls' school in Manab, Iran. United Nations investigators recently concluded that this was likely a war crime. Funnily enough, the boat strikes do not constitute a war crime because we're simply not at war with the cartels. In a strictly international legal sense, the criteria established by the execute order to attack these ships is really unclear. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia revealed that the boat strikes are being carried out using free criteria that he was not allowed to disclose. However, he was allowed to disclose that quote-unquote evidence of narcotics was not one of them. Republican Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky said during the same hearing that having weapons on the vessel is not one of the criteria either. This was during a full committee hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee for the fiscal year 27 State Department budget, by the way. Anyway, in August 2025, the U.S. military mobilized to the Caribbean. And on September 2, 2025, the first strike event occurred. And I say strike event because there were at least four missiles fired on that day. Per the Washington Post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order was to quote, kill everybody, end quote. Video published after the attack shows a boat racing across the waves, lighting up with a tower of fire after being hit. Nine people died because of that first missile. However, after the smoke and fire cleared, surveillance video being watched by U.S. military officials, but not released to the public, showed two people clinging to the remains of the vessel. They stayed in those freezing waters for roughly 45 minutes, until Admiral Frank Bradley, then head of the Joint Special Operations Command, also known as JSOC, ordered SEAL Team 6 to hit it again, killing the two remaining survivors. Per the Intercept, Admiral Bradley sought legal counsel from JSOC's legal advisor in between the first and second strike. Although the response isn't known, a lawmaker told the Intercept that the follow-up strike was deemed legal. Two more missiles finally sank the vessel. Bradley, who's now chief of special operations command, said that he ordered the extra strikes because the shipwrecked men and the fragment of the boat still posed a threat, sources told the Intercept. Per the New York Times, the survivors had managed to get back on the boat's remains and were waving to the planes before the second missile killed them. The aircraft used to carry out this strike was reportedly painted to look like a civilian plane. However, this practice has stopped since that first strike, according to the New York Times. That same article states that the men had spotted the plane and turned the boat around back to Venezuela. Per sources who spoke with the Intercept, JSOC did not know the names or supposed affiliations of all the persons aboard this vessel. Of the victims who've been identified by Air Wars, eight were from San Juan Dunare in Venezuela, while three others were from local towns close to San Juan Dunare called Los Estigos and Guiria. The one victim that is the most well-known information about online is Luis "Che" Maria Martinez, who was identified by the Associated Press as a quote-unquote "long-time local crime boss" that made his money mostly from smuggling people and drugs across borders. He had previously been jailed after a boat he was operating capsized in 2020, killing quote "about two dozen people" end quote, including several of his relatives. He was jailed in Venezuela, to be clear. Some family members believe that "Che" Maria was one of two bodies that have washed up on the shores of Trinidad and Tobago, per an anonymous source who spoke with N+ Univision from Martinez's native Guiria. The anonymous source compared "Che" Maria to an errand boy for drug traffickers, not the owner. Per the Killing Spree report by the Washington Office on Latin America, there is a significant possibility that many of the victims who died in that first strike were passengers traveling from Venezuela to the United States, and many of those who died in the first strike were passengers traveling to Trinidad and Tobago. The report cites El Clip and I will hear as well. Quote "Some people who are familiar with boat movements" end quote "along the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela" told El Clip that quote "it is common for the same boats that carry drugs on the outward journey to bring passengers back. The capitanes, as the boat operators are known, take whatever work they can get" end quote. The second boat strike we know of occurred on September 15th, 2025. Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian man, was one of three men killed by that boat strike. Family members told RTVC, a Colombian news outlet, that he had been on board the boat and that it was an artisanal fishing vessel. Citing the video posted by the Trump administration online, family members posited that the ship had been having engine trouble at the time that it was fired upon. When the New York Times spoke with Carranza Medina's family, they said that the boat was not in good condition and that the boat was not working properly. The family, the mother of his free children, said that he had never been involved in drug smuggling. Quote "If he was some kind of narco-terrorist, then why are we living in misery instead of a mansion?" she asked a reporter. Gustavo Petro, who was still president of Colombia at the time he made these remarks, said that Carranza Medina might have been involved with drugs intermittently as many fishermen are forced to because poverty leaves them little else in terms of work. Her reporting from El Heraldo, Colombia, and the New York Times, he had previously pled guilty in a scheme to steal weapons confiscated during legal proceedings, but it appears that he never served jail time for this. I add this context because the truth of who these people were is extremely nuanced and regardless of whether they were quote-unquote criminals in the eyes of the state or not, they did not deserve to be killed. In fact, as Petro said, for these poor communities, because of the economic desperation these fishermen face, it's common for them to be killed. So, as I said, the truth of who these people were is extremely nuanced and regardless of whether they were quote-unquote criminals in the eyes of the state or not, they did not deserve to be killed. In fact, as Petro said, for these poor communities, because of the economic desperation these fishermen face, it's common for them to die. to be extremely vulnerable to being exploited by drug trafficking organizations. Per the team behind Los Bombardeos, the four men killed during the October 3rd, 2025 strike were also from Guiria. Luis Ramon Amundarain had traveled from his home to Trinidad and Tobago in search of work. He was a motorcycle taxi driver and a boat captain who accepted his first drug running job because he had no other way to pay for his youngest daughters during treatment or to feed his four other children. According to El Clip, Ramon's cousin, Robert Sanchez, was also on the boat and was killed. For the AP, Robert had been pushed by economic pressure to join a drug smuggling job in hopes of getting enough money to buy an engine for his fishing boat. Ramon's wife told El Clip that, quote, if Ramon had really been a narco-terrorist, if he'd had money, if he'd been living large. Believe me, I wouldn't be living where I live now. And if you go to the homes of the other free men they killed, you'll see that they don't have much either because none of it belonged to them, end quote. I should say that El Clip notes that all signs point to them about to go on a run for illicit cargo. But a friend of Ramon's told El Clip that he was sure no drugs were on board at the time the boat was hit. Because a boat traveling from Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela is going to pick up merchandise, not drugs. Quote, boats carry drugs from South America northwards, not the reverse, end quote, said Maria Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of El Clip to The Guardian. On October 14th, 2025, a strike killed six people. Chad, Charpo Joseph, and Richard Chisamaru were among the victims. They were both from Trinidad and Tobago, and they were fishermen, per CNC Free TV. Joseph's grandfather characterized the strike as a, quote, act of evil, end quote. They seemingly had no connection with drug trafficking other than Joseph's uncle being a, quote, unquote, drug lord for the TNT Guardian. Per a lawsuit filed by the families of Joseph and Samaru against the U.S. government in the district of Massachusetts, Samaru was working on a farm in Venezuela and had called his sister days before he was killed to let her know that he had found a ride to Trinidad. Similarly, Joseph had told his wife he had found a boat ride from Venezuela back home and would see her in a couple of days. They never arrived. Per Air Wars, Dusak Milovic from Guiria was also one of the men killed during that strike. He had once been a cadet at the Venezuelan National Guard Academy, but dropped out to run drugs, per the AP. The lawsuit against the U.S. by the families of Joseph and Samaru is currently stalled pending the completion of judicial proceedings in Trinidad and Tobago that would declare the two men legally deceased and allow their families to take control of their estates, per the Trinidad Daily Express. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the time to name all of the victims that we know of or the circumstances which led to them being killed in the ocean. Forced into an unmarked grave. However, you can see the picture that's building through the strikes that I've mentioned. These people appear to be either common fishermen or forced into smuggling drugs because that's the only type of work that they could find in a poverty that they had lived through most of their lives. Even the ones who were nominally part of a drug trafficking organization, perhaps one of the 24 on the secret list were low-level members at most, or only, quote-unquote, affiliated, perhaps because they were traveling on the same boat as someone who was a member or hitched a ride on a boat carrying drugs. The truth is we will likely never know the full details of who all these people were and what made the U.S. target them specifically. After the first strike, an official admitted that only one victim was considered a member of a designated terrorist organization, per The Intercept. The rest were affiliates. Pentagon officials have claimed that they knew the identities of everyone on that first boat, but per Senator Mark Warner, ranking Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with ABC, quote, they don't know all of the individuals on many of the other boats, end quote. I should also mention here that maritime interdictions have not stopped while these boat strikes have gone on. Per El Clip, on the same day as that very first strike, the Colombian Aerospace, its Dominican counterpart and the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South carried out Operation Seuss, which led to the seizure of nearly 450 kilos of cocaine and the arrest of two people. Seuss and other operations like it have occurred in parallel to the violent extrajudicial killings of the boat strikes. This shows that contrary to what the Trump administration has said, blowing up random people on boats isn't the only way to curb drug trafficking. There is certainly another way to stop it that doesn't involve murder and guarantees a person's day in court. This is in line with a new tactic utilized in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, where SAFCOM forces have been interdicting alleged floating refueling stations that support illicit drug trafficking. Many of the publicly listed press releases related to these interdictions specify that they operate for Los Choneros. These vessels are also sunk via an explosion, and per the press releases I've read, the crew on these ships are disembarked and then handed over to their respective countries' authorities. However, speaking of a day in court, three people have been rescued as survivors in two incidents. On October 16, 2025, two men were pulled from a sinking semi-submersible vessel. Andres Fernando Tufino Chila of Ecuador had previously said, but his sister told El País that he'd been working as a fisherman before the U.S. struck the vessel he was on. Jonathan Obando, the second survivor who's from Colombia, had no criminal history and no cartel links, according to El País. Even though Trump promised to prosecute them, they were eventually let go without being formally charged by either the U.S. or their home countries. Obviously, this begs the question, if these people, are really quote-unquote "narco-terrorists," why have they been able to go free? As El País notes, Trump's strategy is paradoxical. The Trump admin has enough justification to kill them extra-judicially, but not to charge these men in a court of law? Question mark? All possible evidence that could link these men to alleged drug trafficking, if there ever was any in the first place, goes up in literal smoke the moment that these boats are hit, El País noted. It's likely that a court case would expose much of the legal scaffolding that upholds the thin legal justification that the Trump administration is using for these strikes, as well as put on display that many of these people might really just be fishermen forced into participating in the drug trade as a lookout or a guide or something like that because they had no other opportunities. A note on survivors. There haven't been more of them because the U.S. is apparently intent on not looking for them. For the Intercept, after a December 30 strike sank three vessels, SAFCOM said that it "immediately notified" the Coast Guard, but it took the Coast Guard almost 45 hours to begin searching the attack zone for survivors. It is believed that the 11 people on these vessels drowned at sea. To end this section, on March 24, 2026, the Ecuadorian ship La Negra Francisca Duarte II, which was coming back from weeks of fishing, was hit by an apparent U.S. military drone strike, according to N+ Univisión. The crew had been forced off of the boat by apparent U.S. military personnel, although it's unclear from which agency they could have been. Photos from another ship that was detained in the region show that it might have been Coast Guard personnel, per N+'s reporting. Crew of La Negra Francisca Duarte II, as well as the Don Maca, which was intercepted on April 30th, 2020, alleged to Drop Sight News and Mongabay-Latam that they were arbitrarily detained and tortured. The crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte was moved roughly 900 miles north from their position and turned over to the Salvadoran Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the crew of the Don Maca told Drop Sight they had been "held hostage and hooded for eight days." La Fiorella, another Ecuadorian ship, and its crew went missing in January, per the New Yorker. The wife of the captain who commanded the ship told Drop Sight that her husband had called her on an emergency line saying that "American aircraft, two drones, and a blue patrol ship" had been circling the boat. The next day, La Fiorella and its crew disappeared. The prosecutor who had led the investigation into La Fiorella's disappearance was shot dead alongside her sister in Manta, per the New Yorker. There do not appear to be any links between the two. There are no links between these three boats and drug trafficking, per the report cited earlier. Unlike the boat strikes, the U.S. has not taken boastful credit for the disappearance and detention of these ships and actively denies having done anything to harm them. For their part, the Salvadoran military says that the men of the Francisca Duarte had been shipwrecked and then rescued as part of a "humanitarian operation." It's unclear if these are related to Operation Southern Spear or to the U.N. Task Force Western Hemisphere, its evolution. There was a brief two-month pause on these boat strikes from July 21st to August 23rd, but at time of recording, the strikes have continued unabated. There appears to be no end in sight for this terror. These strikes are part of the Trump administration's focus on exerting control over the Western Hemisphere, the so-called "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine." As part of this renewed focus, Trump attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolas Maduro. He is currently sitting in jail in New York. Meanwhile, the U.S. has started partnering with other countries in the region to attack so-called "narco-terrorists." These countries, such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Honduras, have agreed to join operations on their soil with U.S. personnel. These include airstrikes, which I previously mentioned, as the attack on that dairy farm. It's clear that this repression has led to a rising tide of anti-narco-terrorism actions that will become more prominent across Latin America. I should also say "anti-narco-terrorism actions." Alleged "narco-terrorism." On September 22nd, the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago published a joint statement, declaring that they were announcing the, quote, "first joint action under our newly announced pillars." individual and collective action to confront the scourge of narco-terrorism. As such, we declare our intention to impose, as applicable and in accordance with our respective international and domestic legal obligations, as it freezes immigration and visa restrictions for members, associates, and supporters of the organizations, and criminal liability for individuals knowingly providing material support, including logistical support, to the organizations, among other measures. This announcement has seemingly been a long time coming. At a conference of the America's Counter-Cartel Coalition in March 2026, Stephen Miller told Latin American military leaders that, quote, these organizations can only be defeated with military power. And I see some heads nodding up front because they understand you're dealing with a lot of lawyers in your country, I'm sure. You have my permission not to listen to them, end quote. This is frightful. To be honest with you, there's not enough space in this episode today, but I assure you I will talk about this more later at some point. If you want a brief intro into what the U.S. has done in Latin America before, you can listen to my episodes on the Dominican Republic and my episode on the U.S.'s colonies. To be honest with you, things are not looking good in terms of democratic rights in the Americas. I want to end this episode by highlighting this quote from the Washington office on Latin America Killing Spree Report, quote, if normalization of the boat strikes takes hold and the U.S. president can assert an unlimited license to kill, the protections of the rule of law will be gravely weakened for all of us, not just those who are the most immediate targets of state violence. Thank you for listening. You can find me on all social media as at Vaquero2XL, and you can follow Cool Zone Media at Cool Zone Media pretty much everywhere. Okay, we've been talking about QP Mail for a minute now, Bow, and wow, the feedback we're getting. I mean, so many of y'all love this stuff. You're stopping us in the street going, I love QP. Wait, what is QP? Uh, do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise, the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Once you know it, you start seeing it everywhere. People ask what makes it different from basic mayo. Well, the answer, egg yolks. QP is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken, noodles. