Col Zone Media.
We should have kept working on that bomb that they thought would turn the entire enemy army gay, which was the thing they really put money into.
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumpling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode, we are covering the week of February twenty fifth to March fourth. A House committee just today on Wednesday, as subpoenaed ag Pambonid to testify on her handling of the Epstein investigation, with five Republicans joining all Democrats in
the vote. Hillary Clinton was asked about Pizzagate and UFOs during her congressional testimony on Jeffrey Epstein. More on that next week, in a special episode, God and Netflix declined to raise their offer to buy Warner Brothers, resulting in
Paramount winning the bidding war. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr held CNBC that the Paramount deal would be approved quote unquote pretty quickly and that Netflix quote would have had a very difficult path saying the paramount deal is quote a lot cleaner does not raise all the same types of concerns unquote. More on that in the episode before this one insane. He just said that out loudon yeah.
Yeah.
On Thursday February twenty sixth, almost a year after Mahmoud Khalil was first attained, Ice agents arrested another Columbia student in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after six am, five playing clothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security showed up outside a Columbia apartment building without a warrant,
demanding to be let inside. The agents gained entry by falsely telling the buildings superintendent that they were police searching for a missing child, even bringing pictures of this fake kid. The agents used this lie to enter into the apartment of twenty nine year old student Ellie Agaheva, where she was then arrested and taken off campus. After being detained, Agaheva posted on Instagram quote, dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.
This same day, Mayor Mom Donnie happened to be meeting with President Trump in the White House regarding federal funding for the Sunnyside Yards housing project. During this meeting, the Mayor voiced opposition to ice raids and concerned about the detention of the Columbia student earlier that morning.
I shared my concern with the President about IS's detention of Columbia student Elmina Agajeva yesterday morning, as well as the detention of four additional New Yorkers in relation to the university, Mahmo Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, jinse O Chang, and Thea Kakordia. I asked that their cases be dropped. I'm grateful that shortly after our meeting, the President called me to inform me that Elmina would be imminently relief, and indeed she was.
The mayor also discussed the release of Akaheva in a question during this press conference.
During your advocacy with President Trump, what do you think the winning argument was and did they reverse course?
All I can tell you is what happened, which is that I shared directly with the President a list of names of Columbia students and those who've also been detained because of their activity on Columbia campus, and that these actions do nothing to advance the cause of public safety, and I asked that these cases be dropped, and the President said that he would look into it. Soon after the meeting, I received a phone call from the President saying that he was going to eminently release her.
At three forty five pm, Akaheva posted on Instagram that she'd been released and was quote unquote safe and okay. On Thursday night, at DTS spokesperson told a reporter that Akaheva's student visa was terminated in twenty sixteen for failing to attend classes, and that quote Ice placed her in removal proceedings, and she's been released while she waits for her hearing unquote. The current state of her case is unknown, with neither her lawyers nor DHS providing any follow up statements.
That last part is very confusing to me, right, because if she had lost her student visa for non attendance, that that can happen, that would have shown up in sevis, right, and that was a decade ago.
That part confused me.
I just so I was scanning it right before we started, and I figured I'd just ask you in the episode.
But yeah, I mean, she has no pending cases with DHS in their system, or no pending appeals. It's very unclear what happened here or the exact cause of why she was arrested, and the state of whatever visa she's on.
Right, Yeah, she could have been on a completely different visa.
Yeah, it's very unclear.
There's a lot here that I'd like to know, many such cases, I guess, So to start with a couple of immigration things, you want to send it. Hearing yesterday, that's Tuesday, Christine Nome doubled down on the he claims she's previously made about Alex Pretty, which are, as far as we can tell, false, right, saying his action to a quote the definition of domestic terrorism. She's in the house testifying today, So I will try and summarize both those testimonies in next week's ED, just so we don't
end up covering this twice. And we've got a lot to address today. This is breaking news right before we release the podcast. Christine Noam, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is going to be leaving that job at the end of March, and she will be replaced by current United
States Senator for Oklahoma Mark Wayne Mullin. Nom will be moving into another job where she will be the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which is a security initiative for the Western hemisphere that Trump is planning on telling us more about this weekend. Mullin, for those aren't familiar, is a sittin of the Cherokee Nation. He has been in the House of Representatives for ten years before, he was in the Senate for the last three years,
and he used to be a professional MMA fighter. Secondly, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced an investigation into potential misconduct by federal officers in the state and response to DHS has claimed that quote federal officials acting in the course of their duties are immune from liability under state law. This isn't true in legal terms, right, officials can be prosecuted if their actions weren't necessary or proper or not in the course of their duties. So this
pertains to the supremacy clause of the Constitution. Right, and there's a two part test for supremacy clause immunity aid the federal officials actions authorized under federal law and be that they are quote necessary, improper in the execution of their duties as a federal officer. I will link in the sources of our document to a tenth circuit case on this. The case was about some federal Wildlife officers who had crossed onto private land during a wolf coloring operation.
In Wyoming, and then Wyoming it.
Tempt to prosecute them for trespassing, right, so we can see like a previous example of this, But it's not true that they have a complete immunity from state laws, which is what's important here. I want to move on to Iran, just like most of the US military has done. But thank you, it works so hard on these Yeah. So we made a whole episode about this, which came out on Wednesday of this week, and I don't want to recap.
