It Could Happen Here Weekly 226

Justice month, I've seen viral posts citing online articles saying that ICE is going to round up and quote unquote disappear trans people, that the FDA is making a quote unquote registry of trans women, and that an adult trans healthcare ban is imminent. Welcome to It Could Happen Here? A show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. For this episode, I'd like to emphasize the could in it could happen here.

moment and what we can do about it. To unchecked panic, clickbait reduces the process of staying informed to being in a state of constant doom and feeling hopeless against an unstoppable enemy. Or it makes someone completely check out and not believe anything they see online even if there is a real pressing threat, both of which cloud our ability

to assess and respond to very real threats. For the book of this episode, I'm going to focus on an article that claims ICE is now permitted to detain anyone for quote unquote looking trans. This reporting and the online discussion around It is a microcosmatic example of how we understand both the Trump administration's attacks on trans people and

how and why ICE operates as an agency. This story can be traced to a sub stack post with the headline trump administration opens the door for ICE to target anyone suspected of being trans. The sub headline continues by reading quote, under a new rule, the State Department will be able to revoke trans people's visas over quote unquote misrepresentation. It'll give ICE grounds to suspect all trans people of

being in the US illegally unquote. The information contained in this headline is the furthest many people will engage with the content of this article. Combining that headline with preconceived notions about how ICE functions under the second Trump administration makes us a very frightening claim. So what evidence does the subset article include to support this claim? Earlier this month, the State Department updated its policy for the Diversity Immigrant

Visa program, also known as the Green Card Lottery. The new rules require that applicants upload a scan of their foreign passports, biographic and signature page to cut down on fraudulent diversity visa program entries. The policy update also changed the gender entry to sex on application forms policy will update.

The State Department wrote, the marker reflected in the sex field on any visa application, including the entry form, should match the applicants' biological sex at birth, even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicants foreign passport or other identifying documentation.

A mismatch may occur between the gender listed on foreign documents and the sex the US government wants you to list on a visa application, but it is simply not the case that this mismatch will inevitably result in an application being deemed fraudulent and then denied the kind of fraud this rule change is trying to combat by requiring a passport scan is not unique to trans people, according to Melita Picasso, staff attorney for the ACLUS LGBTQ and

HIV Rights Project. Picasso said in an email that the new rule quote seems to more directly target fraudulent activities involving third parties basically entering the lottery on behalf of individuals without their knowledge and consent, and then extorting them for large amounts of money if they are selected.

reflect an individual's immutable biological classification as either mail or email.

someone from receiving a visa. ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso told me that the new policy itself recognizes this could cause discrepancies, and that she doesn't see a quote new or heightened risk of being accused of fraud or wilful misrepresentation if a transgender person follows the instructions by listing their sex assigned at birth on the application, even if they also file a per certificate that has been updated to reflect their gender identity.

In such cases, the adjudicator should confirm the applicant sex as defined in the executive order, indicate that sex on the visa, and add a case note documenting any discrepancy between the passport and the visa to prevent issues at the port of entry unquote. Later, in April of twenty twenty five, the United States Citizenship Immigration Services officially updated their policy on requiring quote unquote biological sex on immigration applications.

The policy also states that quote USCIS does not deny any immigration benefits solely based on a failure to properly indicate that benefit requesters sex unquote. Acale U staff attorney Milita Picasso told me that USCIS officials have quote unquote a lot of discretion and that the policy says that failure to list biological sex quote will cause delays in processing the application while USCIS tries to verify your sex

assigned at birth unquote. Now, the State Department has said there are grounds to deny these applications for trans people if they make a quote willful affirmative material act of misrepresentation by misrepresenting their quote unquote biological sex at birth in application forms or to a consular officer to gain

entry to the United States under false pretenses. Legally qualifying as willful mess representation is a relatively high bar, and this language was specifically written with the intent to restrict trans athletes from entering the country to play sports. The sort of misrepresentation the State Department is talking about is if a trans woman quote unquote misrepresents her birth sex to procure a visa or admission into the United States for the purpose of competing in a women's sports competition.

This same sports relo, dated February twenty fourth, twenty twenty five, also states quote, if there is a discrepancy either in the applicants documents or in electronic constantly records, or if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant sex, you should refuse the case under two two one G and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.

from receiving a visa. The article escalates its claims, stating that trans people who already have a valid visa could have it revoked and be deported for misrepresenting their sex in the past, citing US law that if if an alien is found to have obtained a visa quote by fraud or wilfully misrepresenting a material fact, they are ineligible

to be in the United States. The article also refers to a section of the Foreign Affairs manual, which includes providing quote a fake birth certificate in support of an

immigrant visa application as misrepresenting a material fact unquote. The article goes on to assert that the Trump administration could refuse to recognize trans people's amended birth certificates from foreign countries and essentially consider them quote unquote fake, thus making their visa eligible to be revoked by quote unquote misrepresenting

a material fact. The author of the substack links to another one of her own articles on a new policy regarding the issuing of US passports with sex markers reflecting biological sex at birth. The passport policy instructs the state parmer employees to check birth certificates for signs of being amended, and if they are amended, request more documents that list sex at the time of birth, such as medical records,

hospital records, or early school records. ACLA staff attorney Picasto says that this does not mean entire amended birth certificates or quote unquote fake for the purposes of establishing fraud or willful misrepresentation, which is again a high bar, and that Trump administration has never argued this as such.

in certain countries. And this whole claim about trans people's visas being revoked because of applications of misrepresentation is contradicted by the State Department, which said last year quote currently valid US visas issue du prior to the effective date of this guidance bearing a sex that differs from the visl holders sex as defined in Executive Order will remain valid through its expiration date. The visa holder does not need to apply for a new visa with an amended

sex marker until the current visa expires. So the first half of this article covers what I argue are gross misrepresentations of State Department visa policy. The second half of the article speculates on how this misrepresentation could be enforced by ICE in it Supreme Court ruling last year, just as Kavanaugh wrote that ICE could detain people based on a combination of factors such as working a certain kind of job, ethnicity, and speaking Spanish or talking with an accent.

Kavanaugh said that ICE can detain someone for questioning quote if they have a reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in

the United States. The author of this substacked article argued that Kavanaugh's concurrence quote unquote effectively permitted ICE to use the fact that someone looks trans as the quote specific articulable fact, allowing its officers to question, harassed, detain, and even deport both citizens and non citizens as long as it has a reason to claim that being trans makes a person more likely to be in the US illegally unquote, with this substacker adding that because of State Department policy

requiring applicants to list biological sex at birth on forms quote, ICE now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans people are more likely than says people to have misrepresented themselves during the visa process and therefore are more likely to have entered the country unlawfully unquote. This assertion from this substacker rests on the idea that looking trans makes

someone more likely to be in the US illegally. This idea is not supported by any immigration policy memo or guideline that also assumes that the justification for a Kavanaugh stop is the same as the legal process of removal, which it is not. This idea was invented by the author of this article, It's not based on any enforcement directive from ICE, and misrepresents what the State Department means by intentionally misrepresenting biological sex in the visa application process.

Discrepancies in gender markers across government documents is not itself grounds for detention or deportation. In fact, it's federal policy to create such discrepancies. Furthermore, dealing with potential discrepancies between gender markers on foreign documents and the Trump Admin's insistence on only using biological sex at birth on federal documents is handled by State Department consular officers and USCIS employees, not ICE Enforcement and Removal operations officers who work under

an entire different agency. But the main thing that makes me believe that ICE will not suddenly start targeting people for being trans is that this State department policy requiring sex at birth on visa applications isn't actually new. It's existed in some form since February twenty twenty five for both immigrant and non immigrant visas. The only recent change is that the Green card lottery rules have been updated

to use this same language. Quote. Nothing about this new rule makes it more or less likely that ICE will be free to scrutinize trans people's documents and detain those whose documents show any inconsistencies unquote, affirmed a CLUS staff attorney Melita Picasso put plainly, state department restrictions on stating assigned sex at birth on Green card or visa applications does not give ICE any new justification to roam around disappearing random people who quote unquote to look trans. But

it could make border crossings more risky for non citizens, and visa applications harder to navigate and subject to delays. This policy from the State Department is bad, but turning that into saying that ICE is now going to round up trans people and vcode them doesn't understand how this will actually affect immigrant trans people or trans people currently in federal custody.

This new law is certainly dangerous, and any attempt to strip a people's legal ID is very worrying and carries potential for abuse. In the case of Kansas, already having a passport would be really ideal. Otherwise, a hospital birth certificate or early school records can theoretically be used to help prove citizenship, and it is worth saying that a citizen temporarily losing documentation does not put them at the

same level of marginalized risk as an undocumented immigrant. The new Kansas law does direct the Office of Idle Statistics to quote reissue birth certificates when necessary to correct this sex identification unquote. Similarly, DMVs were instructed to reissue a quote unquote corrected license once the invalidated one was turned in. We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back, who

it could happen here. The unsubstantiated claims made in that substack article went viral across multiple social media platforms like TikTok, Blue Sky, and Twitter, bolstering further speculation. Social media posts further extrapolated the potential harm facing trans people by ICE agents beyond the claims made in the article by saying

that ICE will now deport or disappear trans citizens. Anyone who tried to push back on the legitimacy of those claims were labeled dangerous or fence for trying to quote unquote downplay the threat posed by ICE. Assertions of new pressing danger in this back and forth discourse largely took three forms. One saying that because ICE is already doing X bad thing, that means they could also start doing

this new bad thing. Two people asserting that ICE is in fact actually already doing this, and three arguments based on distrust of the government and ICE's general lack of legality.

Much of the discussion emerged from the genuine belief that ICE has been granted new power or has been quote unquote authorized to detain someone for looking trans, that Trump has quote unquote opened the door for ICE to start profiling trans people, that, like the Streame Court's ruling last year, profiling has been essentially greenlit for trans people, or that checking the consistency of gender markers has been added to

ICE's quote unquote jurisdiction. And to be one hundred percent clear, there's not been any new ICE memo or policy related to transpeople, gender markers, or documentation being in their jurisdiction. State department policy on requiring biological sex on applications has existed for over a year. The real danger posed by this policy is that more trans immigrants could have their visas delayed or, in extreme cases, denied. People may need

help navigating this increasingly confusing application process. Still, people have tried to assert that ICE's intentional targeting and profiling of people for being trans was quote unquote already happening. In the past year, ICE has detained transpeople. It's hard to get exact numbers on this because ICE stopped collecting detention data for trans people last year to comply with Trump's anti trans executive orders, though we do know of attempts

to deport transpeople from news reporting. Last August, ICE detained a transwoman who over stated a visa by six years, and in November, a transwoman who lost her lawful permanent residence status in twenty twenty three after pleading guilty to a felony was quote unquote inadvertently deported to Mexico despite a court order specifically barring her from being sent to Mexico. We have no evidence that these women were targeted for removal on the basis of being trans, but what happened

to them is still horrific. As of now, there has been no reporting on people being targeted for detention based on looking trans, because the government has not actually argued that being trans itself qualifies as reasonable suspicion of illegal presence.