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really love QP mail are the ones who use it. Whatever you're eating, QP it. So if you haven't tried QP yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. QP, the original Japanese mayonnaise. You'll understand. a lot of migrants looking to come into the EU have transited through the enclaves, as they're called. So Ceuta and Melilla. Another one is the Canary Islands. You know, since the 1990s, this has been one of the major routes of migration. And so while it may seem incredibly significant and spectacular, which it was because of the scale, the fact that Ceuta and Melilla are transit points into the EU for migrants is part of a very long and ongoing trajectory. And so what we saw, particularly because of the scale of 70,000 people crossing into Ceuta, was, you know, this global kind of uproar that frankly came from many parts, you know, came, of course, from the right, where the right and, you know, nationalists across the spectrum. So the far right, but also conservatives, and at a global scale, right? So not just in Europe, but also in the United States and elsewhere. This fed into, of course, the perfect anti-migrant storm that far right and fascist and conservative forces are always fueling. But also we saw a lot of, I would argue, misinformation from many leftist commentators who arguably actually used a lot of right-wing rhetoric to claim that this was an attack on Spain because of Spain's very vocal position in support of Palestine. And so this created really a perfect storm. For a lot of misinformation across the spectrum, particularly for people who had frankly never even heard of Ceuta before. And so this is kind of what happened, both in terms of the really significant scale of migration that took place, but also what we saw after in terms of how people responded to this moment. Yeah, thank you for setting it up that way. What that's going to get into, for me, of interest is the leftist misinformation that we saw all over the internet. But before I get into kind of some of the details of the aftermath, I'm going to go back to the beginning of the pandemic. I also just want to kind of break down, why did migrants think this was a good time to try to make it to Europe? Like why in this scale? Yeah, it's a good question. And, you know, I think a lot of what's happening is frankly still being pieced together because, you know, one of the things that we did see in the aftermath was a lot of, you know, clipping and hypotheses. And there are still people on the ground who are talking to migrants to find out, you know, why did you make this journey at this moment? What is the circulation of information that was happening? So a lot of that is still coming out, which I think I want to emphasize because I think in like a hot take economy, we don't, we aren't sitting with accurate information always. And there isn't a simple answer because again, I would emphasize that migrants who migrated in that moment, again, were coming from very different backgrounds. And by backgrounds, I don't just mean the kind of national origins that I pointed out. But, you know, many of the migrants have left, but many of the migrants are still there. And so people were in very different situations. And I think as to why they chose to make the move in that moment, there isn't a single answer. Some of the factors that we can point to and we can see is, you know, there was a Supreme Court decision in Spain just a few weeks prior to this, this mass migration in July. And so that decision was in June. And, you know, that decision was a very specific Supreme Court decision in Spain about regularization because Spain has been regularizing migrants, which has been really significant actually in the context of, you know, this rightward drift in the EU that has been escalating. Spain's regularization program was significant. And there was a Supreme Court decision associated with that about travel and travel routes. To kind of put it simply, what we saw is several misinterpretations of that Supreme Court decision that started to circulate. And, you know, for anyone who is familiar or who has family who has been looking to migrate, you know, from all of the many situations and horrors around the world, we know that, you know, information travels fast. So one of the kind of conspiracy theories is like there's no way 70,000 people would have all gotten access to the same information. And frankly, that is a complete misunderstanding of how diasporic communities and communities who are immobilized, who are looking to migrate, how information travels. Travels much wider. Travels much wider. Many of the WhatsApp groups, for example, that in the United States, they're looking to migrate. And they're looking to migrate. And in this situation, people were referencing, there was at least two groups that had almost 200,000 people on the WhatsApp groups. And this is not a conspiracy theory, because actually, coincidentally, yesterday, a number of declassified documents were released by Spain. And so these Spanish documents revealed that there were some of these WhatsApp groups had almost 200,000 people on each of them. And so if you think about it, that's just a fraction of the people, you know. So the issue is not how information travels. It's just whether people choose to act on that information. And so I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really verified they think that information is. And so that was significant. The misinterpretation of the Supreme Court decision bolstered a lot of these WhatsApp groups to think like actually now is the moment, right? Actually, just yesterday, the information that I was referencing actually suggested that the Spanish government was told by Spanish intelligence, that there was going to be some significant movement in July in mid July. Okay, because of access to these WhatsApp groups. And we know that many of the migrants, particularly non Moroccan migrants in Morocco, were waiting to move in the summer, because that is actually typically when people move, not at the scale of 70,000. But it is not unheard of for 1000s and 1000s of people to be on the move through the summer, trying to get into Europe, particularly crossing through the Mediterranean. So that is actually just frankly, a baseline, right when it comes to a lot of migration. And then of course, we did have the element of, you know, to what degree did the Moroccan government and Moroccan authorities not necessarily, you know, foster this in an active way, but definitely suggestions that, you know, Moroccan authorities were not as heavy handed as they have been in the past when collaborating on border securitization, and perhaps using this moment to leverage with Spain with respect to Western Sahara. So you know, multiple factors were at play. But it is the main things that stand out, particularly from migrants who both returned or are still in Soweta is really the Supreme Court decision. And then just this kind of surge that happened in the moment where more and more people felt in the moment that they could make the crossing because of the seemingly lax border securitization in that moment. I want to get to Morocco and Western Sahara in just a moment. Listeners will remember or hopefully will remember a episode I recently did with a Western Sahara activist, Muhammad Saddam. So I'll link that in the show notes. But before we get to that, just to kind of break down the aftermath, the kind of immediate aftermath we saw in Spain, and as you said, like, not just Spain, not just Europe, but also the United States. But let's maybe start with Spain. Like, has there been kind of an anti-immigrant backlash as a result of this? And what has that looked like? And then how has that kind of fed into these narratives, like, especially in the United States, like the Great Replacement Theory, like people really hooked on to these things. So maybe you could break that down for us. Yeah, you know, the things that have been happening on the ground, you know, I'm also obviously not there, but being in touch with comrades there and following what's happening has been incredibly alarming. You know, so it is undeniable, of course, that we are overall in a crisis of neoliberalism and austerity. And we know all of the ways in which that means people feel intense economic pressures in their lives. Ceuta is not a huge, huge place in terms of geography and population. And so just the ability for the infrastructure, the local infrastructure to actually support people in a good way has been significantly strained. However, you know, while that is true, that is often layered, as we see in many places with anti-migrant xenophobia, right, where migrants become the scapegoat for capitalist austerity, become the scapegoat around scarce resources. And almost every day, in Ceuta, there has been anti-migrant protests since the last 30 days, almost every single day. It initially started by far-right forces coming into Ceuta from other cities, particularly from Spain and elsewhere, really to foster this phenomenon. And unfortunately, now it has extended into Ceuta locals as well. And so Ceuta has historically been known for being a very multicultural space. You know, it is a borderland. And so I use multiculturalism, not in the liberal way, but in a very sincere way of what it means for people to have lived together for a very long time. And I don't say that to romanticize all the anti-migrant violence that has been ongoing and the securitization of the enclaves since the 1990s, but I mean within the local communities. And that has been fracturing, you know, many of the organizations that have been operating in Ceuta to support migrants are now facing attacks. You know, there are being called traitors. They are facing a lot of hatred just for supporting migrants, just for doing accompaniment, just for doing documentation. And they've been doing incredibly important documentation work, documenting how migrants have been stranded alone on the beach. Many migrants have been corralled and told that they cannot leave certain areas. So they are basically enclosed into certain areas of Ceuta. Many of them have been denied registration. So registration is the process through which you become registered. And so into the state registry in order to access supports. So they have documented Then when they accompany people, they are being arbitrarily denied. And when they're denied, that means they can't access any of the support. There have been beatings by local police authorities. There have also been local attacks on migrants by right forces. So it has been incredibly hard and horrific to witness this. And what I find particularly hard about this moment, just to return to this earlier moment, you know, when migrants were first landing on Ceuta in July, the way that so many left-wing comrades were quick to dismiss it. I'm not saying the left is responsible for the violence, but it has meant a very quick turn away and abandonment of migrants because people were quick to just call it an invasion and say, well, so many of the migrants have come back. It was not an issue. But that ignores the fact that there are, in fact, many migrants who are still there. I mean, again, particularly migrants from Palestine, from Yemen, from Mali, from Sudan, who have been, again, you know, just kind of stranded on the beaches. And for organizations in Ceuta who are supporting migrants and migrant justice organizations, you know, they've said that they haven't seen anything like this in decades in terms of the work and the impact on the ground. And just desperate conditions for these people that I think, like you said, the left. Not all the left. Let's just be, you know, everybody get upset with me. But some large parts of the left and the global north that, like, really loves a neat narrative. Yeah. So let's maybe get into that. Like, why did we see, for me, especially English-speaking influencers and pundits who speak on the left, like, why did they connect this to an Israeli plot? Yeah, I mean, I think what we've seen in the past few years since the ongoing genocide. Various kinds of lefts have emerged. You know, one of those lefts has been very quick on the takes, on the upticks. You know, we see content farming. And in particular, we see very simplistic narratives where people may not actually know the extent of place-based geographies and movements and have only seen clickbait about what countries have done to stand up to the Zionist enemy. Right. And that is important. Spain, for example, is one of those countries that has stood up to the Zionist. We saw this with, you know, tremendous support, for example, for South Africa during the ICJ hearing. And at the same time, we had organizers from Sudan saying, hey, can we talk about what's happening between the South African state and the UAE and the closer relationships? You know, none of which is to simplify in the opposite direction, but it is to actually sit with internationalism in a meaningful way and to look at all the contours of what is happening. And so what we saw in the aftermath of July. And really from commentators who, frankly, in my humble opinion, have any connection to migrant movements. Right. So did not know the history of Ceuta, do not understand Ceuta as a transit point for many decades, really harping on this idea that because it was migrants entering into Ceuta, it was an attack on Spanish sovereignty. You know, there was all these clips of these migrants are military aged men. Just look at them. They're like 18 to 45. And it's like, who do you think they are? Who do you think most migrants are in general? Like that is actually the demographic of many migrants, not exclusively, of course, but that is the reality of migration, particularly on dangerous routes. Right. That has been one of the impacts of securitizing the borders is that it does make it harder for elderly or kids to migrate because those routes are becoming more dangerous. So, you know, the narrative became, look, this is a U.S.-Israeli Moroccan backed plot to destabilize Spain. And Spanish sovereignty at a time when Spain is standing up to Palestine. Like that was the through line and all of the evidence was clipped and farmed to justify that. And so, you know, that was why we saw what we did. I think in this moment we're seeing many other similar narratives in that trajectory that are not about Ceuta, but that are in that same vein where people want to suggest that everything is a U.S.-Israeli backed conspiracy. Right. And frankly, you know, people straight up saying, like, you know, if anyone is against Spain, they must be backed by Zionists. Like, you know, and it is clear cut and nuance is terrible and nuancing is two-sidedism, you know. And so I think there was an uptick because that has become part of part of some segments of leftist discourse. Yeah. People in the Palestine space, I'll speak for myself in particular, like this struggle to have a truly interesting. The internationalist perspective has been, yeah, a growing struggle in the movement, like to kind of push against the the easy narratives that people want to latch on to. And your argument is that, like, treating it as a foreign military, like maneuver, like you're just conceding the far right's premise entirely. So let's maybe also talk about the Moroccan role here. You mentioned already that, like, there is a an interest of the Moroccan state to use migration as a leverage and Western Sahara plays a role in this. So could you maybe break that down for us? Yeah, I think, as I mentioned, you know, some of this is still being parsed out. And so, you know, we don't know for sure. But what we do know is that Moroccan state authorities likely relaxed. They're kind of border controls in that moment. And I think it is important here, again, to emphasize that, you know, both Morocco and Spain have for a long time collaborated on border controls. Right. And so, you know, one of the arguments that I generally make is that we have to understand borders as a linchpin in state violence. That, you know, while there are many things often at play in terms of global geopolitics, whether it's imperialism, of course, or bilateral kind of relationships between various states. One of the things. One of the things they have always collaborated on and continue to collaborate on is borders. It's completely global. And, you know, Spain and Morocco have long collaborated. Spain has often funded Moroccan border securitization. And so while there are many significant differences between Spain and Morocco, for example, on their positions and alignments on Palestine, you know, Morocco's normalization, Spain's significant stance against Zionism and Israel, although imperfect. It is significantly more than Morocco. That is undeniable. Despite Spain and Morocco's significant differences on Western Sahara, they have collaborated on border securitization. So that is important to hold as the overall context. And then in this moment, you know, it's hard to say precisely because, again, we don't have all of that kind of information. But what we do know is that at different times, Spain has leveraged the border and Morocco has leveraged the border for their own personal interests, particularly around Western Sahara. And with respect to Spain, Spain has actually fluctuated on its position on Western Sahara over the past several years. In 2021, as we know, Spain reversed its position on supporting an independent referendum on Western Sahara. This moment in 2026 has been really important because Algeria and Spain have reestablished relationships. While we don't know the extent of that relationship, we know that those relationships being reestablished. Did cause some discontent for the Moroccan state. And so, you know, we can speculate that that is one of the reasons, particularly in this moment, that Morocco may have decided to really leverage the border in a particular way to have Spain rethink any possibility of rethinking its position on Western Sahara. And to emphasize, Spain has not yet reversed its decision from 2021, but people understood that maybe this gesture towards Algeria. Might suggest that Spain was going to change its position on Western Sahara. Interesting. Yeah. No, I think it's a very important point to underscore that there is, as you've mentioned in your previous work, this kind of externalization of enforcement and that there are all these states around the world that play that role. You know, Fortress Europe. I don't know if catchphrase is the right term here, but like we talked a lot about Fortress Europe, like, I don't know, 10 years ago and the role that a lot of these Middle Eastern states, despite. A lot of differences, like you said, like play in the maintenance of border imperialism. I kind of want to maybe end on this idea from some of your commentary on this on this particular incident a month ago about how, you know, we need to understand, like, people will keep crossing. That's going to be the significance. So for those of us who aren't taking an anti-immigrant position, either from the left or the right, like, what should someone who takes that seriously actually be organizing towards right now? Yeah. I love that question, because for me, when I think about the externalization of borders, as you just were talking about, to me, it means that if we see bordering as happening, not just as, you know, a line on a map that's, you know, about people crossing in particular moments or, you know, especially right now, what's happening, for example, in the U.S. or what we see with AFD's victory in a region of Germany, all of this to me really points to, like, it is impossible to separate out the rise of fascism. And so when I think about, you know, what can we do to to support migrants, it really is a much broader struggle to dismantle fascism, because despite all their differences and all polls for fascism, it really is a much broader struggle to dismantle fascism. for the past decade have shown this, that in different parts of the world, people vote for fascist parties for different reasons, right? Because obviously not every geography is the same. But the two most significant similarities is anti-Muslim racism and anti-migrant racism. That is the most consistent similarity in very disparate parts of the world. Because, you know, for example, white supremacy is not necessarily at play in India, right? Like that is not the governing framework for fascism, but it is Hindutva, which is motivated by anti-Muslim racism, caste supremacy, and also anti-migrant racism, right? All of the changes that we're seeing under Hindutva that are denationalizing and stripping people of citizenship, particularly from Muslim regions of India. So those are very connected in many different parts of the world. And so I think it is so important to understand the ways in which anti-migrant racism is not only about migrants on the move, but it is part of a much bigger, larger project of fascism. And so dismantling fascism is actually so central to thinking about no borders and, you know, the freedom to move. And also for me, it really is about the freedom to stay, right? So all of our struggles against imperialism, but an anti-imperialism that's inflected with internationalism that centers, you know, the way in which borders are a structuring of imperialism, that we cannot continue to see the nation state as an anti-imperialist formation. The nation state as a form, I'm not talking about particular governments, you know, whether they're anti-imperialist or not, but as a form. And so thinking about anti-imperialism from an internationalist perspective is so central to migrant struggles, you know, like what is, how do we make sure that people are not being displaced and immobilized by bordering regimes and the dismantling of capitalism? So for me, really thinking about bordering as a through line through our struggles for abolition, through our struggles against displacement and genocide and gentrification, all of these are very similar forces, right? Very different, of course, in how people are impacted, but similar in their logics. So to me, thinking about bordering as central is how we actually fight for people on the move. It is to refuse to silo migrants into this other struggle, because that is actually what the right relies on, right? Like if we actually think about it, migrant is one of the most state constructed categories. Like we know everything is constructed, race is constructed, gender is constructed, but migrant truly is so constructed, you know, it's literally just about a paper. And so, you know, to refuse to feed into the idea of that construction is to understand migration as inherently connected to all of these struggles, right? It is actually a symptom and cannot be siloed as a kind of separate side issue that people who stand for migrant justice are just, you know, this little pro-immigrant silo alongside all these struggles. It is to see bordering as the other forms of violence. No, that's so well put. I think we all could do in all of our respective communities to do a little bit more work understanding what fascism actually is. Like what are the building blocks? What are the mechanisms of fascism? And if there's consistency in being anti-fascist, then you see this very clearly that the immigrant issue is central. But unfortunately, there is not always consistency. But yeah, thank you so much, Harsha. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And I know that a lot of people will get a lot out of it. So thank you for your time. Thank you so much. And thank you for your work. Your work is just so deeply appreciated. Please know that. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right. Take care, everybody. Okay, we've been talking about QB mail for a minute now, Bow. And wow, the feedback we're getting. You're stopping us in the street going, I love QB. And if you're thinking, wait, what is QB? QB is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredible value. It's a incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really love food and flavor use it. Whatever you're eating, QB it. So if you haven't tried QB yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. LVTDNVT. Get ready to change. Face the rush. Spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at LegendsWithAZ.com. Legends has it all. Void or prohibited. Must be 18 plus. Play responsibly. I'm Brett Coleman. And I'm Trevor Sikama. Have you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference? Beyond the final score? That's exactly why we created NFL Pro. Got a man wide open. Touchdown, Seahawks! Every week, we use exclusive next-gen stats insights and NFL content to break down the biggest stories, matchups, and moments from around the league. We go beyond the box score to uncover the numbers, the tendencies, and details that help explain what actually happened on the field. Fires it out in the flat to Barkley, who beats one man, spins past another. Leaps over a third. And don't worry, this isn't just a show for stats experts. We use advanced analytics to help tell the story behind the game, turning the numbers into insights that every fan can understand and enjoy. So whether you're a casual fan learning more about football or a hardcore fan who can't get enough analysis, our goal is to help you see the game in a whole new way. If you've ever wanted to know why a play worked, how a matchup was won, or what most fans missed on Sunday, NFL Pro delivers insights you simply can't get anywhere else. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's your kind of show. It is in the name. NFL Daily. Fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. Matthew Stafford coming off his MVP season. On a dazzling dart from Matthew Stafford. Big time trades that shake up the NFL. A.J. Brown is loose. And of course, those Seahawks trying to run it back and win another Lombardi trophy. The Seahawks win Super Bowl 60. They are bringing. And a Lombardi back to the Northwest. If it's happening on a football field, NFL Daily will cover it. Listen to NFL Daily on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player Carly Lloyd. I'm Fox Sports reporter Jenny Taft. And on our new podcast, Whatever It Takes, we're talking motherhood, marriages, careers, and figuring out how to balance it all. And we'll discuss the game that brought us together, because nothing is off limits. Do you remember your initial reaction when Fox called you to be a part of the World Cup? I was like, no, I don't want to do it. You said no? I played with players that didn't, I don't think that they really, truly loved the game. I found the love with the ball at my foot. But in my head, it was the long game. It was like, I don't care what I'm being asked to do at Fox. I'm going to go get some reps, and I'm going to learn it, and love it, and embrace it. He said, this group of people will never be in the same league. He said, this group of people will never be in the same room as part of the same team ever again in your life. And it is your job to make sure that you enjoy the moment. You're proud of what you accomplish together. Listen to Whatever It Takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Kevin Foster. And today we're separating the art from the artist, specifically taking Macklemore's solid political takes, and isolating them from his, let's just say, iconic bars like What Up, I Got a Big Cock. For those who aren't caught up, Macklemore was touring with Ed Sheeran not long ago, before he was removed from the tour for espousing pro-Palestine statements on stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Specifically, he said, free Palestine a few times, and thanked students at Columbia University for kicking off the encampments movement in spring of 2024. Those students indicated, inspired his song, Hins Hall, the title student protesters gave Columbia's Hamilton Hall, named after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old who was brutally murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza in January of 2024. In a beautiful case of leopards eating faces, Ed Sheeran's entire lineup of opening acts and his backing band withdrew from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore. In his next performance, Sheeran gave a sort of apology speech to the crowd, reading off a telegram, prompter in which he did not use the words genocide or Palestinian. Rather than focusing on that, due to the outstanding negative response to McLemore's statements from Zionist billionaires, I think it's worth listening to some of what he actually said on stage. Here's a clip from his Instagram. To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love, for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. So I say free Palestine. I say free Lebanon. I say free Cuba. I say free Congo, free Sudan, free all people in America living in fear over this terrorist organization, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free. This song is called Hen's Hall. Some deeply frightening stuff in there, at least for Robert Kraft, the pro-Israel billionaire owner of the New England Patriots football team, and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, near Boston, where McLemore was set to appear on tour with Sheeran. Kraft was not happy with McLemore's support of Palestine. He said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I rights on stage, and he confirmed to Rolling Stone that he barred McLemore from appearing at the Boston shows over, quote, recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, unquote. Despite McLemore's clear calls for equality and peace, Kraft felt his presence at Gillette Stadium would stymie the supposed goal of providing a, quote, welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that all events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech, unquote. Funnily enough, those shows ended up getting canceled anyway due to severe weather warnings. But Kraft allegedly did not stop there. According to a post by McLemore following his removal from the tour, Sheeran apparently said that Kraft had rallied other stadium owners with an ultimatum. Quoting from that post, McLemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues, unquote. Messina Touring Group, the promoter of the U.S. portion of Sheeran's tour, said in a statement that they were notified by venues from the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they would not allow a concert to take place with McLemore in the lineup. Obviously, this represents a serious affront to freedom of speech, something that is far from new on the matter of Palestine. As of yet, Kraft has not discussed or denied the allegations of, quote, "the pressure campaign against the rapper." In response to the controversy, basically everyone and their mother chimed in, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who pretty well lays out the real focus of this episode. "This is about how just a handful of stadium owners and the elite can prevent an entire massive issue, in this case the genocide in Gaza, but it doesn't stop there. It could be speaking out about AI. It could be speaking out about any issues." Here's where things get interesting. Rolling Stone lists seven stadium venues that allegedly objected to McLemore's inclusion in the tour, and of those seven, five are publicly owned by either the city, county, or state in which they reside. I could spend quite a lot of time talking about how I think Ed Sheeran is a coward, how it is a political statement to fold in favor of genocide deniers, but what I'm far from is that it's not just a political statement to fold in favor of genocide deniers, but what I'm far from is that it's a political statement to fold in favor of genocide deniers, but what I'm far more interested in is the First Amendment implications of Kraft's alleged actions and the ways in which billionaires are able to wield authority over our rights, even through public institutions and capital. To discuss this in depth, I've interviewed friend of the pod Mo Meltzer-Cohen, a law professor at CUNY School of Law, experienced in defense of people targeted on the basis of First Amendment-protected beliefs, identities, and association. Let's dive right into that. I'm kind of wondering if you can just tell me, from what you know about this case, what do you make of a billionaire kind of organizing a censorship campaign like this? Have you seen similar things in different contexts around free speech? Well, certainly. And there are all manner of ways in which coercive social or economic pressure is brought to bear on different people or different events. There are forums in order to constrain the expressive conduct of different people or different groups. There's certainly nothing at all that is unique or unusual about that. I think what's important to recognize before we really get too deep into this is when we're talking about free speech principles, we can talk about free speech as or free expression as a shared cultural value. But the First Amendment only applies to the government, right? So when we're talking about censorship, we need to be clear about whether we're talking about a private individual or company refusing to platform particular speech, which is certainly censorship, but it isn't government censorship of the kind that the first amendment does. So we need to be clear about whether we're talking about a private individual or company refusing to platform particular speech, which is certainly censorship, but it isn't government censorship of the kind that the first amendment does. traditional public forum, land an area that is owned by the government. Well, the government is permitted to impose constraints on the time, place, and manner of expression. Those constraints, first of all, they have to be reasonable constraints. And those constraints may not be imposed on the basis of content or viewpoint discrimination, right? So that's what they're saying when Lucas Oil Stadium says, Lucas Oil Stadium is content neutral. It's a very inelegant way of saying we aren't discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. So constraints may be imposed, but they have to be content neutral. They can't be based on viewpoint discrimination. They have to be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government purpose or a significant government interest. And there are a range of things that are understood to be legitimate or valid significant government interests, right? They are things like public safety, making sure that school children's educational activities are not disrupted, right? Making sure that people have access to and from public buildings, right? These would be considered valid government interests. Now, that issue sort of points up the fact that with respect to stadiums in particular, there are frequently events held at stadiums where in the wake of those events, typically sporting events, there are threats to public safety. And so, you know, there are threats to public safety, there are very often extremely foreseeable incidences of boisterousness, shall we say, after, you know, the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup, you know, publicly owned stadiums are not exercising their right to impose reasonable constraints on the time, place and manner of expression by shutting down the Super Bowl. And so, you know, there are often extremely foreseeable incidences of boisterousness, right? In anticipation of what they could reasonably expect to be rowdiness. I think Mamdani would be recalled if he tried to stop the Knicks games over public safety concerns. I don't think Mamdani would ever do such a thing. No, I know they won. In any event, it is really important to understand that it is permissible for the government to impose constraints on expression. They have to be reasonable constraints. They have to be content neutral, right? Not discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. They have to be narrowly tailored, meaning they can't just be, okay, we're going to shut down everything because we have some concern, some speculative concern that like, you know, we're going to shut down maybe there's going to be some rowdy behavior. And finally, and critically, those constraints have to leave open what are called ample alternative channels of communication, right? So absolutely canceling a performance would not leave open ample alternative channels of communication, right? And it's not clear what the public interest is in this case because, you know, there are exceptions. There are things that fall outside the zone of First Amendment protections. And there are things like fighting words, you know, hate speech, true threats. But it's very clear that criticism of Israel, support for Palestine, solidarity with Palestine, those things are not hate speech, right? Criticism of the political ideology of Zionism. These are not instances of anti-socialism. Right. And so it's, you know, however offensive Robert Kraft or anyone else might find solidarity with Palestine to be, it is not speech of a kind that is exempted from the protections of the First Amendment. So, you know, if, again, if there's a private event company or a privately owned stadium that says, we don't want to have more play, they're at liberty to do that, right? They can make that decision. Yeah. What we can't have, or at least what deserves interrogation, what deserves a serious inquiry, is a publicly owned government-run entity shutting down speech at the behest of a wealthy, powerful individual, not on the basis of needing to impose a reasonable constraint or a reasonable restriction on the time, place, or manner of expression based on a content-neutral analysis that is narrowly tailored to serve some significant government interest while also leaving open ample alternative channels of communication, right? I am concerned about a public stadium bowing to that kind of pressure particularly in light of the fact that Kanye West can perform freely, and Kanye West is pretty openly anti-Semitic. Yeah, this is a sort of a, not even really a side note, but Kanye West performed multiple times at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa at the end of June. And, you know, while the set list FM doesn't say that he performed his song, Heil Hitler, that I guess came out in 2025, it's hard to believe where we're at sometimes, but it's the open hypocrisy of that is just astounding. Well, it's never been about anti-Semitism, right? I mean, just as a side-side note, there are more Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews in the entire world, and they are explicitly motivated by explicitly anti-Semitic goals, right? One of Jewish people from the so-called, you know, global north. Oh, God. And the other of which is to hasten the apocalypse, at which point, according to the Christian Zionist eschatology, some Jews will become Christian and remaining Jews will go to go to hell. So this is not and Israel is about solidarity with Palestine. Now, you know, we're looking at this very sort of niche and narrow issue of what are the implications for the First Amendment when we have a municipally owned or a government-owned event space and a performer is prevented from or forbidden from performing in that space? Clearly on the basis of what would typically be understood to be protected speech. Why does it matter? I mean, just to clarify, I am not an expert, certainly, in whatever kinds of leases or contract arrangements there are between these cities or states and, you know, third-party event planning companies, which, you know, if there's enough space in between between, you know, the stadium and the decision being made potentially by a private third party, that might vitiate some of those First Amendment protections. Yeah. Right. I don't know because I don't know enough of the facts on the ground there. And nevertheless, I think it is really important for us to address ourselves to this question. Am I a Macklemore fan? I, you know. Not particularly. I mean, he's fine. But my concern is not with a wealthy and powerful recording artist. My concern is that we look at this situation with Macklemore, and I think it is obscuring a whole range of threats to free expression for the rest of us, right? Because, you know, is anyone going to be able to say, you know, I'm a Macklemore fan? I'm not going to be real worried about Macklemore's welfare. No, he's fine to his credit by his own admission. He's not suffering. My concern is not with Macklemore not being allowed to play a show. My concern is with the implications for the rest of us when we're allowing these kinds of incursions into First Amendment protections. And I think this is such an interesting case because the fact that it's Macklemore is actually functioning, I think, to camouflage what those threats are, right? Because we're also focused on the fact that it's this wealthy, powerful guy, that we're missing the fact that the First Amendment can't be mobilized to protect his free expression. How else might we see these end runs around constitutional protections for the rest of us? I think there are a lot of things that are protected by the First Amendment that aren't necessarily legible to us as First Amendment protected beliefs, associations, or activities, right? Because we often will think about things that are First Amendment protected as being like the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the right to think about things that are First Amendment protected as being like the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the left to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution, or the state power. To wrap this episode up, I just wanted to highlight again, although it may feel a bit silly to talk about all this in the context of McLemore, a multimillionaire, I think the point is that this sets a bad precedent. Notably, we've witnessed crackdowns on university students over Palestine solidarity protests. There was a new ruling against a student from the University of Texas Austin just last week. There may still be open questions about these stadiums and their complicated contract arrangements, but either way, the wealthy are wielding influence over the public square. With all that said, here is Mo with one final note. I would just like your listeners to be alert to all of the ways in which our daily lives are frankly made possible by First Amendment protections that we don't think about very often. And I would like to plug the concept and the practice of not talking to law enforcement until you have had an opportunity to consult with counsel. Yeah, always good. the feedback we're getting. You're stopping us in the street going, I love Kewpie. The one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Kewpie is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. Whatever you're eating, Kewpie it. So if you haven't tried Kewpie yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. Get it? Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at legendswithaz.com. Legends has it all. Avoid rip-off. It must be 18 plus play responsibly. I'm Brett Coleman. Have you ever watched a game and seen the difference beyond the final score? Fires it out in the flat to Barkley, who beats one man, spins past another, leaps over a third. The new NFL season is here, and you should be listening to NFL Daily as we march along to Super Bowl 61. Last year, we had Mike McDonald, Sam Darnold on the field after the game, but that was last year. If you're a football sicko like me, NFL Daily is your kind of show. It is in the name, NFL Daily, fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. A.J. Brown is loose. I'm former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player, Carly Lloyd. I'm Fox Sports reporter, Jenny Taft. You said no? I'm going to go get some reps and I'm going to learn it and love it and embrace it. He said, Listen to Whatever It Takes with Carly Lloyd and Jenny Taft on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a labor journalist. I'm the author of a book called Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor. And I'm a third generation union member based in Philly. Obviously, go birds. And I'm just over the moon to be back here in the cool zone. Shout out to Sophie, Robert, James, and everyone else for letting me Kool-Aid man my way onto their network now and again to catch you up on what's been happening in the labor movement in the U.S. and otherwise. If you've been paying attention, you'll already know. September was a very busy month. But if you haven't, well, that's what I'm here for. So let's start off with some good news. And look, I'll throw you a bone. Here's a quick one for the gamers. In a big dub for tech organizing, 1,900 video game workers at Activision Blizzard have just won their first union contract. Hell yeah. Workers at the company have been organizing in various ways since 2021. But they formally unionized with the community. Communication Workers of America in 2024. So it's been a long time coming. This shiny new contract includes a lot of good stuff. They got protections for remote workers, huge for the tech world, and against outsourcing. They got some language around AI development. They got a three-day in-office hybrid work week, which, damn, I feel like the four-day work week is still a huge pipe dream. These guys are out here doing three. Unions are good. You know? And they even got May Day off as a paid holiday. It's really great work all around. You love to see it. May a thousand more tech worker unions bloom. Speaking of contracts, this is a big one. 800 Walmart workers at a distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, have just won that company's first ever union contract in North America. Now, Walmart has long been the labor movement's white whale. It's one of the largest employers in the world. It's run by evil Arkansas billionaires who hate unions. Its workers regularly make the news for the despicably low wages that those rich people pay them. But organizers in the U.S. have yet to crack the retail giant. And look, it's not for lack of trying. In the past, Walmart has simply shut down stores who have tried to unionize. For example, back in the year 2000. Which is so much further away. Back in the year 2000, after meat cutters at a Texas location voted to unionize, the company eliminated its entire meat department in Texas and in five other states for good measure. I'm thinking about it. I don't think we have a meat department in South Philly. Like, imagine cutting out an entire section of your store, of your enormous nationwide retail chain, because a handful of workers. In one place. We're like, hey, what if you treated us a little better? Like, it's petty and it's cruel and it's very on brand for Walmart. So folks are understandably very excited to see workers in Canada sticking it to them. And when the Ontario Union Drive went public two years ago, of course Walmart rushed to punish those workers and did its damnedest to bust their union drive. But importantly, this time, those union busting Africans, and all those efforts failed. So we can only assume that the Walton clan is hopping mad about the whole thing. situation. Again, love to see it. And honestly, now that our Canadian counterparts have notched this major win, I'm really curious to see what kind of organizing efforts we might see here in the U.S. I mean, when Amazon workers in Staten Island unionized, they set off a little chain reaction. When Starbucks workers in Buffalo unionized, they sent off a big chain reaction. You know, these guys are over the border, but it's only a few hundred miles from New York. It's not that far. Could this contract in Ontario be the beginning of a domino effect? Are we finally going to unionize Walmart? Look, it would take a lot of doing, but, you know, someone's got to be the first. And now that someone's proved it can be done, look, I'm just saying a girl can dream. Speaking of New York, a couple of hundred miles south in New York state, caregivers with the state's consumer-directed personal assistance program have filed for a union election with 1199-SCIU. CDPAP is a Medicaid program that allows folks who are eligible for home care services to train and choose and hire their own in-home caregivers, which can include family members and friends. So it's always exciting when we see this kind of thing happen. And I think it's a good thing that we're able to do this. I think it's a good thing that we're able to do this. overworked, underpaid workers organizing and fighting for better. But the sheer scale of this particular union drive is honestly incredible. And it's legit historic. Nearly 70,000 caregivers have already signed union cards signifying that they're down to join the union. And if they're successful, if the union drive is successful, the union would include almost 190,000 workers across the state. This would be the largest union election in the United States. And it's in U.S. history, like all of U.S. history. And it's being led by workers whose labor is deeply undervalued and rendered almost invisible to those outside the walls of their unique workplaces, which they're not working in a factory, they're not working in a store, they're not in a retail setting. These are workers who are completely atomized, isolated, working in people's homes. The fact that they've been able to organize and effort this scale is just, it's so impressive. And it's long overdue. You know, prior to this, the record for the largest election in modern U.S. history happened in 1999, when about 74,000 L.A. County home care workers voted to form a union with SEIU. Sound familiar? Nearly 30 years later. Nearly 30 years later, these caregivers in New York are following in those footsteps. As the union noted, the filing comes at a fraught moment for care in America. Medicaid-funded services face devastating federal cuts enacted under the Trump administration, which has villainized this workforce with its waste fraud abuse campaign. At the same time, the nation's rapidly aging population is driving growing demand for care, as they wrote in a press release. For many people, this situation is a problem. A specific program can be a lifeline. The difference between seeing your loved one left to loneliness and neglect, or to having them be cared for in their own homes by people they trust, who love and advocate for them. The difference is really stark, but don't take it from me. The union shared a few worker and client testimonies with me, and I want to share them with you now. So the first quote comes from a worker, Angela Jimenez, who was a full-time healthcare worker and 1199 SEIU member before she left to join the CDPAP program to care for her mom. So Angela says, I love taking care of my mother, but love doesn't pay the bills. Rent, groceries, and healthcare keep going up while our wages aren't keeping pace. Care is essential work, but the way we're paid doesn't treat it that way. Caregivers like me shouldn't have to struggle to survive. I'm joining with caregivers, across New York, because together, we have the power to demand what this work is worth and make sure we can afford to keep doing it. Soleil Biang, who works as a caregiver for her 79-year-old mother, an Alzheimer's patient, says, I need a community. I need a pay rise. A labor of love is still labor. And 68-year-old Dominique LaRouche is a former caregiver herself, who was a proud union delegate for 1199 when she was younger. Now, her daughters care for her through the CDPAP program. She says, My daughters help me get out of bed in the morning, help me get dressed and brush my hair, and help me cook meals from our culture that I enjoy eating. But what they really give me is the chance to live my life. Because of my daughters, I can see the people I love, be part of my community, and experience the world around me. CDPAP has given our family safety, dignity, and peace of mind. That's why I'm proud to stand with my daughters and thousands of other CDPAP caregivers as they come together to join 1199-SCIU. So, an election date has not yet been set. Under Trump, the NLRB remains a clusterfuck. But here's hoping we get some more good news on this soon. Because, I don't know about you, but I feel like the working class could really use a win. And an historic union win, that would feel pretty good right about now. And speaking of caregiving. Once again, I've got to shout out National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S., for continuing to just be incredibly based. This time, they're leading a week of action against Peter Thiel's data-gobbling surveillance demons at Palantir. The tech company has happily and profitably provided technology to ICE to surveil and target immigrants in the U.S., and to Israel's Ministry of Defense to use in its ongoing genocide. In addition, the NLRB has been making a lot of money from the U.S. in the last couple of years. The NLRB has been doing a lot of work in the U.S. in the last few years, and it's been doing a lot of work in the U.S. in the last couple of years, and it's been doing a lot of work in the U.S. And like many people in power, in and outside the labor movement, NNU has not been shy about speaking out against these atrocities. In August, they called out Israel's bombing of hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure. And their executive director, Puneet Maharaj, said plainly that, "The intentional bombing of hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure necessary for basic living are war crimes against humanity. The Israeli government must be held accountable for these atrocities, and the genocide must stop." Nurses and caregivers truly are the best of us, man. Now, hold that thought while we take a quick little ad break. I'm Kim Kelly, and I'll see you in the next episode of NNU News. Hello again, you're still listening to It Could Happen Here, and I'm still Kim Kelly. Now that we've started off with a little treat, let's get into some of the bad news that came crawling out of the labor world this past month. So you know how oil has gotten really expensive because of the U.S./Israel's fun new forever war in Iran? Well, when oil is available, someone's got to get it from point A to point B. And I don't know about you, but I think it's probably for the best that those "someones" working conditions are safe and stable and decently paid, so they don't have to go drive for DoorDash when they're not navigating huge tankers full of toxic and economically invaluable fossil fuels. Seems like common sense. Given all that, and the inherent volatility of the job, we also probably want them to be protected by a good union contract, right? That's what DEC officers, at Alaska Tanker Company and Overseas Shipholding Group, thought too. Which is why an overwhelming percentage of them chose to unionize with the International Organization of Masters, Mates, and Pilots back in 2024. As a quick aside, I've been to a lot of union halls, but the MMP union hall is definitely one of the coolest. They have so many model ships. Like, more than you can ever imagine. But anyway. So the Mates voted to unionize, the NLRB ordered their employees to recognize the union and start bargaining. And then, radio silence. It's been two years, and these workers are still without a first contract. As the union noted, their fight now reflects the same first contract crisis seen at Amazon, Starbucks, and other major employers. Corporations drag in their feet, knowing they're supposed to be bargaining, knowing that they should be treating their workers with respect. It's like, the same old story. It just keeps repeating and repeating, repeating in different industries and in different areas. And it's like, we can see you. We can see you doing this. Being a bad boss, being a union buster, dragging out these union contracts is not a good look. And the employees are not going to just sit there and take it. In the case of these DEC officers in the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, Union, they pointed out that the companies were not going to just sit there and take it. In the case of these DEC officers in the Masters, Mates, and Pilots Union, they pointed out that the companies were not going to just sit there and take it. In the case of these DEC officers in the Masters, Mates, and Pilots Union, Union, they pointed out that the companies were not going to just sit there and take it. Also received millions of dollars in federal subsidies and said pretty plainly that, quote, "Companies benefiting from taxpayer support should not be permitted to violate federal labor laws while denying basic bargaining rights to the American mariners risking their lives at sea." now that latter point is important because like again this bizarre war that we've become trapped within that impacts them pretty significantly word recently broke that an iranian military official identified one of these companies overseas ship holding group as a candidate for potential retaliatory measures which is not what you want to hear when you're a person who works on an oil tanker that's not like good it's frankly terrifying especially given how hard the u.s military is fucking up this entire thing so look while we're still a little ways away from transitioning to renewable energy while we're still dependent on oil we we have the world we have right now the folks who are working on these oil tankers and risking their lives so people can drive five minutes down the street to go to fucking target like let's , let's take care of them let's help them out the maids are asking folks to sign their petition that they have calling on the companies to stop stalling and start bargaining so please sign their petition we'll drop it in the show notes for you so unfortunately there really is never any shortage of stories about rich people being evil to workers but the big bad villain of this past week or so comes from a rather unlikely source on september twenty third jerry lennon said that he'd like to know what's going on in the world and he said he'd like to know what's going on in the world and he said he'd like to know what's going on in the world and he said he'd like to know what's going on in the world journalists america foggy published a blockbuster story for documented new york titled cesar alerson dismantles unions why is he now creating them that you truly need to go read because it is just wild and before we get into it i want to make sure we're all on the same page so we're going to take a minute to talk about union raids so generally speaking unions are supposed to play nice together what with their shared history and their story and stated goals and the whole solidarity thing and a part of that is agreeing not to try and steal another union's members doing so is called raiding and it's a very unchill move back in the battle days unions went to war over stuff like that and things got real bloody uh now it's tactically legal but it's still very much frowned upon uh there's a little less dynamite involved but still not a good look so given all the risks why would a union bother trying to go raiding why would they try and go to a unionized workplace and try to displace the union that was there before them and swoop in and take their members seems like a weird thing to do no well it usually comes down to math more members means more dues money and more money plus bigger membership means more power politically and otherwise sometimes though the math falls apart and things seem to turn upside down in the case of cesar alerson it seems like he's purely in it for the love of the game and that game for him is union busting as kefagi uncovered alison has had a long career in quote-unquote union avoidance a sanitized term that consultants and their clients like to trot out to make their slimy actions seem a little less contemptible it's a union avoidance consultants job to persuade workers not to unionize when you hear about captive audience meetings and things like that these are the people that are parachuting into workplaces to try and convince workers that unions are actually a bad thing that's their whole job it's a very lucrative business that rakes in about 1.5 billion dollars a year from anxious anti-union employers who somehow have not realized that they could simply pay the workers the wage increases that they're probably going to be looking for in their first union contract and save a bunch of dough but you know captives of industry are not necessarily renowned for their adherence to logic and empathy so that's where the union avoidance consultant comes in with that kind of background why then did alison walk into a golden crust manufacturing plant in the bronx identify himself as a representative for progressive workers of the world local 311 and start trying to convince the workers there who are already unionized with ibw local union 1430 to join his group instead and how many times has he apparently done this before like you'll need to read the whole article to find out but it includes a whole lot of twists and turns there's corruption there's family drama there's union buster on union buster infighting there are mafia ties the phrase that's just paperwork that has nothing to do with me does a lot of heavy lifting the whole sordid tale shows just how low employers and their anti-union goons will stoop to assure that workers are kept underpaid overworked and unrepresented and telling you you got to read this thing shout out to amir he rules now let's take a minute to collect ourselves before we head into our next tale of work wins and woe all right so we got some good news we got some bad news and now i'm gonna leave you with some news that's neither wholly good nor wholly bad but definitely something to keep an eye on but first a rumor i love gossip and i'm always down to investigate a nice juicy transportation strike rumor this one's been flying around for the past little while but i'm pretty sure it's a non-starter in a classic case of social media not actually being real life i know i'm shocked too news began to spread a few weeks ago on instagram tiktok and reddit that truckers were planning a strike for october 1st to protest skyrocketing diesel oil prices in the United States and the United States were planning a strike for october 1st to protest skyrocketing diesel oil prices in the United States and the United States was planning a strike for october 1st to protest skyrocketing diesel oil prices in the United States skyrocketing diesel prices there's even a goofy ai flyer out there calling on drivers to quote park it stand together make our voices heard if a large-scale trucking strike or even a partial disruption were to actually happen it could have