Cool Zone Media.
This is it could happen here? Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis to name, joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode recovering the week February eleventh to February eighteenth. Some small news items up top. Last week, the FDA declined
to review a new flu vaccine from Maderna. On February twelfth, Tom Hoeman announced that Operation Metro Surge has concluded and quote significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through the next week.
Un quote.
Zarmamdani has ordered a new audit of city agencies to ensure compliance with sanctuary city laws in New York and Stephen Colbert says that CBS refused to air his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Tallerico, citing the FCC's equal time rule. Despite this rule historically having an exception for late night talk show interviews. Last month, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to enforce the rule regardless of the
well established President that excluded talk show interviews. And finally, the owner of a warehouse facility in Hutchins, Texas, so so that they won't sell or lease the building to the federal government as a detention facility. The city's mayor and council all opposed the project. Seizure by eminent domain is still possible.
Yeah, And I guess with that, there's been campaigns in a couple of other small, traditionally conservative rural areas to not lease facilities for ICE. And it's still a little unclear, and I suspect it's kind of column A columbee. How much of this is, you know, nimbiism and how much of this is resistance to ICE specifically.
Yeah, we covered a little of that in the episode I did on Social Circle, which is in Georgia last week.
But I think it's fair to say both.
Yeah, And obviously when I say nimbism, I don't mean it in a bad way.
It's bad to have this in your bag.
Yeah, right, But like their issue was into moral one in some cases, Yeah.
In some cases.
I think in some cases it's their little columny, little column B.
Yeah, it's hard to tell.
Yeah, And I think like It's worth noting, for instance, hearing in southern California right a town called Dulzura, pretty small town. Maybe you've heard of it from when the KKK did border patrols there back in the day. But the Border patrol are trying to build a big new facility there and have been for some time called New
brown Field. There has been local opposition to that among people who are very like people who I have spoken to are otherwise conservative, and like, some of it is, yeah, I don't want this changing the character of the town. I don't want a giant detention center that would eclipse the population of this very small town. Some of it is also like I want them to be locking up
people out here. We have a nice life out here, and you know, we have little lots of fields and horses and space, and it seems like it would be really fucked.
Up to have people detained out here.
Like I think like that that Nimby impulse can sometime like could still combine with even people who are not you know, abolitionists. They don't want to be confronted with the horrors directly next to them.
Yep.
And we'll talk a little bit more about the numbers like ICE's polling numbers, like how popular they are with Americans. But one of the things we've seen this year is that like they've been shedding support even from Republicans. So like, you know, whatever debate we have here, that's like certainly not a non factor.
Definitely.
I think it's now time for us to talk about the biggest news story this week, which is that Shilah buff was arrested in New Orleans during Marty Graw after getting into.
A series of fights. Who he was in the movie Holes?
Oh?
Yeah, he was also in a different production called Holes, but not based on a book.
He was in Holes.
I forgot, Yeah, it was in both holes.
So I don't know who this person is.
I've never Yeah, he's a he's a child actor who is a who was very popular during the early two thousands and has gone. He played the Indiana Jones's son in the reboot event or in the new in the fourth Indiana Jones movie God and then he has He has since kind of fallen into madness and disrepute. He's a spousal abuser. He's repeatedly assaulted people in public. He showed up on that webcam white supremacists were drinking milk on once for reasons that are still to this day
somewhat unclear to me. And he got into a fight in Marty Gras, which is just just just a fun little bit of news. My favorite part of this is that he assaulted a guy. He was repeatedly restrained by members of a bar, and whenever they would let him go because they just wanted him to leave they didn't want to call the cops, he would then continue to attack the guy he was assaulting until they forced they were forced to call the police and have him arrested.
And I've been in Marty Gras over the last few days, and let me tell you, getting arrested by the police during Marty Gras not easy. I don't have a lot to say about that other than I was surprised by the number of very political floats that I saw, particularly at least one that was entirely paper mache ice guy's in a very like, non flattering way. There were a lot of like costumes and a number of like references
on floats. There's a couple of pretty hideous caricatures of Trump on floats, and they all got like a widely positive reaction and I find this interesting, and I'm bringing this up because the research that I've largely been doing for the EED this week is trying to get a handle on, like where Americans are polling right now and how popular or unpopular is the president and his agenda, because like we see articles every week about like Trump's polls hit a new low, or the most recent article
that I think it's gallup is no longer going to be doing presidential like popularity polling. But I wanted to get a look at, like how the actual parties and their agendas are holding up. And it's a pretty shocking gap between I mean September October, like fall of last
year and today. So in September of twenty twenty five, per Yugov, the Democratic Party had about a sixty four percent unfavorable So like sixty four percent of polled Americans didn't like the Democratic Party and a little less than thirty four percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of
the Democratic Party. And if you actually look at the graphs for those that you GOV presents, they're basically making like a wineglass shape, right, So what that means is unfavorability is moving up and favorability is moving down rapidly, like at the time at which those bulls were taken in September of last year. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, neither party was popular, but the Republican Party the wineglass shape was a lot more muted, more like a shot glass.