When I voiced skepticism about the claims sourced from this substack article, people responded to me saying that even if this has yet to happen, one could argue that ICE still could expand their operations to include profiling and targeting trans people for detention, since they're already profiling and rounding up quote unquote random brown people. After all, this podcast is called it could Happen here, and ICE has detained both citizens and legal immigrants and sent them to quote

unquote camps. Though this show is called it could happen here. That doesn't mean we should spread unsubstantiated doom spiraling, disconnected from the material reality of real policies, advancing a fascist project. The Trump administration has been very clear and open about targeting groups of people flooding through our southern border. That is who ICE is designed to target, and they have policy directing them to do so and new permission from

the Supreme Court. It is true that ICE has temporarily detained US citizens when looking for people they suspect our undocumented immigrants. This has been for two reasons. US citizens accused of interfering with ICE activity while protesting, or because ICE suspects US citizens may be undocumented based on factors like skin tone, occupation, or speaking a foreign language, usually Spanish. This second group of people then must demonstrate proof of

citizenship or if they are immigrants, they're legal status. The period they're detained is supposed to be relatively short, usually a few hours, though in extreme cases that's stretched into multiple days. When I posted about this online, someone sent me a Wikipedia article claiming it proved that ICE has deported one hundred and seventy US citizens during Trump's second term. The article actually said one hundred and seventy citizens have

been detained since Trump took office. Again, there have been a few reported instances of US born citizens being deported. These are citizen children who are deported with immigrant parents to avoid child separation, though many many children do end up being separated from their parents when their parents are deported. The last argument that people fall back on is simply that ICE is a completely lawless agency and it can

do whatever it wants, including going after trans people. After all, ICE has murdered US citizens on camera in broad daylight, but it's important to remember that happened for a reason. Those weren't random acts. ICE and CBP murdered people protesting ICE rates targeting their immigrant neighbors. Federal agents killed people because the protesting was an inconvenience and there was use of force policy and training directing them to do so. For decades, CBP agents have killed people at the border

and gotten away with it. The Trump administration may not care about the law, but this analysis is not based

on any assumptions about legality. It's based on the administration's own stated goals, which they've been very open about, and the policies and practices currently in effect, none of which relate to ICE targeting people for quote unquote looking trans. From what we know, the Kavanaugh stops framework have never been used to target trans people for being trans as the reasonable suspicion of being illegally in the country, and there's been no changing guidelines saying that being trans can

be the basis for said stops. Asserting otherwise is simply false. Insisting that because of State Department application policy, ICE will now randomly arrest transpeople is conflating two very different things. This isn't about the potential legality of ICE targeting transpeople. I'm simply saying there is no such directive instructing ICE

to do that. Asserting that the Trump administration is completely one hundred percent unbounded by law also ignores the fact that federal and immigration courts are still in active terrain of battle. While the administration has repeatedly ignored courts and judges orders. People have also been successfully released from ICE custody by filing habeas corpus petitions. It's not that I believe in the personal integrity of ICE agents, far from it.

But this concept of ICE as this vague fascist desk squad that will go after any group the Trump administration hates. Turns ICE into this abstract idea rather than a single material agency with concrete motivations and limits that leaves a wake of destruction in the course of achieving their purpose. ICE does raids where there's high concentrations of immigrant workers.

The targeting isn't actually random. ICE is going after undocumented immigrant workers, sometimes using skin and language as a rough proxy to do document checks. To assert the inevitability of ICE going after trans people, people invoke comparisons to the Nazis, and as rhetorically useful as it is to equate ICE to a modern version of the Gestapo. This is not Germany in the nineteen thirties. ICE is a contemporary version,

but the current world is different. The chronically online doomer may retort, but once ICE is done with immigrants, then they will go after trans people. After all, what's the purpose of increasing ICE is staffing and funding or building a network of tension camps across the country, if not to use them against the undesirables. There's about fifteen million undocumented immigrants in the United States and about three million trans people. That's five times as many undocumented immigrants than

trans people. Last year, ICE reached a record high number of deportations, over six hundred thousand. This number still leaves millions and millions of undocumented immigrants. ICE will never be quote unquote done with immigrants. This logic again reduces ICE to this vague, abstract evil and fails to consider the purpose of ICE and why it currently operates as it does. So what motivates ICE? Do Individual ICE agents share the same motivations as the agency itself or the people directing it.

Individual agents certainly could be motivated by racism, political ideology, a paycheck, or a combination thereof, but the motivating forts across the entire agency cannot solely be based on ethnicity itself, or else you wouldn't see as many Hispanic ICE and CBP agents. People tend to think of hate as a vague causal force itself, rather than it being the result of complex societal factors shaped by material forces like the economy, jobs,

in security, and housing shortages. These material forces are often expressed as racial or ethnic prejudice, but the underlying motivation of ICE as an agency and by extension, DHS, still rests on material forces, not racial hatred as an abstract ideal.

Rank and file employees could have entirely different motivations compared to some of those at the top of the agency or the agency as a whole, and people in charge of the agency may themselves even be confused as to the material motivations that underline the existence of immigration enforcement agencies. But this lack of alignment is a weakness in the agency and DHS more broadly, as demonstrated by the fallout of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which left ICE and

DHS in a compromised state. So why does ICE exist? What material role does it fulfill? It seeks to stabilize the social order by targeting surplus populations, and what's the most efficient way to do that by going after the most marginalized populations with the least amount of legal and

economic protections, which are undocumented immigrants. This operation maybe sold to the public, and indeed it's enforcers by marketing it in the language of race and crime categories, which are often equated, But underneath that, it's still an attempt to solve problems caused by material economic forces. In reality, this material motivation establishes a certain direction of impact, as well as material limits like budget, personnel, and balancing between public

approval and public opposition. So with that in mind, does it make sense to claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to conduct the targeted mass detention of trans people as a class?

an overlapping threat vector. As such, migrant support should remain focused on things like ICE Watch, rapid response networks, and providing immigrants legal resources, including to trans immigrants who madeed assistance navigating the visa process, and working to get people out of ICE detention. The latter is especially important considering Trump's executive order forcing transwomen in federal custody to be detained with men and Trump administration's plan to end federal

prison rape protections for trans people. But most people engaged in this discourse genuinely don't understand how state department policy on visa applications will actually affect trans immigrants and what we can then do to support trans immigrants, But this whole discourse takes the focus away from the people most at risk of ICE, which are still undocumented immigrant workers. Lilith in Seattle with a one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year tech job is not at high risk

of being detained by ICE. Believing otherwise prohibits people who are actually safe and secure from using their wealth and status to support others who do not have the same safety provided by wealth or status, whether they're transgender and

immigrant or both. Misleading articles in the larger panic driven information economy encourages people with financial or legal security to be scared into paralysis because they believe that any amount of opposition to the government will result in being disappeared to a concentration camp. This justifies a retreat from the world by framing it as safety, allowing one to focus on maximizing their own power and wealth to achieve security.

Retreating solely into the rule of the victim achieves a sort of emotional catharsis, but this also alienates you from the world and ends up doing propaganda for the enemy. In this discourse, there's a tendency to make the enemy out to be an unstoppable monster, which further justifies in action because it doesn't allow you to understand the limits of the enemy, whether logistical or ideological, and resigns us to power before an omnipotent all powerful evil. ICE operations

are an expensive, unpopular, destabilizing thing. We must keep an eye on the fragility of power, as that informs us on how to fight it. When removed from action in the real world, people have no way to confront truth. It is a frightening time to be transgender. On top of what feels like never ending attacks on healthcare and

our ability to exist in public life. You now see news stories about a US state invalidating people's IDs, at the same time as viral social media posts claim ICE has been given new authority to detain transpeople and deport immigrants for having the wrong gender marker. Various attacks on trans rites separated through time, could be viewed as a coherent, centralized strategy towards a singular, horrific end, but they also may be in fact disparate, often petty attempts at cruelty,

intending to demoralize transpeople and make translife prohibitively difficult. The way Red states and the Trump admin are trying to eliminate transgenderism, as Michael Knowles would say, is to simply make it incredibly difficult to socially and medically transition, like by not recognizing gender on government documents, be excluded from public bathrooms, and continuing efforts to restrict healthcare. Will do

one more break and return for a final segment. The state of catastrophic fear I've been talking about is maintained by a near constant wave of articles with panic inducing headlines, which fuel social media posts that further escalate and abstract claims maiden headlines to a Nazi Germany esque level of potential danger facing trans people. One such impending danger circulating online this month is the claim that the FDA is making a registry of trans women and moving to crimin

diy estrogen. This claim originated from an article in a trans news outlet published March twelfth, reporting that anti trans lobbying groups sent a petition to the FDA to create a registry of transwomen who take estrogen and restrict the use of feminizing HRT, which if implemented, could quote fast track a pathway to criminalizing estrogen use. Importantly, this citizens petition is not US law or proposed government legislation, nor

is it FDA policy or regulation. It was written by an anti transactivist coalition and sent to the FDA over three months ago in December of twenty twenty five. The petition requests quote unquote immediate action by establishing a new docket for the public to officially comment on the safety and effectiveness of estrogen in gender transitions, and to schedule a public hearing on the subject. That is mainly what the petition is for, though it doesn't make further recommendations

following the conclusion of a public hearing. These recommendations include adding a warning label to estrogen, conducting a safety review, having clinicians report adverse effects to the FDA, and requiring the drug manufacturers quote establish a patient registry as a part of a risk evaluation and mitigation study to capture real world safety data unquote, and that is the registry

mentioned in this panic headline. This article, or more accurately distorted versions of its claims, went viral across trans Twitter, with tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands of quote unquote views, but the article received strong pushback on Blue Sky for being quote unquote sensationalist and inflammatory.

The outlet that originally published the story later updated the article, clarifying that the FDA receives hundreds of petitions a year, and even if implemented, they can take years to go into effect. Twenty thirteen, only six point six percent of FDA citizen petitions were approved and resulted in new regulation. A study from twenty sixteen found that, on average, quote, these petitions require two point eighty five years for a final agency decision, and many decisions remain pending ten to

thirteen years after their initial submission unquote. This FDA petition story was not the only article this month theorizing about a trans registry or adult HRT restrictions. In mid March, multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that Republican lawmakers in Tennessee advanced a bill that would quote unquote create a public

list of trans residents in the state. The bill in question mandates insurance companies also covered d transition, and would require that care providers submit statistics on gender affirming care to the Tennessee Department of Health, which must quote not contain individually identify information defined in HIPPA unquote. The Tennessee Department of Health would then use that information to make

a publicly available statistics report. But online accounts are spreading this story as if Tennessee is making a quote unquote sex offender style public registry with the names and locations of all trans people in this state. A bill like this could potentially be used for harm, and it may face court challenges for possibly violating parts of HIPPA by collecting data on county of residents and procedure dates. But the reporting on the bill and the viral reaction online

make it out to be something completely different. There's no reason to believe this bill would create a publicly accessible registry or list identifying trans people by name in this state. The bill has not yet passed the state Senate, and it may not in its current form. Right now, it's unclear what exact form the collected data will take with in a statistics report and what level of anonymizing data

aggregation will be employed. This is something to keep an eye on if the bill does pass and the state Department of Health drafts guidelines for the mandatory statistics reporting,

But the way it's being reported is incredibly misleading. Interestingly, the source for this public list claim is the same substec outlet that created the false story about ICE now being able to detain people for looking trans. Also earlier this month, multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that the Fourth Circuit Court approved state bans on gender affirming healthcare for adults. On March tenth, a Republican appointed three judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states can

prohibit gender affirming surgery from being covered by Medicaid. The ruling affirmed ban on Medicaid coverage for quote sex change surgeries in West Virginia, with the panel arguing it doesn't discriminate against trans people because it applies to specific procedures,

not specific individuals. This is certainly bad news for trans people in West Virginia on Medicaid, but reporting that this decision could soon result in trans people losing healthcare in other states or nationally is misleading and removes key context. This is not a total ban on these procedures. It's a ban on state Medicaid coverage of these surgical procedures. The ruling is not a ban on other forms of

gender affirming healthcare. Like HRT, nor does it threaten the hospital's ability to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds for providing gender affirming healthcare, like the Trump administration has threatened so

far unsuccessfully. Still people postulated on how this ruling could be laying the legal groundwork to eliminate adult transgender healthcare, but trans journalist to David Forbes noted that this ruling will likely be appealed to wider Fourth Circuit, which has recently ruled in the opposite direction of this three panel ruling.

What paniced assertions of an impending total ban on trans healthcare tends to overlook is that going from a state ban on Medicaid coverage for surgery straight to an all ages ban on gender affirming healthcare skips a lot of steps, and those steps are crucially important. The panic, clickbait induced doomer mindset treats every horrific potentiality as an inevitable eventuality. This undermines our ability to accurately assess risk and effectively

dedicate resources to oppose what are pressing threats. So what purpose does this sort of posting serve and why are people so primed to believe it? These panic driven claims rest on the very real fact that trans people are facing present danger. Oftentimes, people boosting these panic stories are genuinely trying to help inform their own community of potential harm.

