Also media.
This is it could happen here.
Executive Disorder are weekly newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world and what this means for you. I am James Stout and today I am joined by Sophie Lichtman and Mia What.
This week we're.
Covering the week of February eighteenth to February twenty fifth.
We'll also have a segment by one Garrison. Davis added on later they were out in the field covering a story which will be an episode coming out soon.
But yeah, they were inside the capital, not the.
Januarited States Capital.
Yea, yeah, so around Mumbo Army, I understand is going to pardon them and it will be fine.
Oh my gosh, two like four people who actually believe this.
Yeah, yeah, Please don't take to the subreddit. Garrison has not been arrested. It's up a couple of small things, I guess. Last week, the Georgia State Elections Board voted to reprimand Elon Musk's America Pack for mailing absentee ballot applications prey filled out with voting information during twenty twenty four elections that violates the law. Uh yeah, yeah, and they didn't they did this thing.
I don't know if you remember this.
They didn't indicate like it wasn't a ballot, it wasn't from the government to vote with, it was from Elo Musk.
What that's so unhinged.
Yeah, he was really on one back then. It'll be interesting to see how he approaches the mid terms with his America Party.
Wow, Scotus did say that USPS is legally immune for intentionally misdelivered mail. They're basically saying, you know, and this was a five to four decision and.
It happened on Tuesday.
February twenty fourth, that the US Postal Service can't be held liable for intentional failure to deliver mail.
Only Hinge's decision. By the way, that the actual, the actual story behind it is this black woman who was renting property out to people and all the like, the people were pissed about it because they're racists, and so they were doing shit like intentionally not delivering bills and stuff. They were like locking their mailboxes with like locks that no one had the keys to because the post office people were just putting locks on it. And it got
ruled that they have immunity for this. Wow, bizarre.
Yeah, I mean all of this just feels like it's being targeted for voter suppression.
But yeah, that's a bigger story.
Yeah. But also another case of Supreme Court says racism. Fine, yeah, many such cases.
Yeah, that's the that's the doctrine. The other thing was this this week is part of the DHS shut down. Lewandowski and nom decided that they were going to shut down TSA pre check and global entry so those people aren't familiar, are like expedited processing. One is forgetting on the plane as you go for security there, and the other one is for when you arrive in the United States and nuclear costumes that this lasted for like minutes. It seems that way. I think global entry is still paused.
There are other ways in which having a global entry car can exploit your entry into the US still, but the pre check thing did not last very long because that would.
Have probably pissed off all the wrong people, right, like.
Yeah, and also make lines even longer, which is airports are already a nightmare.
Come on, come on, they would have gotten killed by their own congressional staffers.
Right. You think Ted Cruz doesn't have TSA pre check.
Please the idea that like, okay, so we're like they're forcing all the TSA people to work anyway, right, because they are essential employees. But be like, if you can find a way to make those people work less, let's say by having a group of people who have been pre cleared so the TSA people don't have to spend quite a long checking them.
That helps.
Actually, this is not a cost saving measure. This is clearly to try to punish people and put it on the dems.
I simply have TSA pre check just so I don't have to take off my shoes, and because it brings me great joy when I get to ditch people who do not have love ditching Robert Evans at the airport and every time we travel together it's a battle who will get through the line first.
And one time it was him and he was like.
Ah, you know what I deserve that a prettiest ye A previous job bought me that PSA prey check and I've had it.
For years, and wow, I love not taking my shoes off. That's it. That's the only person for me. I'm like, Wow, get to wear shoes.
First world problems, Oh, yeah.
Let's talk briefly about Mexico. Yes, oh god, dramatic tone shift.
Yeah yeah, yeah, well you know you might use your pre check on a trip to Mexico.
Wow.
Transition Wow, yeah, that's a transition. That's what we do here. See yeah, professional podcasting. The Mexican military killed Elemento on Sunday. Mento's legal name is Nemesio where servantees. He was, of course the leader of the CJ and G, which is I guess the English translation would be like the Hallisco Cartel new generation, right. The Spanish acronym is how it's generally used. He was also the most wanted person in Mexico.