a massive impact and grind the entire economy to a standstill transportation logistics workers hold an incredible amount of power which is of course why so many of them are forbidden from striking under the railway labor act truckers many of whom are independent contractors or members of established unions like the teamsters don't fall under the act and theoretically could engage in labor action if they wanted to they just haven't done it yet i've got to say though if a potentially paradigm shifting nationwide strike was actually in the works chances are that facebook wouldn't be the first place you'd hear about it remember when joe biden killed off the railroad worker strike before it even had a chance to start the corporate media was going to be the first place to hear about it and they were going to be the first place to hear about it it was flooded for weeks with stories and statements justifying that debacle and inadvertently showed how powerful that kind of action could be this might not be legit i would be really surprised if we saw any kind of strike activity or stoppage activity on october 1st but you know that's not to say we'll never see it much to consider and speaking of transportation union busting for our last story of the episode it's time to get into the zone auto zone where workers at a location in white plains new york just won their union hell yeah 11 workers at this small but mighty shop will join uaw local 259 making them the first store at the country's largest auto parts retailer to successfully organize now auto zone execs are not thrilled about the development and they actually wasted over two hundred thousand dollars trying to keep it from happening that's right tried to bust the union they hauled out all the classic tactics captive audience meetings remember the whole union avoidance thing we just talked about that's them in addition to surveillance threats of discipline and retaliation for supporting the union and they also got a little funky with it by flying in 17 different managers from memphis from indiana california florida to lurk around the stores push anti-union propaganda on the workers and keep an eye on their conversations honestly this brings to mind the scenes at the first union drive back in buffalo at starbucks when there's just a flood of managers and execs wandering around the stores like trying to mop and getting underfoot because they were terrified of the thought of having to bargain with their workers a side note it's still fuck starbucks we are boycotting starbucks until starbucks workers united gets their first contract make your coffee at home or buy it from a union shop just not starbucks but back to the zone this isn't the first time auto zone execs have locked in to crush a union drive either back in the early 90s the teensters tried to organize one of their distribution centers but were unsuccessful even though the union drive failed the nlrb still dinked the company for its unlawful conduct during their union busting spree i guess old habits die hard because this time around according to nathan de kong a parts equipment manager auto zone was trying to do everything everything possible to destroy us, to destroy our union. It was a show of force to intimidate us to make sure we don't even think about talking about the union. That's what you told the chief, a really great labor publication that you should also read, who did a great story on the whole situation. The workers voted to unionize anyway, a historic win that AutoZone celebrated by promptly firing Dukong, who was the primary leader of the union drive. The company insisted that he was a supervisor and therefore ineligible for the union, which Dukong disputes. He says that he did not have firing, hiring, or disciplining power, but did try to remedy before the vote by refiling the union petition. Didn't work. The day that it went public, the manager who fired Dukong told him very bluntly that his support for the union was why he was being axed. Quote, despite repeating instruction not to advocate for the union, you continue to participate and or facilitate union activity at the store. The horror. The chief also reports that days after AutoZone fired Dukong, management fired a supervisor at the store for, quote, failing to stop the union. It's just, it's just ridiculous, you know, like the whole situation. Like, fuck it, relax. Like, God forbid, you gotta give some workers a raise. Eleven workers you gotta deal with. Like, grow up. But since then, labor has rallied around Dukong. I'm so sorry if I'm saying your name incorrectly to you, Nathan. Let me know if I fucked it up and I owe you a drink. But a GoFundMe has been created to support him and other fired workers. It's raised about 13 grand so far. Phenomenal. Gonna need more because he's gonna, this is gonna be a long fight. So, we'll pop that in the show notes so you can add to that number. Let's get it up as high as we can. This is a developing story, but it's really been heartening to see how much love Dukong and his co-works have been getting. And it makes sense. His union organizing story is very modern and very relatable and very New York. He's gotten support from artist and director Boots Riley, whose latest film, I Love Boosters, Dukong cited as a direct influence on his decision to try to organize. Which is so cute and so timely. Like, damn, that John just came out. It's a great movie. You should go see it. And, you know, maybe you'll get some ideas. On the organizing side, he also got an early boost from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. Great project that you should look up if you are union curious. He connected with them through his work as a volunteer field lead for now Mayor Zoran Mamdani's successful campaign. It just goes to show there are a million ways to get started. And organizing. And a Boots Riley movie marathon might not be a bad way to start. As for Dukong and the UAW, they're not backing down. As he told the chief, anybody who's interested in forming union at their auto zone, we want anybody interested in that to reach out to us. Their union busting certainly works, but not well enough. Boom. How could you not want to support that dude? That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if any of this has caught your interest, you want to do some more reading, you want to dig into it, you want to talk to your co-workers a little bit, then my job here is done. Until next time. I love QP. And if you're thinking, wait, what is QP? Well, the answer? Egg yolks. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. You'll understand. Legends has it all. Avoid repetitive. Must be 18 plus play responsibly. Broke's throat. Got a man wide open. Touchdown! Seahawks! Don't worry, this isn't just a show for stats experts. NFL Daily, fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. Big-time trades that shake up the NFL. A.J. Brown is loose! They are bringing the Lombardi back to the Northwest. If it's happening. On a football field, NFL Daily will cover it. I'm former U.S. Do you remember your initial reaction when Fox called you? Did Fox call you to be a part of the World Cup? You said no? This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by. Robert Evans and Special Correspondent Bridget Todd. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to talk through some of the worst stuff imaginable with you fine folks. Yeah, it is a hard week. This week that we are covering is September 23rd to September 30th. I'll start with a few shorter news stories that I think our little panel here might find interesting. On Tuesday, Donald Trump, the president, launched America.gov. A website to host an AI chatbot that pulls information from across the multitude of federal government websites. America.gov and this little chatbot probably deserves its own focus in a future episode. But also on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order to rename artificial intelligence to superintelligence after running polls on social media for the past week. And he also met with the heads of six tech companies to sign the, quote, White House Accord on. Which essentially promotes self-regulation in the AI industry. Speaking of superintelligence. Under Trump's signature on this document, the United States is written as the Unites States. Excellent work there. This document was also signed by Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Kijensen Huang of NVIDIA, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, and Anthropix Dario Amadei. Does anyone have any notes on this little chatbot or super intelligence they'd like to add? Not really. I mean, what is there to say? We can just move on. Yeah. Now, Dario's inclusion in the White House Accords is a little funny because earlier this week, a memo circulating the White House named Dario as a leading figure in the cultish effective altruism movement, which, according to the memo, is responsible for the AI doom panic threatening technological innovation and national security. Robert, if you've not seen this memo, that document cloud link has it there. You should take a look. It's pretty funny. Oh, yes. No, yes. I have seen this. Yes. The memo covers Anthropix ties to effective altruism and identified effective altruism as a, quote, heavily male, white, non-religious, politically left or center left, and usually vegan or vegetarian. I love that they throw in their diet, like a little detail. And I don't even fully agree with that statement, but OK. This memo tracks the, quote, AI doom pipeline back to effective altruism, consequentialism and long termism based on effective altruisms, quote, impartial maximization. Do the most good wherever and whenever it occurs. Extend the calculation into the far future through long termism and treat human extinction as the loss of potentially enormous future value, unquote. The memo also talks about, you know, shrimp consciousness, bestiality and killing babies, pulling from. A variety of effective altruism, like thought experiments and right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's this is why I don't really agree with calling them even a left or a center left, or at least there's there's elements of that. But there's elements of like, like classic far right, like eugenic thought. Right. And this document even notes that, you know, it's talking about some of the stuff Singer said about disabled kids and the like. But they're leaving out like it's interesting to me that this seems to I haven't done like a deep dive, but at least from what I remember and from what I'm looking over now, it does not seem to be mentioning. Nick Bostrom, he's like the guy who is generally considered the father of long termism within the E.A. subculture and is also like the biggest eugenicist within like the prominent chunk of that that movement. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that the Trump allies might not be talking about those aspects of E.A. Yeah, but yeah, but like a lot of this memo does focus on anthropic and Amadei. Yeah, because the government's been beefing with with. Anthropic for for months, especially following the Iran war and statements that anthropic has made about military use of their technology, which has led to the War Department publicly attacking anthropic. And as of last week, effective altruism itself in a series of posts. What a time to be alive. Quote, Americanism, not effective altruism. Yeah. The United States will continue to be A.I. dominant. We're this close to Pete Hegseth talking about Ayala's birthday gangbang as a matter of national security. And I, for one, am ready for this glorious day to come. Oh, man. Dark timeline. I want the younger listeners or anyone who's like you remember, like hanging out at parties in your early 20s with some like absolute dipshits. Now, imagine the president is like getting really angry at those dipshits and like you hate them, but he's not angry at them for a good reason. This is like for those of us who've been following the E.A. movement for years. Such a good analogy. Like, well, these guys suck, but not for these. Reasons the post that they put out. It's clearly A.I. generated. Oh, got it. You should see it. One of them. It almost looks like a really bad over the top. A.I. Generated flyer for like like a theme night at a nightclub. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's pulling from a bunch. I mean, the whole War Department feed right now pulls from a whole bunch of like what I'll call downstream from telegram aesthetics. Yeah. And I think these follow that also. These are all descended from like the white boys summer aesthetics we were seeing for five years ago, which, of course, is pulling from kind of like nightlife aesthetics as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a really horrible mix. It's a ruby rose. Another post from the Department of War. The United States will never be an effective altruist country. I agree. Pretty cool. Fair. He's right. He's right. Pretty cool. Moving on. Moving on. About a week after Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman sent a little video to the Republican midterm convention, The Intercept reported that Fetterman has been fundraising using GOP email lists with campaign fundraising emails coming from the address, quote, info at GOP squad dot com. Now, one of these GOP linked fundraising emails said it was from friend of the pod, James's favorite senator, Mike Lee, who wrote in this email, quote, friend. I'm going to go to the GOP. I just got an email from John. He's basically a Republican now. Wow. I need your help to draft him. Sign here, unquote. And then there's John Fetterman, you know, campaign insignias below this, this little email chain. So cool stuff there. Two great tastes to go great together. Fetterman and Mike Lee. And while speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival this past Sunday, Fetterman did a little Freudian slip. Let's take a listen. A Hindi from Dallas and they ask, why not become an independent? Because I'm a lifelong Republican. Democrat. Every time, every time it's funny. That's a moment right there. That's clippable, ladies and gentlemen. Circulate. Go, go, go. Internet spin wildly. Wildly spin, Internet. I guarantee you that's going to break through. That'll get that'll get clipped. Yeah, I'm a lifelong Democrat, though. You're not spinning. He just said he was. A Republican. There's no spin to do. Yeah, that'll get clipped. Doing my part, I guess. Yeah, man, that's that. I just love the like, they're going to take this out of context. No, the context was you called yourself a Republican, man. Like, yeah, it was a slip up, but it's like no one's taking it out of context. You said it. You just said that. Uh, speaking of our totally cool Congress, Palantir was named as a quote, top supporter of the Congressional Black Caucus at their annual. Charitable Gala this month, with Palantir's name plastered on tables at the event and a big thank you banner in the convention center. Oof. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has very publicly returned donations from Palantir. Yeah, I was at the CBC here where I live in Washington, D.C. Yeah, that was, I wasn't my fave. You know, you when you went into the building, there was this image that was like a orange image of the late Shirley Chisholm. Who is one of my idols. Yeah, Shirley Chisholm's awesome. Yeah. She's awesome. Unbought and unbossed. She was the first Black woman elected to Congress. It's her picture with Palantir's branding on her image. That's fucked up. That was like getting kicked in the nuts right when I went in. And, you know, I just, I can't imagine that anything about what Palantir's doing at Chisholm would have been down for. No, no. Yeah, it was, it was not my fave. No. That sucks. For some Palantir. Positive Shirley Chisholm representation, though, if you watch the relatively new History of the World by Mel Brooks TV show that was on, I think, Hulu. I forget which streaming platform. Shirley Chisholm plays a major role in it. It's a loving tribute. I need a palate cleanser. I might have to watch that tonight. Yeah, it's not bad, actually. In a statement to HuffPost, Palantir said there, quote, Proud and honored to support the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's mission of creating pathways for promising young people to enter public service who may not have the networks or financial means to do so. Without support, unquote. Basically, we want to own them. Yeah. Surveil them, track them, get them into our databases. I mean, and you can't, you can't fault some of these guys who are in their 80s and 90s who don't really know what Palantir is necessarily. By you can't fault them, I, of course, mean you should be faulting them. They shouldn't be in office. They should. They should. They're too old. The former chair and current influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus, 86-year-old Jim Clyburn, recently told Vox that he only learned what chat GPT was earlier this summer. Like, I think I'm too old to be an elected leader now because when people bring up, like, TikToker influencers, I just black out and find myself holding a gun these days. So, like, I, like, I can't imagine being 80 and trying to keep up with this shit. You don't think of yourself as an influencer at all, Robert? Oh, of course. I, I, I, I make media. That was a rage bait question and you fell for it, my friend. I want Robert doing makeup tutorials on Blue Sky. I, I could do that. Yeah. Dazzle camouflage on your face. Anyway, sorry, Gary. Well, with just a little over a month left until the midterms, the federal government has begun airing pro-Trump television ads paid for by U.S. taxpayers. These are, for all intents and purposes, Republican campaign ads paid for by you. There's at least three different ads in circulation, and one of them, a single black and white shot of Trump walking down a hallway with a voiceover talking about, quote, A final battle with you by my side. to demolish the deep state globalists and warmongers. And if that little last part sounds a bit outdated, that's because this was literally a Trump 2024 campaign ad. Yep. But with one important change, the on-screen text at the end of the ad reads, paid for by the U.S. government, unquote. This ad is played during sports games and on Fox News. Another one of these Trump ads airing on TV is edited in the form of, like, a hype video with, like, quick flashing images on screen with text reading, largest tax cuts in history, reigniting American manufacturing, and defend law and order and police. Too many ands. So as images of Trump and these little phrases flash on screen, the song Love Me by JMSM plays in the background. Let's take a listen. Together we will defeat communism. Socialism and Marxism in America. America will never be a communist country. Oh, God. The only person that I've ever met in nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves. Paid for by the U.S. government. Yeah, that should be illegal. Probably is illegal. Adding this to the ever-expanding bucket of, um, is that legal? How are they allowed to do that? Now, the White House has defended these federally funded, but clearly partisan ads to influence the midterms by calling them public service announcements akin to Biden's PSAs about the COVID-19 vaccines. Are you fucking kidding me? Sure, man. Public service announcements about how our great leader is perfect and can do no wrong. Love me. Love me. To quote the White House, the announcements are very clearly not campaign ads. President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it's worth defending at home, at the border, and abroad. Unquote. Their country? That's not what they were singing. Love me to. They were singing love me to images of Donald Trump with his arms wide open. Like the fucking Jesus at Rio. Like it's wild. Oh, it's, it's, it's bad. I don't like this. Yeah. A few other kind of election related points I want to hit. Last Thursday, the California Supreme Court ruled that Sheriff Chad Bianco violated state election law by seizing 650,000 ballots for the Prop 50 special election on redistricting as a part of his quote unquote election fraud investigation. Now, I think it's worth noting that emails leaked, in 2021 revealed that Sheriff Chad Bianco was a dues paying member of the Oath Keepers since at least 2014. And in a debate earlier this year, during the Sheriff's unsuccessful bid to be the Republican nominee for governor, Bianco said he was proud of his affiliation with the Oath Keepers. - You're an Oath Keeper. We all know that. - And I'm very proud of it. - Well, you should. - I'm very proud of it. - Well, I'm sorry. - And everybody that wants to like, again, lie and emotionally get all spun up about the Oath Keeper organization, I just would, before you do that, and I know none of you have, I want you to go read the mission statement of the Oath Keeper mission statement and the ACLU. - I saw them on CNN attacking the Capitol. - And the ACLU. I saw a politician molesting kids. Does that mean you molest kids? - What? - Exactly. - Really compelling stuff from Sheriff Oath Keeper. But this whole story gives us an interesting look into possible election interference done on like a county level. With Judd sheriffs just seizing huge swaths of ballots to try to invalidate as many as they can after an election based on vague allegations of "discrepancies in the count." But now going forward, at least in California, there will be protections against this tactic. - You know, you said that it was found that he did this and that he violated state election law. Will he be facing any consequences? - It doesn't look like he'll be facing consequences, no. I guess the ballots will be returned and destroyed, but no, this is not gonna result in anything for him personally. He just can't continue his investigation. - Wow. - Speaking of allegations of election fraud, earlier this summer, Trump and DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen claimed they had uncovered hundreds of thousands of non-citizens who were registered to vote. And we didn't report on these claims in depth because the White House provided no evidence for these extraordinary claims. But in communications to state election officials following this big public announcement, the Trump admin already began to deemphasize the certainty of these large figures. Nevada was first told by DHS that they had as many as 15,903 non-citizens on their voter rolls. But in a meeting between state officials and DHS last month, DHS said that that number might not be totally accurate because each voter had not yet been manually reviewed, and the true number may be closer to 185 voters. After this meeting, DHS emailed Nevada officials clarifying, quote, "We did not reduce the 15,903 to 185. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 "and confirmed 185 are not US citizens," unquote. So still keeping open the possibility that there could be upwards of 16,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls, which have been flagged, but then DHS themselves narrowed that down to at least 185 confirmed cases. So after this, state officials then checked those 185 alleged non-citizen voters and found that every single one was actually a US citizen. In a letter obtained by the New York Times through an open records request, the deputy attorney general in Nevada, Gray Goat, wrote to DHS, "As for the 185 individuals, "our records indicate that they were citizens. "You have provided nothing of substance "to suggest otherwise." Nevada's secretary of state said in a statement, quote, "Our records do not support DHS's claims, "and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that. "Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts "to intimidate election officials into compliance "and deter voters with huge claims of fraud "with no evidence." Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true, unquote. All of this relates to our first main story this episode. On September 25th, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on ideological lines to allow the Trump administration to use a janky citizenship database from DHS to purge voter rolls. Though the worst potential effects of this will be delayed until after the midterms. Now, we've talked before about the ongoing legal battles over Trump's attempts to restrict mail-in voting. This new shadow docket ruling centers on the implementation of the other half of Trump's March 2025 executive order to, quote, "protect the integrity of American elections." The creation of a new list of verified U.S. citizen voters. After Trump signed the election integrity order last year, DHS began to expand something called the SAVE database so that it could be used to verify large batches of voters. Quickly, voting rights organizations sued and a district court blocked the order, finding that the overhauled SAVE program, quote, "trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote." But the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to stay the district court's ruling. And last week, without a full briefing or oral argument, the Supreme Court granted that stay, clearing the way for Trump to implement the new SAVE database. The SAVE database was created decades ago to verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits, like Medicaid and food stamps. But the newly modified SAVE system incorporates confidential data from the Social Security Administration and allows authorities to conduct bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. Currently, 27 U.S. states use the SAVE system to verify voters. And last year, some states began testing the newly modified database. More on that later. In the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using the SAVE database, in the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using the SAVE database, in the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using the SAVE database, to the government from using this newly overhauled database, the plaintiffs alleged that the integration of social security administration data violates multiple privacy protections and that the use of the data to purge voter rolls risks irreparable harm to voters who are mistakenly removed from the rolls due to inaccurate or out-of-date information in the database. And this part is really crucial because social security administration data does not necessarily reflect someone's current immigration or citizenship status. And SSS data is not just your social security number, but also names, dates and places of birth, citizenship indicators, death records, and any information obtained while processing requests for social security numbers. So there's a bunch of very, very personal, very private data that gets stored here. It's not just your, you know, however many digit number. So if this new database flags someone, or a search comes up inconclusive, voters could be required to take additional affirmative steps to prove their citizenship or naturalization, possibly within a very short time window, or they risk being removed from the voter rolls and unable to exercise their right to vote. In the dissent penned by Justice Jackson, she echoed the concern of the plaintiffs that, quote, the staleness of Social Security Administration's citizenship records risked disenfranchising recently naturalized U.S. citizens, unquote. And absolutely, if someone's afraid that they might get into trouble or ICE might go after them for registering to vote, even if they are legally allowed to, or if that fear prevents them from taking certain actions, that is real and active harm. And this type of stuff isn't just future speculation. According to a ProPublica report from last February, quote, DHS has had to correct information provided to at least five states after SAVE misidentified some voters as non-citizens. In particular, in Texas, one woman said, quote, had her voter registration revoked without her knowledge, and two more people had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status per Jackson's dissent. So this can also happen to you and you not know about it. So you can be removed from your voter roll, not actually know necessarily. Maybe they tried to contact you and that just didn't work. That just didn't happen. So then you think that you're registered to vote, but you actually aren't, which of course then makes you unable to vote. These are all real. Actual harms. But the majority opinion of the Supreme Court didn't actually consider any of these harms posed to lawful voters, but just focused on the harm that the government could suffer if they weren't allowed to use this new SAVE database. And weighing the legality of DHS using what's otherwise protected confidential data from the Social Security Administration, which the majority ruled DHS was allowed to do based on the illegal immigration reform, and Immigrant Responsibility Act Section 1373. And this is the big kind of legal debate regarding is this database actually legal? Are they allowed to use this protected data? The district court said no. The dissent says no. The plaintiffs say no. But the federal government and now Supreme Court majority says yes. And I want to get more into kind of the weeds of this legal argument in a future episode. Because to quote Jackson, the argument being made by the majority is implausible. And they are very clearly misreading a federal law. Like it's just it's a very plain misreading and interpreting a specific law in a way that no one else has interpreted it before and would fundamentally alter privacy protections in this country and goes directly against the Clinton administration's interpretation of this law as well. But I'll get more into that kind of in a future episode. about the various efforts to undermine elections going into the midterms. So as bad and bullshit as all of this is, this ruling will quote, likely have a minimal short term impact, according to Jackson. And that's because the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from quote, systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from their rules in the 90 days prior to any primary or general election. So they cannot do these massive, massive bulk searches that this database is designed to do. They can't just like remove tons of people all at once from the rules. But that doesn't mean that this will have no impact on the midterms. Because the government is still allowed to use this new safe program to conduct, quote, individualized inquiries per the majority. So they can still go after individual people, just not bulk searches. Jackson writes that states will quote, at most conduct individualized voter rules. maintenance using the modified save system. And she concludes her dissent by saying, quote, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take, unquote. I'm glad she named that in her dissent, because I can't get over that bit of what about the harm to the government. That's wild to me. Yeah, no, there's there's another line I have saved in my full report of this, which is so funny. She writes, it cannot be that the government is injured whenever it is prevented from violating the law. That's kind of a really good sum up of like most Supreme Court kind of debates during Trump's second administration is that the government is constantly claiming that they're going to suffer a lot more than they're going to suffer. Harm if they're not allowed to break the law. Considering all of this, I think it's important to reiterate that non-citizen voting is relatively rare and statistically insignificant. It's not something that is altering election results or causing harm. But what could cause harm or alter results is the mass disenfranchisement of voters, scaring naturalized citizens into not voting and DHS forcibly deregistering lawful U.S. citizen voters. Because of their wildly inaccurate voter verification system. Now, regarding the massive numbers thrown around by the Trump admin, like 300,000 non-citizen voters, 16,000 flagged in Nevada, it's not yet clear if the new save system is where DHS is getting those numbers. But considering the fact that the 185, quote, manually confirmed cases in Nevada turned out to be all U.S. citizens, you cannot take anything DHS is saying at face value. Basically, this whole illegal voting panic is functionally a psyop to purge U.S. citizen voters. It's to convince as many states as possible to use this new save system, using threats and intimidation, with the ultimate goal of purging voter rolls. Which they're not allowed to do, in the three months before the midterms. But going forward after the midterms, DHS now has the ability to do bulk searches and removals ahead of future elections. So this is definitely something we will keep an eye on going into 2028. Anyway, let's go on an ad break and then return for some bad news. And we are back. Let's turn to Bridget Todd for our next main story. Yeah, thanks, Gare. And I have to give a quick heads up in the form of a trigger warning that this segment deals with some pretty rough stuff. Sexual assaults, drugging. So just know that before we talk about it. Cutting in here just to say, if you would like to skip this section on Cornell and Title IX, I'm going to skip it. I'm going to skip it. I'm going to 9. You can skip to the next ad break, which should be around the 55-minute mark. I can't know the exact timestamp because that depends on the ads that are loaded into your individual podcast feed, but the next section by Robert Evans should be around the 55-minute mark after the next ad break. So y'all have probably been hearing about what's happening at Cornell right now, and I want to start by walking through the timeline because this case did not just suddenly emerge this month. The New York Times actually had a really detailed breakdown of the timeline that was super helpful in me kind of just understanding what's going on. All of this happened almost two years ago, but there is a reason why folks are talking about it right now. So back in October of 2024, according to Jane Doe's lawsuit, earlier that night she had been out at bars and Greek life events. Around 11 o'clock, she goes to the Chi Phi fraternity house to meet a male Cornell student. She's also a student at Cornell at this point. She said that she thought of this student as a friend to her. Now, according to this lawsuit, she was then pressured into consuming drugs and alcohol, including ketamine, and that seven men sexually assaulted her while she was incapacitated from the drugs and alcohol and weaving in and out of consciousness. I looked at the lawsuit that she filed. The details, that are laid out in this lawsuit are truly horrific to the point where I don't even necessarily feel comfortable like getting into all of them here. Stuff like her being forced to snort ketamine off of an erect penis. Oh, God. Yeah, it's it's pretty bad. And her suit says all of this went on for hours. According to her complaint, one of the men posted a message to the fraternity Snapchat group during the night that said, quote, free pussy. Obviously, her suit says, quote, free pussy. And she said, quote, free pussy. Her suit interprets this as an invitation for other fraternity members to join in the room and join in the assault. This is not even like super in dispute. You can find pictures of that Snapchat message and like see the replies to it. And even the do nothing district attorney who I'll be talking about more in a moment has since described those Snapchat messages as, quote, morally disgusting. And he said that his office was examining whether or not those Snapchat messages could have criminal significance. So. Three weeks later, on November 8th, Jane Doe goes to the Cornell University police. And, you know, I don't think anybody is surprised to hear that in situations like this, there is always some victim blaming fuckery. So here. is some victim blaming fuckery. So that do-nothing DA, the Tompkins County District Attorney Matt Van Houten, said that Jane Doe's original statement to the police described at least some of her drug use and sexual activity that night as voluntary and consensual. That's his words, not mine. He says that that was a major reason that his office determined at the time that there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. So when I heard that, I kind of did that Scooby-Doo, like, what the fuck do you mean? That seemed absurd to me. So I looked into this, and I only learned this from researching the situation, but there is a wrinkle in New York state law that critics have called the voluntary intoxication loophole, which is basically that under New York law, if you voluntarily get even extremely drunk, the fact that you were too intoxicated to meaningfully consent does not, by itself, legally establish that you were incapable of consenting to sex, which to me is, I mean, I, maybe I'm a Pollyanna, but I did not know that. I was learning that for the first time from researching what happened at Cornell. Like, I get legally, especially in a situation like a party where multiple people are drinking, like, how do you adjudicate after the fact without, like, blood tests and stuff, the level of intoxication of everybody? Like, I understand how there's, like, complications there, but it seems like, something other than just not addressing it would be the right thing to do legally. Yeah. And basically, this law posits that you essentially have to be, if you're talking about consensual drinking, you basically have to be incapacitated to the point where you cannot move or speak on your own in order for that and that alone to establish that you were incapable of consenting to sex. So if you're, you know, drinking, but still talking, even if you're, like, extremely, extremely drunk, that by itself, does not legally establish that you were not capable of consenting. So I really take your point, but it seems to me that, like, okay, well, we'll just codify that into law. Seems wonky to me. And there are lawmakers. It just seems like they abrogated their, like, making an actual, like, decision on any of this and just sort of picked, I don't know, like, it doesn't seem like where you should draw the line, right? Like, just, okay, when somebody's passed out, like, in nothing before, that's just really, it just. It just seems very irresponsible and incomplete. Totally agree. And there are lawmakers who are actively working on changing this, this intoxication loophole. And I'm glad that you said that, Robert, because to me, I, this is just me editorializing. I think it raises a fundamental question about how consent works, because a person can voluntarily use drugs or drink and be sexually assaulted. A person can consent to one sex act and then not consent to another. Consent is. Yeah. And I think that, we just have to, I want for us a society where we have more conversations about what consent actually looks like and how it works so that more people kind of fully understand that. I don't feel like we're having those conversations now, unfortunately, like in wider society, particularly with young people. Yeah. So that do nothing DA that I told you about, Van Houten, he also has pushed back on this sort of emerging claim that Jane Doe's original statement was fragmentary or incomplete, or this idea that she did not do a good enough job of getting a detailed account from her. He says that Jane Doe gave police a comprehensive statement and made more than 20 handwritten corrections to that statement before signing it. So that's, that's what he says is like why his office declined to pursue charges. But Jane Doe's attorney disputes all of this, including the idea that her original statement means that her current allegations are inconsistent with what she originally reported. Her attorneys argued that she was traumatized and incapacitated and that authorities failed to adequately investigate what actually happened. So I should say that Cornell did take some actions following this report. According to both Cornell and third party reporting, the university did temporarily suspend the Chi Phi fraternity and impose some temporary suspensions or restrictions on students accused in connection with this incident while they investigated. Cornell University's police did contact that DA, which like, okay, a lot of good that did. And prosecutors again, reviewed the allegations and ultimately decided not to, you know, pursue criminal charges under New York state law. Then in January of 2025, Jane Doe filed a formal Title IX complaint with Cornell, triggering a totally separate university review process. So in case you don't know, Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding and dictates rules around how colleges are required to respond when a student reports something like sexual assault or sexual harassment. According to the New York Times, by May, Cornell's Title IX committee had held at least 12 hearings involving these allegations in this situation. So Cornell now says that this investigation eventually resulted in what they describe as serious disciplinary sanctions, what they describe as things like suspensions and expulsions, and that the Chi Phi chapter that was involved in this is still barred from campus. However, we don't actually know exactly