In the case of that ICE story, it was based on the assumption that there was a legitimate recent rule change enabling iceo target people under suspicion of being trans. It makes sense that people would want to raise the alarm about ICE gaining new powers. But acel U staff attorney Melita Picasso cautioned, quote, we are supporting our community by trying to warn people, but these warnings need to be clear and accurate, otherwise we end up inadvertently contributing

to the chaos and fear unquote. Other times, these panic stories are spread with the hope of scaring allies into caring about the ongoing attacks on trans people. Perhaps this is successful in some cases, I don't know. But as a side effect, this strategy deals significant damage to the people it's trying to protect. Forecasting doom twenty four to seven can drive people into hopeless despair and push them away way from strategies to fight against the current attacks

on trans rights. Panic driven agit prop could also contribute to a girl who Cried Wolf scenario where allies start to discount concerns about certain attacks on transrights due to previous unsubstantiated viral claims. Though many people spreading these claims may have genuinely good intentions, the people creating these claims

may develop certain material incentives. Traditional mainstream journalism has failed to question the massive government overreach into the lives of transpeople, and in some cases helped manufacture consent for the stripping away of trans rights. This state of affairs has made trans people lose faith in the big outlets, leading to small upstart outlets filling in the information gaps in trans

news coverage, but without any institutional backing. Independent news sites and sub stack style blogs have to build an audience to generate traction and stay operating. It turns out thousands of people constantly freaking out creates high social media engagement, and this creates a loop where trans panic fearmongering boosts social media engagement, which further encourages more irresponsible clickbait framing. Those who are successful may slowly develop a new class position,

which then needs to be maintained. Financial incentives may even pressure journalists who have done good work in the past to fall back on panic driven engagement bait to attract new traffic. This isn't exclusive to trans outlets either. Following the assassination of Charlie kirk Ken, Klippenstein reported on his substack that the FBI was about to quote designate transgender people as violent extremists. His report contained no new, verifiable information.

The core evidence was an unnamed quote unquote senior official who told the Clippenstein he quote unquote feels like trans people could be labeled nihilist via extremists. Clippenstein has previously misunderstood the nihilist violent extremism label. The term actually predates the second Trump administration and refers to groups like seven sixty four Child's extortion rings and communities like the school

shooter fandom TCC. Hours before Clippenstein's report was published, the Heritage Foundation and the Oversight Project publicly released a petition calling for a new classification of extremism called trans ideology inspired violent extremism, to categorize attacks they believed are motivated by transgender ideology. The petition memo denied that all trans

people and their allies would be designated domestic terrorists. Under this label, only those who quote, encourage, promote, condone, take or insight unlawful violent action or threats based on this ideology unquote. The Heritage petition also runs contrary to Clippenstein's report by advocating against the use of the nihilist violent

extremism label to describe transgender motivated violence. A Heritage petition to establish a new category of extremism is different from an unnamed official who feels like trans people as a whole could be labeled as nihilist violent extremists, and it's important to understand that distinction. That was last September. It's now half a year later, and neither of these things

has come to fruition. The closest we got was in late September, following Trump's Antifa Terrorism executive Order with the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number seven, which listed quote extremism on migration, race, and gender as common recurrent motivations and indica of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self described anti fascism unquote, among many other threads animating

violent conduct. Regardless of that, people online interpreted both Clippenstein's report and the Heritage petition as meaning the FBI classified the entire class of trans people as domestic terrorists. Social media both amplifies and distorts already misleading claims, turning news into a massive game of telephone, and the siloing of certain users and platforms makes countering this misinformation incredibly difficult.

The social media economy carries certain incentives for the producers of panic bait that could be attention, status, and money, but the consumers of panic also stand to gain something catharsis justification for their actions or lack thereof, as well as attention from fellow consumers. These clickbait panic pieces explode around trans Twitter, which is still quite active, consisting of sex workers, gamers, TTT style posters, and zoomers who think

Blue Sky is crunch and liberal. Some of these panic stories, like the FDA A registry, don't do very well on Blue Sky because that's where a lot of trans journalists who do actual journalism are, but those journalists are not active on Twitter and TikTok, making it harder to counter our misinformation on those platforms. Countering trans paniclick bait also suffers from algorithmic suppression because it doesn't get people as riled up. A wave of emotionally charged doom posting is

boosted much farther than a calm and calculated rebuttal. The biggest TikTok about ICE detaining people under suspicion of being trans has one point two million views. The biggest TikTok fact checking this claim has two hundred and ninety thousand views. So much of social media politics is emotional manipulation based on anger, fear, or catharsis. Posting about perceived danger is essentially viewed as a form of activism, and if someone casts a doubt on what's seen as an existential threat,

that person becomes emotionally equated with the enemy. Panic produces helplessness, but helplessness can actually be cathartic for the individual. It's not helpful for people currently in the most danger. So then what is there to do in terms of the trans panic information economy. Don't be afraid to openly question the legitimacy of certain reporting due to fear of backlash from the community. If it's good reporting, it should be able to stand up to scrutiny. So when you see

a new story that triggers an emotional response. Stop a moment before clicking share and find out where this claim is coming from. A reliable journalistic outlet, an independent publication. What other reporting has this publication done? Has it been accurate? Who is the reporter? Are you familiar with their reporting? What else have they reported on? Is it speculative? Are

there logical jumps without supporting evidence? Again, I'm not trying to minimize the danger coming from a tax on trans people. Quite the contrary, the right is continuing to take away trans rights and these threats should be treated seriously. But when trying to counter these real attacks, one must be cautious about looking so far ahead into this speculative future that it takes the focus away from the clear and present harms. This isn't about trusting the government, It's about

understanding the world in order to change it. See you on the other side. You can find a text version of this episode on the Shatterzone substack, with hyper links available for many of the terms or reporting referenced.

then you should listen to them. And I am appalled at the discourse about Venezuela which is happening without Venezuelan voices for the most part, where people will talk to Venezuelan's at all in the US press. It's far too often people in the diaspora who are talking to the right wing of media and highlighting what are sometimes recent objections to Madulas, sometimes which are completely insane. But it's a complete failing of us on the left to not

talk to people from Venezuela. Maybe you could just share with us, like how it's been since January. To see it offered it as a binary right. You can either exist on the Maduro and people can live in poverty and suffer, or you can watch your country get bombed and choose like mcm like and none of this is happening. Was asking you what you would like, Can you like share how that's been.

it's fine. But yeah, the immediate thing was concerned. Then obviously I couldn't sleep that night because of everything that was going on. I live in Europe, so by that time it was like, I don't know, it was like five in the morning or something eight in the morning. I don't remember it was. It's all just a blur to me now, but I remember I was just like on my phone seeing the updates like every minute, trying to contact my friends who did live in Karakas, and

they were just saying, yeah, like we hear bombs. We don't know what's going on. And then eventually, like some people started saying that they bomb liked some strategic military basis or like in Paracio Mira Flores, which is the presidential house, and so everyone was like all over the place, and then we got all this information that they took Maduro whatever.

So it's kind of just like everyone's trying to like appropriate or steal their own narrative and suffering for their own gain, and the left and the right are doing both like equally. Yeah, So it has been kind of frustrating because I mean every time I even just try to leave a comment on Instagram or say something, I'm called a fascist like Trump supporters, Cia Masade agent whatever.

And you know, it's frustrating to see so many people because most of the people I follow are like leftists, right, But I've unfollowed like seventy percent of the people I used to follow because they started posting like Promaduro stuff and talking about how he was so great whatever.

world of nobody wants to hear my voice? So it has been very difficult, right yeah, yeah, yeah.

like struck home with me. Are two things I guess let's address the first one. It is fundamentally a colonial impulse to steal someone's narrative and assume that they're incapable of speaking for themselves, so you must speak for them, right Like. That is something that I have seen, not just now, but for years about Venezuela, right Like, it must have been really frustrating to see this kind of campiss tendency to literally steal like the voice of Venezuelan people to speak on their behalf.

friends because of that. Maybe not a mental breakdown, because it was just like a right.

imagination see them. Yeah, it doesn't give you a place to express your identity, right, you just have to fit into someone else's box. Yeah, something else you said really struck me, Like there seems to be and again it's like it's not distinct from the colonial impulse, right, I think about the uplift civilized and Christianized, or the white man's burden or these like notions of people who were subject to colonial violence being lesser than or incapable of,

and like, what are the things I see? It is like the idea that Venezuelan people are not aware of United States imperialism. I lived with Chilean's in Caracas in like the first decade of this century, right, Like people were very extremely fucking aware, Like I live with people who have been tortured because of because of United States imperialism. They've played me to have our records and then told me how they chopped his hands off, right, Like, Yeah,

you're a person on the left. You have an understanding of the world and world politics, and you've studied and traveled, But like, there is a cultural understanding of this right which does not require one to attend university. Can you explain how people because people are weighing on the one hand, we have this malorda regime which is killing people, which has imprisoning people, and which is acting as a fundamental

constrain on our autonomy. And on the other hand, we have the Americans dropping bombs and we know what the Americans have done, Yeah to this part of the world. If you could just talk on that little bit, explain how people live with that balance.

It's a case of the boy who cried a wolf, but in this case, it was the dictator who cried intervention.

to being exploited and we're used to being cheated. So when people in the US say, hey, the US only wants to steal your oil, or hey, like they're going to exploit your country, it's ignoring the fact that we have already been living through that very same thing for decades, and many believe that our material reality won't be affected

just because now it's someone else stealing out resources. If anything, people are willing to see if these new guys, aka the US, might do things differently now, whether that's right or not, what it really speaks to I think is I guess my final point, which is that people are desperate. Every time a leftist says, oh, your life is about to get so much worse or so bad or whatever, they say that without knowing how bad things have already gotten.

I mean, I remember going to school during like the worst parts of the famine and seeing like a skeletal dead body lying on the street. Like that's an image I still have nightmares with. And I mean for a time, I remember someone I knew dying or being killed every single week.

desperate for a change, any change. And the fact is that the global campus left ors me and my friends have begun calling them the imperial Left, has done nothing for us they've given us no sustainable solution, and if anything, have completely sided with our pressors. So you know, if Trump and says I recognize this regime is bad and I'm going to do something about it, people are going

to take that. And this is what is so frustrating to me is that many of these leftists will go ahead and then criticize Venezuelans for siding with their enemies. But what they don't see is that they have sided with ours, and at the end, all that does is make life even harder for us. We've gone so desperate that we've run directly into the hands of vultures because

they're the only hands that we've been given. I personally don't love what the US is doing to our country, but I mean I understand why many Venezuelans have reacted the way that they have, and this is how I can best explain it to those who don't understand it.

like I engaged with them. It's it's very funny to see that, like in their mind all opposition in Venezuela is of the right wing, like MTM, yeah, tendency right, Like, there are many very valid reasons where people on the left will be opposed to what's happening. Does it feel particularly isolating to be of the left and at the same time have this constant assumption that to be in an opposition you have to be of the right.

You know, we know that the that the opposition isn't just like.

most of them are anarchists. But when I do try to explain it to them, they do seem to understand because they know who I am and they know that I'm not like, you know, bullshitting them.

what a wonderful country. And then like, once people begin to feel comfortable and safe with you and you talk more, everybody knows we don't have it all figure out either. Everybody knows the history right like, and then people, yes, of course have a wide and varied range of things that they would love to see in Venezuela, but they are united behind seeing an end to dictatorship yeah and stay violent.

How we've been able to do that. How you know, we can all say, you know, we may not agree on on how certain things are done, but we all agree on what needs to be done, which is you know, like getting rid of this regime, right, So yeah, I

mean it's it's actually pretty pretty cool. And although it's not always easy because again, like you have, like in any country, we have all sorts of different opinions going on, it is really nice to see everyone united for one thing and one reason and that's really the important thing. So so you know, I wish other countries could maybe learn a little bit about that too.

and sort of leave the rest behind. Yeah, it's remarkable, genuinely, like seeing again, like a lot of my experience, I have not been in Karrakas for probably fifteen years, maybe longer. It's seeing people in the diaspora and migrants, but like people who have grown so used to the state ironically failing to provide the basic necessities of life that they've

got used to just obtaining them and from each other. Like, even if those people are not anarchists, they are probably doing more mutual aid than people who spend a lot of their time being anarchists on the internet. Yeah, Like that's a beautiful thing that we should be in aura of rather than invalidating. It's so many people on the left e.

would like exchange things somebody needed anything, like if somebody's grandmother needed like this medication that can only be found in like this one place in Karakas, like. But then I didn't have gas, but maybe like my cousin had

gas so that we could drive to Karakas like. So that's kind of how it worked back there, Like we had that solidarity towards each other, and I think obviously if we go abroad, we're going to continue showing that same Yeah, I like that same attitude because it's just like part of who we are.

therefore refuse to learn from Venezuelan people so frustrating. It's like a mile phrase. But like what can people do?

from Venezuela. Like, how can people better be in solidarity instead of like trying to force you all into one box or another box. Yeah, if we assume most of our audiences in Europe or the United States, right, and they, yeah, there haven't been big Like we're in solidarity with the Venezuelan anarchists or even the Venezuelan socialist or communists who are opposed to Maduro to DELTI Now.