The operation was carried out by the Mexican military. I've seen some reports that they didn't notify local law enforcement so he wouldn't be tipped off now. Mento is reported to have died on a military flight after the raid, so have been injured in the raid and then died on the way back to Mexico City, where he was obviously going to be treated, and then questioned if he survived. I guess in response, more than two hundred and fifty
knuck called blockados knuckle blockaloes. If you're not familiar. Are roadblocks that are generally made up of vehicles that are carjacked. They're often like buses, and then they're set a blaze that they're set at ninety degrees to the direction of traveler of the road right, so it makes a roadblock. So more than two hundred and fifty of these were set up around the country. This is a relatively common response.
The most I guess, like serious response we've seen to a government action before was called the Kolia Kanasso.
Couliacan was in a lower cartel.
This this one they're calling the men jassel right, using the same etymology, I guess. There have also been attacks on Mexican National Guard troops, killing more than two dozen In twenty four hours. Following the raids, more than sixty civilians I've now been reported to have been killed, including a pregnant woman. Yeah, it's all like it's folks in Mexico who going to suffer, right, Like it's every day
people trying to get on with their lives. Another of the things that happened is the bank will be nstar so like well being bank. I guess I would translate that as it's a bank that exists to bring people into the banking system who would otherwise be unbanked. It's a government initiative in Mexico. So a lot of branches
of that bank have been burnt down. This is part of a tendency on the part of Shinenbaum right to repudiate the previous policy of hugs not bullets, and to go after organized crime in Mexico more violently.
I guess it.
Seems like the country's security forces have been leading the charge against the seen A lower cartel, and this maybe indicates that it's the military who were going.
After the Hallischico cartel.
So like the two branches are pursuing separate missions against against different entities. Right, it remains to be seen if there was any US involvement.
I kind of take.
Issue at the needs you suggestion that there has to have been US involvement. Like, the Mexican government is more than capable of doing state violence. It has done so for a long time. Yep, you know, the Mexican government is capable of acting on its own. Not everything that happens is about America. I don't want to cover this in too great of a detail. It's not really a beat that we report on other than this is a relatively major occurrence in Mexico.
Yeah, and Gear is gonna plug in now future Gear, tell us what you got?
Hello.
Garrison Davis here with Sophie Lechterman for a special segment about the Super Bowl commercial for Ring the Doorbell, owned by Amazon Yep. During the Super Bowl, Amazon's Ring Doorbell air commercial showing off a new feature called Search Party, which was advertised as a way to locate lost dogs by automatically searching through footage captured by ring cameras in the neighborhood to track a pet's movements.
Ooh, who picked the name search party? And who thought that wasn't creepy?
Search Party is interesting because it makes you think of like a crime scene. Yes, that is a brain link that they may not have intended. Let's play, yes, please the audio from this commercial because, as Sophie discussed before we started this segment, where we're unsure of the overlap of it could happen here listeners and Super Bowl watchers. So here is the Ring commercial audio. It's thirty seconds.
This is milw pets her family.
But every year ten million go missing, and the way we look for them hasn't changed in years.
Until now.
One post of a dog's photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match. Search Party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs. Since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family. Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search Party available to everyone for free right now, Join the neighborhood at rain dot com.
Join the neighbor uh No?
Also, when did they launch this?
Do we know it's launched? I'm pretty sure Search Party is launched.
I just don't believe that dog and Day bullshit.
It launched in late twenty twenty five, Okay, and I can speak to this a little bit more, Actually sure, because I saw this feature early when I was in
Las Vegas. Actually right, this commercial this intends to portray, you know, a heartwarming unification of a dog and its owner, but in effect, the ad sparked public backlash, including from politicians like Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and privacy rights organizations, and among normies because this ad accidentally demonstrated the technological capacity to turn every neighborhood Ring camera into a web of surveillance that AI can use to locate anything.
Based on a picture.
Now, as I said, I saw this feature unveiled at CEES last month. I talked about it on Better Offline. At ces the AI search functionality was described like this. The owner of a lost pet can upload a photo and post a notice in the ring app. An Amazon will utilize ring cameras in the area to search for matches, and if a match is found, the owner of the camera can share the footage with the owner of the
lost pet. But the public display this technology during the Super Bowl has stirred trouble and bad headlines for Amazon. Senator Ed Markey said that the ad quote exposed a scary truth the technology in its doorbell cameras can be used to hunt down a lost pet or a person.