Fifty five point four percent of Americans pulled by Yugov expressed a unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, at about forty two point three expressed a favorable opinion. You can compare this to October twenty twenty five polling by Pew Research, which showed something similar. Sixty four percent of Americans were frustrated with the Republican Party, Seventy five percent of Americans
reported being frustrated with the Democratic Party. Forty nine percent of Americans poll replied that they were angry at the Republican Party, Fifty percent reported being angry at the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans, thirty six cent of Americans felt hopeful about the Republican Party, twenty eight percent of Americans felt hopeful about the Democratic Party, and then twenty seven percent of Americans were proud of the Republican Party sixteen percent Democratic Party.
Those are pretty bleak numbers.
For the Democrats coming in the fall of twenty twenty five. Like that is kind of black pilling stuff, right. This was in the fall of last year, pretty rapid change fro where things had been about four years ago. For example, in September of twenty twenty one, about sixty four percent of Americans had expressed frustration with the Dimmerocratic Party as opposed to seventy five percent four years later.
So that's all fall of last year.
Now, between when the polls that I read to you came out and now we've had a cup several major things happen. One of the more significant was the long shutdown, which was disasters for Republican favorability and for Trump's own favorability. And we also had a significant I mean, obviously in LA and in Chicago. Ice had been doing very terrible and very like you know, I guess I should say, like documented crimes, like horrible things that were spread widely
on social media. But that has also accelerated massively in the first couple of weeks of twenty twenty six. And what we're seeing now in more recent polls taken in late January and from anywhere from like kind of early January to late January and early February is a significant reversal.
So NBC News's Decision desk collated a bunch of different polls like Daily Mail, Marquette, Wall Street, Journal, Yahoo, you go of Fox News, Emerson, and over the last month or so, you're looking at an average spread of all of these polls of about negative nineteen point nine percent favorability for the Republican Party and about negative twelve point
eight percent favorability for the Democratic Party. So when you think back to those numbers from last fall, that's a pretty dramatic change, and it kind of correlates to a dramatic change in Trump's own favorability, which has gone down by about twelve percent per the average of those polls that kind of aggregated by NBC Newsdesk.
Their article notes quote.
Ipso's polling released in late January found fifty one percent of Americans say Trump's immigration policy is on the wrong track. Amazingly, just a year ago, American said Republicans have a better plan, policy, and approach than Democrats on immigration by a twenty two point margin. Now that advantage is down to five points. So while Trump is underwater with immigration his and the
Republican Party. These policies towards immigration are still more popular than the Democratic Party's responses to immigration, but they have also collapsed in terms of like. The gap between those two things, again, twenty two point margin to a five
point lead is a is a pretty dramatic narrowing. And one of the things that has come along with this is an increasing agreement among Americans that ICE has not only gone too far, but needs to be if not abolished entirely, then severely curtailed, and a lot of Americans a shocking amount currently support abolishing ICE entirely. A PBS News NPR Merist poll released recently found that a majority of Americans feel ICE is making the country less safe
and has gone too far. Six in ten Americans disapprove of what ICE is doing, only about three in ten approve of it, So by a two to one margin, Americans disapprove ICE's operations to approve of their behavior. This is a very like political breakdown. About ninety one percent of Democrats disapprove of ICE, sixty cent of Independence disapprove of ICE. Meanwhile, seventy three percent of Republicans approve of ICE. But even that number has dropped fairly recently.
Right.
In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe Ice hasn't gone far enough dropped from eighteen percent to twelve percent over the last year, and only about twenty two percent of Americans feel like Ice is doing a good job compared to twenty six percent of Americans a year ago. So we're seeing like pretty unequivocally Americans rejecting the Republican tactics on immigration, and they tend to be blaming Ice
for it, right Like. That's one of the things that's most interesting to me is that both Ice and President Trump have seen the most dramatic collapses in public support, which suggests to me that, like, Americans are kind of tying these two things together. Currently, per Yugov, as of January twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, more Americans support abolishing ICE than oppose it. Now, this has not mean a
majority of American support abolishing ICE. I've seen some people mistate that forty six percent of US adults, as pulled by Yugov, somewhat or strongly support abolishing Ice, twelve percent are not sure, forty one percent somewhat or strongly oppose abolishing ice.
Yeah, that's still pretty striking.
Yeah, say a plurality, right, Maybe now would be a good time to talk a little bit about like where Democrats, different Democrats are, different wings of the Democrat Party are on abolishing ice, because I think it's one of these areas where like the further up the party you go, the more detached from that public opinion you get. So maybe you will start the Keem Jeffries, Democrat leader in the House, hit him on the Joy Reid Show on the topic of abolishing ice.
Why not lead and say abolish ice? Because what you're telling us is you want our taxpayer dollars to pay for a lawless, massed armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities. And I'm trying to figure out how you, as a leader can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should be going twice, I don't.
Understand anything that you just said when I've moved English, well, I don't understand anything that you've just said to me when I've made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutaliz or kill them. That's the whole reason we're in this fight right now. That's the whole reason the DHS is getting ready to shut down.
That's abolish abolish ice.
