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recognition and gunshot detection and so on. Distressed person detection is another one which is really dodgy.

identity for that person within seconds. Anybody who understands facial recognition will tell you that that is not true, and that can't possibly be true. Facial recognition is never one hundred percent accurate, and in fact, there have been dozens of cases where people have been falsely arrested, wrongfully imprisoned in charge because of incorrect facial recognition results. This has also already happened in the case of Mobile Fortify. There was a woman in Oregon who ICE scanned her face,

and they scanned her twice. Both times it came up with a different identity for this woman, and it turns out that both of those identities, neither of them were the correct identity for this woman.

information or anything like that. There's also the Clearview AI, So even if you've never done any of these, there's another app called clear View which is used by law enforcement and by ICE, which does a similar thing. But it's back end data is all of the photos that have been posted online, so they're using data from social media Facebook, Instagram, everything else to make a face match and determine who you are based on that sort of publicly available data as well.

I will probably use these terms interchangeably. And in short, the way it works is it's a little piece of software that sits on a mobile hotspot, one of those little things that you buy to get like Wi Fi in various places from a cellular connection, and it looks at the traffic between the hotspot and the towers that it's connected to, specifically the control traffic, not what you're doing, but what the control traffic is, how it's connecting into

the towers. It looks for a number of suspicious things, signatures that we've written of what we think are indicative of MC catcher activity. So we've been running this for a year. There's several hundred of these around the US, if not a couple of thousand, but we don't have exact numbers. There's a bunch of these all over the US. We had a bunch of Minneapolis, people have been running them in Chicago, in LA when that was going on.

People have been running them all over the country. Yeah, and we have found some evidence of MC catchers, but a lot less than we expected, or a lot less than many people expected. I actually didn't expect to find many. And specifically, we have not found any evidence of mccatchers being used at protests. And I just stop for your

first second to explain what a sting ray or mccatcher is. Yeah, this is a fake cell tower essentially that tricks your phone into connecting to it so that your phone will identify itself to the mccatcher. These are used for the primary reason these are used for is to track down a specific person. So like what we see in court documents is that these are used to verify that somebody is home before a police rate happens. Right. This is what the vast majority of use for these is. That

is one use. The other potential use, and the one we're actually more concerned about, is that these could be

used to identify who is in a specific area. You can set one of these up outside, let's say, outside of a mosque or outside of a protest an anarchist meeting or a anti fascist meeting is regularly happening, right, and identify the people who were in that meeting by getting those unique IDs and then going to the phone company and saying give us the subscriber information for these people, and that is a far more concerning use, and we are not seeing it so far with ray Hunter being

used for that. What we're seeing is uses that seem to be more in line with the sort of manhunt or like verifying that somebody is home style of operation, which is also what we're seeing in cored documents.

every mailbox, right, And that was really the impression that a lot of activists had about mccatchers, right, that they were in every cop car, that they were everywhere, that they were just constantly being used, And it seems like that's not the case. And I think there's a couple reasons why. One is that they're expensive. It costs about a million dollars for an mccatcher contract, So these are

actually like fairly rare, and they're hard to operate. They require a lot of technical knowledge, they require a lot

of understanding. Cops are idiots. They don't want to actually go do all this work if it's not necessary, right, And it's a lot more expensive then using one of the many other surveillance technologies they have flock facial recognition, things like pen Link, which we can talk about in a little bit, but other databases of location because our phone advertisements on our phones are constantly giving up our location, right, and there's a whole surveillance industry around that selling that

data to police. Also, the other big issue is that there was a legal decision in twenty twenty, twenty nineteen. I'm going to mess this up. Fact checkers will need to get on this in twenty nineteen called Carboner versus USA, and the Supreme Court in that decision decided that to access historical cell site location information, so this is where people were located based on what cell towers they're connected to.

That police would need a warrant for that information. And it seems like at that time a lot of law enforcement agencies decided that that also extended to stingrays. Whereas previously they had not been needing to get a warrant to use their sting rays, it seems like a lot of them thought, oh, okay, this seems like it probably

also applies to stingrays. Therefore, any case using sting rays without a warrant, we'll get thrown out, and therefore we're going to need to get a warrant to use this thing.

software in that was acquired by PenLink. In this sale, there were links to a couple of spyware manufacturers. Anyway, there was a report on citizen Lab that's excellent. I highly recommend it. But the short of it is that PenLink has acquired two of their main products, one of which is called Tangles and the other one is called Weblock. Tangles is a social media surveillance tool that allows investigators to scrape social media for specific keywords and make links

between different people different organizations. Say like anybody who has interacted with the Jean Brown gun Club, or anybody who has interacted with the Socialist ra or anybody who has mentioned the words Antifa. Right, you can go build a dossier on that person, build the dossier on who their friends are, what they're talking about. Scrape specific groups, any sort of left leaning group, right, they can build a dossier on that and who all the people are, who

their friends are. And then they have this tool called Weblock. And what Weblock does is it is a near real time database of the locations of millions of phones worldwide. And so how it works is police can circle a specific area on a map and it will show information about all of the phones that they know, you know that we're in that area in some sort of time frame. And I think that the data gets updated every twenty four hours. So you're going to have about a twenty

four hour delay in that data piece. So you circle an area just like with your finger, and you're going to see who was there, you know, as of twenty four hours ago and back to so you know, whatever

timebrame you said. You can then select any one of those phones that were in that area and see information about that person, which is mostly advertising demographic information like what what sort of age bracket that person's in, what their interests and hobbies are, whether they have kids, whether they're a parent, what their nationality is, et cetera, et cetera.

But you can also see a historical map of where that person or where that device we should say, yeah, has been right, and so you can see where they're, where they spend their days, which is probably their work or something like that, where they spend their nights, which is probably their house, you know, where they spend sort of their afternoons or evenings, maybe a third space, maybe a lover's house, something like that. Right, But you can

see everywhere they've gone. You can see if they were at a specific protest, you could see everybody who was at a specific protest. You could do a lot of different things with that, and we think that they get

that data from advertising networks. We know they get it from apps on your phone, and basically those apps are sending information to advertising networks which is then sold or scraped by penleink to add to their database for this app, and all of this is then sold to law enforcement, so law enforcement can get this information and none of it requires a warrant. Currently, a law enforcement does not think they need a warrant to acquire this data, and judges have upheld that so far.

I know those apps don't have advertising SDKs in them. Yeah, but if you wanted to, if you were extra paranoid, like if I was heading through too something, I mean, if I was heading to something that I didn't want people to know I was there, I would turn my phone off or at least put it on airplane mode, right. Yeah, you know, short of that, you could turn off location services entirely for your phone, right and give no app

your location. But yeah, it's our phones are snitches, man, Our phones are snitches.

you've been involved in some of these devices. I don't know how you want to put it. You're behind some of them.

what's out there. And so essentially you have all these devices that are transmitting around you, and it's totally fine and totally legal to just receive passively, and so things like Wiggle or Kismet you can use on Linux to just drive around and just kind of see what devices are in your area. And through this I came up with a device that was based on remote ID stuff prior to we spy that just detects drones and then transmits it over meshtastic, or it detects a device and

transmits it over meshtastic. And then I was like, it'd be really cool to have a device that if you have a device that you want to know when comes around you, it'll just BEP. And so I just took a micro controller and drew out the design for this thing to connect to a beeper and essentially made the

firmwares that do a few different things. For instance, if you if you wanted to know when a Tesla drove by or something, you could put in the OUI for that or the MAC address for a specific device, and you can just tell you get alerts when devices are around you, essentially, so that's where all that began.

there's no reporting on it. Like if they wanted to get one of these devices, cruise around town and work out like when they were being spied on, Look, what kind of abilities would it give them?

but this is the important one lately. So a lot of people are out on you know, out doing war driving and doing real time research and contributing to, you know, adding to this database of flockcams signatures essentially, and it's either Wi Fi or Bluetooth, and some of them are over cellular too, but essentially this. I made a firmware called flock you when you drive around, it just war

drives flockcams. And a good friend of mine did some recent research and found out that if you put the micro controller into Wi Fi promiscuous mode, it'll detect more flockcams. So that firmware just came out a couple of days ago. So constantly being added to. So if anyone has you know, mac addresses OUIs, please contribute. It takes a village to raise us surveillance detection shit.

why why would I want to look for drones? Drones are super cool. I just fly them around to see the birds. Like, you can explain that drones might also play a role in surveillance.

You can export the data from this and upload it directly to block mapper, right, or there's some other site that'll help you, like plot a route from point A to point B avoiding flock cameras, which I think is really cool. It also just helps sensitize you to how many flock cameras are in your town. Like people like they they they are unobtrusive to a degree, right, Like

they are easy, easy visual noise to just ignore. Yeah, right, but when you're like I was surprised by how much it went off in my town, and then I look up and I'm like, oh yeah, flog cameras, flock camera okay, right, And It got me used to like spotting those cameras around, right, And I think that it's a really it's a really useful piece of propaganda work essentially in that in that way to get people used to spotting these, to get

people thinking about, well, where are these? How many of these are there in my town?

be like, well, I'm gonna be watched constantly. There's nothing I can do, so, you know, sprit, why do anything right? And this gives people something to do, right. There's a thing you can and Americans love buying a thing, right, We love a gadget. And so there's a thing you can go buy or build or set up or whatever. Right, and go start pushing back, even just a little by little, on the surveillance around you.

council and demand that they rip these cameras out. It becomes easier to find and organize with other people in your community, right, it becomes easier to start to you know, think about direct action, you know, in that sense, it becomes a bit of like propaganda indeed, right, Like we're giving people the tool to get off their couch and start to push back and start to fight back and start to become a part of a community. Right. So I think it's really important for that with ray Hunters.

So I already kind of described how it works, but we had we had a few goals with ray hunter. One was to figure out, you know, how often the cell size simulators were being used in the US and

around the world. But but you know, I live I live here, so this is my main focus, but specifically how often they're being used to spy on protesters, right, because we were getting this idea that a lot of activists thought that they were everywhere, right, and I thought that other things were a much bigger threat, right, Like, I'm there are there are things that I'm more concerned about.