What we said there.
That is why we make lots of episodes so you can go into depth on things. So I will for the most part be picking up on that by updating people. And things have happened in the twenty four hours since we recorded that. Firstly, it seems that the attacks or eat said timing was heavily driven by Israel, who were likely acting on intelligence about the whereabouts of Harmoni. The attacks occurred in the daytime, which is pretty unusual, like normally they want to time these things with moon phase.
They want to do them at night, just to make them safer for any of the piloted aircraft that they're using.
Right.
I also wanted to point out so that the source for this Israel claim, let's start there, comes from the Rapid Response forty seven account. I guess I described that as like a White House affiliated Twitter account. I can't think of the Yeah, it's one of the accounts at the It's not White House, but it's one of the accounts that the Trump administration runs.
One of the accounts the administration users to disseminate information.
Yeah, it's quotation here from Marco Rubio quote. The President made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched other attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.
It seems like the initial push came from Israel.
Right.
I'd also like to add that Tafran is getting bombed very heavily as we record this, something that I think is missing in that discourse. We were actually going to have an episode about the water crisis in Iran. This week for obvious reasons, we made another Iran based episode. But Iran is critically low on water. Lake Uma, which was the largest lake in Asia, is essentially gone now from damming from a draining of aquifers, and Tehran is sitting on top of an empty aquifer, which leads to
greater potential for damage. I guess with some of these large bombs that we're seeing dropped there right.
I mean, it also means that absent even any of this military aggression from the US that we're seeing right now, Iran was in realistic danger of becoming a failed state. Yes, because of the sheer lack of water. That is an existential threat when your capital city is running out of water, like there's no other way to look at that kind
of scale of problem. And the fact that now dealing with this massacre of the people who had been running things, as well as mass destruction via the air of a lot of civil infrastructure, this is just so much more of a problem, and it makes the odds of the end result of all this being a failed state in the region that leads to a humanitarian crisis on scale of the refugee crisis we saw during the early stages of the series of a war much likelier.
Yeah, especially when you consider that there are millions of refugees already living in Iran, right from Afghanistan.
Right.
RANI has been deporting them on a massive level. But like, yes, the chances of this being an absolute humanitarian disaster are worryingly high. Tehran received one millimeter of rain. Yeah, last year according to some Guardian reporting. I read like they were already, as you said, very close to people turning on the taps and nothing coming out.
Yeah, they say, is not helping that.
I want to move on to these claims that we have seen in the past twenty four hours about a Kurdish partner force in eastern Kurdistan, right, And in Kurdish that would be called roger Lat that would be western Iran, right.
Right, Like Kurdistan. The broader region is western Iran, northern Iraq, northeast Syria, southern Turkey. Right. You can draw kind of a big glob around all those parts of the world that's Kurdistan.
Yeah, exactly, if you can like draw up blot that encompasses all of those things. Yeah, Obviously Kurdistan is not a state.
It is an area.
It's not at all that is part of the issue at stake here. Kind of a big deal kind of the thing. Yeah.
So, Axios has reported that Trump called Buffal Talabani and Musud Barzani, who are the leaders of the two biggest factions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yeah, Southern Kadistan North in Iraq. The piece was written by Barak Ravied. This is not Barak's first time joining us on executive disorder. Brind of
the bad yeah, yeah, regular guests, biography. People remember last time that we talked about Barak, it was in the context of a leaked proposal for peace between Russia and Ukraine that appeared to be essentially a list of Russian demands but was not present was presented as a US proposal. I will try and remember what week we talked about that and and that link in case people want to go back right, Like, I've spent a lot of time appointing out on various websites how bad this piece was.
It was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements. For instance, it it listed Talibani and Bazani as leaders of Iranian Kurdish factions. What Yeah, I think it's important to note at this point that like media perceptions of the Middle East are often formed by people whose understanding is eclipsed by the introductory part of the Wikipedia article on a given topic vastly like that's not an exaggeration.
Like this, this is this is this is like saying Macran is the leader of like the Quebecy separatists. Yeah, like that kind of ship.
Yeah, and I see that.
I do believe actually an episode I will be actually doing that in partnership with INFO Wars France. Very excited to see that get off the ground.
Info War with France is a frightening concept.
Like genuinely, hey, baby, they're turning the frogs. Gay, we gotta do something about that. That was a French French very excellent. Sorry.
They also kind of didn't understand that the SDF and Peshmega were distinct entities.
That appears Jesus Christ wildly different. Yes, and combat efficacy too.
Yes, yeah, yeah, very just like unless they're talking about the Peshmega Roja I guess, which like exists lightly telegram rumors these days.
The piece does.
Line up with the strategies that we are seeing, though, right there has been significant bombing of il GC and police facilities along the border with a rock. There have been and continue to be many Eastern Kurdish groups who are based in Iraq right now, right there has been significant bombing along the road from Halabduk to Kamancha right, which would be like a road that you would use if you're planning to move some people.
In that way in theory.