Americans oppose this creepy surveillance state unquote, and the privacy rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a statement that the ad was quote unquote disguised as heartfelt, but actually quote previewed future surveillance of our streets, a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything human, pet, or otherwise.
Quote.
Now, these concerns are in the wake of high profile ICE rates targeting neighborhoods, and a recent announcement that RING was going to partner with the police surveillance company Flock, which operates large scale, integrated camera systems that allow police to tap into a network of surveillance in urban areas through cameras and license plate readers. Now, Flock claims that they do not give federal immigration agencies direct access to footage, and that may be true, that.
Doesn't mean that won't change that they don't have capability to do so.
Well, and that doesn't mean that CBP and ICE can't acquire that footage in other ways and currently right now, a four h four media report from last May showed that local police working with ICE used Flock's camera network to track immigrants as a part of ICE and homeland
security investigation. So they are getting access to this footage even though they aren't directly tapped into the Flock network, because they can work with local agencies in states that do not have sanctuary city policies and in states that maybe do, because police may not be always following those laws,
Ring not. Flock says that their footage can be requested by local law enforcement, and users can decide whether or not to respond, though Ring is also subject to Warrens, subpoenas, and court orders requiring some footage be handed over to authorities. Following the backlash to the Super Bowl ad, Ring canceled its partnership with Flock in what the companies describe as a mutual decision. The deal would have allowed Ring owners to directly share footage with the Flock network.
Now.
All of this happened around the same time that the FBI was able to access recorded footage from Nancy Guthrie's Google Nest camera as a part of that kidnapping investigation, despite Guthrie not having an active recording subscription, so this too sparked privacy concerns. Cash Fortel, FBI director said that the footage was recovered from quote residual data located in back end SYSTEMSOTE. This was footage that Google records and stores for free on a temporary basis, usually for a
few hours before it is quote unquote deleted. So if you have one of these Nest cameras, Google will store a few hours of footage for you to look at for free and then says that it's going to be quote unquote deleted, and Nest owners can pay a reoccurring fee to keep that footage accessible on the Google Cloud for longer. Guthrie did not have such a subscription, so this data that was recorded was marked for deletion. But
data deletion is not an immediate process. It just marks a piece of data as being okay to write over with new data, which means until that happens, fragments of that data can be retrieved and pieced back together. But this can be tricky and take a lot of time, and in this case, it took Google over a week for a very high profile case.
And they're still working behind the scenes to retrieve even more footage. Yeah, from this Nest cameras.
It's not easy.
I think the sort of privacy concerns for this case do not reflect largely for I think most people's concerns because the specific way Google stores it footage in the cloud is also unique to the Google Nest system. Ring doesn't do it in this same way.
They also ended up outsourcing this to like private security retrievers for data retrievers, as opposed to doing it internally, either with the local sheriffs or FBI, which says a lot.
Yeah, not surprising, and yeah, there's always a concern with these sorts of you know, doorbell cameras, that the footage can be subpeded, right, but that process also takes a long time. I think there's a difference between the sort of flock style immediate access and subpoena ining footage or having to piece together fragmented footage in the case of like the Nest storage system. But this is this is the current situation with with the Ring and Flock deal
that fell through. Ring does partner with Axon, the bodycam company. Similarly, police can send requests to Ring users and they can voluntarily send the footage. If they choose not to police really want that footage, they can try to get a court order that may or may not succeed, depending on the details of that case.
My question is when you were a CS what what were they highlighting there? Was it different from this commercial or was it a similar campaign?
It was very similar to this commercial. It was it was like a section of the large like Amazon room. Like Amazon has a whole suite a suite in this hotel, but it's it's not it's not like a hotel room. It's on the convention floor. But they have like their whole whole like kind of ballroom section Amazon wing and Amazon wing of the convention. Yeah, and this was one of the many products. They had a few other surveillance products, like a like a security camera tower it's powered by
solar that can like roll around. Also as planning to integrate into these web surveillance networks. But since this ad and the negative backlash which led to the Flock deal coming through, there still has been reports from four oh four media about internal discussions among Ring to use search Party for crime to quote unquote stop crime, and they're still ongoing discussion on the various ways to apply this technology.