But also cel size simulators, stingrays are pretty mysterious, right, Like, we don't we know the broad strokes of how they work, but we don't know the technical details of what exploits they are using to you know, essentially trick people's phones into connecting to them. Right, So this was a this was a chance to try to get some ground truth

information about that as well. Yeah, and we have succeeded in that we have a bunch of recordings from around the US of things that we think are quite likely to be cell size similiators actively in use by law enforcement, and move out some ideas about how they're working and what they're doing, and the other goals that we wanted to try to like calm down some of the fear and uncertainty and doubt among activists about whether this was a threat model that they need to worry about and

give people more accurate threat models.

think that we're actually seeing these Right. But it gives people a modicum of comfort too, Right, because you have this, you have Rayhunter with you, right, and if it doesn't go off, you're like, every time it doesn't go off, you're like, Okay, you know, maybe this is not actually a threat model that I need to worry so much about, right, And then I hope you'll think, well, what do I

need to worry about? Oh? Probably things like PenLink. Probably things like Celebrate and the cops arresting me and making a copy of all the data on my phone. Yeah, right, probably other you know, facial recognition and other things like that, which I think are the things that you should be thinking about and worrying about. Yeah, that's been the point of Rayhunter, and I think it's been successful in that sense.

laying siege to the city. Hopefully there is no next time they lay siege to a city.

And so I think it helps people to have that, Like it's one thing to go on flog map or whatever and be like, Okay, well they're there and there and there it's another one to be like, well, shit, in my going out to get a pizza with my friends, I was spied upon five times, and I think that that is very valuable. At the same time, nobody tried to sell sites spoof and get my information that way. I think that's very important. Let's talk a little bit

about like how people can organize. San Diego has done a spectacular job of signing a contract that it can't stop paying for surveillance cameras. So even if we stop using them tomorrow, we would keep sending our taxpayer money to a spying company, which is great. Because our city is and run by the sea, it will continue to be a shit show forever apparently. But like, let's assume that other people have slightly more competent local government.

your little baby. It captures all of that shit, right, Like, there's a broad range of people in this country who are fucking disgusted at that, people who we might not be used to organizing with. But perhaps you guys could like explain the how or if you're aware of instances where people have organized against state survailan too, would be cool to hear about that.

just a bunch of drivel. You know, you go and then somebody does three talks fifteen minutes each, and so the host was kind enough to give me a twenty five minute slot at the end to talk about flock cameras in our city here, And it just so happened to be happening before they tried to vote on a real time intelligence center that centralized flock ax on and all of our drawn data into one just like wall

of surveillance for the city. And so I did this talk and a city council member showed up our toolest city council member, Kim Roni. She showed up and dearing the questions at the end, I was unsure because on our portal here it said the APD says, you know, we don't share our data with outside agencies. And Kim Roni came up and confirmed that something like four thousand agencies have access to our data. Yeah, we don't share them, but they can request and we just hand it over.

So yeah, that's that's one thing that we learned at that time. So this this prompted a big push that was kind of happening for city council. So a lot of folks that came to that talk came to city Council, and I'm telling you, like, it's folks all over the board. I mean, this is Appalachia here, nobody, nobody wants to be surveilled in these hollers.

a vacuum. Your city council doesn't care, right They they want to score easy political wins. Right block sells them this as an easy political win. Right this they can stop carjackings, right they can. They can find car thefts, they can, they can do all these things that are popular. Nobody likes being carjacked, nobody likes having their car stolen.

Right But when people show up to city council and push back and fight against this, it makes it not an easy political win, right, it makes it It makes it actually politically a bit poisonous to push these technologies.

And like you said, I think we can build very broad coalitions around this, right, and we can start to like, hey, you know, remember how you know how mad you were about flock, Like, yeah, wait till you find out about these other surveillance technologies, right, Like, now, let's talk about campaign finance and how how all these companies you don't like are financing politicians? Right, Like you can you can pull people to the left, and this is a good

way to start interacting with those people. Yeah, right, even people on the right, even sort of our more you know, the more libertarian folks.

what are they going to end up doing? And there's been cases where they've shown that police officers have surveiled their ex partners and then consequently pulled that person over, which is just insane.

for searches, even though that's illegal. And when they don't do that, we know that ICE. You know, people in ICE have buddies in California law enforcement. They text them, they say, hey, run this plate for me. Law enforcement texts, runs the plate, puts the reason down as investigation or crime or you know some other such nonsense. Yeah, and then and then you know, sends the information back to ICE.

make the politicians who passed it feel good. There are some parts about transferring people who are in detention already, But like these these systems give so many workarounds, right, or like if the data belongs to the company and not to the city, or if it's stored on a service somewhere else, like, all of these things provide potential

work around. So I don't think I guess that because your local city council member has tweeted about ice being bad, that that means that your flock cameras are not being used for that. It's very hard to ring fences.

mesh detect. It takes that detection and sends it over mesh Tastic Laura networks. So you can set up a for instance, set up a node way out somewhere and then you can have it sends you a message down the line when a dron comes by over mesh tastic, or you can set it up somewhere and have it say okay, there's a body cam down here or whatever device, a tesla, an anything.

take this and make it on your own. I've made Home Assistant integration, so like if a UI pops up around your house, you can just get an alert via your smart home. You could just go on there, you know, dev it out. If you see something that's that I screwed up, just let me know and I'll fix it or we'll collab. So it's all open source.

Europe and parts of Africa. There's a tp link device that fits the bill better for those areas, and once you buy the hardware, you can install the software on it there. The hardware, unfortunately, is not open source because, like I said, we didn't bull the hardware. We're just purposing old hardware right when this when the project started, you could buy the hardware for like ten or twenty bucks.

Now it's harder to find because of people have bought out a lot of the supply and other other scalpers have wised up to the fact that people are trying to buy these. So unfortunately we've created a whole like mini market. Uh, i'm a I'm a I'm a market maker. Goddamn it. We've a hyper capitalist right here. But no, there's like there's a whole you know, mini market of people selling like already installed ray Hunters on eBay and stuff.

I don't recommend paying more than like forty or sixty bucks for the hardware, but then, yeah, the software is free. It's free, it's open source, right, it's on getthub. You

can go edit it right now. And you know, I know there's a lot of tech folks that listen to the show, And I just want to say, like, there's so many cool opportunities for counter surveillance, right, Like we keep kind of kind of mentioning that, like a lot of police hardware is made by this company Axon, and it has a very unique blue chooth signature that can be easily detected.

surveillance stuff. And so I really want to encourage the tech minded folks to like think about this, Come look at these projects, you know, Come, you know, write your own code or make your own projects.

thing from Colonel for you know, a few dollars. I don't know these priced off the time, it's I don't want to say. Or you could build one for you know, under twenty bucks, right yep, And you are then, for you know, twenty or forty bucks, you are making useless a surveillance tool and surveillance network which costs hundreds of

thousands to millions of dollars. Right The economics here are on our side, yeah, right, Like this is just like any sort of asymmetrical warfare, right Like, it costs millions and billions and really billions of dollars for the governments of the US to set up this surveillance economy, and we can defeat it for you know, twenty or forty bucks each, right, Like, we can do this a lot longer than they can. They will go broke before we do.

And I think that that's really important, right, Like, like the asymmetry here and the economics here are actually on our side. Yeah.

If this is your first time going on GitHub and that there are people you can reach out to, like real nice people. You won't get an AI tech support. Someone will help you understand this shit, and that is cool.

that requires everyone to do what they do best. Not everyone can be out on a street corner whistling a whistle or driving around right. Some people that have HA like a really powerful skill set, And if you are someone who can't be out, you can still help create these You can help code this stuff like it's beautiful when our resistance takes the best from all of us and then we are all better because of.

and they're doing a good job keeping that up. A lot of respect to them, and then yeah, I check out you know Rayhunter dot eff dot org for Ray Hunter stuff, Colonel Panic dot tech for his stuff. Since he plugged my stuff, I guess the other thing that I will plug is open Archive, which is a nonprofit

that I'm on the board of. They're making an app called save which allows you to securely record, archive, and verify videos of whatever you want, say, such as human rights abuses or you know, police atrocities or things of that nature. And so I recommend that project. Go check them out. They're really good folks. If you're doing a lot of cop watch type stuff, that's a good place to go.

and we'll talk about that in a sec. But let's first start by talking about how the document starts with a presidential forward by none other than Donald Trump, dated May twenty twenty sixth. Trump lists counter terrorism accomplishments from the first year of a second term, like mobilizing DHS to remove illegal alien criminals in ghiest sympathizers to arresting the isis K operative who planned the Abbey Gates suicide bombing in Afghanistan, and rescuing over one hundred American hostages.

Speaking of Trump also says he secured the release of the remaining October seventh hostages end quote began the process of ensuring Gaza can no longer serve as a haven for terrorism and extremism unquote, and that's through establishing Trump's own Board of Peace. The president writes that Operation Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury have dealt quote unquote devastating blows to Iran, which Trump calls the world's number one state

sponsor of terror. Other actions Trump admin has taken include designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters and quote unquote deadly cartels as terrorist organizations, with Trump boasting that he quote began using the strength and power of the US military to stop and destroy cartel operations. The example that he includes here is when the US armed forces captured the quote unquote

narco terrorist outlaw Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro. So Trump's opening forward covers the majority of what this sixteen page total strategy is focused on. As Trump writes, quote cartel's jihadists or the governments who support them. Now, what Trump doesn't actually write about in this forward is what most reporting

on the new counter terrorist strategy has focused on. The later inclusion of left wing terrorism as one of the nation's leading terror threats, and that's what we'll be mostly talking about today. Good though we will cover the other two types of terrorism that this guide focuses on now. This strategy is the brainchild of White House counter Terrorisms are Sebastian Gorka, a far right Hungarian commentator who briefly

served in Trump's first term. This new document states, quote, a new type of domestic terrorism has emerged, driven by violent extremists who have adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life. The terrorist threat has changed. We face new categories and combinations of violent actors that make established ways of doing counter terrorism insufficient or obsolete.