So I would say the first thing you need to understand is that you know, I understand why you're looking at things from your own perspective, but you also have to include Venezuelan perspectives in your activism in order for them to actually be productive towards the Venezuelan people, right, Because when you say, you know Fremaduro and you know us get out of Venezuela, you're still not addressing the necessities of the Venezuelan people, right, which is we need

to get out of the regime. Sure, like one of those necessities is the US getting the fuck out of there, but you're not addressing the main issue.

to actually be free. Right, So I think it's key, it is very necessary that when we have these like free Venezuela protests, it's not just about the US, but it's also protesting the Madula regime, right because otherwise what you're going to do is you're going to exclude many people who also want the US to back off from your own protests.

non Venezuelans can go ahead and out of that you know, anti peerless part of the conversation or you know, perspective

to the conversation. But they do need to make space for the Venezuelans who also need to speak out of the regime, right, So it needs to be a combination of both, and in your advocacy you have to include both at the same time always because again, if you don't speak about one, then you're sort of like portraying the other one is like the good side, right, And what that does is that continues to isolate Venezuelan's I mean, including myself, Like I said, I can't even go to

free and as well protest because I'm never going to be, you know, next to somebody chanting free ma duro.

is a solution to the problem. It just seems to be such a condemnation of the organizing or much of the left that people cannot and this is my general frustration with the world, well one of them. They can't think outside of the state model. They cannot conceive of

an alternative that does not already exist. Yeah, even though there are movements outside of the state right, like a Kurdish struggling in the north Easyria for example, it's one, but like I don't know, like we should be able to dream of a better world or a beautiful life, and it seems like so many people have forgotten that that's what being on the left is about. And they identify as revolutionaries, but they're extremely reactionary in their politics

and their goals. Like, yeah, it must be so strange to come from. I don't know how old you were. When do you remember like very early Chevismo.

of early Chevismore. I also remember as well, sort of seeing the division, and that to me is like the biggest, most impactful memory, right, the division that existed so on my family. I remember, just for context, like part of my family, half of my family is like middle class and the other half of my family was working class, like you know, brown working class from the coasts, right,

so shout out to Okuma. So you know, it was like different realities, different necessities, And I remember both sides of the family arguing a lot, Like there was a lot of division, very similar to what's going on in the US right now in terms of division, right, yeah, where there were like heated arguments, people did not speak to each other, people hated each other because of you know, like part of my family was Cha Vista, the other part was opposition or whatever.

her hair red because she supported the regime whatever. So so that's one of the things I remember the most, is my family, both sides like hating each other because of it is And it's something that I'm seeing in the US right now a lot, and I think it's operating in a very similar fashion.

all just disappointment. And the other side of my family is just like chill, I don't know, like.

that's how they think right now. Or it's like either it was disappointment or that perspective of you know, I support Chavis but not Maduo.

We got prisons and cops exactly. And like that stance seems to be entirely absent in any discussion of Venezuela, which is it's so common, like you just don't hear the like it's not like a left critique from other left stances. It's a left critique from the same place that chav Is more claimed to come from. And it's completely absent in our discourse. And like I can't, well,

it's because we don't talk to people from Venezuela. But yeah, yes, it's extremely frustrating, and I think like there's a lot that the United States can learn because we're already seeing large numbers of people being like, oh, yeah, I've voted for Trump one, two, three times, and now something has alienated them, right, whether it's mass deportations, whether it's a war with a run, whether it's the economy being shit, whatever it is, Like, we need to learn how to

allow people to change their minds or like to get better, like the vendants, where in opposition wouldn't be what it was if they said anybody who supported chabb As at any point can fuck off, we don't want you, right, Like, yeah, it's it wouldn't work, It wouldn't function. And I think if we would listen to people, there's so much that we could learn from that, but we seem so locked in on talking down to them instead.

you know, I used to live in the US. Now I live in Europe, but that's one of the reasons I decided to leave, because I saw many similarities to what happened in my country, and I decided to just Skidadle as soon as like, because I sort of knew where it was all going.

So because we do have a very big Middle Eastern population, again, many Palestinians, many Lebanese people who are not unaware of what has been going on in the Middle East, right, So that's also something to be added to the conversation, is you know when we talk about these things like they're not isolated, and precisely because we're not isolated, that's why we should, like you said, like be more in support of the people rather.

own people. Yeah, it is so frustrating that we saw that happen and the world still allows people to tokenize the Palestinian people right and to use them as a shield definitely against the oppression of their own people. I think a lot of people will be thinking or listening and being like, well, I haven't really heard from Venezuelan voices, or I mean they might not know any people from Venezuela.

Where can people do more to listen if they want to as they approach this issue in so much as people are still approaching it because half the US media's forgotten about Venezuela already.

to get into these conversations. See what local activists are saying, see what the news are saying, like see even what our leaders are saying.

you want to inform yourself. You need to develop the ability to think critically about what's going on and be able to understand who are these people and why do they have this perspective? Right, So they have this perspective not because they were slave owners back in Venezuela, not because they're white, some of them are not white. It's not because they are like pro fascism or they necessarily love the US, right, but it's coming from a place of trauma.

sound very pro capitalism to me. But I guess the ability to understand these people instead of calling them like CIA agents, fascists, like they're stupid, they're idiots, don't listen to them. The diasporas just full of like massad agents whatever, you want to call them, right, like I've seen every athol in the book, like any excuse in the book, like.

their root con the crisis in Venezuela. Right, So why do they have all these like crazy ideas?

all these Venezuelans who again claim to be right wing. And to a second, why say they claim to be but they claim to be right wing, And again it's not just because of the mad Madula and Chavist regime.

It's not just because all of the abuses committed to them were in the name of socialism, but it is also because the international left has reacted so negatively towards our cause that you know, many Venezuelans decided to say, hey, you know what, I'm right wing or I'm moderate, or you know what, I love the US now because all the people who are anti West are pro the regime that is killing my people, right right, So what's that What that is doing is like actually pushing these people

even further when you call you know, these like.

your roote concern is. Therefore, I think we should talk about this and I can understand that in order to inform myself what is truly happening to these people that are making them believe these crazy things like Trump has fave us, right.

of these other places you might be like advocating for intervention. Yeah, and like it's ever really important not to be like, Okay, this person goes in the mag of box for me, because like there are Venezuelan people who are going to go in that box, right, But like, we have a good deal of people who like they're obviously not going to be opposed to migration in they themselves some migrants exactly.

That doesn't always apply. There's the famous video of the Turkish guy complaining about migrants as he enters the United States.

not talk to the people and can't. Yeah, and then we only see a small subset of discourse translated into English.

while not compromising your own beliefs and your own knowledge and experiences. Right, So that takes much work. So that's what I meant by that, Like very few, yeah, for the people in that sense where they engage and actually go and try to talk to us. And I think that's the best way of being informed of any issue, is just talking to the people.

we have not done more. We have not reached out to more people in Venezuela, that we've not used our platforms, so we've not shared their voices, that we haven't done more to push back on this idea that like the only options to Venezuela are neoliberal neo imperialism, or maybe neoliberal so is what we do anymore, but American imperialism or like this anti imperialism of idiots? Is there anything you'd like to plug? Do you like people to find you on the internet or some other stuff you'd like

to direct people to. Maybe they can call you a mossad or cia or whatever.

who are magasolanos. You ask them what do you want to see in Venezuela, And what they want is affordable housing, affordable healthcare, clean water, proper environmental policies. They don't want any more abuses committed to the indigenous communities, particular those

in the Araco Minerooco. So you ask these people what they want, and this is what they want, right, So when they just say that they're right wing, they say that they're right wing simply because they are traumatized from, you know, this apparently socialist regime which was anything but and people on the left sort of, you know, just supporting that regime and isolating them and treating them like

absolute crap. So they're traumatized by both of those things, and that's why they claim to be in this position. But if you actually talk to them, that is not the case. Keep that in mind, because it's funny to me when many people say, oh, you guys just believe propaganda. That's why you're pro Trump, and that's why your right wing, because you consumed the CIA propaganda. You guys are blinded by propaganda, when in reality.

also pushed people away. And I think if we're able to solve that issue, If I think if the Left is able to see Venezuelans as human beings and to have a different approach, such as you know, with you know what we've talked about earlier, I think we're going to be able to have a better conversation and have a better relationship between these two communities and actually get somewhere productive.

political game. Just include us into the conversation, I think is the most important thing anyone listening to this should take away.

It comes out April seventh, twenty twenty six, but you can go ahead and pre order it now anywhere you buy books, and make sure you ask for it at your local library and your local independent bookstore.

Castle in West Virginia. I would love to read a book about Peter Brimlow and the races in Castle.

with SBLC, for instance. I think that all that is important, and there's different ways to do it and do it effectively. But I think for a book, I wanted to focus more on what these people and this culture that is surrounding them is doing to every people.

in tons of people from the developing world. My mother came to the country in sixty eight, for example, that was like a you know, three years after Heartseller, and I wouldn't have been born if not married a white guy,

and etcetera, etcetera. She came from Egypt. So he became obsessed with this and kind of in the way that I know, you know a lot about these the way some of these minds work, Molly, but in the way that some people get obsessed with environmentalism, and then they kind of expand that concern to sort of say, well, there's too many people, right, there's too many people. There's too many people. Well there's too many brown people. That's

what's destroying the environment. And then they become you know, sort of white nationalists minded or anti grand immigrant minded. In Briml's case, I really think it was like a financial thing, just like this is putting all these different strains and whatever, and then it became the financial became less of a concern, and the actual anti immigrant thing

became bigger and bigger for him. In nineteen ninety five, he publishes Alienation, which is a book that was actually praised by people like David Frum, you know, the very same guy who's high hatting about Trump every day. It was considered socially acceptable, and then over time I think people realize that the book had a very racist undercurrent, and it became beloved by Nazis, white nationalists, etc.

that feel. It was built in eighteen eighty by a guy named Samuel Taylor Suit who made it for a very very young young girl. I think she's like seventeen or something like that.

And then there's like this kind of turnover from people one generation of the next trying to keep the castle going. It's always more expensive than it's worth. It's beautiful, it overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny, gorgeous, looks like a great place to go on vacation. And if you imagine, like for Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty Times Square rolled into one, that's what the castle is. It's so tiny, and this is the

main landmark. This is the thing that everybody goes to and they go hiking around there and all this stuff. So this is a tourist town that attracts a lot of LGBQ people from places like Washington, d C. Baltimore, a lot of liberals and all of a sudden you have this again SPOC labeled white nationalist, anti immigrant, nativist, whatever you want to call them. Couple buys this castle, right,

they decide to buy it. And the way they found it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is thirty seven years younger than Peter herself and started with him and when she was twenty or something like that and he was nearly sixty.

Charlottesville guy, right, they unite the right guy is Assai. So VIDIA couldn't stage any events. They were very worried about counter demonstrators. I think that the counter demonstrators from that first Maga era really put the fear of God into some of these people. They didn't they were they were scared shitless of anti racist, anti fascists, and all of a sudden, you got a castle on Zilo a million point four and it's got stone walls all over it,

and hey, we can hold our conferences here. And so that's how they got it. They ended up getting it for that reason And what happens to the town afterwards is, I think is a minor tragedy in our culture that hasn't been paid attention to enough.

need to keep people going in. The press goes a long way in Berkeley Springs, so it's a little place. They don't know how to push back. Someone buys private property. What can you do? But they start to organize and try to figure out a way to urge Brimlow to leave or to make it so difficult for him that he leaves. And yes, it is absolutely a symbolism for

what everybody's going through. And there are people all over the country in places red states where you might find people who you wouldn't expect kind of protesting against TESLA or something like that. And it could be kind of corny, these type of people who like corny online and easily ignored. They're all over the country feeling that exact dread that you're talking about, where something very like above them is bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs.

change the politics. They're trying to integrate themselves, you know, coming from outside basically to take over, right.

we've been living in it for in a more intimate way. Right.

to the book. I mean, there's these are things that for for a normy that maybe a little bit you know, you may like the book, but you may be final

little disturbing. But for people like us who have kind of really been through stuff in this and seeing it up close on a regular basis, Look, what I like about the book is it's it's rare to like say, I'm going to praise some white people here, but like it's white people saying that they don't want to be represented by these values, right, And I think that for me, as somebody who comes on outsider, I like, look, so normal in New York. I'm just I'm just swarthy, but

they are there there. I look like Osama bin Laden and uh.