That is a listen. I'm going to use the language that I want to use. You can use the language that you want to use.
You can see Jeffries visibly kind of tense when the phrase abolish ice is used, right like, he's yeah, he wants nothing to do with it. The immediate responses is to go to affordability. I do want to note that when he was previously asked if he would use the appropriations process to rain in eyes, he did exactly the same thing.
But why not use the appropriations as to rain in ice, leadergen.
For an operation?
No, what I'm what I'm focused on right now, Chad, is to make life better for the American people by extending the affordable care and tax credits, which, by the way, a lot of folks in this institution believe was not possible. But Democrats made clear before the government was shut down that we were in this fight until we win this fight on behalf of the American lower the cost, save health care.
That's our objection.
Why there, he does the same thing, right, he goes back to affordability, which is something that Democrats have done for the last year and a half right when asked to take a strong leadership stance and ice, far too much of their leadership has instead like tried to deflect to affordabilit I do want to note that, like they are now doing exactly what he was deflecting from there, right, Yeah, and that was only less than a month ago.
It's interesting because it's like this cowardice on like specific terms and messaging. Yeah, even though they are using the provisions process to try to rain an ice like that is that, Yeah, that is what they are doing now. But it's like a complete complete cowardice or actually like yeah, trying to like use like public pressure to your advantage at the moment, Like.
Yeah, he's doing the thing and almost like failing to It's not that he's doing the thing, you know, as many of us would wish he did, but like he's failing to take the easy win. Yeah, like because of like you say this like institutional cowardice or like these it's like there's some kind of red line rhetorically for jeffrees and other leadership Democrats that they will not cross. And I have to believe that some of that comes from what they see as like the long legacy of twenty twenty.
Or like perceptions of the Democratic Party is like too far to the left, is too extreme or something.
Yeah, they that, like specifically the perception that they like attempted to abolish the institution of policing, which was not really anything that they had that was not in their policy platform. Right, they were not Democrat leaders saying We're going to do away with the cops. In fact, Biden was talking about how we need to fund the police, not defund the police in twenty twenty.
Right.
Yeah, But nonetheless, like that, there seems to be this real, like it's very hard for them to break that rhetorical boundary. It's not entirely just jeffreyes on this. Seven Dems cross party lines in late January to vote for a DHS funding bill. So we got Representative Henry Quella of Texas.
Worst the worst Democratic congressman.
Yeah, shit, fucking.
Texas Deems hit different and like specifically like Rio Grande Valley Democrats are a different breed.
God, it sucks so much.
There's Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Glousen camp Perez Washington, Laura Gillen, Don Davis of North Carolina, Lauri Gillan is New York, Tom Swosey of New York, and Vicente Gonzales of Texas.
This is not it.
There's not a position that is unique to Jeffrey's right, Like, this's this idea that like, perhaps there needs to be some reform of ICE, but bit abolishing it would go far too far. Other Democrats have introduced an act which would essentially move funding from ICE to local law enforcement. So it would take that seventy five billion dollar budget allocation to ICE and move it to local cops.
Right.
This is called the Providing Useful Budgets for Localities to invest in cops by substituting six appropriations from federal enforcement to yield results Act.
Holy shit, Now, wonder these people's favorabilities like negative onondrillion.
Yeah, good word.
It's what we call a backronym in that they have started with the word public safety and then made a really horrendous attempt turning that into an acronym. There is also like a wing of the Democratic Party right there on the left, which is more forthright about abolishing ICE. His clip of AOC talking about why I should be abolished. And this is at an event in Queen's Yeah.
ICE is a very young agency relative to many others. Enforcements of people who committed crimes that were undocumented or had visas used to be under the Department of Justice. And in the Department of Justice, if someone wants to come to your house, you need a judge. You mean, you need an entire judicial process, You need a warrant to ensure that your constitutional liberties would take are respected.
You need all of it. What they did was that they took ICE out, well, they took Immigration enforcement out of the DOJ, which had very tight rains on what you're allowed to do. They take that they put it into this new agency that they put at the time, which is a Department of Homeland Security. First of all, in what world does FEMA belong under the same umbrella as ICE. It makes no sense at all, no sense
at all. And what happened is that once you take that enforcement piece out of that agency, they then start to answer to nobody. Even though I technically, statutorily their responsibility is just supposed to be on immigration enforcement. They are now expanding their data collection to US citizens, to everyone on this soil.
They are waiving.
These phones around and saying that they're implementing facial recognition technology to a centralized database. We have to fight this tooth and nail. We need to defund it. We need to not allow this to be collected by private companies. A lot of what we need to do is not just revisit Session seven oh two. We need to abolish ICE, and we need to have complemented.
Changes block that up.
One thing I do want to note about her statements is that during the appropriations process, she did give statements about how she was pushing to defund ICE as an agency, and this did cause a reaction from some i'll call them over the online leftists, claiming that it had changed positions from wanting to abolish to defund, that this is some sort of slide. And then she then had to follow up with saying, well, currently, the way to restrict ICE and lead to abolishing it is through defunding it.