This strategy lists three main types of terror groups the US is currently facing narco terrorists and transnational gangs, legacy Islamic terrorists, and violent left wing extremists, including anarchists and

anti fascists. Now we'll get to the narco terrorist stuff later, but let's start with that last line, which is clearly clearly pulling from Trump's Antifa terrorism Executive Order as well as the National Security Presdential and Mirandum Number seven, which directed federal law enforcement to investigate potential crimes relating to political violence and terrorism quote under the umbrella of self

described anti fascism. This is a pretty clear political weaponization of the intelligence community apparatus, and the new counter terrorist strategy doubles down on what ms M seven established writing quote. In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national counter terrorism activities will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti American,

radically pro transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement to cripple them operationally before they can name or kill the innocent. We will do the same with state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on US soil or against Americans anywhere quote.

animating violent conduct. Included NSPM seven, anti Americanism, anti capitalism to Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility to those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

After this new strategy was published, Sebastian Gorka told reporters, quote, we are taking ideology and counter ideology very seriously now, despite that clear political focus, literally calling it left wing extremism, something that Biden never really did with right wing extremism at least some documents.

Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and Conservatives committed by violent left wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.

one killing now on executive disorder. We have reported on a few instances where the Trump administration has tried to weaponize the killing of Christians or attacks against churches as being motivated by like anti Christian bias, even when the people committing those attacks were themselves Christian, and for all that we can tell, we're not religiously motivated against Christians. But they tried to glom onto a few of these incidents.

This document from Trump's first term focuses almost exclusively on Islamic terrorism, specifically ISIS and al Qaeda, but also briefly mentions the Neo Nazi National Action Group in one paragraph and in another reads quote, the United States has long faced persistent security threat from domestic terrorists who are not motivated by a radical Islamist ideology, but are instead motivated by other forms of violent extremism such as racially motivated extremism,

animal rights extremism, environmental stremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism quot but that's really all has on non Islamic extremism in what is a thirty four page document.

and the Al Paso shooting at the walmart. Then the document covers what it calls anti government or anti authority violent extremism, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the Congressional baseball game shooting, and the recent January sixth attack. I'm going to read a paragraph from Biden's domestic terrorism strategy here to compare quote. Today's domestic terrorists espouse a range of

violent ideological motivations. They also take on a variety of forms, from loan actors to small groups of in formally aligned individuals to networks exhorting and targeting violence towards the specific communities,

to violent self proclaimed militias. Among that wide range of animating ideologies, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those who promote the superiority of the white race, and militia vilencxtremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats.

These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence towards the same segment or segments of the American community, whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, or other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI plus individuals, or others. Their insistence

on violence can at times be explicit. It also can at times be less explicit, lurking in the ideologies rooted in a perception of the superiority of the white race that call for violence in furtherance of preservation and abhorrent notions of racial purity or cleansing. Now, Biden's strategy does later specifically mention quote unquote, anarchist violence, though within the broader context of anti government or anti authority extremism quote.

A significant component of today's threat includes self proclaimed militias and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the US government based on perceived overreach. Anarchist violent extremists who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions which

they perceive as harmful to society. The document goes on to mention sovereign citizen violent extremists and other groups that resist or oppose legislative, regulatory, or other actions taken by the government. And this strategy also names a few single issue ideologies which may motivate violence, like abortion, animal rights,

environmental issues, or involuntarily seliment violent extremism. But that little section there is the closest that the Biden's strategy gets to quote unquote left wing violence as Trump would call it. But rather than referring to violence as somewhere on like left right politics, Biden's strategy tries to specifically name the

exact motivating factor driving the violence. His document reads, quote, the definition of domestic terrorism in our law makes no distinction based on political views right, left or center, and neither should we unquote. Biden's ag Merk Garland would often say that combating domestic terrorism is about stopping violence, not policing ideology, and quote unquote, violence not ideology was an often repeated refrain during the Biden administration, and this is

something that the Biden administration definitely acted on. The FBI investigated Stop Cop City under Biden, and a significant portion of the domestic terror related charges while Biden was in office. We're levied against Stop Coop City protesters by the State of Georgia with investigative assistance from multiple federal agencies, and almost all of whom we're charged with terrorism. We're not actually charged with any specific violent crime.

In Trump's A New Strategy, it states that under the Biden admin, US officials quote used their significant powers to politically target individuals in the interests of those they favored, wanted to keep in power, or to help win elections unquote.

The intelligence community classified racially or ethnically motivated violence as the most common type of attack. It's thirty five percent of domestic terrorism, and this category also contributed to the most debts. The second most common type of attack was anti government or anti authority motivated violent extremism, with thirty two percent of attacks, and that category covered a lot of different things, including the malicious stuff as well as

the anarchist stuff. It depends on who's doing the exact categorization, though, yeah. Now, the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists were most likely to conduct civilian mass casualty attacks, while militia types were

more likely to target law enforcement or government apparatus. In comparison, Trump's new counter terrorism strategy does not contain a single mention of racially or ethnically motivated by extremism, not one which is like a which is astounding, right, even like beyond beyond the clear partisan what weaponization like just from a counter terrorism standpoint like this is this is bizarre,

This is this is quite quite a choice. The last pillar of Biden's counter terrorist strategy was quote confronting long term contributions to domestic terrorism, like racism, bigotry, religious or ethnic hatred unquote. Meanwhile, Trump's new strategy says that the fearsome powers of the US government must never be abused quote, whether under the guise of de radicalization, protecting our democracy, or any other pretext unquote. Great, which is I don't even know how to respond to that.

board meetings, members of Congress, or President Trumpet's associates. This administration will continue to prohibit the intelligence community from being used politically against innocent Americans unquote. So that's the main example of partisan weaponization of the intelligence community. Let's start

with this first one, targeting Catholics attending traditional Mass. This refers to a twenty twenty three FBI memo from the Richmond Field Office on how racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists were displaying a growing interest in traditionalist Catholicism up great and how trad Catholic extremist violence could be mitigated by building connections within the church. Sure now, random Latin

Mass churchgoers in Virginia were not being investigated. Rather, this memo was discussing the quote unquote growing overlap between the white nationalist movement and quote unquote radical traditionalist Catholics, and how white supremacists may use trad cafe social media to

promote violence and recruit. This memo also made a distinction from ordinary traditional Catholics who prefer or Latin mass and the extremist beliefs and violent rhetoric from what they call radical traditional Catholics what we would just call tradcats like colloquially. After backlash to this memo, the FBI claims to have scrapped it for not meeting the standards of the FBI.

still Catholic affiliated. This priest refused to speak with the FBI about communications he had with a parisher who was a self described radical traditional Catholic clerical fascist, self described who was posting about conducting a mass shooting at a special needs school. Are resistance against the government, learning how to manufacture pipe bombs and using untraceable means to purchase supplies to manufacture three D printed weapons. Posting about that on this Catholic account.

started attending this traditionalist church and planning an attack. The FBI claims he tried to recruit others with similar belief systems and made comments to churchgoers about his intent to commit violence. He was arrested again and pleaded guilty to possessing a destructive device. So the FBI was looking into this priest because this priest was not talking to them about what the communications were with this Nazi, communications that they know existed, and so they briefly looked into him.

This caused a massive backlash among the right. This is where Marjorie Taylor Green was posting about defunding the FBI. A lot of the dismantled FBI stuff coming from the right was based on this incident of the FBI, you know, targeting conservative churchgoers. Little side tangent there. The other main example from the Trump counter terrorism strategy refers to parents

and school boards. This is in reference to a letter from the National school Boards Association requesting federal intervention into the harassment, threats and attacks against school boards in twenty twenty one. And this letter read, in part quote, these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terror and hate crimes unquote. After this letter was sent, the ag Mayork Garland announced that the government was going

to look into these threats. This too, sparked a huge backlash from the right, claiming that the FBI was investigating parents for terrorism. There was congressional hearings, and a month later, the National school Board Association apologized for some of the language they included in this letter. So those are the two man examples of this of this horrendous government overreach and weaponization of the intelligence community against innocent Americans.

The primary threat is the so called narco terrorists previously mentioned, And this term narco terrorists was invented in the eighties by the President of Peru to describe attacks on the police by drug traffickers, but since then the term has come to mean a variety of things. In this new strategy, Trump doesn't just consider drug trafficking as a means to fund terrorist groups, but also implies that drug overdoses themselves constitute a form of terrorism.

is how they categorize it. Technically, when the US government uses the term terrorism, it's supposed to mean activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coersion, or to affect the conduct of the

government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. It's really that that last half that constitutes the terrorism part that separates terrorism from just any crime. It's the intent to intimidate or coerce civilian populations or influence the government. But the FBI defines international terrorism as quote violent criminal acts committed by individuals and or groups who are inspired by or

associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations unquote. So if you designate a group of foreign terrorist organization, that means that

what they are doing is terrorism. And that last bit leads us to Trump's kind of core strategy to combat drug trafficking, designating cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, which will quote make available additional intelligence authorities and denying disrupt their financial streams and access to the United States unquote.

After the designation, Trump authorized quote dozens of strikes by the Department of War against cartel drug boats, resulting in a more than ninety percent decrease in maritime drug smuggling into the United States unquote. Citation needed. Yeah, we will get into the second priority of the counter terrorist strategy after these ad breaks. All right, we are back for our last section here. Let's start by talking about the second priority of the counter terrorism strategy released last week.

The second is the targeting and destruction of Islamist terror groups, especially Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and isis k. Trump's new strategy blames continuing jie hottist plots against Americans quote in part because of the failed forever war policies, the empowerment of terror supporting regimes like Iran, and a past unwillingness to challenge Islamist ideologies head on unquote. So

how's that going? How's that going? I haven't I haven't checked the news in about three months, Robert, can you briefly fill me in?

takes up a significant chunk of the strategy. These sections of the document largely mirror Trump's National security strategy from last year and talks about how quote unfed mass migration in Europe has been the transmission belt for terrorists, and discusses the need for quote honest conversations about Islamism and how hostile groups exploit open borders and related globalist ideals. The more these alien cultures grow and the longer current

European policies persist, the more terrorism is guaranteed. As the birthplace of Western culture and values. Europe must act now to halt its willful decline unquote.