The KDP and the p UK, so they are the two major Kurdish factions in Iraq, have unified their Peshmerger. Peshmerga means those who face death. They're the armed forces that are affiliated to the two Kurdish political parties. This is really kind of a rhetorical construct because they have regional commands which effectively mirror the areas where the KDP and the p UK are in control anyway, but they
have unified payroll, which is interesting. It is also worth noting that pro Iran groups inside Iraq have been targeting Peshmerger with drone attacks. Both sides in its conflict are bombing Iraq create now, which really does suck for people in Iraq.
Yeah, I mean, like this conflict has been ever present. Obviously after the Iraq war. Iran exert had a significant amount of influence. They brought explosively formed penetrators to the Shia militias in the region. The cleric Maccadal Sadar, who was probably the most successful political figure of the war
years and was very heavily involved with Ran. During the fighting in Mosul, you had Peshmerger, you had Iraqi army soldiers generally from around Baghdad, and then you had the PMFS, the Popular Mobilization Forces and these were all Iran backed militias and traveling, especially as I was with Courage, you had always be really careful in the PMF positions because you never knew what would happen because again they are enemies.
They were tied together fighting Isis, but they are not allied forces and they have a history of fighting each other.
Yeah, that was a wild time ked a lot of people who had a lot of beef on the same side that particular contract. It's also probably worth noting at this point that like it was the Department of Defense, not the CIA that was really driving the boat. Yes, when it came to like supporting the Kurds in Syria, Yeah, the CIA went with the TFSA that Turkis Shri Syrian army, which does not have a great record as far as
not doing war crimes goes. I also received confirmation today that Barzani and Talibani spoke with Iran's foreign minister, so they've spoken with both Trump and the Iranian foreign minister. Kubad Talibani, who's a deputy Prime Minister of Kurdistan, not the same person as Baffel Talibani, the leader of the PUK, made a statement to say that the Kurdistan region was not involved in the conflict. I think it's very unlikely that we will see large Pesh merger groups from northern
Iraq southern Kurdistan entering Iran in the near future. I do think it's interesting that Revied got this piece leaked to him because things don't generally get leaked because one person has a crisis of conscience. It does happen sometimes, but in events like this, it is normally a choice.
And this particular story leaves the Kurdish people in a very difficult position because it puts to target directly on them for the Iranian regime right, and they can fight or not fight, but they have been singled out as a group that is going to be the ground forces of this Israelian US aggression. And what that means is they will be singled out for oppression at home, whether or not they fight. That leaves them in a place where they might have to choose to fight right or
they might fight but not through their own choosing. There has been for some time an alliance for some time. I think twenty second of February is when it was made of five Kurdish groups, five Iranian Curdish groups. These are rather than saying them like phonetically how to read out the initials, people want to look them up PJAK PAK, KDPI. And then these two groups have names, not initials. There are two of the three parts of Kamala and Hubbat.
It is more likely that these groups, specifically KDPI, will be willing to engage. We do know that Trump spoke to Mustafa Hidri that he's a KDPI leader. I have had source suggest it some Kurdish and some non Kurdish groups have at least the intention or desire to enter Iran and fight. I'm not really comfortable naming, particularly which ones i'd want Deata sourcing on that. Yeah, what they plan to do is unclear, right, None of these rogulati
groups are massive, like numerically, they don't have the manpower. However, ITV reported that weapons have been stuck piled in eastern Kurdistan for a while, and as we saw in in Rajavos, as we saw in southern Kerdistan and the Islamic State times like, their ability to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that the Kurds have retained for a long time.
Yeah, an advantage they have over so obviously, it is act true that in the months preceding this there were uprisings in Iran and tens of thousands were killed by the government, And that represents the people who in normal Iranian civil society would have and kind of best positioned to be active and a part of any sort of like government that were to follow. If the current government collapses under the onslaught being directed against it, a lot
of those people are dead. That's not really the same case with the Kurdish movement because at any given time, three quarters of the Kurdish movement is not you know, more or less is outside of Iran, no physically present
and This is what happened in Syria too. When you had other parts of the country massively depleted by the slaughter fighting asad in northeast Syria, you were able to have Kurds from southern Turkey and from northern Iraq come in and provide a lot of the backbone of what became these large and effective fighting units that were able
to defeat. Isis when you're talking about, like, well, what's going to happen if the government of Iran starts to crumble, There's a pretty good odds that you wind up with a sizeable Kurdish force, and it would very likely be supported by Western at least initially by Western munitions in that chunk of Iran. Like, that's a very possible outcome.
Yeah, I think it's probably if we do see like continued air strikes. For the Iranian state to disappear in its current form, there needs to be a ground element, right, Yes, And these are among the most likely people that It is, of course important to include the context that the US is less than a month of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria, right, Yeah, And.
You should never if you're if you're listening to this and a member of like a foreign militant group that the US is talking to, don't ever trust us? Yeah yeah, bad friends.
Yeah yeah, bad friends indeed. Yeah yeah, not friends at all, but allies.
Not friends at all. Guys that will fuck you the second we can, like the second we can. Yeah.
I will say that the Americans in Syria were specifically there to fight isis. They weren't there to aid in the curtige freedom struggle, right right, and they have been very inconsistent about not aiding.
The other thing about Rojava was it was very explicitly not a state and not an attempt to carve out a separate state, and they were always extremely emphatic about that. So it's a very different situation than anything you're seeing with the regime change the Trump administration is working on.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's take a break here and then we're going to talk about boats.