So that's what we're doing through the appropriations process. No, my position has not changed. I still think think the agency should be abolished.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a broad issue we had, which was that at the end of twenty twenty, as a result of all of the federal agents that were in American cities and had been video brutalizing citizens and places like Portland, there was a lot of anger about DHS.
In particular.
I wrote a column for Business Insider about like, look, this agency is going to remain under Biden, but if we don't cut the legs out from under the entire agency, it's basically set up to be the president's secret police. And broadly speaking, the Democrats didn't do anything to stop it. But I also, like, I guess where I am on this is. I think it's kind of counterproductive at this point.
The failures of the Biden administration, I think are quite manifest in what the Trump administration is doing right now. And what I want to focus on is the fact that we've had, in the space of several months, Americans become more than twice as likely to support abolishing ICE, which is both a fragile coalition because the fact that the number has changed so rapidly means that it could
potentially change back. Like, I don't feel solid in counting on that to be the permanent state of affairs, but it introduces an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to build support to destroy this agency. And I think it's probably too much to hope for DHS as a whole and anything close to the near term. But the fact that during the Biden administration so much got punted on, I
don't know, like we're past that. We have the opportunity, now, we have the anger now I do I retain my worry, And I would say almost one of my biggest political fears is that twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight go well for Democrats. They do again what happened under the Biden administration.
Yeah, and they leave all these things intact.
But one of the big differences that we have, at least right now is that at no point was abolishing ICE polling the way it is right now during the Biden or the first Trump administration. Yeah, And I think we have to take advantage of that. There's momentum right now, like this is a.
Crucial time, not just like we're talking here in terms of like abolishing ICE moves us back to the two thousand and three norm right, Like what it doesn't do is fixed the fundamental issue here, which is that there are not legal pathways for people to come to the US and there need to be and like I think like now is the time for people who are involved in democratic politics right to agitate for like a genuine
reform package. I don't think we will ever see support like this again for legalization of undocumented people, for Dreamers right, or people who are impacted by deferred action for childhood arrivals, which is a policy that it came to place under Obama.
Like, now is the time for substantial immigration reform.
I say this knowing that this will not fix a problem. Like more than most people you know, I have seen the horrors of our immigration system firsthand, but like there is a moment right now that we could change things for the better. And I share roberts worry that if Democrats get like an easy win even in the midterms, that we might not get that. And like what we saw rounder Biden was a big pointer to what we're seeing under Trump that essentially the DHS was almost impossible
for him to control. Yeah, in that he acquiesced to oads, he is still responsible for them, like the buckstops with him.
He's president.
I'm not certain that he planned it, but nonetheless it continued to happen for months and months and months out of his presidency, right, Like, it was very obvious the way this was going to go if we got another Trump presidency, and if they do that again, we're just setting the table for things to get worse again.
Right.
And I think James the task before is twofold, right, because on one hand, we have to reform the system by which people gain legal acceptance to live in this country, and that also includes I think there needs to be a push for some sort of federal law that will make it impossible or at least much harder, to reverse these acceptances and to do things like nullify or cancel green cards and permanent residency like the administration is doing
right now. Like both, we need increased pathways and we need increased resilience to promise people that, hey, if you go through all of these hoops to become a legal resident or a citizen or whatever, it can't just get pulled away the next time a Republican wins office.
Yeah.
And then on the other side of things, you have this vast, uncontrollable militant agency built as the armed wing of the presidency that has to be destroyed because it can't exist a democracy yeah, it's no compatible and then you have I mean I would extend that to DHS as a whole. But it's my same issue with like, if we can defund ICE right now, I'm always in favor of taking away some of their money.
That's not the extent of what I think should happen to ICE.
It's just like it's a salient, right, Like you have to look at it that way. Like it it would be as if you're you're like, well, it's not worth winning the Battle of Stalingrad because that doesn't give us Berlein It's well, but these are steps, you know, you try to damage and reduce the agency's power and ability
to function. Yeah, while you're continuing. And I guess the worry about that too is that if you do defund ICE, if they because we've had some Trump has made a couple comments about worrying that, like we need to reduce kind of the tempo at which ICE is operating because it's bad for them.
So that is kind of one of my concerns.
That maybe if they, if they pull back on the throttle a little bit, the rage will decline enough that there's not this kind of motivation and behind abolishing but I feel like that's just a fear you kind of have to eat, as opposed to not trying to stop and reduce the harms the agency does in the immediate term while you're working long term for abolition.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Did want to talk a little about other numbers, because immigration is obviously a major issue for American voters. It's an issue people pick who they're going to vote for the presidency on. It's one of them, but it's not the main one. As a general rule, throughout most of modern political history, the kind of the top issue for Americans is the economy. And if the economy is bad, it is very hard for your party to stay in power. If the economy is good, it is a lot easier
for your party to stay in power. Right, Like, these are fairly basic facts of political life in the United States, always with some caveats, but that it bears looking at how do Americans feel about the economy and who do they blame for the fact that they feel badly about
the economy? And per Politico, which carried out a recent survey, about forty six percent of Americans say the cost of living is the worst they can remember it ever being This includes thirty seven percent of people who voted for Trump in twenty twenty four, and Americans pretty like significantly agree that this is a Trump problem. Inflation, the fact that they can't afford things is on him because he's
the present. Again, forty six percent of Americans say it's Trump's economy and his administration is responsible for rising costs. And this is true both among Republicans and Democrats, which is very interesting to me. A percentage of Americans, based on the vote in the twenty four election, fifty three percent of Harris voters in twenty twenty four say the cost of living is the worst they've seen it, and again, thirty seven percent of Trump voters in twenty twenty four
feel the same way. So that is it's an example of something that we've talked about and wondered about on this show a lot, which is like how much.