The main success story of this strategy is the capture of Maduro quote, the illegitimate leader of Venezuela, a cartel boss in league with terror sponsor Oroan and its terror proxy Hezbolah un quote. We've talked about this strategy for like thirty five minutes, and you may have noticed that so far we've really just talked about identifying targets with very little discussion actually on actual strategy on how to counter these threats. That's because the document has very little

on actual strategy to counter these threats. It lays out three steps for countering terrorism, identifying terror actors and plots before they happen, cutting off their arms, funding and recruiting streams,

and ultimately destroy the established threat group. Methods for going about this are quote a series of similar, high intensity but short campaigns against jihadist groups love to see that happen, as well as sanctions, shadow fleet, oil tanker interdiction, and covert operations to disrupt funding and state sponsorship of terrorism. That's it. That is really the bulk of like the actual strategy of how to do this.

through these line by line. New and evolving collaboration between nation states and threat groups such as cartels, alliances between established terror groups, exploitation of new weapons like drones by cartels and jihttists, the remaining threat of terrorists acquiring and using nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, which President Trump has rightly labeled the single greatest threat to this world unquote.

All of this stuff is like Bush era terrorism stuff, Like this is all very outdated, not necessarily outdated, but like it's not cutting edge. I guessed what is what would be the more correct way of putting this, Like you're just talking about drones now in twenty twenty six.

in National Security Potential Memorandum number seven. This new strategy does not designate trans people as a class as terrorists, nor does it categorize trans people as nihilistic violent extremists, like some have previously reported, in essentially states like NSPM seven that being extremely pro transgender can be a motivating factor in carrying out terroristic violence, and the only example provided is the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which we still

don't have an illuminated motive for besides the suspect allegedly expressing frustration at Kirk for spreading vaguely defined hate. The strategy claims, quote, our counter terrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us. We will not permit the weaponization of America's unparalleled counter terrorism capabilities for partisan purposes quote, despite clear political weaponization and Gorka specifically specifically mentioning that we're going to be

countering ideology now. A way to kind of explain what's going on here, Like think about racially motivated or ethnically motivated violent extremism. Being racist isn't illegal, but if someone threatens to shoot up a black church because they are racist,

then that qualifies as racially motivated bilent extremism. The Trump administration is basically using the same mo against people with left wing, anarchist or anti fascist views to either stop crimes before they occur, or crack down harder on people or groups who have committed crimes motivated by those ideologies.

The Joint Terrorism Task Forces were already directed to investigate Antifa aligned groups and individuals quote engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation, and that's been happening since at least October of twenty twenty five. What's in this documents already been in effect for a while, and we've already seen some of the results of this in the federal Prairie Land trial last February, following the shooting of a cop outside an immigration detention facility in Texas last summer.

The government in that case used the specter of Antifa to link a group of defendants together and argue for ideological motive, and a federal jury convicted eight people of riot, conspiracy, and material support to terrorists, even if each individual defendant

did not commit an act of violence. Yeah, So there's cases like that, and then there's also cases against the SPLC, which, while the government hasn't specifically said are part of their anti antifa investigations, you can see some similar through lines there.

the ongoing war in the Middle East. That is really most of what the document's trying to do is actually build up the counter terrorism justification for all of Trump's military actions. And that's one thing that has I guess slightly frustrated me in people's discussion of this new strategy that a lot of it's based on threats to left wing activists in the United States, while not really focusing on the bulk of the document, which is building the

justification for Trump's murderous military actions around the world. Right, actions that are blowing up people in boats, bombing schools in Iran, things that have like a sizable death count, and the sort of logistical and theoretical framework that Trump is building through this document does have really really devastating lethal consequences, And I guess that's what I wanted to focus on a little bit, a little bit more, rather than just the targeting of left wing extremists.

et cetera. And to some extent they maintain their hold through violence, and I believe we must break free from this parasitism. I believe there are other ways of relating with each other with nature, and I'll talk about those ways at the end. By the way, hello and welcome. It could happen here. I'm andrews Age Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined today by.

these kind of grand narratives of history. And of course we know the flowers with these grand narratives. They have limited explanatory power. But I still found use in these narratives and understanding aspects and angles of our history. At least when you take a critical approach to them, because I mean history is, as the name implies, a story.

You know, there are many interpretations and frameworks that can be used to explain or better understand different aspects of history, and so progress offers one framework through its three eras of focus. Of course, history isn't actually so linear. Different forms can co exist, forms can come and go. It is in this sequential development as is sometimes posed. But there are trends that we can observe. And so these three phases that McDonald discusses identifies particular ideas of progress,

forms of parisitism, and agents of history. And I think it's a very compelling connection between the theology, politics, economics and ecology that intertwined to make up history. Obviously not perfectly accurate, but I think it helps us to see certain tendencies more clearly. So we can look at a lot of the anarchist approaches or anarchist adjacent approaches to tracing the development of the state in history. You know, Pt.

Gal Loose had worship and power. JAMEC. Scott has against the Green and in progress, although I don't think he is anarchist anarchist a jacent in progress McDonald's starts with the beginning of recorded civilization in three thousand BCE and looks at the way that many early states developed from a blend of religion, politics, and daily life. So, I mean humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years

before recorded history, right, they spread across the globe. They experimented with all kinds of different social, political, and economic organizations that are now lost. The Time and the Dawn of Everything by David Krieber and David wen Grew kind of wrestles with some of this. In the early years of recorded history, there were many manners of approach to state development. From roughly three thousand BCE to fourteen hundred CE.

This is the first phase of McDonald's timeline. Human societies such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, meso America, and medieval Europe saw a combination of hierarchy with cosmology. McDonald calls this phase Heaven in the book, not to co sign it as an ideal, but to illustrate the prominence of religious

power in this time period. And me I know, even hosting recently about the impact of religion and the seeming has its uns people have nowadays about actually engaging with what it means materially for the experience of domination in our day to day lives.

Greer talks about this, I think debt actually, where a bunch of sort of the administrative systems that would become like credit, are these things that are developed in order to sort of track resources moving into these giant temple complexes, and so you have the situation where, you know, the things that are going to become the building blocks of economics and exploitation for every single subsequent period in history are developed in order to in order to fuel these

sort of hierarchical massive complexes where just staggering amounts of resources are like fueled into into these sort of temple complexes. And that's a you know, that's a thing that continues to current present day.

which established this particular kind of order. And when disasters struck, whether it be floods or drought, certain vasions, this was a sign, a sign of the times perhaps.

becomes hand like that. I'm a lot of great biologists, but this is this kind of thing where like you have this situation where like, yeah, elements of like the old notion of what progress was of like the sort of centralized hierarchical complexes of religion are like excapated by the next thing that's going to happen, and that's taken by the next thing, which is taken by the next thing, and we still have our sort of like versions of it that have been taken through like countless numbers of

world systems.

Victorian War. All of this was interpreted through a sacred lens. People knew what place they had in the cosmos, or at least thought about it in that lens, and they understood what role they had in the divine hierarchy. On a material basis, though, because I mean we do have to think materially and not solely ideologically, these societies engage in what McDonald called continuous and regional parasitism to extract resources like food, labor, and land. And the agents of

this paris are city states, kingdoms, and empires. On the city state level, you had them dominating their immediate hinterlends, and on an empire level, their conquerringe neighbors, done for either integration and taxation or tribute or slavery. But due to the limits of the technology of the time, you know, they didn't have the instant communication and fast transportation that we do today, there were limits to how far an empire could spread. Even the largest empires had their limits

and would often devolve power or fracture. Tensions would begin to build as growing empires struggled to uphold central authority. Belief systems came into conflict, and contact and intellectual traditions developed.

Over time, governance would get more bureaucratic, religions would face reform due to challenges from within, and by the time that we approached the late medieval period around the thirteen hundreds and fourteen hundreds, at least from a europe focused account or Old World focused account, the world is indeed

change it. Transition has begun from this heaven phase to the next phase in McDonald's framework, as in the nation phase from fourteen hundred to nineteen hundred, where we move away from a world of cosmic order to a world more distinctly human, a world of human order religion phasis, of course, but authority has begun to move from the heavens down to Earth, an earth that could be observed,

could be measured, navigated and controlled by human beings. And so we see this in this time with the emergence of the sciences and the emergence of newly minted political theories and the idea of progress. In this time was redefined as expanding knowledge, increase in efficiency, mastering the environment, hence the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, advances and navigation and so on, and consequently parasitism as a process becomes more disposed.

Extraction would stretch across continents and would be carried by maritime tree routes taken resources from different parts of the world, including sugar, cotton, spices, metal, and labor, all flowing through increasingly complex global systems and increasingly industrial supply chains. As wealth starts accumulating in certain regions thanks the extraction of others, you know, the rich is being built up in one place because of the poverty being developed in another place.

As the agents of this time of the kingdoms and empires, but also newly minted corporate charters and nation states. And to be clear, I'm not trying to say that these are the sole agents history in any of these particular periods, which is that they were significant. I don't want to deny the role of you know, the politics from below the rabble, as Graba sometimes refers to them, would have also shaped the development of history.

with all of these systems at the same time. The entire world in like two thousand BC is not just like mirror images of like the Shang dynasty everywhere right Like, there's a whole plethora of different systems that are interacting with each other from I mean, I can't even there's just an unbelievable sort of diversity of like cultural forms, some of which are states, some of which are not.

But yeah, when you're doing a macrohistory like this, you are looking at certain sets of thems and matching patterns with them. But that also is not We're also not saying here but that's literally everything that is happening on earth, because it's not. Yeah, but yeah, just just want to get that in for the people who are gonna get very mad about this, which you are aware of the presence of other narratives. We have we have we have we have done our postmodernism training, we have done our

historical archaeological stuff. I just.

to be constructed and enforced through violence and assimilation. You know, you didn't have this concept of France until France was built, and the whole world has suffered as a result. You know. Yeah, we didn't have this concept of Italy. You didn't have this concept of of of Nigeria, you didn't have this concept. These nation states had to be constructed.

this ruler? Who's like yeah, exactly, you know. So yeah, these things have to be constructed, and they were constructed a lot more recently than people.