Replacement conspiracy theory. We think that the Great Replacement that like, you know that thinking about more extreme things that Brimlow has said.

of almost the most important person. And I asked Charlie. I was like, you know, so you met the Brimlows, you hung out with them. What was that like for Christmas and stuff like that? And I was like, well, how do you feel about the great replacement stuff? How do you feel about like the stuff he writes? And what he said was he's a writer. He's a writer like you. He's a journalist just like you. He's the same as you. There's no difference. And he was very defensive.

Yis you know, I think that framing is very useful for understanding why we can't seem to snap out of this current condition that we're in. When you're inside that bubble, that's the logic that works. It's like, this is the guy on our side. You know, we're defending the guy on our side. Right, that's a psychosis that kind of overshadows the entire narrative.

Whereas you know, if you do a movie that's said in the eighties, you will see like the event a little bit more about like at the kitchen table, what the family is going through as something happens nationally, right or so and so's it's almost like we need time

to process. But this has a very clear time period, which is the period right before COVID to the twenty twenty four election, and it's enough in the past now that I think we can look at how these things affected regular people in this in this town, because every time you're seeing viral videos about black Lives matter, that's

impacting the way people act there. So you may get a like five white people go stand on a street corner there with some signs after George Floyd's death, and that's like a huge deal in that town because it's like people are shocked by it or they want to they want to they want to harass those people after that. So that was one factor. And as yeah, and as for as for myself, it also overlaps like probably the

darkest time in my life. And that's not totally unrelated to Berkeley Springs in the sense that, like, you know, stuff at SPLC was like really really bad at the beginning of the book. Then they're not there in the second half, and my mental health was was just not in a great place. I had spent, as you know, a lot of time with these guys, and I know you personally have dealt with a lot of threats and really, I mean as a woman, I mean you're dealing with I imagine it's even scarier because.

it for a while on my end. One example that is, in twenty twenty one, I took my son to the batting cage and afterwards we went to seven eleven and I got a call from a number in North Carolina and then it was an FBI agent and he's like, hey, I just want to you know, as a courtesy, you want to let you know that we have somebody who's like talking about assassinating you, and you know, do you have any questions?

idle thing. And so when the Tree of Life shooting happened, when he went out and said, you know, screw your optics, I'm going in right right, yeah, and I was like, I know this guy, that one dingo he So this was this was very traumatic for me. I've been holding pretty firm on this. I had a lot of manic tendencies in the sense of like I could just work constantly, and you just work around the clock, work late at night, constantly doing investigative reporting. And I was on a mission

because I was so angry about what had happened. You know, you're the right, That's what that really triggered me. I had before then, I had been really open to pursuing at as a crime reporter or on climate change. These were the kind of things that were like I had written features of previously. But it was it was after you night the ride, I got folks, and I really was like, I'm going to put all my abilities into trying to create trouble for these guys, and you did.

thing is that I reached a breaking point. I was I was happened to be in Berkeley Springs with some of the sources from the book when I had to go home and go to a syche ward and I went for three weeks and I got diagnosed with bipolar there, which was a very useful diagnosis.

I mean, I think we both are guilty of this. Over the years on this beat, there is this tendency to sort of you know, exchange war stories like oh, you know, I got this terrible threat.

was sweating. I had never seen his face. He kept all of his pictures offline. But I had the goods. I knew I had everything. But yet at the same this is one doubt. It's like, what if it's not him because I don't have the face match forget threats.

That level of stress of just you know, it's just like I checked everything, right, I like you think think about the you're trying to leave the house for a long trip or something like that, and it's like you know that thought, Oh yeah, like did I leave the gas stove on when I was you know, when I was boiling something for my kids or whatever? Like that's

the way it feels, right. It's like a sort of you like you memorize the entire investigative feature and you're like going through it and there's like, oh, oh, you know that was that right? Did I check that? And I'm like, yes, I did.

they started to limit our ability to publish stories. They really became very risk averse.

tone in a meeting. And then there was the thing about that was there was like a verbal warning or something that was they actually bothered to write out, which was quite stupid. If you're doing a verbal warning, you shouldn't put it in print. And sure enough we found in there that like all the dialogue that was in there was completely fabricated and made.

and Beeson. I told him about that. And then they responded by turning around and disciplining me again, almost like to say, like we've got them on the ropes now, let's really like make them quit.

I was distraught about this whole situation. It was adding another thing on top of it, and watching the retaliation, which became a genocide very quickly, did not improve my mood. Obviously. It was very stressful to see that stuff. And Hannah invited me to sign a thing about you know, it was just sort of like asking writers to sign on Israel's and apartheid state, you know, calling for a ceasefire.

terms of discrimination to what happened effort. And then when people found out what happened, the union started to write things to you know, to management. There was all this internal dialogue happening while I was in a psych word with like no access to anything, and almost everybody in my line of managers was pushed out and given buyouts allegedly Quirk this woman and Beeson and now the CEO is.

but I needed to keep working on the book. So it was like a week after I got out of the hospital, I came back down there, and then the folks who I had been working with since twenty twenty when the Brimlas first arrived, they kind of took me in and nursed me back to health. So that's why it's I feel like unified in the narrative, and we're able to explore what happened to me psychologically, and what happened is and them psychologically as this other stuff is happening.

and others. Right, it was a collective push to take the existing right wing mom star and set it in this direction. What this is doing to us.

out and you put your hand on his shoulder. Instinctively, when you're sharing laughter with someone, you put out, you put your hand on his shoulder and like, you know, recoiled immediately and didn't know why you had done that. But this like tiny moment of physical intimacy that you know this was a person, or the transgender mushroom farmer Lisa Marie who sought out Lydia Brimlow at church and shook her hand during the Right of Peace, Like I would have loved to have seen that.

they're writing really high. And then by the end from the Letitia James investigation, it had not turned into a lawsuit yet by that point, under the pressure of that and just under the pressure of just everybody around them, you know, not wanting them to be there, they decided to dial down VideA altogether, and it still exists in the sense of like the Twitter accounts still exists, and Brimo is still writing on substack. Some of it is a legal thing to try to, you know, get them

out of the way of Letitia James. But you know they're really broken down. I mean, the videos that they published about their closing, I mean, it's just a laundry list of things that add up to a defeat. I don't think they would disagree with that that they felt

defeated by the end. And the people who were in the town, who are so nice and sweet and wonderful and all this, they're laughing as you would right as everyone talked about like when Trump dies and everybody's like, oh, I'm going to do this when Trump dies and all that stuff. Right, it's just liberation from that thing. But ultimately it's a really like if you just look at the Brimlows, it is, you know, it is a brutal fall by the end of the book.

people in polymarket. And then the suckers they you know whatever, the o the rest of it, the bigger percentage of seventy five percent followers, they're taking their money and that's MAGA. That's a big part of bag. And then the other part is less concerned with money, although money is a

part of it. Is just ascending and pushing down from a power power space, right, Like you just like to be in a place where they can have power over other people, and usually other people being designated by not looking like them or not behaving like them, or not having the same kind of boyfriend's girlfriends whatever than them.

You're twenty years old. It's very rich. White husband comes by his old for you. He's like fifty seven, and he's recently lost his wife Brimola lost his first wife to cancer. And you're in the kind of heritage seeing your kind of conservative yourself and.

didn't know what the hell was going on. So you're in this marriage with this dude, and you have kids now, and you've seen the other side of it, the hell of it up close all the time, people shutting down the website. People there were hackers. There's all kinds of things that they're dealing with constantly. Everyone is telling you, everyone other than people in the movement are finding ways. Whenever they get a chance to speak to you, they're

telling you, you know, go fuck yourself. We hate this, right, we hate you. We don't like this stuff.

you know. I just think that they're now so they think they're such part of the culture, and it would be it'll be very interesting for me to see if there is a huge change after this, if we see sort of the Trump regime kind of fall, have a really hard fall, and some of this really starts to break up. What will happen and when people like look back at some of the stuff that's happening over the past like a few years, even as there's been this

tremendous explosion. If you look at the time from when the book ended, which is again on the election day, the day after the election, I'm twenty twenty four, I mean.

above your coffee shop. Absolutely, I don't want to keep you forever, but I just want to remind the listener Strange People on the Hill, how extremism tore a part of small American town by Michael Edison Hayden comes out April.

always been. You know, when I was writing the book and I was recovering from the mental health thing, I wasn't online at all for all twenty twenty four and so my nice that greatered my my ex engagement. In any case, I don't like being on there too much just for anything other than research.

It's not that I call it, but its name was launched a little over a month ago, with the administration insists and expected duration of four to six weeks, and we're coming up to the end of that timeline. Trump announced the day I record this March thirty first, that he's expecting combat operations to end in two weeks or less.

So we'll see what happens tomorrow. They're supposed to be a speech by the President on Iran, so we'll know more then, But relevant reporting indicates the Trump administration is at least seriously weighing the feasibility of sending marines in to take and hold Iranian territory, namely Karg Island and potentially other islands in the Strait of Hormos, most of which are inhabited and all of which are heavily defended.

If they go through with this, we might be about to watch in real time one of the most consequential disasters in military history, a modern day Gallipoli, in which hundreds or thousands of American soldiers and billions in materiel get chewed up in an unsustainable and unwinnable war of attrition. There's no real way for the average American to know what kind of stockpile our military maintains the most advanced munitions.

We're talking precision guided missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile, but also the interceptor missiles used by our various missile batteries. Estimates suggests the US has already expended about one thousand Tomahawks in a month of combat operations, which would be around a third, maybe a little less, of the total stockpile.

That doesn't sound so bad until you realize that our present stockpile of Tomahawks was built up over more than a decade We're only capable of making about one hundred and fifty a year at present levels, which means our military already burned through around seven years worth of these things, maybe more, because in twenty twenty five, the US to finish budget included something like fifty six Tomahawks, even though our largely ineffectual war against the Houthis had already depleted

the stockpile. This is a story that you'll hear over and over again in this episode. The US military is actually quite bad at knowing and asking for what it will need, and even worse at predicting accurately what it's going to need in the immediate future. Each Tomahawk costs them around three point six million dollars to produce, and these are the only long range offensive weapons mounted by our naval destroyers. Per a source interviewed by Military Watch magazine, quote,

without intervention, the Pentagon may be left out of ammunition. Now, Tomahawks aren't the only things the US military is low on. For that same article, inventories of anti ballistic missiles and GBU fifty seven bunker buster bombs are estimated to have been almost totally spent, while being significantly more costly to replace.

We just don't have granular data on the size of US interceptor missile stockpiles or supply of stuff like Patriot missiles, but we do have a pretty good understanding of how badly our regional allies have depleted their stockpiles of these defensive tools. Bahrain is estimated to have expended eighty seven percent of their Patriot missiles, the UAE and Kuwait are up to seventy five percent, and Qatar is at like

forty percent. Experts estimate that Iran has gone through or lost via airstrike roughly a third of their ballistic missile stockpile. This may or may not be accurate, and if it's inaccurate, it may or may not be inaccurate in either direction. Our intel and Israel's intel is often very spotty when it comes to stuff like this. A good illustration of this would be the fact that on March twentieth, Iran fired two ICBMs at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean that hosts a joint US UK air and

naval base. Neither missile did any damage, but that wasn't really the point. The launch of these missiles was a message from the Iranian regime to the US one. Previously, Iran had limited itself to only striking targets within twelve hundred and forty miles of its own borders with ballistic missiles.