Does reac break through the fever swamps? And this is suggesting that, like to a pretty solid degree, that actually Trump is I still think he's got a floor of somewhere around thirty percent of Americans who will follow him into the pits of hell, even if it means shoveling themselves into it, but that number used to be like forty percent, right, and it does seem to be declining.
This is being treated as a five alarm fire among the Trump White House, which is interesting me for a couple of reasons. You know, anytime you talk with especially people them left about but also increasingly a lot of Democrats about the midterm elections in the twenty twenty eight elections, I think you have to deal with his people saying, but are there going to be elections?
Right?
And you know it's I don't dismiss those concerns out of hand, obviously in part because the administration is talking right now about having ice agents and polling places, right, you do have to acknowledge that as a concern. But at the same time, I think if you're looking at this rationally, you have to note that the Trump administration internally is acting as if there will be elections and
that those will be competitive elections. They are worried about the economy, they are worried about their polling, and they are taking actions to try to mitigate the worries that they have, which they wouldn't be doing if they were already sure there's never going to be another election. Right,
and that is important to remember. It doesn't mean there's not a danger, doesn't mean they won't try shit if they lose, but it does mean that they are treating these political issues as political issues that they have to deal with via messaging. There is an article in Fox News recently about Trump's team huddling to decide on midterm messaging.
I'm going to quote from that now.
The meeting, which was confirmed to Fox News by sources familiar with the gathering, was hosted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wilds and Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who is steering Trump's political strategy. According to sources, the message during a slide presentation by chief polster and Chief Strategists and strategist Toorney Fabrizio was that the economy will be the top issue in the minds of voters, and the White House needs to spotlight its efforts on easy affordability.
The meeting was held as the GOP ares to defend their control of the Senate and their razor thin House majority in November's midterm elections. Republicans are also dealing with the presidents continued underwater approval ratings and a slew of surveys, including the latest Fox and News pulling that indicates Americans are pessimistic about the economy, and publicly, the administration's claim is that Americans are happy with the economy. The economy is the best it's ever been. Look At how good
the doo is. It's over fifty thousand, right, Yeah, But everything we're hearing internally, like all of the reports that from people inside the administration about like what's going on day to day, is that they're wide awake and worried over the fact that their economic numbers are completely fucking dog shit. Now, what does this mean for the midterm elections, Well, very few people that I have found who are like credible analysts don't expect the Democrats to retake the House, right.
Meaning, most credible analysts do think the Dems are likely to retake the House.
That said, there's a fairly few people who expect a twenty eighteen style Democratic blowout, among like the professional bull watchers and stuff, which is, if you remember the Democrats
flipped about forty one seats. There's a couple of reasons for this, right, And I found a good article in The Hill that's kind of analyzing like why we shouldn't be expecting some of the exuberants that you're seeing on social media about like early elections and how bad Trump's numbers are, is maybe making people overly optimistic about like flipping all of Congress to Democratic control, which is not currently the likeliest outcome. And there's a couple of reasons
for this. One of them is that, as unpopular as Trump is, and I've hit on that quite a lot, the Democratic Party's overall favorability is at about thirty three percent, which is nine points lower than the Republican Party's favorability and you know, depending on the poll, five to ten points lower than Trump's own favorability. This is based on a Marquette Law School pol Right, So Trump is very unpopular, so with the Republican Party, but people don't like the Democrats,
the Democratic Party as a whole. People like individual Democrats, a lot of people like their Congress person, a lot of people like whoever it is they want to see as the presidential candidate. You know, you can look at you know, you've got folks who really like Mamdani or really like pritzkerp But as a whole, voters, including Democratic voters don't feel very positively towards the Democratic Party, in many cases more negatively still than they feel about the
Republican Party that started to turn around. But if you're kind of hoping that there's going to be like a full on switch that makes it immediately possible to successfully impeach President Trump, that is extraordinarily unlikely to come in twenty twenty six, right, which doesn't mean that it's unlikely to have a good result. Republicans losing control of Congress is a good result.
Right. There's just a lot less. I mean, there's a lot less.