Because sure as fuck is not like the Kurds or Yazidis. It's you know, yeah. This is all of which is to say what you were saying, which is this is a violent and bloody process that is a lot more recent that people understand.

exploitation of people's and ecologies. We saw the dire event of the sciences and scientific classifications, but you also saw how that gave way to pseudo scientific justifications for inequality. You know, the create chain of being, the idea of the whit's being on top of everyone else. Yeah, you saw a self determination for some and self determination not so much for others. As by the time we reached the eighteen hundreds, the piece of change was exceedingly traumatic

and volatile. Industrialization, urbanization, communication and transportation converged to compress time and space. We see the booth of new ideas and reformed relations, and by the time we reached the early twentieth century a new phase is taken shape. We are now in what McDonald's calls the system phase, spanning

from nineteen hundred to the present day. The system, the machine, whatever you want to call it, is this fast, interconnected set of systems that organize we live, produce, consume, and even think. The system does not have you know, a single king or figurehead that you can point to as the big bad, despite I think people's efforts to try

and find a big bad. It's really a web of processes and incentives and networks and complex bureaucracies and global markets and industrial and post industrial economies and mass communication and the underground economy and all these different things chugging along almost like it's beastly bloodthirst is something benign. Forgive the alliteration and like to throw in out of poetry every once in a while. So the idea of progress

becomes very economistic in this period. It's focused on growth, output, productivity, efficiency. Our entire economy is basically organized around these metrics. That's the thing that people are worrying about when they're on Fox Business or whatever, the Financial Times, whatever spaces of dialogue about the economy. The focus is not on actually all of people's needs being met. It's what's what's growth? Looking like this quarta? How efficient how we exploit in the planet.

and domestic species. This is the parstism of the first phase. Disparate parasitism, meanwhile, had captured energy from additionous societies, imperial subjects, and both exotic wild and intensively domesticated species abroad. And

that's the second phase. And so the new form, networked parstism captured energy from all of these as well, but with the addition of ancient species of plant to animal in the form of fossils, this enabled concrete energy capture through increase in electrification, and then the digitization and extraction and production and abstract energy capture from extremely large, dense populations of urban subjects. Though the foundations of this system were built in the nineteenth century, it was only the

twentieth century that it came to dominate end quote. So this parst is is networked on another level. You know, it flows through global supply chains. It extracts fossil fuels, you know, cool oil, gas power, maintains the entire cont It maintains transportation, industry, agriculture, digital infrastructure, all of it.

A whole world, as we've seen, has been built around these fossil fuels, and something as simple as blocking a pay smalls straight can have a dire impact on the entire world, much of which is yet to be felt. Even as the strait has now been reopened, it has not been reopened about to be seemingly. I mean, Israel did viod. This is fire though, right, so it probably will not be opened again.

In fact that it already has begun to catch up on us. We're not in the when climate change happens in the future. It is happening right now, and the Nation States are carrying on business as usual and business is booming. The agents of this parasitic phase do not care.

This period saw the rise of corporations, you know, these massive transnational entities, and what you'll notice about this period is that they are the agents of this time, even sometimes more than countries some of them, some of these corporations have more power than entire countries, and to the advantage of mass communication and coblization. We also saw ideological coalitions, which could be seen as another agent in this phase.

You know that the government's institutions, media, tech giants, and movements that share a particular worldview and shape the narratives that determine what people be it workers, consumers, users, or citizens believe it's normal, necessary, and it never tell. As a person living in this time, it is very difficult to see it. You know, you get used to a certain system. It's you know, it's like water to fish. If you abstract and tangible like, what are you talking

about this? There's nothing besides this can be the reaction you get sometimes, and it is not on anyone individual to understand the detailed machinations of the entire system, the biggest picture. Nobody I think sees all the machinations of the entire system. But nevertheless, the system sees you. You know, it sees you as part of its functioning. And to kind of bring it to a close, what I want people to take away from this is that you know

you can be and you are an agent in history. Now, whether you are an agent of history that serves as a cog in the machine or you are an agent of history that serves as a wedge in the machine, that's really up to you. We're obviously facing down enormous wealth, deep inequality, technological advancement, military might, environmental stray, and atomization. The twenty twenties have been a world bind of a decade already and it's not even over yet.

lanes that it couldn't militarily control. And then we fought the one war which would prove that we cannot in fact secure the sea lanes. Global capital. Ipacal transformations are happening in like the very structure of global capital because these people think that like the idea of not using your military power and then reaping the reaping the world spanning like trillion trillion dollar rewards of this, like they thought that shit was like girl, shit, Yeah.

land that one can escape too. Yeah, and so what comes next can be fragmentation, it can be some kind of evolution or calcification, or it can be a social revolution. And the more ones and the cogs and wedges in this moment to actively decide in that. But I think we can do without this parasitism. As MacDonald knowes, there are other ways of relating with each other and with nature. He borrows from the ecological language of commends, salistic and

mutualistic relationships. In mutualistic relationships, organisms benefit each other. For example, we provide hives and protection, while bees pollic crops and produce honey. And commends salistic relationships, one organism captures energy from another while doing neither harm nor good to the other. There's lots of animals and plants who make their home among trees while neither harmon nor help in the tree itself, although some of them do end up helping the tree

in more indirect ways. But finally, in parasitic relationships, which is the kind that has proved disastrous for our world, one organism that be in us has captured the energy of another, or of multiple others to those others detriment our system has put us in the position of essentially be in mosquitoes on planet Is, and not in the role that mosquitoes play in the overall health of the ecosystem, but literally sucking more blood than the system consistin, and

so we have to shake things up, we have to imbolden I think new forms of relations and what those relations look like after you as usual, All power to all the people, peace.

Supreme Court ruling called Louisiana v. Kalay. On a sort of micro level, this is about the question of can Louisiana just eliminate the two majority black districts that it had in its congressional map in twenty twenty four. Getting to this map in the first place was a subject of really intense civil rights litigation to get to the point where there were two majority black districts in twenty

twenty four. On a macro level. What is that stake here is canny state create an electoral map where they spread all of the black voters across different districts in order to make them a minority in every district, thus making it impossible for black voters select the candidate if they're choosing. Until now, the answer was no, because this is specifically what the Voting Rights Act was passed to stop. Like this, specifically like this, this is one of the

very specific things. I cannot emphasize this enough, this specific thing, which is spread out the black vote across a whole bunch of districts where everyone else is white, so that black people cannot choose who they want to elect. This is like one of the specific things it was designed to stop. Again, up until now, you have not been allowed to do this, and this has led to the

creation of what are called minority majority districts. This is a long and complicated history that frankly could be its own. It probably is like multiple people's doctoral dissertations. The short, short version of what a minority majority district is is it's a district where the majority of voters are from a minority group, thus allowing people from a minority group

to select a candidate of their choosing. There are a lot of these districts in the South, specifically to prevent Republican politicians from making it impossible for black voters to elect anyone they chose. And fundamentally, what's at stake here, right, is the constitutional right to elect a candidates of your choosing if you are part of a minority group.

of Jim Crow over discrimination. The Supreme Court has decided no, actually, what they decided is that if the Republican party that controls the legislature draws a map that does the thing we've been talking about, where they spread out all of the specifically the black vote into a bunch of districts so that black people can't elect a representative. In order to challenge this as violation of your voting rights, you have to prove definitively prove that the intent was racism

and not literally anything else. So, for example, and this is the thing that's really at issue here, right, you have to prove that they specifically wanted to do this out of racism and not just because they want to elect Republicans by gerrymandering it partisan lee, which is amazingly a thing that's legal to do in the United States

for reasons that are incredibly baffling. And also you have to be able to prove that they created this map specifically out of the intention to disenfranchise a minority group. And also you have to create a app that would allow them to achieve whatever other goals they supposedly want, like, for example, again making sure that Republicans have all the seats in a state, but also would not be racist.

So you have to create a map for them that would allow them to do this in order to prove that there could be another map that achieves their goals of like partisan jerrymandering, that isn't also racist. It's completely unhinged legally. This is this is a shambles. We have covered some downright like hideous nonsense on this show in terms of Supreme Court decisions, right like that. This Supreme Court has just the lowest level of legal literacy in

like living memory of any Supreme Court. It is astounding the kinds of just absolute horseshit they are popping out with this. This is maybe their worst ruling, which is difficult to prove because there have been so many abhorrent ones. Even just just from a pure legal perspective, this one is so bad it defies belief. So, okay, One of the main issues here is Section two of the Voting

Rights Act. I'm just going to read what it says, quote, No voting qualifications or prerequisite to voting, or standard practice or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision in a manner which results keep that in mind later, which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section nineteen seventy

three B. So again I kind of emphasize this enough. Right the way this is written is that it says that you can't apply qualification or prerequisite to voting, or have any standard or practice or procedure cannot be imposed by the state or any other politicals of that results in the denial or abridgment of the rights of citizens vote and account of race.

constitutional law professor who specifically does election law. He is like, by no means a leftist. He's coming into the right of like Justice Jackson in her dissent in this case. Right, but even he I'm going to quote what he writes about this. He calls this ruling an abomination, which is like a thing that you don't really get from like legal people. They don't say shit like that. I'm going

to quote what he says about this quote. The ruling purports to interpret the Voting Rights Act Section two, but it destroys the central meaning of the section, converting it into the exact opposite of what Congress meant for it

to do. The one thing that is unambiguous about Section two is that the nineteen eighty two amendment to the section's test creates a quote results test for determining whether there is liability under the section, replacing the intent test that the Supreme Court had previously adopted for Section two claims. As the text states, quote, no standard practice or procedure shall be imposed which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen to vote on account

of race. Yet the case defiantly converts Section two back to an intention inquiry rather than a results analysis. So what happened here, right, To make this extremely clear, is that Congress in nineteen eighty two had amended this. They amended what this thing said, right, because Supreme Court had been adopting a standard of intent, right, which means that you have to prove that like these people were like mustache whirling saying the N word in fucking clan robes,

doing Nazi salutes. You have to like prove that they intentionally did this for racist reasons and not any other reason. And Congress went back and went, no, fuck that. If the result of it is racist, then you can't do it, even if, like nominally what you're saying out loud is that you're doing this for non racist reasons. If the result is racism, then you have to not do it.