Huzzah.
All right, we are.
Back and it's boat time.
It boat time, yeah, James Stout PhD.
Yeah you can't see it, but I'm wearing my little boat hat right now.
I've got one of the.
Stripey shirts on.
So the United States has sunk a submarine and a total of seventeen Iranian ships, it's claiming. In a briefing, Saint comm said they were going after the entire Iranian navy. At the current time, they claim there are no Iranian ships the Strait of horn MOUs, the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Aman. This briefing was interesting because they explicitly made the comparison to the invasion of a RG not an invasion, not a war that has the greatest rep in recent months and years.
Even among conservatives at this point.
Yeah, Trump, Trump has made thing of well, I mean, Trump wasn't strongly opposed to the war in Iraq right that. I think he has acknowledged that it was a mistake or the way it was conducted was poor at least. What they said here was that the scale of this bombing campaign was twice that of the shock and or bombing campaign that we saw in Iraq. They have so far used cruise missiles air strikes B two, B one and B fifty two bombers, long range precision of strike
missiles for the first time. They call them prisms and something called Lucas strons, which are kind of interesting to me. They are the result of the United States capturing and reverse engineering an Iranian Shahed drone. The shahed is like a it sounds like a law, very distinctive, sound like I've heard them flying over and yeah, but they are one way attract drone. They're essentially a sort of guided munition.
They're very cheap, and they've they've been very effective for Iran and for Russia, who now makes has licensed production of these drones. So it's interesting that the US is openly just saying, yeah, we saw that and we copied it.
It's one of the best ideas in warfare of the last hundred years. It's an incredibly effective platform that seals up an enormous number of holes that have always existed in modern militaries, like the capacity gap that it allows,
particularly a country like Aroan to seal. Right, because with enough Shaheeds you effectively can mimic not just the assassination capabilities of like bigger drones, but something like close air support in a way that's very hard to interdect with traditional air power.
Right.
Yeah, that's a real sea change, and they seem to be being used effectively right now.
Yep, that's cheap. There's tons of them.
Ukraine, they've used like interceptor drones to set them right, but that requires a lot of time, technology, and a human effort.
Yeah, so I think this is probably a good time, James, for me to talk about munitions, because, as you noted, we're using a significant amount of high precision projectiles. We're using like advanced weapons systems that are made to allow us to hit targets very precisely that could not be
hit with dumb munitions or with less intelligent munitions. The downside of this is that it's hard to make enough munitions to maintain on a war footing in peacetime because in peacetime it's kind of a waste of money as an industry, and so capitalism doesn't tend to unless there's a war on reward companies for producing the kind of like munitions and number in the kind of number you would need to fight a modern war, and so whenever one does start up, you wind up with this situation.
We're seeing this that we saw this with Russia and Ukraine.
We're still seeing it in Russia and Ukraine. And we saw it in World War One two where very suddenly everyone runs out of ammunition, right and prior to the United States going to I'm going to say, going to war with Iran again, like literally about a week before, there was an article that dropped in the i think the Wall Street Journal about how Trump's top generals were really worried that the United States did not have enough munitions to sustain conflict with Iran for any significant period
of time. And there's immediately been reports as soon as this started that that is, in fact exactly what's fucking happening. There's a good piece on CNN Politics written by Sean lyndas Kylie Attwood, and Isabelle Kushuldian, and it describes, or at least it talks to conversations with someone at the Pentagon saying that the United States is burning through long range precision guided missiles at an unsustainable rate, and this is not just to attack Iranian positions, but also to
stop Iranian ballistic missiles. Quote from that source, Each intercept represents hundreds of hours of training, readiness, and technology all coming together to work. Is designed so that means you don't have an infinite number of these, whereas Iran is capable of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and the drones that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down Iran's producing something like one hundred ballistic missiles
a month and had a stockpile going into this. We can build six or seven interceptor missiles in a month, right,
So obviously we're going into this with stockpiles. And Trump has claimed that US munition stockpiles have never been higher or better, and that the war could go on forever very successfully, just using these supplies, but he didn't specify what munitions he was referring to, and all of the information coming out suggests that we are like the seventh Fleet has basically burned through its supply of advanced munitions.
There's been confirmation because the IERGC claims they took out two THAD batteries, and I don't take the IERGC at their word, but we did get local confirmation in at least one case that one of those batteries was disabled, and it seems very likely based on some satellite imagery that both were damaged. How damaged they are is very hard to say. We're talking generally the radar array that you use for the missiles has been hit, but we've
only got like eight of these things. These batteries are like not just our most best protection we would have from like submarine based nuclear missiles, but our best anti missile systems period. And we're in the process of peeling away the fat batteries that we've got in Korea to bring into the Middle East to continue to protect Israel and to protect our forces, and the fact that any of them may have been seriously damaged or lost is
a serious problem for the United States. I want to continue from that CNN piece here they're interviewing a Colonel Mark Gunzinger, who's a retired military colonel and the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He basically made this claim that, like, since the United States has established air superiority early on in this conflict, quote, there's not such a need for the higher end, very long range state and off weapons.
I don't know that I agree with him on this because it seems like we're using some of those munitions now, But he's primarily talking about we don't need to use as discriminating of weapons systems now. Instead of using our super advanced precision guided munitions, we can use stuff like jadeams, which we have a lot more of. We have a huge stockpile of jadams of various sizes and small diameter bombs.