Even if you're kind of taking the unfavorability of the Democratic Party out of it, there's a lot fewer seats up for grabs right now. In twenty eighteen, and when that, you know, the Democrats flipped forty one seats. There were seventy five competitive races this year. Heading into the midterms, there were only eighteen. Right, there's a lot less that can flip. And I don't think Republicans are likely to lose control of the Senate, right, And the polling shows
things being pretty razor thin there. Democrats have about a four percent advantage according to Economist. You GOV polling right now in the congressional midterms, and there's a three point margin of error, so you're looking at like a lead,
but not enough of one for a complete fucking blowout. Right, there has been some more positive data, like kind of right before we came on to record this, like I looked at some charts by Focal Data that was kind of breaking down midterm voting and tensioned by groups and looking at like likely voters, And this is always kind of a little bit like voodoo, right in terms of how you're trying to, like, well, how likely is a likely voter and how do we like factor in realistically
are they going to show up anyway if you're kind of assuming that like people who self report as likely voters will only actually vote about a third of the time. Per this study, Democrats are ahead by about seven points in a generic house ballot. So you know, that's kind of where we are right now. I think we're looking at a midterm season that's going to go well for the Democrats, But I don't think we're looking at a midterm season that delivers us from the Republican Party being
able to ram through legislation. I think our kind of best case scenario is one in which they have to give major concessions because the Democrats have you know, flipped the House at the very least like.
And that's that's big. But I don't think.
I don't think Trump's going to get impeached starting January of next year.
The one thing I will say about the polling data is that so obviously Democrats tend to perform better in special elections because to vote in a special election, you have to be a higher interest voter. And that also special election cycles get driven by immediate like anger over stuff, and there's a bunch of different factors that dry special
election turn out. And also the Democrats have been absolutely obliterating the Republicans in all the special elections that have been happening recently, or even in the cases where they're lose, they're losing by very small margins in places where Trump was wining blowouts. Yeah, so I think if you want to be optimistic, I think that's the case for optimism. But also, yeah, like we're not going to have all of our problems magically solved by the mid terms.
Yeah, yes, to specify on that, what you were saying, there was a special election in Tennessee and Republican Matt Van Epps beat the Democrat often Bane by nine points, but Trump had won in twenty twenty five, were there by twenty two points.
Yeah, and like like a few we talked about this on the show. But like last year there was there was an election in like a special election in western Iowa that Trump had won by double digits and the Democrats won by double digits.
And that kind of thing shouldn't be happening.
It sure shouldn't, No it is, And yeah, you know, so that's that's the optimistic case.
And hey, like I've just come in saying like, hey, don't expect Congress to be completely flipped, but like, you know, it's the times are crazy. Who knows what else? Who knows how many more people Ice is going to murder? Who knows like what other like how bad the economy's going to get.
We might have invaded Canada by then, Like who knows.
Anything's on the table, anything's still on the table. We're just kind of looking at shit from February.
Yeah, yeah, and some of this shit will depend on like what atrocities they commit in the weeks and days before the midterm election. Right then, I think we see so around certain the killing of Rene Good, the killing of Alex pretty right, we see those things shift public opinion dramatically. And the ongoing snatching of immigrants and deportations and sending people back to places where they be tortured
and killed. Like that's kind of the background and it makes people angry, but like it's these these these specific actions which seem to shift public opinion dramatically. All right, So on that topic, I guess we should talk about the quote unquote shutdown, and specifically the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Right.
I guess the first thing to clarify is this isn't a government shut down in the sense of the shutdown we saw last year, right that that lasted like forty plus days.
Right, It's a partial shutdown.
It's partial shutdown.
What's happening right now is the Democrats are holding up further funding for DHS until the administration agrees to some concessions that they have asked for. This is unlikely to impact ICE and CBP a very great deal for a.
Couple of reasons.
Firstly, the Taxi Spending Cuts Bill right, twenty twenty five bill funded them to an absolutely unfathomable degree, I think sixty five and seventy million, respectively. More quickly, it will affect other agencies under DHS. Those includes Transport Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard. Some TSA workers will be working that they will likely
not be receiving pay. This is pretty common right that they're deemed does quite unquite essential workers, and that means that they will be expected you to work. What we saw last time was that as the shutdown dragged on, people were calling in sick or not coming into work because they were taking other jobs right because they had
bills to pay. The reason this is happening is because Democrats successfully managed to get Trump to separate DHS funding from another spending bill, which passed through and funded the rest of the federal government.
They are demanding an end to masking.