what happened. to each individual student because Cornell has declined to publicly disclose any of those details citing federal student privacy laws. Jane Doe's attorney told CBS News that two of the seven students were expelled, and at least some of the men who were named in the lawsuit have denied allegations through their attorneys. So if you've heard about this situation, you've probably heard about one particularly grim detail, and that is the essays. So Jane Doe's civil complaint alleges students were, quote, afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell, like written papers that you would write in a class. Cornell has since pushed back on that claim, but in a way that I find interesting, because they did not say that none of the students involved were made to write an essay to mitigate, you know, their conduct. What Cornell said was, quote, none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement. So, like, it kind of does sound like maybe they were made to write essays. Like, well, I'm not sure what that exactly means. So Cornell says the disciplinary process resulted in a range of sanctions, including suspensions and expulsions. But again, we don't really know what all went down there. So after that, the story kind of fell from public view until very recently this month. This month, Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the defendants, including Cornell University, Chi Phi, her sorority Delta Delta Delta, university officials, and seven men that she says participated in this assault. And that lawsuit has really pushed this whole situation more into public view. Like, how did the university handle it? How did the authorities handle it? And I have to really champion the student journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun here, which is Cornell's independent student newspaper. The Daily Sun's journalists have been reporting on these allegations going back to 2024, and they have been aggressively pursuing and covering the lawsuit and the university's response. There is a really good Q&A with one of the student editors, Cerise Kuzba, in the cut, about what it was like to break and cover this story. And one of the things that she said was that weirdness around whether or not these students were asked to write essays to mitigate this really, really awful behavior, like, it clarified the fact that the students were asked to write essays to mitigate this really, that for me because she basically says that Cornell treats sexual assault on campus as a more of an education issue, not a public safety issue. And she really describes the kind of environment where like it would make sense that the university would think that having students do workshops or write essays would be an appropriate way to mitigate harm. She told The Cut, when you search the task force website, you see what they're doing is classes, workshops, and website links. It's pretty easy to assume that those who would often commit the sexual assault will most likely not be the ones attending the voluntary and optional sexual assault workshops. Within the editorial committee, we feel that sexual misconduct cannot be solved in the same way we try to attempt to solve plagiarism. These are very fundamentally different issues, she told The Cut. So if you have seen the names of these men circulating publicly, that is because of the Cornell Daily Sun. On September 21st, the Cornell Daily Sun's editorial committee released a report that said, published the names of all of the men who were named as defendants in this lawsuit. They said that they believed Cornell had failed in its obligation to protect the students and to adequately account for its handling of the allegations. So I do have a couple of updates. On September 28th, that Tompkins County District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten, you know, that do-nothing DA I was describing earlier, well, he announced that his office was actually going to do something, and that is to reopen this criminal case. So I do have a couple of updates on that. On September 28th, that Tompkins County District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten, you know, that did something, and that is to reopen this criminal investigation. Van Houten says that his office has assigned a senior prosecutor with experience prosecuting sex crimes and is preparing to present the case to a grand jury. Also, New York Governor Kathy Hochul called for an outside counsel to conduct a transparent, independent review of how the university handled Jane Doe's situation. Specifically, she wants this review to determine whether or not Cornell met its obligations to protect students and pursue justice. So that's kind of where the Cornell situation sits. I have a couple of other sort of pieces there. I don't know. Now, if you would call this person a journalist, I'm going to refer to him as a substack troll. Oh, no. Are you going to talk about who I think you're going to talk about? It's Michael Tracy. Oh, yes. Yes. It's time for Michael Tracy. God damn it. Is this not his first appearance on the pod? No, we've talked about Michael and him being sure the Americans were about to invade to help Ukraine because he wound up accidentally at a U.S. embassy in Poland. We've talked about Michael a few times because he's always wrong about everything he says. Well, you might not be surprised then to find out that he is trying to reveal Jane Doe's identity. This is not the first time he's gone after a survivor. Yeah. Yes. He tweeted, if you happen to know who this Cornell Jane Doe is, get in touch and I would be happy to publish her name and identifying information. And yes, this is 100 percent permitted under the First Amendment. Whatever threats or emotional blackmail people might want to deploy. So just. Just a real lovely guy. Real lovely addition to this whole shit show. There's been a few other kind of far right content creators who've tried to dox this woman has have have put out identifications that who knows if they are real or not. But this is definitely not just Michael. This is not just a Michael problem. This is this is across the whole kind of. Oh, yeah. Twitter America first Groyper sphere as well. Yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned that, you know, when I was researching for this, I actually found myself in the behind the bastards or cool zone subreddit. And one of the posts on there caught my eye, which was I think this person is right, but basically asking, does it seem like there's an uptick in kind of, quote, gender wars stuff being used in incendiary ways? Yes. And he was talking about some of the conversation around the Lindsay Clancy trial. And I do. I mean, I'm lucky that I've on my side. Kind of pocket of the Internet. Everybody is, you know, supportive of Jane Doe and they want a more transparent, clear process for when this kind of thing happens. But I do think we're seeing an uptick in this kind of thing being used to divide and and incite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Lindsay Clancy or whatever her name is case, I'm also seeing used a lot that way in the right of like women want to be able to murder their babies and stuff like there's definitely a concerted effort to push gender conflict shit. Yeah. And I'm I hate that it is effective. I hate that it's the kind of cultural issue that really can move people along these lines. And, you know, I think it's important that we know that this situation at Cornell is like not isolated. Campus rape is not is not an isolated thing. And there's actually another story that you might be hearing less about a student at Louisiana State University named Kendall Francis. Basically, Kendall Francis is a student at LSU, a young black woman. This is from Law Commentary. LSU found a football player responsible for sexual assault and forcible rape through its Title IX process, then reduced his one year suspension on appeal to two years of probation without restrictions, subsequently allowing him back on the LSU football team. So this finding remained in place. And that case is now under criminal investigation. So you're probably thinking, what the fuck? Basically, Law Commentary reports that Francis. The student at LSU filed a formal Title IX complaint in January of twenty twenty six after investigating these allegations and the player's accounts. The university did find him responsible for sexual assault and forcible rape. LSU initially imposed a one year suspension. That player appealed. The university upheld the sexual misconduct finding, but then reversed the suspension, replacing it with that two years of, quote, disciplinary probation without restrictions. This, of course, allowed. Him to return to campus, campus life, campus activities, including returning to the LSU football team. So the student has been saying, you know, I've been made incredibly anxious by this. I wanted to be on campus and live my life. But the idea that the person at the university agrees assaulted me is just allowed back on campus is unacceptable. So in response, she filed a criminal complaint and that complaint was brought to the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office, for review on September 22nd, twenty twenty six, where they are now investigating. And that's kind of where we're at right now. But LSU says that they're standing by what they did. They said that they followed the policies and the process correctly and that they're, you know, working with law enforcement to solve the matter. She's been speaking up on social media, you know, using her real identity, which is an incredibly fraught thing to be doing. I wanted to play just a little bit of a video that she posted to social media. We had a pretty rough hearing. The hearing was not the best. And then LSU said that he was accountable for rape and then proceeded to suspend him for a year, even though for rape, the suspension is two to three years. Even with him admitting on the record that he did rape me, they still just gave him a lesser sentence in which he then appealed. During this appeal process, it took so long. And they took a long, long time to give it back to me. And I ended up coming back to LSU because at first he was suspended. And I did not think that they would suspend him because they had already found or unsuspend him because they had already found him responsible for rape. After the appeal process, LSU decided to send me the email of the appeal process during my class. So I ended up reading the appeal in my class. And during the letter, it said that he was still responsible for rape, but he's able to play football, join orgs and everything like that. And so that made my anxiety really, really bad because I don't want to face this person. So this caused me to go online full time. And now I'm just trying to speak on my story because LSU does really protect their athletes, especially their football players. And I'm sorry for anyone else who has gone through something similar to this. My DMs are open. You guys are more than welcome to message me. I really just wanted to bring awareness upon this situation because I'm just dealing with a lot right now. And I think. That this story needs to be heard. Thank you guys for listening to my story. And I hope you guys all have an amazing day. So she's been really speaking out on social media. And, you know, I'm really happy that we are galvanizing around Jane Doe at Cornell. And I think that all survivors and victims deserve to have their stories shared, deserve to have support, deserve to be believed. And so I just wanted to also highlight what's happening at LSU with this title. Nine complaint as well. And coincidentally, I do have some title nine news because on September 28th, the very same day that that D.A. announced that they were reopening the Cornell investigation, the Trump administration formally reinstated the title nine regulations that were created during Trump's first term. This has been a little bit of a political and legal tug of war back and forth for years. During Trump's first term, his administration rewrote the title nine rules back in. Among other things, the regulations that he changed narrowed what kinds of sexual harassment schools were required to address under title nine and also strengthened procedural protections for students who were accused of misconduct. The Biden administration rewrote those rules again in 2024. Those Biden rules broadened protections against sex discrimination to include explicitly extending those protections to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender equality. Those Biden rules broadened protections against sex discrimination to include explicitly extending those protections to include specifically extending those protections to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender equality. identity and changed how schools could handle sexual harassment complaints. But those rules then got tied up in lawsuits. And in January of 2025, a federal judge struck them down nationwide. So the 2020 Trump rules were effectively kind of back in place. But what happened this week is that the Trump administration made that official. The Education Department formally removed those Biden era regulations from the books and restored those Trump 2020 regulations. So if you ask me, those rules make it more. More difficult for some students who experience sexual harassment or misconduct or assault to come forward and get real help from their schools. Now, to be clear, the Cornell case and this Trump change are different developments. They're not, you know, related. But it is hard for me not to sort of read them concurrently because it feels like we're watching this Cornell case raise all these questions about what happens when a student reports, you know, sexual assault or sexual misconduct. Who believes them? Who investigates? What the university does, what they are, what they have to do if they're getting federal funding, what law enforcement does, you know, while the federal government is simultaneously deciding what obligations schools have when students come forward with stuff like this. Yeah. And I mean, to the degree to which the Title IX issue was motivated by by transphobia as well, just shows how much transphobia ends up hurting everyone. You know, you're going to talk about, you know, keeping women safe in locker rooms. And that's why you're going to attack, attack trans people. But then you're actually going to be reinstating a version of Title IX with less sexual assault protections. Oh, yes. I have said this many times. It's like that Beyonce quote. When you play me, you play yourself. When you when you dabble in transphobia, ultimately, you are hurting everyone. You're making everyone less safe. Thanks for that report, Bridget. We'll have one more ad break and then Robert will have a special report with Darn Tootin. Bye. and we're back so in april earlier this year on this very show i celebrated the massive upset parliamentary elections in hungary which saw right-wing authoritarian prime minister victor orban forced out of office over the past decade and change orban had disintegrated what checks and balances existed in hungarian democracy as he cracked down on political opponents destroyed academic independence and censored the media so effectively that his regime was used as a model by the u.s right wing ever since hungary started hosting its own c-pack and people like tecker carlson produced fawning coverage of orban's regime in an effort to copy it here then came peter magyar whose name is the hungarian equivalent of a guy in the u.s being called pete america a centrist conservative magyar rose to power promising to take back hungarian democracy and punish orban and his cronies for their years of outrageous corruption on the campaign trail he called orban's government a terrorist and he called his government a terrorist and he called government a mafia state magyar laid out a road to jail program in which he promised consequences for right-wing politicians and appointees who abused their power and this was a massively popular part of his uh campaign and it's something that democrats in the united states should be paying attention to after magyar's tiza party won among the celebrations was a tinge of very real worry what if peter turned out to simply be a different kind of authoritarian or what if he was just feckless and did the same kind of thing our own political leaders did in the u.s when trump lost in 2020 in other words what if he completely failed to hold orban and his people to account out of fear there was good reason to worry that the road to jail program would get dropped entirely now that magyar and his tiza party were in power as kino versek noted in an article for deutsche well quote orban had laid out plans that stretched decades into the future in the event of his party losing the election civil servants who would be difficult to replace would sabotage the work of new governments in addition billions were squirreled away to continue financing orban's network they were left in hungary with kind of the same problem we are going to have in the u.s if we ever do get trump and his people out of office which is that you can't just beat them in an election you have to undo the stuff they did and punish them in order to cripple their networks and stop them from rising again and that was an open question after magyar won in hungary and it's now looking after a few months like he is committing to going after orban and his network with a two-thirds majority in parliament tiza has launched what i've seen translated as operation purge or operation purgatory on different news sites i'm not really sure what's a more accurate description of like what magyar actually meant i think operation purgatory because as deutsche well notes peter has a known penchant for religious and historical symbols okay on monday hungarian prosecutors detained two of orban's former ministers over corruption allegations these guys are still incarcerated parliament had previously voted to lift their immunity per a euro news article by sandor zeros seztak who served as development minister from 2014 to 2018 is suspected of taking around 30 million euros in bribes linked to bus tenders hanko is being investigated over the disbursement of 46 million euros in cultural funds to public figures which the authorities largely regard as campaign financing now both men deny any wrongdoing and it's i don't know how this is going to uh shake out but i suspect it looks like the government is going after them pretty hard and i think this story is important to watch both because obviously hungarian democracy matters but also because this should be taken as a model by democrats if they ever do manage to unseat the republicans and take back some form of control magyar isn't just going after orban and his people because they broke the law he's doing it because it's excellent politics political analyst sabox dole told euro news that fighting corruption has been a major source of magyar's continuing popularity in other words voters continue to support him going after orban quote this is the core issue of peter magyar's politics he has always had the greatest success in the campaign and he has always been the most successful in the campaign and he has always been the most successful in the campaign by promising accountability confrontation and consequences one of these elements is that he will hold those responsible for the past period of criminal proceedings and even send them to prison the promise of handcuffs and bars many times now the elephant in the room here remains orban just as trump would be if things were reversed here victor orban has not yet been charged with any crimes but magyar's party has been hard at work building the judicial infrastructure to make that possible and i also consider this very relevant for americans the heart of operation purge is a new government office the national asset recovery and protection office which is dedicated to going after people who robbed the government during the time that orban's very corrupt party was in power this new body has been empowered to take over corruption investigations from traditional prosecutors as well as to start new investigations and to issue warrants they have several other orban cronies in their sights at present and it looks likely that victor himself will soon face charges over his criminal liability in a case involving two ukrainian cash couriers who are illegally stopped and had their money confiscated as you'd expect orban's fedez party has issued complaints about their treatment calling it arbitrary and complaining