Diego Garcia is roughly twenty three hundred miles away. Many US analysts had treated for years twelve hundred and forty miles as if it represented an actual hard limit on Iran's striking capability based on what their missiles could reach, as opposed to what it really was, which is a political decision made by Iranian leaders to limit the scope

of conflicts. When the Trump administration launched an unprovoked series of joint strikes on Iran, killing a supreme leader in many senior officials, we violated one of the unstated agreements that had held for over decades of conflict. The president's supporters and major hawks on Iran argued that these self imposed limits were allowing Iran's leadership to support terrorism abroad

with impunity. The strike on Diego Garcia proved that military analysts had been wrong about the top range of Iran's best ballistic missiles, but it also served as a statement from Iran's new leaders. You've taken the gloves off and thrown out the rule book. Now we have two. Hudson Institute's senior fellow, Khan Kosopoglu, published an analysis that made this same basic argument.

to have totally annihilated Iran's offensive capability. On March twenty seventh, a combined missile and drone attack at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia injuring more than ten US soldiers, too seriously in damaging several aircraft. One of these, which we have pictures of, was an E three a wax aka the planes with those huge radar dishes on top, and at least one a Wax was destroyed. The Air Force only has sixteen of these, and only about half

our mission capable at any given time. The Army also maintains a fleet of E three's. I found an article in Air and Space Forces Magazine by Chris Gordon and Stephen Lassi, who interviewed Heather Penny. She's a former F sixteen pilot and current director of the Air Force Academy's

Institute for Aerospace Studies. Penny said, quote, the loss of this E three is incredibly problematic and how crucial these battle managers are to everything from airspace deconfliction, aircraft deconfliction, targeting, and providing other lethal effects that the entire force needs for the battlespace. E threes provide an irreplaceable service on

the battlefield. They act as both airborne radar stations and air traffic control towers, spotting threats up to two hundred and fifty miles away, and providing crucial early warning to forces in combat about incoming threats, particularly missiles and drones, drones, really about anything else. In other words, the E three is really really useful if you're say, planning to have troops land on islands in a narrow strait surrounded by

hostile forces who can shoot at you from the mainland. Now, the A wax themselves aren't technically irreplaceable, but they aren't easy to replace, especially on short notice. Each one costs between seven hundred million and a billion dollars, and we don't like, we don't like make them anymore. A wax are old. The average age of our remaining fleet is forty five per irrelevant article colin Task and Purpose magazine. Nobody makes spare parts for the E three's TF thirty

three engines anymore, which takes a toll on maintenance. In twenty twenty two, General Mark Kelly, then the head of Air Combat Command, told reporters we basically have thirty one airplanes in hospice care, the most expensive care there is, and we need to get into the maternity business and out of hospices. That's a weird metaphor for a plane designed to help you fight wars, but we'll move past

that and into some ads and we're back. So when we left off, I'd mentioned how in twenty twenty two, Mark Kelly, then the head of Air Combat Command, was like, we've only got about thirty one of these A wax and they're at hospice care, and we need to like make some new a wax that are modern and aren't falling apart, and have engines being produced. Unfortunately for our military, but fortunately for.

warned it might not survive a war with China. Heg Seth's plan was to just have the military use satellites for all their airborne tracking needs, and if we had to have, you know, a plane doing some of that, we could just have Navy E two D Hawkeyes as

a temporary replacement. Now, most of my listeners are not Air Force generals, and either of them I but I've read stuff guys who know that kind of thing have written, and I'll tell you this it's a bad fucking idea, or it's widely agreed by the experts to be a bad fucking idea. For one thing, the E seven, which is what we would have been replacing our E threes with,

has already proven itself in combat. The AUSSI sent Theirs over to a rock during the fighting against ISIS, and per task and purpose it quote was so reliable that whenever American F twenty two fighters were in theater, the US Air Force asked the AUSSIS to support the US jets. Sixteen retired US Air Force four star generals took the unprecedented step of writing a letter to Congress and begging

them to reverse Exseth's decision. They're reasoning why boils down to this, satellites aren't ready to track airborne targets, and the Hawkeye is too small for the job. Congress ultimately reversed course, but it's uncertain when, if ever new E seven's will arrive, certainly not in time for whatever the Trump administration is going to do next. In the meantime, the Air Force is down roughly ten percent or more of its functional fleet of a wax, and we don't

even have boots on the ground anywhere. Now, what I think happened here, What I think is behind all of these bad decisions, and this is not something I can verify. This is opinion is that a waks aren't sexy. They're not like a cool weapon system. They don't kill people directly. They facilitate other soldiers and sailors and airmen from killing people using other weapons systems. But you can't threaten somebody

with just an a whack. They're not like scary, and you can't show one blowing something up on the news because they don't do that. So I don't think it was a priority for Hegseth or anyone else in his administration, because they're all fucking twelve year olds. Previous administrations and let me be fair here, it's not like they were

any more forward thinking. Had kind of looked at our aging fleet and said, eh, good enough, it's not like anyone we're fighting as a better alternative, Right, who cares. It's the same kind of story we just heard with the Tomawks. Right, what the military was already doing was good enough to scrape by in the conflicts it was already fighting, and nobody involved in starting the next conflict was interested in making sure that the military was prepared

ahead of time. Now, I recognize all this talk about failures to produce war material in sufficient quantity may make it sound like I'm complaining that our air force isn't buying enough weaponry and that I'm urging us to spend more money producing arms and ammunitions, And that is not

my intent. I want exactly the opposite. What I'm trying to do is to highlight how utterly unprepared our administration is for the conflict they started, and how that failure to prepare has made a major military disaster for US forces, not just foreseeable, but likely if the administration makes the decision to send in ground forces or in some other

way significantly escalate the pace of our operations against Iran. Now, the mainstream media has done an okay job of reporting on the ammunition shortages that I've discussed, But what I don't think has been a hammered at home enough is that both are expenditure of advanced ammunitions and the loss of multiple aircraft due to Iranian strikes are a kind

of attrition, and they are really serious kind of attrition. Now, you may be more familiar with a term attrition as it applies to human casualties in a war or battle, but to an extent, the attrition of interceptor missiles and hard to replace special purpose vehicles like a wax does a lot more to damage US war fighting capability than

human losses. A good example of this came in March sixth of this year, after Ronstruck and PERCNN apparently destroyed the radar system for a THAD missile battery in Jordan. BAD stands for Terminal high Altitude Area Defense. These are our absolute best, most effective anti missile defense systems. Each battery costs more than a billion dollars, and each missile a fire costs like twelve point six million dollars. These

are part of why you don't have healthcare. Now we know another series of strikes in the UAE quote hit buildings housing similar radar systems to the THAD battery in Jordan. It's unclear if these were damaged or how badly they might have been damaged, and it's going to remain unclear

because the workings of these systems are extremely classified. As of twenty twenty five, the United States Z ownes and operates a grand total of eight THAD batteries, so at least one of eight is now out of commission and two more may have suffered some degree of damage A month into this conflict. That is not the kind of attrition you want to see prior to actually putting boots on

the ground. Now, US military spokespeople will point out, whenever asked, that the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones are being intercepted, and that Iran is currently firing few of these munitions than they did at the outbreak of hostilities. And what you're supposed to conclude from that is that they're running out because we are doing a better job of attritting them than they are doing of atreating us. And I can't tell you who's actually coming off worse

in this fight. I certainly don't have good insight into the levels of Iran stockpiles of the weapons systems that they're using. However, there is reason to doubt that the United States is coming off the better in this conflict. Ari Cicirel is an analyst for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America or JENSA, and he told Fox News quote, overall high missile and drone interception rates have

been important, but only tell part of the story. A On came into this war with a deliberate plan to dismantle the architecture that makes those strikes possible. It has struck energy infrastructure to upset markets and used cluster munitions

to achieve higher hit rates. Because we simply lack good data on this stuff, I can't tell you perfectly how our rate of interceptions has changed from day one to day thirty, but there is evidence in a few different places that in late March, the rate of successful drone attacks on our regional allies like the UAE increased. In other words, more drones were getting through or being launched.

But I think getting through is the more supported conclusion, and they're getting through because our defenses have gotten or the defenses of our allies have gotten less effective. The Genser report also notes that Israeli officials have stopped intercepting some cluster munition attacks in order to preserve ammunition, basically not shooting down the cluster munitions that don't look like they're going to hit anything or anyone, because they don't

have the ammunition to stop everything. Now, I don't doubt that iron is also feeling somewhat pinched, and the munition department. It would be kind of weird if they weren't both due to how many they fired and how many have been destroyed via air strikes. But the question isn't are they suffering attrition too? It's are they better able to maintain the rate of attrition they're suffering than we are? And while I can't answer that question in absolute terms,

I think the answer is probably yes. Iran's ballistic missiles generally cost a few hundred thousand dollars each that interceptor missiles cost, as I said, around thirteen million dollars. Shaheed drones cost like thirty thousand dollars to make and are often stopped by munitions that cost millions to make and

are hard to replace. It's also worth noting that the reduction in the total number of missiles fired by Iran is not just due to the fact that they run through some of their stockpileots at least partly a strategic decision, as even Fox News admits quote. Iran has adapted its tactics accordingly, shifting from large barrages to smaller, more frequent attacks designed to maintain constant pressure. While gradually draining defensive resources.

These persistent salvos, even if limited in so, force defenders to remain on high alert and continue expending interceptors, accelerating the depletion of already finite stockpiles. Now, there's an important point made towards the end of that paragraph. Persistent attacks

forced defenders to remain on high alert. This is true, and it also brings us to another underdiscussed aspect of attrition, the energy and time of the soldiers our administration expects to fight this war for them, And we'll talk about that after another brace of ads.

human element. The USS Gerald R Ford a Gerald R Ford class aircraft carrier is what's commonly known as a supercarrier. It can travel for twenty five years before its nuclear reactors need refueling, and it has a complement of more than forty five hundred men and women. It is a small city at sea, and I've talked in the past

about how hard these things are to actually sink. During the Ford's deployment to fight the Hoothies, there were viral rumors stoked by AIMS information that it had been seriously damaged or even destroyed by a Hoothy ballistic missile strike. Now I pointed out at the time that this was fanciful. The defense systems on a boat like this cost billions and provide excellent, proven protection against most missiles, drones, and aircraft.

It's likely to encounter. The entire naval battlegroup it travels with exists to protect and enhance the carrier's capabilities, and even if it were stripped of all those things, these boats are just so damn tough to fucking sink. In two thousand and five, the US Navy conducted a live fire test to sink retired Kitty Hawk class supercarrier. Per an article in Forbes, the carrier endured nearly a month of intense weaponized testing and was finally scuttled via internal

explosive charges. It should be added that the warship had been decommissioned nearly a decade earlier and was in poor material condition. There were also no damage control efforts to save the ship. In February of this year, just days before his own death, Iran's former Supreme Leader Iatola ali Hameni threatened the US carriers operating in the Persian Gulf in a post on Twitter because it's fucking twenty twenty six quote the Americans constantly say that they've sent a

warship towards Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom.

at least that's the idea. Beijing also has a line of land based carrier killer missiles, because if you think you might wind up in a war with the United States, it probably booves you to think about how you would kill an aircraft carrier. Now, again, Iran doesn't have any of these weapons systems yet, at least not to our knowledge. But this war of choice by the United States didn't

come as a complete surprise. The Iranian military and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been preparing to fight this war for quite some time. Those preparations have included the construction of multiple fake aircraft carriers, which their forces have sunk in a variety of wargames exercises. The most recent

of these occurred in twenty twenty. The Prophet Muhammed fourteen exercise was meant to prepare for an attack on a Nimitz class carrier, and ironically, Iran made it too easy to sink, which caused it to go down while it was being towed in an inconvenient location that temporarily blocked

a canal. And that should act as a warning that just as American military planners and analysts fuck up constantly, so two to their Iranian counterparts, and we shouldn't assume our guys are a bunch of hegseth looking chuckle fucks. While Iran's Pentagon equivalent is staffed entirely by hard eyed professionals. Every military has dipshit officers and has to deal with bad calls made by people with political power that function

up for everyone. What you should take from this, though, is that Iran is a country with a large, comparatively well funded and prepared military. They regularly invent and sell weapons systems that are utilized around the world, and they've been obsessively planning to kill an aircraft carrier for years and now that doesn't mean they're going to sink one. In fact, I still think that's pretty close to impossible,

at least with the technology we know they have. But they don't need to sink one to render it inoperable. Just hitting the top of it could be enough to do serious damage that would render it combat and capable for an extended period of time. And to back me up on that point, a few weeks ago, while it was actively engaged in combat operations against Iranian forces, a

fire started on board the Jerry Ford. It began in the laundry room, or at least in an area related to the vast laundry system that a vehicle like this has kind of a little unclear exactly what happened. According to the New York Times, though the fire alone took thirty hours to put out. Now, the Navy disputes this, that the ship was burning for more than a day, but they provided no reason anyone should actually trust them. Here I found an article published in the National Interest

by Peter Soussio. He writes that quote the fire caused far greater damage than was initially reported, with one sailor medically evacuated from the ship and two hundred more treated for smoke inhalation. I'm not surprised that the Navy wanted to hide the extent of the damage its biggest warship suffered due to a laundry fire. But this reinforces how unreliable the Navy is as an ongoing source in these matters.