I should clarify specifically like masking in the sense of law enforcement officers wearing gates over their faces, a return to opposites displaying their name, badge, and ID number, increased oversight of detention conditions, coordination with local law enforcement, and end to the detention of US citizens targeted enforcement and not roving patrols, and a unified use of force and uniform conduct policy for CBP and ICE, and then an
end to raids using Form two point fifteen. I'm just going to note here them moving forwardre going to refer to that using its it's that name and not call it an administrative warrant, because an administrative warrant like kind of implies the action of a judge. But these are forms that are filled out right that it is not the same early aspected as a warrant, and that's a
judicial warrant. The Republican counterproposals so far have shown pretty little common ground on this, aside from over body cameras where Gnome did implement body cameras. As I said, ICE and CBP will continue doing what they do right. I was at the border on Saturday and I saw tons of CBP patrols. They do not seem to have slowed down with their wall construction. That may overtime slow down. They won't be paying like the workers week by week
on those contracts. They will be paying a contractor who might be paying a subcontractor, so that would take time to slow down. The things that will slow down. Are things like the oversight function to DHS, potentially administrative and hiring functions, things like that, right, But the actual like on the ground patrolling, most of those people are deemed
as essential workers. So it seems unlikely that we will see, for instance, fewer CBP patrols at the border or fewer ero iscera agents like tasked with doing these ongoing raids. So yeah, talking about DHS, I want to talk a little bit more about the Coast Guard. I think it's likely that some people won't be aware that the Coast Guard is an element of the DHS. They're also a branch of the military, right they're the only branch of
the military that's under the DHS. Yes, so they considered veterans, but they're not on the DoD or the DOW as you can now call it. The NBC has a piece suggesting that there is, I guess, a split in the Coast Guard between lower ranks and higher ranks, and specifically they're talking about feeling that Coast Guard is moving away
from its court mission, which is search and rescue. They highlight one incident in February of last year when a Coast guardsmen went overboard and a Coast Guard see one thirty was detailed to participate in the search for that Coast guardsman.
Right.
It had previously been detailed for a deportation flight that it was retasked to assist with the search. According to the piece, quote non verbally instructed the acting Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lunday, to pull the plane off the search and rescue mission so it would not miss the immigrant flight, a part of DHS's so called
alien expulsion operations. According to two US officials and a Coastguard official, as a result, what happened is that local Coast Guard officials in San Diego scrambled to find two C twenty seven's that could fulfill that deportation flight. In doing so, that freed out the Sea one thirty to then go return to participate in the search. Right. They did continue searching, I believe, for one hundred and ninety hours, but they never found the missing Coast guardsmen.
Right.
You cannot and will never be able to conclusively prove that all of this back and forth with this one thirty had any impact on that, But this incident has clearly had an impact on morale and it suggested general shift in priorities away from search and rescue.
And towards doing more border enforcement.
Right.
Under NOME seven hundred and fifty flights have been redirected from their regular work to instead deport migrants. This comes after she removed a high ranking Coast Guard official from her house so that Nope could live at the house.
Wait what Yeah, yeah, she kicked the Coastguard person out.
Of their house.
Yeah, this was last year. She moved with like very short notice. She moved onto a shit, Yeah, she moved onto a base.
Yeah with Lewandowski, right, that might be the case, goes, there was like a few people in like the cabinet or orbit.
Yes, yes, I thought you meant like they were cohabiting.
Oh no, no, no, okay, yeah, okay, beautiful domestic life.
Yeah okay, I was, I was. I don't want to doubt you. That would have been in news to me. Yes, a number of Trumps, like executive officials, are living on basis more than is usual. I think the Millers maybe do as well.
But yeah.
She also purchased two Gulf Stream jets to fly her around, unlike most government jets, which tend to be returned towards what's called a sterile state after use. That just means that they go back to being completely clean, like they're like a generic jet. They're not your jet. Nome prefers to keep some personal items aboard the Gulf streams, but one of these items, a heated blanket, was left behind after her jet broke down she had to switch planes.
Coylewandowski reportedly sheltered at the Coastguard flight staff and demanded they turn around before attempting to fire the pilot, who fused to do so.
Jesus right, I need my blanky.
I need my blanky.
Turn around.
Yeah, I think she'd she had a rough week. I guess one of the blankets.
These are absolutely just like the softest fascist that have ever ruled the country. Like it, turn off flight around because I left my baby blanket like.
Yeah right, like I oh god.
Fortunately, I guess they de escalated that one and continued the flight. Blanket free, the fire the pike. Yeah, I think it is interesting to look at Coast Guards morale. Right, Like, Coast guards traditional mission has been search and rescue and then the interdiction of like drug vessels, and they have been doing a great deal of order enforcement stuff and removal stuff. And it is obviously like people who have been at the Coast Guard for a long time, not
what they joined the Coast Guard to do. I will just say that there are very few areas in which the United Kingdom has worked shit out, but the lifeboats are one of them. They are mentioned in Mutual Aid. The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has an article on for Popkin on their website.
Incredible and it.
Is one of the really genuinely good things about Britain. By contrasting that are not part of our government security apparatus.
Yeah, because that makes no sense. The entire agency of DHS makes no sense whatsoever.
Yeah, it's just because.
Yeah, there are better ways to do this.
I mean it makes again, it makes a lot of sense as the president's private army.
Yeah.
For our final segment in this episode, some tragic news. On Monday afternoon, February sixteenth, two people were killed in a shooting at a hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Before the shooter died by suicide. Three others were shot
but survived their injuries. In the aftermath of the strategy, people across the right and the left have both used this shooting offensively and defensively in the culture war because of the shooter's general identity and far right conspiratorial politics, even though evidence points towards this being targeted domestic violence. The deceased or the shooter's X onefe and eldest son, and the deceased ex wife's parents were critically wounded but survived,
as did a family friend. The shooter's other son was on the ice playing hockey while the shooting took place. Ordinarily, we would not talk about an instant like this in the news because there's a lot of domestic violence shootings that happened across the United States every week, and not
all of them become national news stories. This is news because of its weaponization in the political culture war, but under most methodologies like this incident would not even be categorized as a mass shooting because less than four people died. It does qualify under the Gun Violence Archive criteria, which counts injuries not debts, in which this would be the
forty first shooting in the US this year. But after the shooting took place, right wing accounts and influences started using this as a part of their trans mass shooter narrative. On Monday night, the Pawtucket Police that they believed the shooting stemmed from a family dispute. The shooter was fifty six years old with six kids. About ten years ago, the shooter started identifying as a transgender woman and used the name Roberta Esposito. The legal last name is Dorgan.