that tiza tyrants want to imprison half the country within parliament magyar has also faced resistance his own immunity was lifted at the request of the prosecutor's office over a minor theft claim that just makes him seem cooler in may of 2024 he stole the phone of a man who was filming him dancing at a nightclub and threw it in the danube which honestly is that's just proper etiquette yeah that's that's that's just awesome that's just rad as hell bro it's also worth me noting that magyar and tiza have been busier than just this during his first month or so in office he had parliament approved cuts to the salaries of lawmakers and ministers and introduced a new maximum limit to the time that a prime minister can hold office two terms which is really noteworthy both that like his party's in power and they're voting to give politicians including themselves less money and limit their own power in office that's a really good sign yeah in terms of like him actually giving a shit about restoring hungarian democracy also on tuesday of this week the hungarian parliament passed a raft of anti-corruption measures i'm going to keep covering this as magyar continues going after orban i think this is really worth watching and yeah so far i'm pretty optimistic about what's going on there no especially in terms of how much orban's regime was like the blueprint for trump's second term exactly this gives us you know this this look into a what if potential you know we've talked about the outrageous levels of corruption in the second trump administration and i don't think many people are very confident that the democrats upon taking power will actually hold the trump admin accountable i sure am not but i think looking at stuff like this kind of it gives us a good barometer to kind of yeah hold the democrats to to a certain extent yes yeah this can work and this can work electorally right yeah yeah yeah when you said it was excellent politics robert i agreed with that and i was like that's how i know they probably aren't the democrats probably aren't going to do it the democrats probably aren't going to do it yeah yeah unfortunately i do before we leave also want to turn our attention briefly to another nation that recently ousted a right-wing wannabe tyrant brazil and this is a somewhat less optimistic story several years now after jair bolsonaros ouster which he's in prison now for for the coup that was launched after he lost his election in 2022 brazil is in the thick of another election that many fear might return the right and the bolsonaros to power the most recent polling from 30th of september by a mio i slash id showed lula the current president with 39.4 percent of the vote and flavio bolsonaro with 38.4 percent of the vote they go through like multiple this is the second round of voting right and that is still a statistical tie although it had this does represent lula has widened his first round lead against bolsonaro but it's still like statistically a tie right neither of them can win with the numbers they're putting up things are drastically close still there's another vote on sunday october 4th and as it stands about 32 percent of voters are still voting for bolsonaro and the voters say that they might change their vote before sunday october 4th right so it is very hard to tell what's going to happen here and bolsonaro's son could in flavio's bolsonaros kid could very well win this election it's entirely possible writing for chatham house dr christopher sabatini said of this election quote a bolsonaro victory would mean trump-aligned governments dominate south america now i won't have time to cover this election in detail but it's worth noting that the incumbent lula da silva is 80 whereas flavio bolsonaro is 45 that said it's unclear to me if age is a major factor in this i doubt it's a non-factor but these numbers are not far from the 2022 numbers right lula won his way back into power with 50.9 percent of the vote to 49.1 percent for jair bolsonaro after polls consistently undercounted bolsonaro support right one thing i'll say is this doesn't look like a massive shift they were pretty close to tide when lula won and they're pretty close to tide now right per dr sabatini's analysis quote this year's contest is more than a familial grudge match for one it looks a lot like recent presidential elections in the region in june elections in both peru and colombia went to a second round each resulted in a narrow victory for conservative candidates who like the bolsonaros are aligned with the regional diplomatic agenda of u.s president donald trump both lula and the younger bolsonaro face high levels of voter rejection more than 54 percent of brazilian voters disapprove of flavio according to one poll lula does little better in the same survey with 52 percent against the president running for a fourth term brazil also suffers from much of the same electoral malaise that we do only 37 percent of brazilian voters say they are satisfied with their democracy a drop of nearly 50 percent since 2013 the highest levels of dissatisfaction are of course seen among bolsonaro voters and as a recent guardian editorial noted most voters disapprove of most men in tracing the significant developments of this campaign the guardian summarizes quote lula's social programs are extensive but frustration at brazil's enduring failure to match its economic record to its potential may hobble him, especially with growth slowing. violent crime remains a top issue then came the banco master financial scandal which has snowballed into a corruption case spanning brazilian politics in the judiciary first flavio bolsaniero was caught on tape asking the failed bank's playboy owner daniel vercaro for almost 27 million dollars to make a film about his father he denies wrongdoing then compromising messages between mr vercaro and the supreme court judge who led the prosecution of the ex-president bolsaniero were revealed the allegations fed the perception that politicians are all dirty and bolstered the unfounded far-right claim that mr bolsaniero senior was stitched up so this is incredibly close a bolsaniero could wind up leading brazil again very soon and if it does a big part of the reason is that nobody presented brazilian voters with a candidate they liked right like lula is very popular among like the western left but he's not popular in brazil right now right he's more popular than flavio bolsaniero but they're both disliked by a majority of the country so if there's a warning that every other country should take out of it than that it's it's make sure whoever you run against the far right is someone people like right again excellent politics hope we do it yeah anyway that's brazil we'll see how that goes i hope lula wins because i really i don't want to see a bolsaniero running brazil again but whoever wins i have one prediction for brazil which is that jair bolsaniero will wind up in a hospital again within the next three months that's i mean that's that's barely a prediction that's just uh that's just a statistical certainty i think but no but this is a really good wake-up call and a reminder that like as fun as it is to have these kind of grandpas on the left you have to pass off leadership to new people like you have to pass the torch even if they're guys who've done some really good stuff in the past and he's too fucking old it just is i think i saw like ryan grim musing about running sanders again for 2028 like recently i'm like dude what the fuck are you talking about i still i have fond feelings for bernie he's too old he'd be like 90 years old dude we gotta we gotta move on people get real get real i'm sorry before we close this episode let's pivot to mia wong for a special tariff talk segment you don't like it rock so let's talk tariffs as trump's trade war with canada continues with no sign of any agreement in sight trump's tariffs are finally getting their day in court but not the 50 tariffs that trump levied against canada using what can at best be described as the extremely dubious powers quote-unquote of the 1930s smoot holly tariff act oh no the tariffs that have finally reached the u.s court of international trade are the section 301 tariffs that trump levied back in july now by the time you are listening to this a couple of days in the future it is going to be october now the first lawsuit against these tariffs was filed again in late july and it's now october and we're getting you know we're getting the initial arguments on like september 30th meanwhile the 10 to 12 tariffs on almost all u.s imports remain in effect and probably will continue to remain in effect while this case winds its way through this court probably an appeals court and then probably also the supreme court despite the fact that these tariffs are just obviously absurd usage of section 301 so for those who've forgotten section 301 are supposed to be the tariffs for unfair trade practices the july tariffs are once again on 99.4 percent of all imported goods and these ones are nominally supposed to be about forced labor there's like a whole the thing about section 301 tariffs is that you can't just impose them immediately you have to do a whole investigatory process and then you have to do a whole investigation process at least nominally about the specific unfair trade practices that the country is doing but you know so these are supposed to nominally be about forced labor but they're on an unbelievable number of countries that just happen to again constitute 99 of all imported goods in the u.s and as the litigants in this case have you know begun to argue in front of the u.s court of international trade it doesn't actually make sense to just have two countries that are categories of tariff levels and then just be like oh yeah all these countries did forced labor or weren't harsh enough about cracking down on other countries doing forced labor so we're just going to set this tariff rate for all of them that's that's not what section 301 tariffs is supposed to be for they're supposed to be for you know like deliberate very specific targeted tariffs on a country for a specific thing not uh we want to impose a 10 tariff again and where our last thing that was letting us impose a 10 tariff is failing so we're going to we're going to do this one now and as as you sort of might expect the the initial arguments do not seem to be going well for the administration who you know showed up in front of the court with the bumbling ineptitude they have become known for when they're forced to defend administration decisions in recent times there's a bunch of reports of you know one of the the representatives of the administration is like giving this starting to try to give this like giant speech about the evils of forced labor and one of the judges just like immediately interrupts him and they're doing again another thing that's a staple of if you've if you listen to or seen clips of like any administrative proceeding for like anything this administration does in court you will see administration representatives be asked basic questions about a case and just not know the answers to them so this is already going poorly on day one however again like this is the first of like three courts they have to go through and probably these are going to be in effect until i don't know probably the supreme court gets to it so incredible incredible stuff happening in the u.s legal system where the president can just impose whatever tariffs he wants by making up legal authority and then they just stay in effect until a bunch of months later when they're found to be illegal which point he's moved on to the next tariff again we're one tariff cycle behind with the section 301 and we're going to have to right he's already using holly smoot for the canada tariffs now it is worth noting this is part of the reason i'm talking about the section 301 tariffs is that trump is also threatening to do a different set of section 301 tariffs to do these they're called quote-unquote excess capacity tariffs that he's had these like investigations going for a while now so excess capacity is it is a thing that exists in the world it refers to you know steel is the context in which it comes up the most it refers to oh yeah there's actually like a lot more steel production than they're supposed to be in these countries that are producing more steel than they need and pumping it all on the market to like depreciate steel prices they're nominally doing investigations about a range of goods with excess capacity i did i did an entire episode about this last year about the sort of core economic causes of this and the way that this sort of like chronic overproduction and under consumption where you have a bunch of stuff being produced that's going to waste because people can't use it because they don't have any money this is this is a structural feature of capitalism yeah i did an episode last year when there was another big fight over steel tariffs that was about overcapacity it's called the economics of the tariff regime if you want to go more into the steel overcapacity stuff but these tariffs mostly seem to be another attempt to do basically the same thing as the other section 301 tariffs that he just levied so it's to have some kind of another way to impose a broad percentage tariff on a whole bunch of different countries and these are you know these are the kind of tariffs that trump has been salivating over ever since he took office and he's been trying to find increasingly obscure ways to do them since the supreme court overruled his initial extremely bizarre claiming of powers that he used to do it last time now to close out my section here let's wrap up the story of i guess now ex-chairman of the federal reserve jerome powell who if you will remember trump attempted to have investigated by federal prosecutors nominally for corruption around like the remodeling of the federal reserve building this is a whole thing that trump and all those people were pushing at the time in the middle of this like conflict he was having where trump was trying to get jerome powell to cut interest rates but that's like not the end of the story so i'm going to wrap up my section here let's wrap up the thing that the president is supposed to be you know pressuring the fed to do that that defeats the entire purpose of the independence of the fed and you know trump was going on tv all the time and talking about like ah they're like turning the fed into like a palace they've like using all your government money to to like make giant like glowing bathrooms and stuff which is really funny when you like look at all of the shit that trump was doing like just all of the unhinged weird golden like renovation quote-unquote stuff that was happening in the white house and the whole sort of ballroom bullshit real sort of classic case of projection but these like very absurd charges led to a fairly serious situation where you have jerome powell getting subpoenaed by the justice department and this is unprecedented right And then he ends up as a response releasing what I can like really only describe as like a preemptive hostage video where he's just talking about like, hey, yeah, I am like the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and I am being persecuted for my political beliefs by the president of the United States. And this, you know, caused kind of enough of a firestorm, even among Republicans in Congress, that eventually this federal investigation is dropped in exchange for Trump's nominee for Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, getting a hearing in the Senate. And the end result of that was that this investigation was sort of moved to the Fed's like independent watchdog. And this week, the Fed finally released a really like 126 page long report that clears Jerome Powell of any criticism. Criminal wrongdoing, which like, I mean, yes, obviously he didn't commit a bunch of crimes in this remodeling. There is a bunch of stuff there about like, ah, there were cost overruns and they should have had like a cap on costs. But I don't know, like a the Fed funds itself, like it's not even tax dollars. It's like they fund itself from fees and be like, look, I'm not a Federal Reserve fan, but like, oh, my God, there were cost overruns from. Subcontractors doing bullshit in a construction project is like, like, come on, like, what are we doing here? Yeah, no shit. Of course, of course, there were cost overruns on a pseudo government construction project from like costs increasing. Like, OK, so this this whole sort of chapter appears to largely be over, although it still remains to be seen whether we're going to get a confrontation between Kevin Warsh and Trump over interest rate cuts. Warsh has been kind of bailed out like at least this quarter by inflation. Data was like slightly better than people was expecting. But, you know, there is also still just a chance that, you know, next quarter inflation goes up and we see like a direct conflict between Warsh and Trump over what's going to happen with the interest rates once again, as as happened with Jerome Powell. And if that happens, we will keep you informed. Finally, here is. A quick message from James Stout, who is out in the field. Hey, everyone, it's James. I wasn't able to join the rest of the gang for E.D. today because I was in Lochiel, Arizona, where a group of people have been defending a cottonwood tree against destruction for the building of the border wall. They have so far been able to stop construction. I believe it'll be 66 or 67 days. If you hear this on the day it comes out. And they have done so by occupying this giant cottonwood tree 24 seven. If you're not familiar with cottonwoods, a very important trees in this ecosystem, they often grow near water. In this case, these cottonwoods are several hundred years old and they used to be a contiguous canopy between what is now Mexico and what is now the United States. At one point, there was a tree sitter in Mexico also occupying one of those cottonwood trees. They were asked by landowners to come down off those landowners were threatened by border. According to people I spoke to on the ground. But the tree sit in the United States side is still ongoing. In between those two trees, there were other old cottonwoods that were they weren't cut down. They were pushed, pulled down by excavators. You can see where their root balls have been torn out of the ground. It's really, really, really horrible to look at. If people are interested, there is a day of action on the 4th of October, and they are also able to. Look at the camp website if you want to look at the camp website, it's very new, but it should be ready by the time you hear this. And it is camp c a m p hyphen o shad o s h a d dot o r g. I will also include that in the show notes. You can find updates from the camp there. And if you want to know more about the planned day of action, you can click. On the get involved tab at the top of that website. I noticed that they also have a list of things that they need, which people can drop off if they are in Tucson, Arizona. All right, that does it for us here at it could happen here. Bridget, where can people find you and your work online? Yeah, you can check out my audio book about how tech companies and AI companies are using our deepest, darkest thoughts to exploit us called love at first prompt AI and the future of intimacy. You can check out my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. You can follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie and DC. Awesome. Thank you, Bridget. Thank you so much for joining us this episode. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here is a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts from cool zone media, visit our website. Cool zone media.com or check us out on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, standup comedian, creator, and host of scam goddess podcast, the true crime comedy podcast, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it each week. I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to scam goddess on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman, Angela Geritana, Jeremy Culhane, Patrick McDonald, and we're the hosts of the artists on artists on artists on artists podcast, the improvised character comedy podcast, where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. The new NFL season is here and you should be listening to NFL daily as we march along to Superbowl 61. It is. It is in the name NFL daily. You'll have fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. 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