Soussio notes, quote, there remained conflicting accounts of the fire in the media, and the Pentagon seemingly attempted to downplay the severity of the fire in the immediate aftermath, leading to later confusion. What we do know is that the Ford, a small city on the sea, lost all ability to launder clothing, betting, and anything else. This caused an immediate hygiene issue aboard and a logistic nightmare for the Navy, which had to fly in clean clothing at terrific expense.

Saying a supercarrier was taken out of commission by a laundry fire sounds silly, but you can't keep a town of forty five hundred people going if no one can do the laundry. The fire seems to have also done extensive damage to crew living quarters, which forced a thousand mattresses to be flown in while the crew slept. Well,

wherever they were sleeping, it wasn't in their bunks. Now we don't know how the fire started again, but unconfirmed reports have blamed sabotage by members of the Gerald Ford's crew. I can't tell you if this is true were not, but if it is, it would not be the first time something like this happened. In twenty twelve, a civilian contractor started a fire aboard the USS Miami and attacked

submarine because he wanted to leave work early. The fire cost four hundred million dollars in damage and led to the vessel being decommissioned. Two years later, the contractor was sentenced to seventeen years in prison. Nabal sabotage was an even bigger business during the latter stages of the war

in Vietnam. In December of nineteen seventy two, Jeffrey Allison, a nineteen year old sailor from Oakland, was sentenced to five years in prison for lighting a fire aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Forestall that same year, a sailor aboard the USS Ranger, another supercarrier, delayed its deployment to the Pacific by three months by allegedly sticking a paint scraper in the main reduction gear, which disabled an engine.

Per an article in the Alameda Post, the Navy's official history of the Ranger confirms that sabotage was becoming more popular as the war in Vietnam became more unpopular. Sabotage

happens every all day. A crewman serving aboard another carrier based in Alameda, the Oriskany, was quoted as saying, now these sailors, the folks sabotaging their own warships in the later stages of the Vietnam War were part of the so called SOS movement, a protest campaign launched and sustained entirely by sailors angry at being forced to participate in

the war against Vietnam. The movement gained its name from an active protest in nineteen seventy one, when forty sailors stood on the flight deck of their returning aircraft carrier and spelled out SOS with their bodies again. I don't know if sabotage caused the fire on the Gerald Ford, and neither it is anyone else, but there are good

reasons to believe it did. As Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in late March, the Ford and its crew have been pushed to the brink after nearly a year at sea normal deployment for sailors on before it is like six months. Come April, it will break the record for the longest post Vietnam

carrier deployment two hundred and ninety four days. Crew members have been told their deployment will likely be extended to May, at which point they'll have been at sea for an entire year.

and pissed off, they're likely to fuck things up. And I'm not just talking about grand acts of sabotage when it was still off the coast of Venezuela earlier. In this deployment, the Ford suffered massive recurrent issues with its plumbing system, which was ripped off a design used in cruise ships and works very badly. I can't exaggerate how

bad the sewage systems on the Ford work. They are broken fucking constantly, and per the Alameda Post, some crew members may be intentionally exacerbating problems with defective toilets aboard the ship by flushing t shirts and other objects, as documented in an email from the ship's engineering department, obtained by ebr our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed

by sailors on a daily basis. That March twenty twenty five email stated, my whole maintenance technicians are currently working nineteen hours a day right now to keep up with the demand. It's a lot of flushed shirts. Now, what I'm building to is that there's a perfectly good chance this fire didn't even start as an act of sabotage, but because somebody fucked up, maybe because they were exhausted, maybe because they've just been running the machines too long.

The laundry is always going all this thing's underway, and if it's going for months longer, the normal shit like lint is going to build up. In fact, I want to read a quote from that article in the National Interest. If the ducks haven't been cleaned out properly, it is easy for small lint particles to catch fire, potentially leading to a larger blaze, not unlike a house fire caused by lint build up. So again, this fire was certainly

not enough to sink the gerald Ford. It didn't destroy it, but it did enough damage that it became combat and effective or at least you could argue that's the case. You know, obviously we replace it with a different carrier group. There's not just not a carrier now, but the ford was not originally scheduled to leave, and left as a

result of the fire in order to undergo repairs. That gets it something very important, very relevant to the question of how a higher intensity war, one involving ground troops against Iran would go, because while Iran may or may not be able to sync a carrier, they certainly have the tools to potentially hit one, starting a fire or just damaging the deck badly enough to render it combat ineffective.

And if these deployment cycles keep getting extended, if sailors are kept at a high operational tempo for days or weeks or months at a time, people will start fucking up. And some of those fuck ups have a chance, as we've already seen, to remove the ship from being combat capable, or to remove other ships from being combat capable.

attention to. The fact that this simple laundry fire took the Jerry Ford out of the theater matters. The longer the US keeps fighting, and the longer we keep our ships deployed chasing Donald Trump's dreams, the higher the odds that something else goes wrong. Yet, whether it's just exhausted soldiers screwing up, angry sailors sabotaging things to protest an unpopular war, or a damned lucky shot, the Pentagon is continuing to roll those dice every day, and I guess

we'll see what happens next. That's all I've got for you right now, everybody. Hopefully we're not invading the islands with ground troops by the time this episode comes out, but we might be.

Limited Series category under News and Politics. It's kind of confusing to navigate the website because there's just so many categories, but those three links will be there below and we will continue to be talking about what is arguably the most important election of our lifetimes in these next few weeks.

in a reconciliation bill. But as of Wednesday afternoon, it looks like Congress has finally reached a funding package for the rest of DHS. Politico has reported that acting ICE director Todd Lyons has been hospitalized at least twice for stress related issues. Oh my god, while working to implement Trump's immigration policy.

clear if they are still javelins in circulation. Basically what they don't know where the javelins are.

was a federal firearms licensee. He owned a shop called Grips by Larry. He sold fancy grips for nineteen elevens. He was already facing a raft of weapons charges after selling a fifty caliber barrett A semi auto belfed and of course a thirty eight Super nineteen eleven pistol to

a confidential informant. The thirty eight Super nineteen eleven pistol Well, the reason I say, of course, is because any time people get busted for illegal weapons sales in the Southwest, there always seems to be a thirty eight Super nineteen eleven involved. That they're very much like a status gun in organized crime in Mexico because certain calibers are less available there, thirty eight Super is pretty most like uniquely

associated with with that market. Like it always seems that that pops up in busts and he was selling fancy grips, some of which had symbology, which sometimes is used by organized crime groups in Mexico. Anyway, this is the first time I've seen a material support for terrorism charge for one of these cartels who were recently designated as ftos,

so that was interesting to me. Finally, Israel has passed a law allowing the death penalty for murder that it uses a phrase quote with the intent of rejecting the existence of the state of Israel. It appears to be a binary system of punishment.

negative match. This did not come from that gun, but that the fragments could not be positively linked to the gun against his emotion filed by the defense doing what they need to do, which is legally defend this man like.

And so what we have here is a bad mischaracterization of a report of like an incomplete analysis from a not very good piece of forensic technology that's being used to do conspiracy because it makes money.

not to the Executive Office of Immigration Review. The declaration came in New York court suit filed by the ACLU on behalf of advocacy groups which had challenged at courthouse arrests. That's been happening for about a year hours I'm sure most people are aware. In the filing, the USDOJ said quote this error, however, was not caused by a lack of diligence and care by the undersigned attorneys. The undersigned was specifically informed by ICE that the twenty twenty five

ICE guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests. In addition, we discussed and obtained the approval of assigned ICE Council before filing every brief in this case and making any oral representations to the Court and the plaintiffs. We also transmitted copies of the Court's orders, transcript to the September second, twenty twenty five oral argument and plaintiff's filings to ICE

Council throughout its litigation. Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error. Is what you've got. There is a US attorney basically saying, like, not my fault, ICE attorney's fault. Relatively unusual statement. Right, Like, obviously we've seen them attempts to kind of split the executive branch before in these

legal filings. Right, we saw, we saw this happen in some of those cases in Minnesota, and then the judge rejected that.

in those courthouses. I have no doubt many of them have already been deported from the United States. Right, many more of them will have suffered material damage if they have not been deported, because they will have been detained in horrific conditions. Right, We've seen more photos today from inside immigration attention. Immigrated detention has always been horrific. It continues to be horrific. We can't make those people whole again in a meaningful way. But what it means going forward,

we will keep reporting on another deportation story. I want to talk about a deportation flight on Monday landed in Mianma. The flight also stopped in Thailand, and it is the fifth such deportation flight that I'm aware of. I know of two that were announced. These have not been previously reported, but in March of twenty twenty five, while at the

time was a state administration council. The Banmar minitary dictatorship is going through the process of changing its clothes and pretending to be a civilian government right now, that doesn't matter for this story. In the second of March twenty twenty five, the illegitimate government of Myanmar announced that it had received two individual deporties, one on each flight. In

April and May of that year, they received more. So we now believe that twenty two people had been deported up to this Monday, and more people, it appears from this flight, have been deported on Monday. The last deportation flight resulted in the deporties being detained and tortured by Miaan Mar's brutal military intelligence. The flight was a bordered jet owned by Journey Aviation and it returned via Sydney

to the United States of America. The United States has been trying to counsel the temporary Protective status for Burmese people for some time, but even with a TPS, it's worth noting that people some people have been convicted of crimes and the exceptions can still be deported, The Hunter said in a press release last year. Quote the MEMMA government is cooperating with the relevant US federal entities in verifying and accepting deportees to Mianma. This and some other

things a Trump administration have done. They've tried to characterize it a de facto recognition of their right to rule the country. Yeah, very clearly, the reason that they're talking about these deportations is because they're flexing that. Hey, the US government is talking to us downstream effectory ed. I think the world is largely not taking that seriously, but nonetheless they are using that, whether it's for external or internal signaling. The last time has happened according to Miama.

Now the deporties were taken straight to the on Tarpi Interrogation Center, and last time it was mostly ethnically Karenne or Chin people. So these are not people. It's a majority ethnicity, right, The majority ethnicity. The ethnicity that comprises most of the armed forces is or certainly most of the high ranks of the armed forces are Bama people. If people want to listen to more about me and my Robert and I have made two very extensive series

about that, we will link to. Talking of torture, here are some advertisements which are like torture for your ears.

This order directs DHS, USCIS and the Social Security Administration to create a quote state citizenship list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of eighteen at the time of an upcoming federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject state. And this citizenship list will then be used to compare

to state voter rules. The list will be derived from quote Federal citizenship and Naturalization records, Social Security Administration records, the DHS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements data, and other relevant federal databases. Unquote James, do you want to talk about this idea of having like a list of citizens, because this is I think something we've we've mentioned before. How there to this point hasn't really been like a single list of US citizens.

every single specific implementation pathway in mind. Yeah, but when implemented is like still is still devastating to people's lives.

is a citizenship that every single person in the US has. Yeah, it's everyone's there's No, there's no distinction. There's not like a different kind of citizenship you get if you have two immigrant parents versus if you have like parents that were like born in the US. Right, Like it's all one thing. Every single person in the United States has

the same kind of citizenship. But the moment you start trying to like hack apart different people citizenship, right, you try to you try to like you know, like like make there be like classes of of how you're a citizen through like this whole birthright citizenship complaint that they're doing right, and to be like, oh, well, just these people who were like born to immigrants are birthright citizens right.