In an internal email acquired by four o four, the Ring CEO said that search Party could be a tool to help quote zero out crime in neighborhoods. So the capabilities of using this to track humans are very known among the people at RING.
I think it's really interesting how quickly this partnership dissolved with the backlash from that Super Bowl ad. It seemed to be almost instant. It's pretty quick, which shows that once upthing's really bad and you point it out, sometimes that can work to stop said bad thing.
Yeah, but yeah.
Search party creepy though like a law enforcement still wants to use it potentially be helpful with certain things, maybe, but it really just seems like they're trying to do like normal people surveillance.
Yeah, and then putting it with this you heartwarming package of helping find lost dogs. If you want to locate a lost dog, the most efficient way to do that is by having your dog myca trips. That is still the most most reliable method. Using this integrated camera network as a as a way to coax people into submitting into a system like this by waving the lost puppy banner is a little bit insidious.
Leave the dogs alone. The dogs don't want to be surveilled. My dog doesn't want to be surveilled. She does, she surveils mind house, Stop trying to take the dog's jobs. We're gonna go to a quick ad.
Break and we'll be back. And we're back.
And I just wanted to follow up on something that was kind of overlooked from the City of the Union, which was, you know, kind of a throwaway discussion about IVF and I just wanted to give some information because I think it's worth talking about for those of you
who don't know, IVF is incredibly expensive. According to I looked at the National Bureau of Economic Research as well as an article from CNY Fertility that says the average coughs of IVF is often quoted at twelve thousand dollars, but that is just the price quoted by the fertillity
clinic for like their base package. And I have several friends who have gone through this and the costs are outrageous, many other necessary expenses on top of that, twelve thousand dollars is around twenty thousand dollars and for most folks, on average, IBS doesn't necessarily work the first time around. For a lot of people, you're spending somewhere between thirty thousand per round to fifty to sixty thousand per round. And you know, despite and fertility being a medical diagnosis
and IBF being the best medical treatment for that. A twenty eighteen analysis of the IBF insurance market by Mercer found that seventy four percent of Americans do not have insurance coverage for IBF, and you know, just from speaking with friends, even if they do, it's still outrageously expensive. So we're looking at a cost of about somewhere between depending on insurance or without insurance. And that's not even including the medical cost. That's not including the downtime cost
of not working. That's not including if you're just doing egg retrieval, and the cost of storage. But these expenses are outrageous and it's been a heated topic for many folks in the far right. And just for an example, I would like to play a clip from Charlie Kirk talking to to Sorry Sorry in advance, two girl twins that you know. I actually when this when this video originally dropped, it was a discussion with a bunch.
Of my friends. So I kind of think it's worth sharing.
Just to see, like how heated of a topic it is, because I want to talk about how Donald Trump has addressed it and how that changed.
So here is an interaction between two.
Girls that were IVF babies talking to Charlie Kirk about IVF, and I think it's just really interesting to hear that extreme thinking from that side.
Hi, Charlie, Hi, So my name is Paige and this is my twin sister IVF.
We have two older sisters that are also IVF.
Okay, so this is about IVF of.
Course, so I'm particularly a neutral on the topic. I don't want to have like a forced opinion because like my entire families kind of become a product of IVF.
Or you guys surahcuse too or just IVF just if.
But I watch your videos and so I've noticed that in one of your videos you do mention that you are okay with IVF, but you're morally against it. Is that true?
Yeah, it's a little bit deeper than that, But I have a lot of problems with IVF albe it while acknowledging the fruit. I'm glad you're both alive and so that must be celebrated. So it's a very I'll explain the difficulty, but please continue, Okay.
My part one of my question is just as someone who was conceived through IVF, why should I also be morally against it?
Got good question, Okay, So, as a pro life for first and foremost, we have to have an issue with the discarded fertilized eggs that happen during IVF. That's why you guys are twins, is because during your creation process, if I can be provocatively blunt with your you lost a lot of your siblings. Yes, am I correct and saying.
So for our older sisters they had six embryos in their batch, two came out, of course, but for us there were three and then two came out.