And Alito goes, yeah, no, fuck that, we're just like flipping it back to an intent standard for no reason other than I want to be able to do racism and help the Republican Party win seats. The other thing that fully talks about is the court is arguing that, like, Congress can't draw from the fifteenth Amendment in order in order to like have the Voting Brice Act work. In the first place, I'm going to quote again, Yeah, the Court in this decision did not need to consider the

question of congressional power to enforce the fifteenth Amendment. That is, because the power of Congress to enact Section two with the Voting Rights Amendment for the purposes of the case could have been sustained not under the Fifteenth Amendment, but under Article one, Section four of the Constitution. Congress has full power under Article one, section four to enact laws

governing the quote, time, place, and manner of congressional elections. Thus, Congress can enact a prohibition against minority vote dilution for congressional districts under a disparate impact theory without any consideration of discriminatory attent, and not rely on the Fifteenth Amendment at all. So, okay, what does this mean? Right? What Alito is saying is that, like, oh well, actually, Congress doesn't have the authority to like write the secution of

the Voting Rights Amendment. They don't have the authority to do it under the fifteenth Amendment because it like oversteps the rights of states to you know, run their own elections. Right, So I'm gonna do a thing I did last time with Fully's thing and just read the full Article one,

section four of the Constitution. By the way, when something says like Article one, section four, you have to remember that all of the amendments, right, the amendment that got rid of slavery, even like the first Amendment, right, the freedom of speech, that's an amendment that's not in the original text that had to be added onto it. And obviously, we have something called the Bill of Rights that, like you know, was like the first ten amendments that was

passed with the Constitution. But that's not stuff that was like put like a freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship that was not in the original text

of the Constitution. That was the amendments put on. This is something that the people who wrote the Constitution were like, fuck if this is going to be in the original thing, right, So Article one, Section four, this is from like the original fucking body of text of the Constitution says, quote, the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the

legislature thereof. But the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators. So yes, obviously they can fucking do the Voting Rights Amendment. They literally have the ability. Like it says in section one, Congress may at any time, by law make or alter such regulations. By such regulations they mean the times, places and manner of holding elections. They could just do this, right, So obviously they can

fucking do the Voting Rights Amendment. It's just it's literally just there in the custumation. It just says that it's all like this, it's gibberish. It's like, oh my god, you can just read the text of the Constitution and it says you can do this. It's god, holy shit. Even from the perspective of like if you treat the law as real, this is just pure Calvin Ball shit, Like I mean, it's just Jesus Christ. Okay, you know what's real and not Calvin Ball. It's it's these products

and services. We are back. So okay, what has the result of this been. It's been about two weeks since the Court did this decision. The Court immediately followed this up by allowing Alabama to jerrymander the shit out of their upcoming election. They're doing this via again, the shadow docket, which is their ability to just be like, no, fuck you, we're not ruling on this case without actually issuing a decision. An unsigned, one paragraph thing from the court can just

dictate what the law is. It's great, it's amazing, and by amazing, I mean Jesus fucking Christ. This happens about a week after the original Screme Court decision. This shadow dockett allows Alabama to put in place a map that was already found to be explicitly racially motivated. Thing Alito said in a decision that he wouldn't do right. Alito says in a decision that he won't overturn a cases that are like avert discrimination and b that he wouldn't overturn this exact case. And then they did it.

So this was three years ago. This, like the Supreme Court said they had to do this. Here's some Slate quote. Alabama, however, refused to comply with that order to get like they got an order from the Supreme Court and refused to do it. Quote, so the lower court imposed its own map, featuring two districts where black voters had a real shot

at choosing their representative. The court also found that in defying its previous mandate, the Alabama legislature had engaged in intentional racial discrimination, violating the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause in addition to the Voting Rights Act. Up until Monday, this decision had prevented the legislature from joining the former Confederate states now racing to eliminate black representatives from their

congressional delegations. Alabama Republicans pressed the district court to lift its bar, but it refused, so they filed an emergency request at the Supreme Court asking permission to re jerrymander black communities in light of this decision. Now, I cantdatmaicize enough. This vote from when they were granted this position. This vote is in like eight days, right, people had already started voting for candidates and primaries, right, And Supreme Court

was like, yeah, sure, yeah, you can. You can fucking rejerry mander this thing eight days before the election. That's absolutely fine. Even though again I can'da emphasize this enough in the ruling, Alito specifically said in the majority opinion that they wouldn't overturn this exact case, and then they did it. It's mind boggling. It used to be, like it really truly did. Used to be that if you were going to do shit like this, you had to like sort of like pretend that you were following some

kind of legal order. And now you just don't. You can just fucking do Calvin bullshit. You can just literally lie about what you're doing in your decisions and then just fucking do whatever you want about it. And obviously, you know, as slave points on. This has been pointed

out by a whole bunch of different outlets. The Supreme Court also had used another legal principle to prevent states that would have were trying to like make more democratic maps, both in the sense of like not being racist and also that would elect more democratic politicians. And even though it was three months before the election, the court was like, wow, it's actually too soon, like it's too close the election

for you to be changing this stuff. But then also now they're just letting Alabama do one of these like eight days before an election. So it's so incredibly clear about what's happening here is that the Court is trying to allow Republican politicians to just straight up rig elections for them by doing gerrymandered districts in a way that lets them eliminate the ability of non white people to vote.

And this is a huge fucking deal. Getting the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act was one of the major achievements of the civil rights movement, right, It's like, one of the biggest goals of the moderate wing of the movement was to have elections in which black people got to actually fucking vote and not have their vote intentionally diluted so they could never actually elect a candidate. And that's what's being done here, right, And this has been

pointed out. It's like anyone who's read any kind of analysis of racial politics in the US. One of the consistent themes of the sort of you know what you would call, I guess like the era of black uprising, right,

the sort of modern era stretching from roughly Ferguson. I thought, I guess you could talk about the stuff in the Bay before that, or roughly from Ferguson through twenty twenty was that the US was not a democracy before the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act because the principle of one person, one vote was not real because you could simply disenfranchise anyone from a minority group, and that was the status quo of the South, and also like a lot of other parts of the country too, was this

very overtibility of these people to you know, not only just like this, this is one of the components of segregation. Right, It's not just like imposing segregation legally in public spaces, right, it's also you know, like it's preventing black people from voting. And this is the thing that the Supreme Court ruling has just effectively destroyed.

Republican politics forever. Right, it's you know, dating back to you if you want to look at like what Trump is and descendsful. We've talked about this at length on the show. The thing that became the sort of religious right was originally born out of like the school choice movement. And the thing about the school choice movement was that

it was an anti integration thing. After losing their fight to be able to have whites on these schools, a bunch of these sort of right wingers were like, Okay, well, we'll just do private schools where we can do that. And that's the basis of modern Republican politics, right, you know, sort of both evangelicalism and sort of Bush administration and trump Ism and Reagan too. Is this shit and this has been what the Republicans have done when they've been

in power. Right, this is a lot a lot of the Trump administration, like what they're doing, Like all of the stuff about DEI, all this stuff about wokeness like this is also a lot of what Dog is doing. Was trying to make it so that black people like couldn't work for the US government.

doing it by claiming both that it's actually partisan. It's just partisan jerrymandering, which is legal to disenfranchised black vetters because black vetters won't openly vote for the party of white supremacy. And they're also claiming that like, not doing this is like infringing on the civil rights of white people, a thing that like is completely you know, just gibberish world turned upside down nonsense. But if they can just do that now because they're in power, because the court

will just let them do this shit. And so I think in a way that really has not been conveyed in the media in the discourse, like this is one of the bleakest moments of this administration, right, you know, on top of just the multiple genocides they're committing, right on top of you know, just like the ethnic cleansing of non white people from the US that ICE is doing, They're what they're doing right now is attempting to end

multiracial democracy in the US. And obviously, politically, I have my critiques of like electoral democracy as a concept, but having it just revert back to only white people get to decide who politicians are is something even worse than what we've had so far. You know, it's a seismic shift in just literally what this country is towards something that unbelievably an unfathomably weak state of pure white rule.

And the people who are talking about this think that it can be reversed just by voting more, but no, it can't. The whole point of this right is to make sure that elections and you know, whatever the will of the people is is incapable of actually affecting the white supremacist state because not white people just don't get votes. You can't just vote harder your way through all of

this shit. You have to actually do things. And you know, if we don't want to live in a white supremacist society, we're going to have to actually take action to combat and actually resist the fact that this is like this is just a pure white supremacist Jim Crow state. Now, yeah, so this has been, it could happen here. I don't have a non bleaque way to end this, but the common refrain is, if you've ever asked yourself what you

would be doing in Nazi Germany, it's right now. And I think you can also add to that right if you've ever asked yourself what would you be doing during Jim Crow, The answer is whatever the fuck you're doing now, And if you're not happy with that answer, then it's time to move.

da Cuna this weekend. British paratroopers from the Pathfind a platoon tandem jumped a doctor and a nurse onto the island, along with supplies, including oxygen, which was critically low on the island. The patient had reported symptoms two weeks after disembarking the cruise ship, and they'd spent that time on the island, and therefore there's a fairly high chance that that they've interacted with other people. Right, the island has

no air strip. They was such a low supply of oxygen that there obviously wasn't time for a boat to get to Tristan Pakuna. So the UK conducted this fairly, I mean extremely You sure this is the first time the UK has ever done it. The island has a populace around two hundred and twenty people and only two medical professionals who are obviously exhausted after delivering care to this person who's on oxygen for several weeks. Yeah, so they jumped a couple more in there, fairly audacious response

to the hunt virus. Secondly, and I think we can also agree of equal importance, Japanese snack food giant Cowbi is switching to black and white packaging.

It has yet to acknowledge the civilian death toll. Government in this area is more or less like only present through its ability to project force like this, and I've seen interviews as locals suggesting the town was under the control of non state groups previously. People remember, the Nigerian government has suggested that anyone doing business with the people at targeting is also a legitimate target, which is how it has justified dropping bombs on crowded markets like this.