That's one of the ways you start getting into these like fucking hideous issues of like okay, are people with tribal membership like you know, residencies like citizens right. It's like all of the stuff is like downstream with this effect to like cut citizenship of parts that needs to just be resisted, like from the fundamental thing of there is not a different category of people called the big birthrates citizens. That's every single person in the US.

been settled for quite literally decades, if not centuries. No, yeah, I will probably try and do something else on birth right citizenship. The reason I haven't done a lot is because there isn't a great deal to say. Yeah, like, birth right citizenship is a thing in the United States. It has been a thing in the United States for a very long time.

we're saying about. Someone may be a citizen and not show up as a citizen in these databases for a number of reasons, whether it's because they were naturalized or even in some cases where granted citizenship through one of their parents after being in the sole legal custody of that parent who is a US citizen before this individual

is eighteen. This is called the Childhood Citizenship Act of two thousand, which makes a permanent resident become a citizen if they're living with a US citizen parent and things like that. Citizenship kind of rolls over from permanent residency without ever actually having to become naturalized, and getting that added to any kind of database doesn't really happen by itself. You have to then apply for proof of citizenship like

a passport or a certificate. So there's all these sorts of weird instances where someone is a citizen, but it may not show up in these sorts of records, including social security records.

state citizenship list. Now, all of this is intended to take effect before the midterm elections, with the DHS instructed to establish the infrastructure necessary to compile, maintain, and transmit the state citizenship list within ninety days. Though this executive order may very well be blocked by courts for being an unconstitutional breach of presidential power, the followut of this will be determined in the next few weeks as states

and legal entities prepare lawsuits. Let's talk about one other executive order. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that a key section of the executive order quote ending taxpayer subsitization of biased media, is unconstitutional. In this order, Trump instructed all federal agencies to cut funding to PBS and NPR.

The judge in this case wrote that the President can credits reporting from such outlets and fund programs that promote specific perspectives and impose limits on federal grants, but under the First Amendment, the government cannot use the power of the purse to quote, punish or suppress disfavored expression by others, writing that both the Supreme Court and the DC Circuit Court have repeatedly observed that one quote may not deny a benefit to a person on the basis that infringes

his constitutionally protected freedom of speech, even if he has no entitlement to that benefit unquote. The judge rights that the executive order quote does not define or regulate the content of government speech or ensure compliance with the federal program, nor does it set neutral and germane criteria that apply to all applicants for a federal grant program. Instead, it singles out to two speakers and on the basis of

their speech bars them from all federally funded programs. It does so, moreover, without regard to whether the federal funds are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems, which serve as the technological backbone of public radio and NIME television, to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones, to support the Emergency Broadcast system, or to produce or

distribute music, children's or other educational programming or documentaries unquote. Now, besides setting a good legal precedent, this ruling won't have much in terms of immediate effects because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was dissolved last month after being defunded by the Republican controlled Congress. That's not being reversed, but this ruling could make it less difficult for PBS and NPR to receive money in the future, either from Congress or some federal agencies.

trade courts. Right now, it is a fiasco. So the government has set up a portal through which you can get relief now after it was sort of after it was sort of forced to by the courts. The implementation of this has been delayed several times because the government didn't have time to actually get it out. A bunch of the portal is not built yet. The government is claiming that it is going to take more time to

build a whole bunch of it. Yeah, I bet now This is a catastrophe because they're they're dealing with about one hundred and a bit over one hundred and sixty six billion dollars of tariff money. But they have to pay back plus interest.

ticking on this. So I'm going to quote here from Bloomberg Brandon Lord, executive director of the Trade Program's Directory of the Customers Agency, who are the people who are sort of running all this is also part of why it's such a disaster because there's like seventeen different agencies that are like working on this, right, So some of it's like the Trade Program Director, like at the Customs Agency, but there's also just there's different parts of the Customs

and Customs and Border Patrol that's dealing with all of this stuff. Quote wrote that more than twenty six thousand importers who paid one hundred and twenty billion dollars in the challenge terrorists were registered to receive electronic refunds. So far, the government has said that payments could take up to forty five days to review. I would bet that it takes longer than that, because again, the portal hasn't been written, hasn't been like made yet. But partnerspate are still being built.

I'm sure those doge guys are on. I'm sure the veriest thing up running in no time. I'm sure they vibe code their way to a perfectly functioning portal. It's gonna be so good. And and again I kind of beside how much fatastrophe this is. The government has said in court that they're portals set up for two thirds of the Mouney, Right, there's still another third that they're like, yeah, I don't know, we're working on it. Who knows when

it's gonna happen. So there's just again like a third of the hundred sixty six billion dollars that they don't even plan to refund. Amazing. Now, now this is not

even the messiest part of this, right. There's a very good piece in the conversation from Peter R. Krabb, who's the professor of finance and economics at Northwestern Nazarene and University, and also Alison and Graham Larson, who's assistant professor of criminal Justice at the same university, and they point out that it's not actually as simple as okay, you have a you have a item on your balance sheet that is the tariff payments for these companies because for example,

you know, okay, so if you were doing like FedEx, for example, they use right, FedEx has like a number right because they just they passed the cost directly on to the consumers. However, Costco didn't do that. Costco shifted the cost around internally. So it's actually very complicated for them to figure out how much money they like be paid on these terrafts because it was spread a bunch

of around a whole bunch of stuff. They also like changed the way that they were structuring deliveries and stuff internally, and there were so there are a whole bunch of different lawsuits from these companies to try to get their tariff money back because a lot of these were going on before the actual formal refund process was started. So

this is like this is another rolling catastrophe. There's also consumer lawsuits of consumers people who bought shit who want refunds for the teriffs because they were forced to pay

the costs of it. Now, because this is the United States of America, there's another layer of this, which is there are a whole bunch of companies where there are there are these investment firms who have come in and said, hey, we will buy the rights to your tariff money for a fraction of the money, and we will guarantee that you get this money now, and then we will pay ourselves with the tariff money that we got back. So now you have investment firms who are buying up pools

of this tariff money. And I bet, from spending a bunch of time last week week in the trenches of the two thousand and eight financial collapse, Molly, I bet they're gonna start selling securities fixed off of these pools of tariff money. So this, oh my head ache. This is great.

did not comply with his demands. Jesus in his truth, he said, I will skip remarking on capitalization, as is our house style, because as well as these would take half an hour. The United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to

end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made, but if for any reason a deal that's not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormu Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude a lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Khag Island. Probably all this is sick desalinization plants, which we have

purposely not yet touched. This will be a retribution for our many soldiers and for others that Iran has butchered and killed over the old regime's forty seven year reign of terror. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump, as a reporter NBC pointed out, targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime.

ask me that question. Of course, this administration in the United States Armed Forces will always act within the confines of the law. But with respect to achieving the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.

for several decades. Israel attack to desalinate some plant on the seventh of March, very briefly, the Israeli press attempted

to report that the UAE had done this. The UAE had to issue a statement essentially saying like, we would never attack the people of Iran, while we disagree with the state of Iran, while that you've been like outwhoked by the UAE, but them saying like it's no way to attack the Iranian regime to force Iranian people to die for lack of water is a perfectly reasonable and just statement.

in it run. I think that sometimes we see this this very puerile analysis has taken hold on the left in the United States right, which suggests that Israel is entirely driving the bus here, that they cajoled the United States into doing this war, and they're telling the United States what to do, when and where and how. I think that's a very juvenile way of understanding this. In the United States have wanted war with Iran for decades.

Trump talked about it in his first term. Trump also still clearly Harbor's resentment for Obama quote unquote getting bin Laden and wants a sort of similar commander in chief win. His confidence was significantly bolstered after the Venezuela operation, and he thought he could affect a regime change here quickly and then extract tribute from a client's day, as he appears to be doing from Delca and Venezuela now. This

has not worked so far in Iran. Israel, on the other hand, has continued with his own campaign, which is an extension of what we have seen it doing in Gaza, what we are seeing it doing in Lebanon, which seems to be to cripple any state in the region, any population in the region that opposed it. Right, but it genuinely seems that its goal here is to leave itself sort of the only functioning quality in the region and to destroy any other armed actor with very little concern

for the loss of innocent life. The United States in the last week has lost significant aviation resources after Iranian ballistic missiles struck and air based into Saudi Arabia. They damaged at least one E three A wax aircraft and then a handful of KT one thirty five air to wear refueling aircraft. This is not in a significant loss. This is half a billion dollars of aviation wiped out in a single strike. And these are not aeroplanes that the United States has a large number of.

right now and not noticee economic impacts. But the Republic of the Marshall Islands has declared a state of emergency and begun fuel rationing that they're strictly limiting the use of government vehicles. I have reached out to the government to presidency. You can hear my reporting from Republic of the Martial Islands, including the interview with the then president

in twenty twenty three. That's another series that we've made here on it could happen here that I'm going to see if we can get someone from the RMI on for an interview, because I think some of these small island nations right where everything has to be shipped in the cost of fuel can make things extremely difficult for people just trying to eke out an existence there in a place that the United States nuked despite never raising the word and anger against us.

before fleeing to China two days later. After planting the bomb, the brother allegedly alerted officials by calling nine to one to one, but the explosive went undiscovered for nearly a week.

fail to build a bomb. So I guess, I guess I never got to the threshold a bomb building where it would blow themselves up because they just didn't produce it viable device.

Jesus Christ. Alexander Hiffler is a member of the JDL six one three Brotherhood, a new offshoot of the terrorist group, the Jewish Fence League, which has been active at Palestine protests in New York the past few years. This is a Zionist extremist group that has been designated in the

past by the FBI as extremist group. According to the criminal complaint, Heifler was in a group video call with an undercover officer last February in which he asked about receiving training quote for how to use the instruments that were not knives, guns, or crossbows for quote unquote self defense.

That's an odd, odd phrasing in the complaint, cross not okay, things that aren't those things okay, great things happening here, and Heifler later specifically mentioned that he was looking for somewhere to throw molotovs.

Heifler talked about needing to obtain fake license plates and told the undercover that he had an escape plan to flee the country. At the end of April, Mayor Zoramumdani clarified online that Heifler intended to flee to Israel. Great to quote Heifler in their criminal complaint quote, I'm thinking, like, if we wanted to go after Kiswani, we have Kiswani's address, so it's like that that would be easier if you'd

be more comfortable with that. Drive down to Kiswani's home, middle of April, no IDs, no phones, in and out unquote Great. A few weeks later they met up again and drove to Kiswani's home to conduct surveillance. Hifler told the under cover that he had done tests with a molotov and a DNA kit from a pharmacy, and because his DNA showed up on the test, they should wear gloves during the attack. A real genius at work.

of forecast to doom. These viral claims are usually based on some irresponsible reporting designed to drive in an engagement rather than inform about the very real dangerous trans people are facing. This kind of clickbait treats every horrific potentiality as an inevitable eventuality, undermining our capacity to accurately assess

risk and effectively dedicate resources to oppose pressing threats. One of the key outlets profiting from the panic clickbait economy right now has been Pink News in LGBTQ news outlet, which we learned last month is pivoting to a quote unquote reporter free newsroom.

own engagement. Then pink News is using that framing to drive their own engagement. That's why this sort of panic economy is a whole economy. It feeds on itself.

bill was going to pass. The push for a bill declaring trans people as mentally ill was by a single Republican state senator named Gex Williams Jesus Christ.

pass the bill itself. Olivia Croth reported that this amendment does not have such support from other legislators and that GEX was expected to withdraw his amendment for breaking Senate rules on piggybacking failed bills onto different bills as an amendment. And even if this amendment somehow got through, the bill would then need to be sent back to the state House for approval and would spark a huge fight that the legislature does not have time for because the legislative

season is now wrapping up. So after this article from pink news was fact checked by this really good journalist doing doing important reporting in Kentucky, pink News then deleted this article and the viral posts plugging it.

very real attacks Republicans are waging in red states. Yeah, one of which one of a few was on Monday, the governor of Idaho signed a new bill into law that criminalizes trans people using the bathroom that matches their gender, including bathrooms in private businesses. A first defense would be a misdemeanor with punishable by up to a year in prison. Second offense within five years would be a felony, punishable

by up to five years in prison. And this would be prison housed based on quote unquote biological sex at birth, which leads to abuse of trans inmates. This is the most extreme bathroom bill that this nation has seen so far, the most restrictive affecting private businesses.

three strikes law, which is a fucking nightmare. This and we also got the Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday which applies a significantly stricter level of scrutiny to any like ban on conversion therapy, which is probably going to end up killing a whole bunch of conversion therapy bans across the country, which, by the way, eight to one ruling, so a bunch of liberal justices also fucking agreed with this. Yeah,

I like that shit is like actually happening. And then meanwhile we have this like haddock slop bullshit that people are using to get money, and it's incredibly frustrated.

taking up all of the oxygen one night. Meanwhile, literally that same day, a bill like this Idaho bathroom bill is being signed by the governor.