Yeah, and so that's my first problem is that it definitionally is saying like we're going to discard life to get to life. I have a problem with that.
So I do.
Agree, but in a certain way. Oh sorry, So in a certain way, those embryos, like say, they weren't going to become anyways, but at least we were trying because they were going to be raised in a house where we are pro life and we really wanted to be able to have kids and cherish that. But by taking that loss, they were able to have at least us out of the three, at least they could have the one. So it's kind of I don't know where I'm going with that.
I understand what you're saying. So there's a pro life way to do IVA, which is only implant the eggs of which the children that you actually want to raise, and so by the way, you have a lower likelihood of working because in your case it would be maybe two or three. For example, the way that the IVF doctor will sell it. It is like, look, here's six embryos. You'll be lucky if one or two implant to the
uterine wall. Let's see what happens. Now in certain cases, four implant to the uterine wall and you get quadruplets, right, which is what happens.
I find that to be a little bit.
Creepy, to be honest, that a doctor can kind of call shots on what life is going to live and not live.
I think you're a little bit creepy.
Just I understand what an a is. Like, I just like, ideologically obviously no, but like, what how does he think that?
Yeah, so that was like an extreme side of things.
Yeah, that opinion of you're killing your siblings and you know that, that sort of thing. I just find it the beginning of that video. I talked about it with a lot of my friends when I first came out. I just thought it was so interesting that where he's like, well, I'm glad you're alive, but you're immoral? Is such a such such an unhinged stance. Meanwhile, during the Trump campaign, Sorry in advance, Donald Trump's voice.
Trump back to back hazard pay.
After listening to it for like two hours last night of the.
Yeah, yeah, Trump deeply pivoted We're going back to like about a month before the election in twenty twenty four, but he deeply pivoted on IVF after the Biomi Supreme Court issued a ruling that effectively halted IVF treatment in the state by declaring that frozen embryos.
Are legally considered to be children.
This decision led to a temporary shot down of IVF services at major clinics due to liability risks. This is, you know, from Johns Hopkins Public health website. Yeah, and so that started a big discussion and splits of different people on different political sides about the topic. But yeah, Trump pivoted an IVF and this is what he had to say, Oh, I want to talk about IVF.
I'm the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
Also during the campaign trail, in an interview with NBC News, this is the most important clip of it.
He said the following, Well, as you know, I was always for IVF right from the beginning, as soon as we heard about it. It's fertilization and it's helping women and men and families.
But it's helping women able to have a baby.
Some have great difficulty, and a lot of them have been very happy with the results, as you know, and what we're doing, and we're doing this because we just think it's great and we.
Need great children, beautiful children in our country.
We actually need them, and we are going to be under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment.
So we are paying for that treatment.
Or you want it, or for for.
All Americans that get it, all Americans that need it. So we're going to be paying for that drape.
And or we're going to be mandating that the insurance company plays.
So either either the government will pay for it or the insurance companies under a mandate.
Yes, that did not happen. He campaigned on that and just giving that false hope to people struggling with infertility who can't afford the Like I said, thirty to sixty to god knows how much thousands of dollars is pretty sick.
It's particularly weird when I understand this is this thing that like his party is not united on, but like they've gone after not having to pay for other reproductive health care right and like specifically I'm talking mostly about abortions here right, like that insurers or employers would not have to pay for it, and that that's a demand that you constantly hear on the right, Like, I guess it this is such a strange issue for them because I guess it's one of the few areas where there's
still like some division where they haven't all just like fallen into life on it.
Right.
And right after he was elected, it was in the middle of February twenty twenty five, you put on an executive order that said, end quote to support American families is the policy of my administration to ensure reliable access to the IVF treatment, including by easy unnecessary statutory regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable. Okay, so he's already gone back on the promise from money campaign, but that didn't stop him from doing this.
We're going to have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag for women to hold women between the fertilization or all of the other things that we're talking about.
It's going to be it's going to be grace. We're joined today. Horrible word fertilization. I'm I'm still very proud of it.
I don't care.
I'll be known as the fertilization President.
That that's okay, that's not bad. That's not bad.
I've I've been called I've been called much worse.
Wow, yeah you have.
That's it.
Yeah, I didn't expect that one. Today.