The problem is that these are not nearly as advanced in terms of their guidance capabilities, and the civilian casualties related from using these are much much higher. So we're hitting a point where we're running out of precision munitions, and it seems very clear that, at least among military thinkers, the attitude is that's fine, because we'll just use these bigger weapons that kill more civilians, and yeah, that's what you should look forward to in the next stages of this conflict.
Yeah, talking of I guess the next stages of this conflict. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation if supporting that it's been flooded with complaints from troops whose officers believe the operation will bring about the end of days as we're told in the Bible.
Well there you go. Yeah.
Yeah.
Here's a quotation from one of their non commissioned officer clients.
Quote.
This morning, our commander opened up the Combat Readness DATUS briefing by urging us not to be afraid as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops this was all part of God's divine plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to armageddon
and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that quote, President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran, to cause armageddon and mark his return to Earth.
I am not a big Bible under.
Stander, but Garretton Davis, our regular resident Bible person, please comment if you want to. I don't think this is good. There is my take on that. I think it's a great way to be going around foreign policy.
No, it's not a good foreign policy blueprint.
It might be kind of made biblically accurate, though, I.
Mean, that's the thing, is that blueprint it is it is, It is accurate, though I was.
Trump does in fact match a number of descriptions of the Antichrist, and it is possible that what we're doing in Iran ends in the apocalypse.
So you know, my understanding is this hinges on a certain color of cal the red hypher.
This is the whole thing.
We had a breeding made, We made it in Texas.
Yes, yes, this is this is one of the first, the first like American like subculture things I ever engaged from. Like when I got the Internet at school, you could go into the computer lab and look at stuff I learn about if people trying to make a red heifer, right, like a yeah, that will bring about the apocalypse is cow? Yeah, fascinating stuff, very normal, very normal. That's all I've got. Hopefully send us pictures to you Catalys. You've got one of the appropriate color and that'll be that.
It's all over.
But I mean, things in Iran do not seem to be winding down. If anything, they're holding or ramping up. Yeah. On Tuesday, Mark Rubio said, quote, in the next few hours and days, you're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and the intensity of these attacks, as frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the
world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it. Quote that, by the way, was also proceeded immediately by him saying we're going to unleash Chang, which is a completely unhinged thing from the old old like anti communists far right, where they're like we're gonna unleash Shang Kai Shack and he's going to retake China and kill everyone. So that's that's great, that's that's fun, extremely normal.
Yeah, that's a that's a John Bircher right there.
Yeah, yeah wow.
And after a closed store Senate hearing briefing the Senate on actions in Iran, Senator Bluementhal said, quote, I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground.
Yeah, we have to. You can't actually stop the regime without doing that.
Yeah, even the like Trump model, which is a Syria model, right of a relatively limited footprint with a partner force.
Still, like American people died in Syria.
Well, and unfortunately, I think they're also looking to Libya. Right. Initially we're hoping it would be something like that, but the thing is in Libya, you already had a situation where there was a massive army a raid against the dictator who was holding them back via air power. So being able to stop the air power was able to was enough to sign the regime's death warrant. And obviously the failure of NATO to do anything to help Libya in the wake of that has been awful, but it's
totally different in Iran. Like it's the Iranian people, the Ranian like resistance. The Iranian protests had not taken territory, they had not swung large chunks of the Iranian military. The military and the regime were still in control of the country and nothing has changed in that regard. So if you're going to knock out the regime, you have to send in the fucking marines. That's the only way that And that's I think what's going to happen at some point.
Yeah, it's going to be uh the next few days, probably by.
The time you're hearing this.
By the way, just as we're recording this, hopefully this has left the news cycle. Several news outlets have published the Kurdish paramilitary forces are streaming across the border into a rut.
That's not true.
Each of those groups who are claiming are doing that have denied it. There is going to be a lot of misinformation, Yeah, in the next few weeks, and you should be very careful about where you are sourcing your news. Yeah, I just wanted to make that very clear.
Yeah, this is the first war, potentially major war that started while already in place was an entire system that monetized people getting disinformation about that war to go viral. Right. Yeah, obviously that has impacted things in Ukraine later in Palestine and Palestine too, but when the invasion started, those were not like it really it's it came into being over what happened in Palestine, you're right, Garrison. Yeah, but it's now in completely full form. At the start of the conflict.
Yeah, there's a whole like industry, you know, across many different countries. Yeah, so misinformation to win money via the blue check system on Twitter, which is still used for you know, news sourcing across the world in the case of breaking events. So speaking of industry, so one of the other consequences of this war has been effectively the end of trade and passage to the trade of formuz,
which is extremely critical lifeline for the world economy. I'm going to quote here from algia Zera quote a commander Iran's Revolutionary Guard core set on Monday, but the strait was quote closed and that any vessel attempting to pass through the water way would be set quote a blaze. Now for CNBC, there's about thirteen million barrels of oil a day that flows through the strat of fromuz, it's
thirty one percent of all sea worn crude flowed. The total like impacted oil production and distribution from this is about it's about a fifth of the world's oil supply total that is being impacted by this. Liquefied natural gas is also being massively impacted because of yeah to place the places where a whole bunch of natural gas and oil are produced. This is a very, very significant blow
to the world's energy supply. And one of the reasons why, even if you don't care like the US does and about you know, obliterating Ibronian schoolgirls with bombs, this war is a terrible idea because you're suddenly losing access to a fifth of the world's oil supply.