CNN is claiming that the CIA facilitated a car bomb in Sinaloa. The article seems to have sources in or very familiar with the operations of Ground Branch. It also alleges that the US government employees who were killed in the car crash last month were members of Ground Branch. More than the fact of this story, it doesn't shock me that the CIA is killing people in weird ways in different countries now that it's one of the things that they do.

and the US en quote. The Supreme Court extended access to remote prescription at melt delivery of the abortion pill with pristone until Thursday, May fourteenth, which is the day this episode releases. The night this episode releases around Thursday. They're expected to make a shadow docket ruling on whether Louisiana's ban on mail order abortion pills can go into effect as the case continues through a lower court. A golden statue of President Trump was unveiled at a Trump

resort in Miami last week. The statue was blessed by evangelical pastor Mike Burns, who said, quote, let me be clear, this is not a golden calf unquote.

twenty nine percent for the Pennsylvania event. It's more than half if you add them up.

or Margie Taylor Green right now. But for me, kind of the biggest issue with this is that it's a refusal to understand or accept the particular moment that you find yourself with them, like a resistance to the self realization that you are living through history and that people

are active agents in history. It's an ahistorical rejection of the fact that some people may look at some of the actions that someone like Trump is doing, whether regarding Ice or the war with Ron, and then choose to act in response, or in the case of the Butler shooting, the result of social disintegration or underregulation manifesting as someone's violent nihilistic expression, similar to the mindset of like a

school shooter. My last issue relates kind of to the second issue, like the ahistorical element, how these false flag shooting conspiracy theories also prescribe Trump too much power by not just turning him into this like invincible god, but then also assuming that, like the US deep State is capable and competent enough to stage major world events like this like brainwash and groom patsies into doing these shootings, and like this also obviously removes the agency and the

clearly defined history other people that do these own shootings. Right, it rejects this Like, like I said, this relates to the second thing. It rejects or refuses to understand the moment that you're living in, and that people actually are active agents of history. And like the people that do these shootings have their own family and their own friends, They have their own history that we can show and prove.

And assuming that all this is like fake, that like the government has like manufactured this or somehow like turned someone who is a normy kind of liberal suddenly into like doing a shooting, or has like fake this backstory. Right, it gives the government so much power. Right, it assumes that the government has power like a magical wizard that totally controls reality.

later at the very campus this trans student attended. This event was going to be hosted by a far right anti trans lobbyist and influencer named Chloe Cole, a teen transitioner who subsequently de transitioned a few years later following an acid trip and then conversion to Christianity. Any such cases, that's fascinating, Yeah, most normal Christian d transitioner.

noise unquote. Then on Tuesday, the National Turning Point USA organization decided to cancel the event, according to University Washington spokesperson Victor Balta. Later that night, Tuesday night, Chloe Cole announced the event was postponed because quote Antifa has assembled a local militia in their own words unquote.

find was using the word militia now. Klokkol also claimed that they were quote explicit threats on my life and that the protest caused a quote level of attention our security team and the local PD are frankly unprepared for unquote. She shared an article from the Canadian far right outlet

the Post Millennial documenting threats against the TPUSA event. Threats like one Twitter user in Canada saying that people should shut down the event, like Milo Unopolis's Berkeley campus event in twenty seventeen, writing quote, make them hurt for scheduling this one other Twitter post with two likes red quote Luckily the bricks in Red Square are easy to grab this time of year. Okay, that's the evidence that Andy

No used to claim that quote. Far left extremists are urging their comrades to carry out deadly violence on two posts, just those two posts. That that was the post that Chloe Cole was sharing via this Post Millennial article, that that was the evidence for these deadly threats. Now, I

do think it's worth reiterating that to these people. They also believe that just calling someone a fascist constitutes a threat of violence, right, something they've been repeating a lot since the death of Charlie Kurk, that just calling someone

a fascist constitutes a deadly threat. In Chloe Cole's video announcing that the TPUSA event was, in her words, postponed, she said that after charlie'ssassination quote speaking on a university campus in twenty twenty six can come with deadly consequences. But towards the end of the video, she stressed that quote, this is not a win for Antifa because truth will always win. I am not afraid of Antifa. That a quote ragtag group of wanna be revolutionaries on cross sex

hormones won't scare her. The enemy is both strong and weak.

The document says that counter terrorism activities will quote prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti American, radically pro transgender, and anarchist unquote. I did a full episode about this with Robert earlier this week, if you want to check that out.

as terrorists. Like NSMP seven, it essentially states that being quote unquote extremely pro transgender can be a motivating factor in carrying out terroristic violence or threats. Since last October, joint Terrorism task forces across the country had been directed to investigate ANTIFA aligned groups and individuals quote engaged in

acts of political violence and intimidation. This new document is just describing things that are already happening while building Trump's justification for military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Western Hemisphere, regime change in Venezuela, and the ongoing war

in the Middle East. But in the wake of this new strategy being released, I wonder if tpusay's canceling of the event and Chloe Cole's language in the announcement might also be designed to coax Trump's FEDS into going after radical transgender ANTIFA terrorists, whether that may be individuals who possibly sent threats online that I just couldn't see, or just made semi questionable posts on Twitter dot com, or who simply spread the protest flyer online, or the protest

organizers themselves. Yeah, I think that is something to keep in mind. This new counter terrorist strategy, it mostly serves as a chilling effect for speech and for organizing. Like I said, it doesn't actually grant new powers, but it can scare people into thinking that the Trump administration is designating a whole class of people as terrorists and stuff like this, you know protests. Right, that is one thing

that they can investigate. Your threats online, That is something that they can investigate, right, That is what they are actually looking into. They're not just investigating random trans people as terrorists. They will be looking into you know, threats or questionable hosts made on social media. Right, those are the things they actually can look into. And I think some of Chloe Cole's language about the quote unquote deadly threats she received, stuff like that could be used bunch

of up administration as a pretext to investigate people. Yeah, whether or not those threats even were real. Right, I did not see anything that I think constitutes a deadly threat based on the post millennials reporting, but her saying that might be enough for a local FBI field office to want to investigate, you know, student activists at this university.

they've been making. And I think that, like you're right on the money, this is something to pay attention to, Like does this get a response? Is there an actual like investigation? Do we wind up see someone get indicted for a Twitter post? Or you know, if someone made a threat that we're not privy to, do they get indicted for that, like or do we see something that does look more like a witch hunt where they're going after like a protest organizer. That'll tell us a lot

about kind of what's coming in the immediate future. But right now, I don't see anything different than what they've been doing, which is kind of like incompetently and haphazardly flailing at everything, sort of vaguely lefty.

from Turkey to do so. There were some und backs to January, but small arms, as we've said before, would not really have tipped the balance here. Ram's army police besiege the IGC, as we've seen since February, can survive assault from the US and Israel. It's not going to be toppled by a bunch of people with aks. They would have bombed the whole city, so they had to. We covered this at a time in our episode about it with Gordayin, but most of the Curtiss groups I've

spoken to don't have responses at this time. But the PAK that's the Kurdistan Freedom Party sent me this comment regarding the protest in January. Quote from the end of December twenty twenty five through approximately January twentieth, twenty twenty six, the Iranian regime committed an unprecedented massacre across the Ilam, Kamanchan and Lauristan. The mobilized hashtal Chaby militias into Persian cities and deployed a massive military presence into our territories.

In order to defend our citizens, we targeted the outposts and military basis where these forces were stationed. We confirmed that, yes, we carried out these operations. So what they're confirming there is that they carried our operations, not where the weapons came from, right, but we saw those operations in January. Pull at Yan put at Yan, famous I guess for being a founding member of the epigae or of Fuendecard, an SDF commander. He's also an author in the politicians,

did make a statement which I thought was interesting. I'm going to read it at least a good amount of it because I think it's worth it. Quote. The Kurds are not mercenaries, Kurdish blood is not cheap, and the lives of Kurdish youth are not for sale. The Kurds are fighting for their freedom, dignity, and political rights, not to serve the temporary agendas of regional or international powers

without any clear outcome for the Kurdish people themselves. At the same time, the Curds have repeatedly shown their willingness to cooperate in fighting terrorism, extremism, and instability in the Middle East. Kurdish forces played a central role in the defeat of ISIS and contributed greatly to regional security, but cooperation must be based on mutual respect, clarity, and long

term political understanding. I do not know the acurity of the recent claims regarding weapons are literally sent to protesters inside it Ran. If such operations truly existed, then the American side should clearly explain which group, force, or individuals receive those weapons. A nation of tens of millions of people should not be collectively accused through vague and unverified statements. Yeah, it's pretty good.

his claims to support it. It doesn't matter, But it does matter in the sense that Trump clearly is personally mad at Kurdish groups and does not seem to be interested in supporting their aspirations for autonomy, which is disappointing. But I guess I don't know why. Maybe because he feels that he alone to take credit for the defeat of the Islamic State, like I can't. I can't quite work out what to cause this, other than maybe he perceives them to have slighted him by not giving weapons

that we don't know anything about. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the broader situation in Iran. I don't want to make this true social review. I know I've read Trump's truth in the past. I have reached a point where I can't do that anymore.

on quote massive life support. Meanwhile, Iran's parliamentary speaker Mohammed Galibath has said quote around forces are ready to deliver a well deserved response to any aggression. Mistake and strategy and mistaken decision will always lead to mistaken results. The whole world has already figured this out. We have prepared for all options. They will be surprised. This comes as Trump calls Iran's peace demands quote a piece of garbage

and quote a stupid proposal. Iranian demands allegedly included an end to Israeli aggression in Lebanon and sovereignty overit straight at home moves. Trump has also alleged that they walked back an agreement to surrender and rich Ranian. We've also found that ran has retained a large number of their missiles and their launch capacity this week. It's also been reported by Jim Laporter, who is one of the few people still doing decer reporting at CBS that Pakistan has

provided safe haven for Iranian aircraft, shielding them from US strikes. Allegedly, some civilian aircraft were also sheltered in Afghanistan, but then had to be moved when Pakistan began bombing Afghanistan in March. Iran has friends everywhere, I guess. The United States sent a ballistic missile submarine to Gibraltar this week. These higher class submarines to provide the survivable element of the nuclear triad, or the most survival element of the nuclear triad.

any permission from Congress to continue with this war. So we will be back next week to keep you updated on what might be operations sledge Hammer.