I'm sorry, it's so insane.
And then back in last October, they put out like one of their like White House fact sheets, you know, fact sheet President J. Trump announces action to lower costs and expand access to in vitro fertilization IVF and high quality fertility care and for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. You can read this on the White House website, but this summary pretty much covers it. It's that the Trump
administration's ivfinition contains two king components. The first is a drug pricing agreement with far supertical company EMD Serrano provides discounts on the list prices of select IVF medications. These medications will be offered at a lower cost to eligible users through a government operated portal trump RX dot CoV and preliminary federal estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services suggest potential savings of up to twenty two
hundred dollars per treatment cycle for medications alone. So trumprx dot gov launched this month in February twenty twenty six. It's a government hosted website that serves as a facilitator and points Americans to drug makers direct to consumer websites where they can make purchases.
It also provides coupons.
To use it Pharma disease and it seems basically like a government version of good RX and is very similar to Mark Cuban's Cost plus Drugs, which has a lot of the same medications with similar discounts, including the same kind of medications for fertility and per ASMR. Again, this move alone does not make IVF attainable for most patients.
Fertility drugs represent only one portion of the overall cost of care, and patients without good insurance coverage continue to face significant out of it expensive Trump has repeatedly promised to make IVF University successful. This announcement does not fulfill that promise. Meaningful progress requires policies that ensure all Americans who need medical assistance to build their families and access that care.
Also, by the way, you can't use your insurance with Trump are x. So yeah, it's an either roll. It's yeah.
Great to note.
He specifically brought this up in last night's State of the Union during one of his what I call a propo I think back to like the Hunger CAG what I call a propo, which is when they like bring people out. I like dates back to like Reagan and when they bring people out to be like and this person here. But it just was such a bizarre thing to bring up. And you know, Trump's State of the Union was the longest of all time.
Yeah, I think so.
And he spent a total of five minutes on healthcare alone, and this was part of it.
And here tonight is the very first customer ever to get that big discount, and it is big. Katherine Raider. For five years, she and her husband have struggled with infertility and they turned to IVF, one drug has been costing Catherine four thousand dollars to purchase. But a few weeks ago she logged onto the Trump RX website and got that same drug that costs four thousand dollars, got it for under five hundred dollars, a reduction of much
more actually than three thousand, five hundred dollars. Catherine, we are all praying for you and you're going to be a great mom.
Really creepy.
Yeah, imagine having the president talking about how you've been boning, Like like, what a fucking how you're having trouble, Like that's a difficult thing for a lot of people to talk. Like I've had friends who have gone through IVF as well. Yeah, thing that happens when you're ear thirties, but like it's a hard thing for people to talk about, let alone to have to have it talked about in front of the whole fucking country.
Fertility.
Infertility is such a personal thing, and it's really to use that woman's pain to promote your drug discount website.
It's pugg it's repugnant.
Yeah, and she's still paying five hundred bucks a month, like like that's just a lot of money.
She's unreal one hundred percent.
While that's not as bad as five thousand, that's so much money.
And it's like, while any discounter.
Fertility related drugs is good, this is not what was promised. I've still ridiculously unachievable for most people. He is not the father of IVF, And this is fraudulent advertising. Just a way of like trying to promote his like artificial empathy to a wider audience. And it's despicable and fertility issues do not need to be played with like that.
That's what I had on that.
It was like a very big throwaway comment, but I thought it was worth talking about because it's been there's been like a linear lead up to what that was, and I think it's important.
To talk about.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, anyways, James, you have more to talk about.
Yeah, So going back to Congress before the State of the Union, Senator bloom Othol's office published a couple of documents from two anonymous whistleblowers which show changes in basic training for er. Er are enforcement removal operations, so they're one of the branches of ICE. You also have AHSI and then the ICE administrative stuff Majorsie homelown, security investigations, the ER the other people who are supposed to go out and detain and remove people, right, that is what
they do. The documents show quote cuts of more than a dozen significant practice examinations which potential ICE ERO officer is no longer must undergo. In fact, the cut is sixteen out of a previous total of twenty five. So there are now just nine of these practical exams, whereas before there.
Were twenty five.