They're not Hispanic, oh. The shooter was divorced about five to six years ago, and Dorgan's ex wife lists the grounds for divorce in the documents as quote, gender reassignment, surgery, narcissistic and personality disorder traits. Then she crossed that out and instead wrote quote irrevocable differences which caused the remediable
breakdown of the marriage unquote. The shooter was extremely active on Twitter, made anti semitic and conspiratorial posts, and frequently interacted with a large assortment of mega influencers, as well as far right, neo Nazi, and conspiracy theory influencers like Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones. Dorgan also shared pictures of a massive like SS toteen CoV tattoo on their right arm and wrote on Twitter quote post off trans to the right of Hitler and quote you can be pro
LGBT and pro Trump unquote. From looking through their Twitter it it mostly appears to be someone who is suffering from extreme mental distress. It's hard to, you know, chart how much of the political beliefs that can be to split on Twitter are like genuinely held versus how much they relate to long standing mental health issues this person suffered from, which I'll get into in a sec.
I'm still a little hung up on the name.
The name also, I think relates to just this person's very very not well.
Okay, they're just trying to pay people off, flick with correct.
I think everything about this person can be seen as an expression of like antisociality politics their presentation the name now.
While right wing news agent Season influencers have used this horrifying instant of domestic violence for their trans mass shooter narrative, framing every transperson is at risk of randomly becoming a mass killer while ignoring this shooter's own extremist politics, people on the left have blamed this tragedy on the shooter being a quote unquote far right Trump supporter or a quote unquote Nazi groper. And this is in part a defensive reaction against the right zone like misleading and non
source claims about a statistical epidemic of trans violence. But laying blame on Make America Great Again and the MAGA movement doesn't really get us much closer to understanding this violence.
We're so used to defaulting to this heartizan culture war like ideological explanation for the cause of public violence, whether that's you know, for the right, trans ideology or neo Nazism, even though both in this case and the shooting in Canada last week, which I talked about a few days ago on the show, this was like anti social, unstable and self destructive individuals who kill family members and then created a deadly public situation leading them to kill themselves.
Despite Nazi tattoos and Twitter posts, this hockey game shooting was not ideologically motivated violence. This was targeted interpersonal violence against family stemming from extreme mental health issues. This goes beyond like right left politics. This shooter just seemed to be drawn to anything seen as extreme or anything that
produced anti social effects. The daughter of the shooter briefly spoke to local news on Monday, saying that the shooter was her father and that the shooter had quote unquote mental health issues and was quote unquote very sick. The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence said in a statement Monday night, quote while details are still emerging, we know that violence within families and intimate relationships can have devastating
and far reaching impacts. Domestic violence does not stay behind closed doors. It affects children, extended family members, and entire communities.
Unquote.
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you want to do analysis of it, it's that like the thing that's actually a predictive for violence is domestic violence, and this is another really horrible to mastic violence incidents.
But yeah, it's it's pretty tragic.
Yeah.
Interestingly, there was some news that came out today, which is Wednesday, that one of the other sons of this shooter was arrested a few years ago in North Providence for setting fires to a black church, which did appear to be ideologically motivated violence. Police found notebooks inside of this person's home filled with hateful writings quote, gutten down everyone that isn't white. If one is white, spread the gospel.
Always give our bloodline a chance unquote. So this incident of a arson in a black church is definitely ideologically motivated.
Yeah, it's been a great, stremely normal country.
And this person was sentenced to six years in prison.
Oh wow.
So the person that's the son of the person, the.
Son of the shooter, one of the sons of the shooter.
Yeah, they had several sense.
Yeah, just a pretty tragic series of incidents with this family.
I do find it really disturbing that the thing that you mentioned where people just kind of drop into a channel when it comes to responding to a tragedy like this, like, and I find it really upsetting when I see it from like, yeah, left and progressive organizations that promote firearms training or like.
I just find it really kind.
Of disappointing, I guess, to see people dropping into these same kind of callous and dismissive responses.
It's just something that's been weighing on me recently.
I am a person who owns guns, but it's still I don't know, I'm disappointed.
I guess.
Yeah.
All right, well we reported the news.
Put a transcrol on your couch.
Yeah, And if you have some news that you think we should report, tips, you can do so by emailing Cool Zone Tips at proton dot me. If you have someone that you would like to be a guest on our show, or a topic that you think Roberts should cover from behind the bustards, we will make another email for that, but if you could just not email the tip line. If you're a publicist and you email, I will block you.
We reported the new.
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