Now.
Trump has repeatedly said that the strait is not open. The RGC has repeatedly said that it is closed. Trump also yesterday that we're recording this on Wednesday, said that the US will escort tankers if necessary, through the strait with US Navy ships. The other major issue here is that no insurance company will ensure any ship going through this,
because why on earth would you do that? And Trump has also ordered the government to ensure these tankers, and this has stopped the massive rise in oil prices a little bit that was happening at the beginning of at the beginning of the conflict. However, I don't know why it stopped the rise in oil prices, because this won't work.
You can't just escort oil tankers through the strait with American battleships and have them not Like, do you know how big an oil tanker is and how slow they are, Like, there's no way militarily that you can actually move oil tankers through here.
You just can't.
It's too easy to hit with literally any munition. So the sort of American markets don't seem to have figured out that you obviously cannot escort oil tankers through the Strait of Fermus. Where people have figured this out are the Asian markets, particularly South Korea and Thailand, where both of their stock index has had their circuit breakers triggered, which is the emergency system may have in place when
the market is collapsing too fast all trading halts. South Korea's index lost twelve point zero six percent yesterday, which is the single largest drop that the market has ever experienced. Yeah, it's it's it's really bad. The Chinese indexes have been okay, but both Japan and Taiwan were down between three and
four percent, which still also quite bad. Now. South Korea and Thailand specifically, the reason that these two countries are having just sort of apocalyptic market collapses is that these two countries are extremely reliant on imported oil. And you know, there's this tendency to think about oil as just liquid money, and it's not. You do actually have to use it to power things, and sertificant portion of that of both the Taie and the South Korean economy are sort of
heavy industrial things that require this oil. These countries are now in very dire straits. And the only way that this could stop is if somehow Trump wins the war very very quickly and be able to reopen the strait, which I don't think is particularly likely. So this is probably just going to intensify. Yeah, you could call it a dire straight.
Ah Garrison, you've brought up my favorite band of which I am aware of one of their songs, great Band, or the one song of theirs, and I know one of.
The songs that has a slur in it. There are better songs hey, no.
But they stopped using the slur and more and more. Okay, And but also the slur was never It was never a slur directed at the audience. They were talking from the perspective of a bigot insulting them. Yes, yeah, so I think anyway.
Yeah, in terms of sound, Swiss last, not the least.
Speaking of dire straits, I'm cutting cutting the white people off.
Talking about cutting it off.
Speaks speaking of being in dire straits. Spain in a well. When I wrote the script, I said, a rare moment of bravery. I should give them slightly more credit than that, but in a moment of genuine bravery and principle. The Spanish government has refused to allow the US to use its air bases to conduct the war in Iran. Yeah, these are American air bases in Spain. This has led to a bunch of assets being moved out of Spain. Trump has responded to this by I'm just gonna quote out to.
Zerra, quote round of z Era.
He said he had told his he had told his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bestitt, to quote cut off all with Spain. We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain, the President said.
The Trump is taking away your your Mona Berrico, like you have to. We have to stop this.
There will be no top us to them.
Where else are we going to get the highest quality smoked meats?
Yeah? Will that forever be worse?
It's not really possible to do this, right because it's Spain is in the EU, and then yeah, don't have internal boards.
Yeah it should it be possible to do this.
I I he knows.
I think it's like probably I'm leaning towards about ninety five to five that Trump just forgets about this, and there's a five percent chance there's some completely hitherto unused, unhinged national security like power that was passed by John wu specifically. But I don't know. We're back to Calvin ball trade policy. He's just saying stuff I was wrong last week. They're just making shit up.
Well, here's the thing like that this shows that may be optimistic, is how different the climate is like this, the social climate is in the United States as opposed during the Iraq War, where like if this has happened during the Iraq War, you would have had people like renaming Spanish dishes freedom fucking die or whatever. Yeah, you would have had there would have been like a social
there's not. There's been no cultural backlash against Spain in the United States that I that I've seen that has any kind of juice.
And you know, and to say like one serious than before we wrap this up, Like the approval rating for this war is sub fifty percent right now. Yeah, it's only going to get worse because wars WARL approval ratings are always the highest when they first start. It's already sub fifty. Everyone hates this. I want to wrap this up before we go to ads by saying the administration had also claimed that Spain had, because of the threat of economic pressure whatever, had agreed to cooperate, and the
Spanish government immediately said, no, we didn't. What are you talking about? Yeah, so they're just lying about stuff again. It's great.
Yeah, whoo oh fantastic.
You know what else is great?
What's that Garrison?
America? Again?