The exams to remove include quote judgment, pistol shooting, determine removability, to encounters to detention and detention to removal, as well as criminal encounters. So these are like exams that would test the knowledge of the potential would be ice agent on these issues.
Right, So you so you just don't have to know that anymore? Yeah, well you can you do an open book test.
Well, it's open book multiple choice, it is now.
Yea.
In some cases there isn't a greaded practical exam at all. It's just passed fail.
An open book multiple.
Choice, Yeah, to determine your understanding of the law, right or becoming a testing Yeah, I know, right, I guess it's a caveat all of this. By saying like the people who killed Alex Pretty and Rennie Good were exceptionally well trained, they had been trained for a long time, they had been in DHS for years and didn't stop the murdering American citizens industry, I'm.
Not saying that.
Yeah, I'm not Joe bidening this, but this is still notable.
There is also the wholesale removal.
Of some classes, because these classes that have been removed include the use of force simulation training that's like a late they watch a video and they have like a laser pistol. That's how they slate use of force there. Well, they used to, I guess. Also the training on the legal structure of the United States government, ERRO authority, and use of force. It also shows a huge reduction in the overall training, which we also heard from Ryan Schwank will get to in a minute, but he was a
former lawyer with ICE who testified to Congress. Toddlines previously told Congress at the FLDC, that's a federal law enforcement training centers in Georgia had been moving from five eight hour days to six twelve hour days. So although the number of training days for ICE agents have been cut, the number of training hours was the same. They was going to get through with their grind set, I guess, but the whistleblower documents show that they're still appearing to
do eight hour days. Like the number of days have been cutting out, the number of hours of training in each day has remained the same. There are some longer days, but mostly those are people who have to make up the pt test or like some nights seem to go later with practical stuff like first aid and shooting, but the bulk of the days continued to be eight hours. There are now forty two total days versus seventy five before. Some of this was already public actually in certain forums
and subreddits. Era Officer has been posting about like the faster training course for a while. The documents show a target of four thousand and seven new officers in fiscal year twenty twenty six. They would aim to have commissioned four thousand new ICE officers by the end of September. We also heard from Ryan Schwank who testified to Congress, and they published some excerpts in this testimony which I'm
just going to include here. A couple of quotations quote, I am duty bound to tell you the ICE Basic Immigration Enforcement Training program is now deficient, defective, and broken. And another quote here Without reform, I will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty and do not know the limits of their authority, and
do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order. Finally, is is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its ten thousand new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and perform their jobs. Schwank was hired in twenty twenty one as a Assistant
Chief Counsel for the ICE Office Principal Legal Advisor. He also serves as a resident attorney at Dilly, which is a detention center for families and children, and at some point in this past he was a private practice immigration attorney. What good lord, this is not like a particularly woke guy, I would say, And like, none of this is to suggest that it would be okay for there to be thousands more ICE officers if they were better trained. It
still wouldn't. But it does show that the state is building a force of people who don't know an unlawful order is and what their rights are and what their obligations are, and what the rights of the people who they.
Are detaining are.
And talking about the rights of people who are being detained, I want to talk about a development in the case
was the unaccompanied Guatemalan children. People remember that over Labor Day, the Trump administration tried to deport these children, and they tried a number of like credit lawyer shit like like just really like silly, like I don't know did did these legal arguments, which which was kind of supurious to get away with it, And they were prevented by a restraining order, right if you remember the judge Sparkle Sunan who was the first judge who issued the restraining order.
But they did so in the middle of the night over Labor Day weekend and sent one of their attorneys to the airport to prevent them.
Christ. Yeah, truly like last minute stuff.
The class for that tro and the injunction was quote children from Guatemala who are or will be in the custody of defendants. They all will be lead to the next part of our story.
Right.