I did a quick little bit of googling before coming around here and found some fun headlines, one of them in the Lion California mayor pleads guilty to serving Communist China. And that article was written by John Ransom, who's a senior contributor at The Lion and also has written for The Epic Times, which itself is like the agent of a foreign power effective. Yeah, the WCBM had a headline this democrat mayor just came clean about working for communist China.

us against one another. In this case, an elected mayor acted at the direction of CCP handlers, coordinated with Chinese intelligence linked individuals, and used a local news platform to spread CCP propaganda. And so let's talk about that. How much of this is true? Right?

Mike's son, are accused of basically having run like content farms at the behest of Chinese government officials, Like they were putting out articles on like the alleged genocide in Zinjang, denying like the Chinese government had done anything wrong there there was any genocide at all in the region, and so it's kind of like propaganda stuff like that they were serving as like a fire hose of propaganda. Per

the Justice Department. In June of twenty twenty one, a PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the we chat encryptid messaging application with pre written news articles, including a PRC official written essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated China's stance on the Zinjang issue. There is

no genocide in Zinjang. There is no such thing as forced labor in any production activity, including cotton production, spreading such rumors due to fame, China destroys Zinjang safety and stability, weakened local economy, and suppressed China's development. Minutes later, when posted the article on her own website and responded to the PRC official with a link to the article on her website, the others in the group did the same. The PRC official responded, so fast, thank you everyone, and

this is bad. Genocide denials bad. The spreading slop content on behalf of a foreign government is like bad. It is important to note that this is not like spying or sabotage in any meaningful way. She's not acting to

like try to damage the United States. She's acting as like an unregistered pr agent for the Chinese government, or at least that's what she had done up to this point in her life, and like everything that she was doing was legal if she had disclosed who she was working for, which I think is also an important thing to note because sh like this happens all the time in the media, Like we all see, there's tons of content that is the result one way or the other

of some government's influence operation, and for the majority of the time when it happens, nobody gets tripped up, you know, either because they have friends in power or because they don't quite cross a line. And I lead in her friends were not very savvy about what they were doing. Yeah, but they were also not operating on a very large level,

like this is not a big operation. One of the notes in this charging document is that Eileen sent this Chinese government official at screenshot showing that the article had been viewed fifteen one hundred and twenty eight times through her site, which is like, not, we're not talking like big deal influence ops here. We're not talking like sweeping powers over like public opinion. Now, perhaps that's what they

hoped Eileen would kind of rise to over time. She didn't seem to be like a kind of rising star in local government in southern California. She got endorsed by some prominent Democratic Party officials, and she was still in touch with her Chinese government handlers at this time. This whole period in which she's like being charged for working as an agent of the Chinese government is like twenty

twenty through at least twenty twenty two. So yeah, this is like, you know, a bad thing, and it's good that this got found out and that she's not continued to be the mayor of Arcadia. But also this is not like the scary thing that the right wing press is making it out to you. She was not here to like subvert the US so that it could be invaded or destroyed. She was there to try to stop people on the internet from being mean to the Chinese government.

Like that was the primary use that they had with her. It's just not that like actually scariest story or anything. It's just a kind of thing that happens. This lady happened to become mayor of a small down basically, which is wild. It's crazy if that happened. But like this is going on all the time.

spy for the Chinese government. It's interesting that they're doing this type of stuff at like the exact same time that Trump just got just like it is like arriving in China.

state constitution. According to Virginia's constitution, the legislature has to vote twice to pass any proposed constitutional amendment before it gets put on the ballot for Virginia voters, but these two General Assembly votes must be separated by a state general election. The first General Assembly vote for this redistricting amendment passed in October twenty twenty five, before the November general election, and the second vote to approve the referendum

happened next January, so a few months ago. The Republican challengers to the new voting map argued that because early voting had already begun, the General Assembly's first vote in October did not actually occur before a general election, and that was the grounds the State Supreme Court used to

block the voter approved amendment. The four judge majority ruled the intervening election requirement was violated because the general election quote began on September nineteenth, twenty twenty five, and just ended on election day November fourth, yeah I.

rhetoric as Trump. We'll get to that in a sec So Justice de Arthur Helsey wrote to the majority opinion, saying, quote, this violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void. Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited they're constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four

days before the last day of voting, unquote. So the court said that the reason why they have this to vote requirement across two different general assemblies is to give voters enough time to not just support or not support a constitutional amendment on the ballot, but then also vote for state lawmakers who will either approve or not approve the constitutional amendment in the legislature itself. Right, So that's

what they're saying. It's like this, this process of having these two votes is to ensure that voters have a say both in who they put into office as well as on the ballot. And they're saying that this process was violated because early voting had already commenced by the time that the legislature actually voted on this proposed amendment.

Chief Justice Cleo. Powell wrote in the dissent that the majority quote broadened the meaning of the word election as used in the Virginia Constitution to include the early voting period. This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and

federal law define an election. By extending elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia beyond a single day, the Majorities formulation would directly conflict with the federal mandate that elections for federal officials be held on a single day, so under the Supreme Court of Virginia's new ruling, the district map drawn in twenty twenty one must be used for the

upcoming election this November. The midterms, the new map would have won Democrats four more House seats, but considering this ruling by the state Supreme Court, Dems are now eight seats down in the national redistricting battle, which the latest gutting of the Voting Rights Act will only make worse.

One of the more extreme measures debated was the possibility of replacing the entire Virginia Supreme Court by lowering the mandatory retirement age from seventy five to fifty four and then having a new court rehear the case.

on this. It's also unclear if they really would have had the bravery to pull such an extreme maneuver, right, something that may be the correct thing to do and maybe something they should just do anyway, if they have the power to fully replace their Supreme Court, why not. Because the Democrats are currently in a majority of control of the state legislature right now, why not do this anyway?

To a certain extent, Also, Abigail Stanberger can only serve one term, so you know, you're not going to lose much political capital by pulling a kind of insane move like this. But it's not going to happen at least right now. Yeah, nope, Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Scott Sortiville told The New Republic quote, as a practical matter, the move would not be capable of being implemented given

the time frame. Now, despite that May twelfth deadline. On Monday, Virginia Attorney General j Jones and Democratic State lawmakers filed an emergency appeal asking the US Supreme Court to put the state Supreme Court order on hold for the upcoming midterm election, arguing that the state court based their ruling on misreading the federal definition of election and by adopting its own definition, the state Supreme Court infringed on the

state legislature's power to regulate federal elections quote. By forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment that people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their

right to the lawfully enacted congressional districtsuot. This case will be initially decided by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles the emergency appeals from states covered by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the US Supreme Court may argue that they don't have the authority to intervene because the Virginia Supreme Court ruling cites state law, not federal law.

And The New Republic also reported that state Senate majority leader Scott Saureville confirmed even if the Supreme Court gives them a good ruling, that ruling could be unlikely to impact this upcoming election cycle due to this May twelfth deadline.

have that. There's lots of people on the Democratic side that are much more rule followy than a lot of the Republicans, as we have seen now Virginia may be able to still pass this redistricting map in the future by spreading out the process over a bigger period of time to not create this confusion about the early voting period. But the map will not be able to go into effect before the midterms, but it still may be able

to go into effect in the future. I do think it's also worth noting that the same day that Virginia filed this appeal with the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court also paved the way for Alabama to eliminate one of two majority black districts before the midterm elections by overturning a lower court order that blocked the use of a Republican backed map from twenty twenty three. So the Supreme Court is currently weighing in on not exactly the same, similar similar things in other states.

what keeps our interstate infrastructure functional. And then state level gas taxes are often also like supporting like state local roads, right. And so Trump has talked about temporarily repealing the gas tax for like a couple of months, there have been Democratic proposals that are very similar. Graham Platner, who's about to be a Congressman from Maine, it's a Democratic nominee. Yeah, who's currently the nominee but is almost certainly going to win.

temporarily paused the federal gas tax. Right, So this is the thing that happens. It's just always a bad idea because it's the reason why you see people in the left and right make suggestions like this repeal state or federal gas taxes is because it's really easy. It's an easy way to say, like I'm looking out for you, I'm trying to take care of regular people. Gas is too darn expensive already, We've got to do everything we

can to make your life easier. The problem is the Highway Trust Fund, which is absolutely critical for our roads being functional, is already always running at a deficit. In twenty twenty four, it was a deficit of about thirteen billion dollars. The main reason for this is that, like transportation,

infrastructure is aging every single year and falling behind. And at the same time, that gas tax is not like peg to inflation or anything, so it has not been keeping pace with the actual needs of the Trust Fund. So anyway, we're already in a really bad situation with the HTF. Every time we pause these taxes, it gets much worse. And I'm worried right now that it was reasonable it may sound and say something like, well we

should just have the rich pay for that. You're never going to have any kind of like move that does both of those things at once. They're going to start by repealing the gas tax, and then they'll never get around to replacing it with anything, and then the roads will just be bad forever. I think this is a bad idea, and I think you should be a little wary of politicians doing this because it's an easy way to get a win. But that said, damn near everybody

is so how wary can you actually be? It's just a really irresponsible, bad idea that has a lot of bipartisan support.

You knows. Me has talked about some specifics around the no tax on Tips policy, but there's there's there's been like a wave of these, you know, small targeted tax cuts on on on on various little things to kind of lift lift the financial burden that Americans are facing, you know, the better ones, you know, the ones like like like Platinum Strategy, which has a part of his

plan increasing taxes on billionaires and oil corporations. But these sorts of taxes are just like little band aid solutions and that are almost like consolation prizes for not being able to just raise the corporate tax rate or income

tax brackets. Right, And it's it's like we're adopting these consolation taxes for this presumed impossibility just actually raising taxes to the level of you know, if you look at the United States in like the nineteen fifties, super super high, super high level of taxes that actually funded social services.

And you know one thing that could be frustrating about these these sorts of more like slopulist tax angles is it you know, it undermines the vital role of taxes to actually fund social services.