This brief ad break before we returned for even more news. All right, we are back two final stories to cover this episode. Last week, the Kansas state legislature passed new law overriding Governor Laura Kelly's veto invalidating state issued driver's license with updated gender markers, requiring quote Kansas issued driver's license and identification cards reflect the credential holders sex at
birth un quote. After this law was passed, the state sent letters to trans people informing them their license was now invalid, effective immediately, including to at least one transperson who did not change their gender marker but recently changed her legal name. State officials say about one thousand and
seven hundred license holders were affected. The law also invalidates updated birth certificates and prohibits anyone born in Kansas from updating the gender marker on state issued cer certificates and
driver's license in the future. This same law also prohibits trans people from using the public restrooms on government property that aligns with their gender, and allows private citizens to sue someone suspected of being trans in the quote unquote wrong restroom in a government building for damages totaling one
thousand dollars. Two trans Kensins and the ACLU have filed a lawsuit claiming the new law SB two four four violates the Kansas Constitutions protections for personal autonomy, privacy equality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.
Yep, no, great, No, it's obviously is a violation of all those things.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's also just word noting that this is part of a trend we've been seeing of just this is basically what used to be a whole bunch of different bills like compiled into one.
Right.
This is like a bounty bill, this is like a ban. This is instead of having legislative fights over for all the different elements, they're just pushing them all through in one package, which has been working for them very like clear like egregious violation of rights. And now there's a Now you have people in a situation where they could have their passport being invalid, their birth certificate being invalid, and their state driveralism is being invalid.
Yep.
It's a very precarious situation. Yeah, that we will watch to see the fallout of in the next few weeks to months. Finally, the Texas primary election that happened on Tuesday, some big news coming out of that the Republican Senate primary was going to advance to a runoff election between incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Though this runoff could be disrupted because Trump just signaled that he will endorse Coronin, leading many to suspect that Pacton may
drop out of the race. This is still unclear, but it was a very close race between those two and one other person that was going to go to a runoff due to redistricting. Two Democratic incumbents House Representatives Al Green and Christian Menefee battled over a new district and a close race that will now also go to a runoff. Sim goes to Representative of Julie Johnson and former Representative Colin Alred, who dropped out of the Senate race to
run for this newly redrawn district. Neither of these two were able to reach a majority, so that race will also head to a runoff. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw lost the primary, yeah to Republican challenger Steve Toath, who was backed by the Parties. Far right an Tucker Carlson is significantly to the right of Dan Crenshaw. Yeah, she's as fun as it is to see Crenshaw go down. He's getting replaced by someone that is actually worse.
It's not good, it's just kind of funny.
Replaced Hitler with Hitler too. Yeah, great things happening.
Because he specifically had spoken out about some Trump policies right, Like.
Yeah, he had gone more independent on some issues rather than like keytoeing to the to the current Republican line, and that opened him up to attacks from the right. Yep, But the big story of the night is the Democratic Senate primary, in which Texas State House Rep. James Tallerrico is projected to be US Presentative for Texas. Jasmine Crockett, who previously told tall Rico that she would not run for the Senate before entering the race late in December.
Crockett did not concede the night of the election. Has since conceded, but did not concede election night, citing issues at voting precincts and dueling court orders that sowed confusion come election day. Republicans in Dallas County and Williamson County switched the rules from county wide centralized polling locations to an assigned precinct system where voters can only cast their
ballots at one specific location. After reports of people being turned away from their regular polling locations on election day and being told they had to travel to their assigned precinct to cast their ballot. Both Crockett and tall Rico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to compensate for the confusion and ensure all votes intended to be
cast on election day would be counted. Judges in Dallas and Williamson County extended voting hours to nine and ten pm, respectively, but later that night, in a ruling just before eight thirty pm, the Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court's order and instructed Dallas and williamsmon County to separate any ballots cast by voters who entered the line after seven
pm and marked them as provisional ballots. After a request by Turn General Ken Paxton, who claimed his office was not properly notified of the extended voting hours, Paul Adams, the Dallas County election administrator, confirmed that these separated ballots would not be counted, pending further legal challenges. At her election night watch party, Crockett said that she had quote no idea how it is that clerks are going to
know who was in line by what time. I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised.
Quote.
On Wednesday morning, Crockett did concede the race, but told The New York Times quote, the Democratic Party should absolutely prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now. People will not turn out because of what's happened, in my opinion, especially if no one fights for their votes to be counted unquote.
It does feel a lot like the first decade of the century. Again, like we go wars in the Middle East. We've got people arguing about votes that should be counted and not counted.
It's great.
So the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary that are tallied so far at ninety five percent of the votes in is two million, one hundred and forty two, two hundred and eleven versus the Democratic primary. That's two million, three hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred and thirty six, slightly more Democratic votes counted in the primary.
Texas has open primaries.
Apparently Texas has open primaries.
Yeah, okay.
Tall Rico was up nine points among white voters, up twenty two points among Hispanic while Crockett was up twenty
three points among Black voters. Krockett was up eight points with Biden voters, and tall Rico up thirty two points with Sanders voters if you look at the twenty twenty presidential primary, and that gives you a little bit of a peak into kind of what these two candidates are presented, with Crockett serving on the Kamala Harris campaign definitely more of a k Hive esque candidate and tall Rico a little bit running off of the kind of Bernie Sanders
progressive coat tails a little bit not coattails, but like using that sort of playbook as more of like a relatable working class guy, less of like an established mid Democrat, like like Crockett sort of branded herself as Tallerico is a former school teacher who served in the state House
since twenty eighteen. Fought against Christian nationalism and a bill mandating the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, calling the bill unconstitutional, Unamerican, and deeply Unchristian, and his past legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs. He's like a
progressive Christian. That's kind of I guess the best way to describe him, as he frequently went viral the past three years for clips of him, you know, arguing in the Texas State House, you know, arguing for progressive points. Of view while like quoting Bible versus that sort of thing. For this campaign of his, he was running on affordability
and cost of living. That was the real focus of this campaign of targeting the richest one percent and giant corporations, making billionaires and corporations quote unquote pay their fair share of taxes, raising federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars, expanding child and earned income tax credits. He's opposed state legislation
restricting gender affirming healthcare, including for people under eighteen. In September, right after he announced his candidacy, Tillerico, who's a member of the LGBTQ Caucus, responded to a question about trans athletes like this.
I think it's interesting. I've been in this race for five days and I've had a lot of interviews with national media. No one's ever asked me about the cost of housing. No one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs, no one's asking me about the cost of childcare. The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes. And so what I would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans people are one percent of the population. Undocumented people
are one percent of the population. Muslims are one percent of the population. We are all focused on the wrong one percent. Trans people aren't taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It's the billionaires and their pub with politicians, and so we need not only the media but all of us to focus on the real problem at hand.
Hey, it appeared like this was effective messaging.
That's a good response. Yeah.
Yeah.
The only dangerous minority is a rich It has consistently actually been a popular yeah messaging. The Democrats have nonetheless shied away from.
Yeah, because that's who donates money to them.
Yeah, because they like that. It's the only minority they liked.
Because many of them are rach Yeah, and others wish to be.
Tallarico supports regulating AI universal health care, term limits for Congress and it Spreme Court justices, halting Israel's illegal settlements, restoring the talking only filibuster, and banning gerrymandering, and establishing independent redistricting. Tallary participated in the Texas Democrats protests against redistricting, both in like twenty twenty one and last year in twenty twenty five, where they fled Texas on holiday for
a while. On his campaign website, he talks about advocating reform to make legal immigration easier, in creating pathways to legalization for undocumented immigrants already long present, as well as spouses and dreamers. Part of his immigration policy reads, quote prioritize the deportation of criminals, gang members, and human traffickers, not our neighbors who contribute to our communities, pay taxes,
impose no threat to our safety unquote. Part of where this sort of language I think falls apart is that when the Trump administration claims that it's deporting gang members and criminals like what we saw with people sent to Seacott, that also includes regular people. That also includes our neighbors. And I think that is one slight fault in this messaging.
It's going to be interesting with him running in the general now, you know in Texas where the border is a big issue there, and a lot of his immigration stuff definitely is not going to at least currently is not as far to the left as some other progressive Democrats, and this is something that he is currently being pushed on especially after winning. Progressive advocates are pushing him on ice specifically, as well as some stuff on Israel and Gaza.
Tallerco is advocated to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive weapons to Israel while still funding the Iron Dome and defensive weapons. Talked about trying to find a way to make sure that defense weapons cannot be used offensively. But he does recognize that Gaza is an extremely important issue and said in an interview quote one of the primary reasons the Democratic Party lost young voters in particular last election was our party's failure to recognize the moral
disaster in Gaza. And I hope that we have leaders who recognize that mistake. I think that's all I need to say of regarding that the generals not until November, and if it is a Cornyn, that will be a much harder race, considering he's an incumbent versus Paxton, who has a lot of avenues for attack. For someone like tall Rico who can lean on his like a Christian charm to it attract voters both in rural areas as well as lean on his support among Hispanic voters, as
demonstrated in the primary. Mia, you have one final thing to add based on the primary elections in North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, there were a bunch of primary elections in North Carolina. And I'm mentioning this because there was a series of North Carolina Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass anti trans legislation over a veto from the governor, and also voted with them on really horrifying like pro ice legislation,
and those people lost by cartoon margins. We are talking margins that start at thirty percent go to forty percent, and one of these people lost their race by fifty percent.
Jeez.
So the anti trans candidates and the like I am pro ice racist candidates lost by like bath party numbers, which which I think is actually very encouraging because I think it's a sign of where people are right now, where people are going. Even as the state is trying to do anti transperpression, this has become a thing that is enough where if you are willing to vote for this shit and make a bunch of trans people stuff for you will lose by You will lose by forty in a primary. Unbelievable.
Primaries tend to include more informed, politically engage voters, and that it's one of the things that engages people most right now, specifically the ice stuff.
It's also more ideologically motivated voters, and the right has made the far right has made use of this for decades to push the more moderate actual politicians stuff for the Republican Party further right, because you can't win primaries without getting like appealing to the most extreme of them, and there has not up until very recently been that kind of success with like far left positions. Not that I think basic respect for trans people ought to be
far left, but it's clearly not a centrist dim position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, apparently, And I think that this is good. I think it's it's a smart way to influence the direction of the party. Yeah yeah.
I want to close with the there's a slogan from Chile that gets used in social movements constantly that goes roughly like Chile is where neiliberalism was born, and we're
going to kill it here. And I think this is sort of the start of potentially that in North Carolina, where well, this isn't the start, but hopefully we're seeing like the culmination of a whole bunch of ways of activism and organizing immobilization that can kill this kind of anti trans politics in the place where it was born, the first bathroom bill.
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