A lawsuit is now alleging that CBP is flouting the injunction by returning children when they first enter custody before
they're sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. So they kind of tried to previously make this argument that like they were with oh, they weren't with ICE, so they went with DHS there with o R. Right, So the Office of Refugee Resettlement is a distinct entity, so they'd sort of tried this like, oh, there's nothing we can do to stop the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and that
had not worked right. The suit also alleges that quote, defendants are using misinformation, coercion, threats, and fear to persuade children to relinquish their rights and sign paperwork portally accepting a form of expedited voluntary return. This is common across DHS. Rightly in my reporting on Dilly, for instance, Primrose told me that the forms for voluntary repatriation are present like
all day and all that in their room. Like any time it gets too much for you, anytime they're too hungry, too tired, to stressed, too scared, you can sign that formula on a plane and it's all over for You're
going back to wherever you fled from. Including the case is a claim by an attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center that unaccompanied children have been given a document that quote completely misstates, or at least dramatically misrepresents the immigration laws that apply to unaccompanied immigrant children, and it conveys to vulnerable children threats that are quote in clear contravention of the entire system implemented to protect and promote
the safety and best interest of unaccompanied immigrant children. This went to the Trafficking Victims Protection re Authorization Act of two thousand and eight. So what this is suggesting is that these young people are being provided with essentially it's not legal advice, but it's misconstruing the rights that they have to be protected, right, and so that they are not being advised properly of the protections that they have
under law. I'm going to keep an eye on this one because I think I don't love the phrase unaccompanied mine is when we talk about this because these children after and accompanied, there are people who are with them, who care for them on their journey here. Right, I've seen this firsthand. It just means that their immediate family are not with them. But like we saw in the State of the Union last night, right, when the Trump administration talks about migrants, it wants to talk about people
who kill children. Right, that is the thing that they or hurt children. That it's the thing that they trusted out a couple of times last night. It is not the migrants who are hurting children in this instance, it is the government. These children who came here on their own to be safe with very few options, right, and either their parents couldn't look after them while their parents
aren't around anymore. There is not a more sympathetic case, right, There's not a clear example of people we should be looking after as a state or a community or a nation or whatever. And the fact that they're trying to turn these children around and boot them back to the dangerous situation came from is really morally appalling. Well, keep reportting on it because I think it is like a very important thing to shed more light on.
Absolutely, it's horrifying, Yeah, just on a basic moral level, like being the person whose job it is and the apparently doing this job of trying to construct fake legal arguments so you can fucking deport children, Like what the fuck? Yeah, it's just so evil.
Yeah, it's it's horrible, like they you know, I've spent a lot of time with migrants. I spent a lot of time with migrants with children. I've known plenty of children who are traveling without their parents. Yeah, and the things that they go through just to get here are horrific, and the things that they're going away from are probably worse.
And to think that those kids could be booted back to the places that they fled within seventy two hours of arrival before they're transferred to r right after months potentially years. Is Yeah, it's genuinely appalling to me. Like few of these things shocked me, but they still disgusted me. And I really hope that this is something that will continue to get coverage, not just here but elsewhere, because like, these are the most egregious wrongs that the immigration system does.
Let's take a quick break and the meal will be back with some terror park.
Oh what's that?
Oh?
Is it?
Is it?
The the dulcet tones of someone who is a Joe's Dramma singing the worst clash song?
Jazz right jazz bar sorry, jazz.
Jazz bock.
I love how consistent you I read that change is the worst class song.
It really pass me off.
Like people they think, oh, the clash and then they go, no, the song that they played while they were fucking bombing Iraq in nineteen ninety one that made Joyce Drama cry and what she hadn't written it? Yeah, uphold listen to other clash songs please?
Oh God, speaking of clashes, Wow, we have finally learned the results of the log awaited Supreme Court case about specifically the tariffs that were implemented through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Those have been struck down. So this is the retaliatory tariffs, This is the Liberation Day stuff, the ones on Canada and Mexico. Some of the tariffs are still in a fact. We will get to that in a second, like for example, the illudinum and steel ones,
et cetera, et cetera, are still in effect. I'm going to be doing a full episode about this case and about what's going on with tariff policy now, because it's very convoluted and weird. But what's important for our purposes here is that in a lot of ways, this is a very narrow ruling in that it is just specifically about this one act IEPA, and what it specifically, very narrowly says is that IEEPA does not give Trump the authority to do tariffs. What he doesn't say anything about
is his ability to use other acts. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Okay to do tariffs. And it also doesn't say anything and I think this is actually very important about the completely unhinged state of emergencies that he's been declaring in order to be able to use IEPA and that's also going to be very important in a little bit, because there's no ruling on that, he's probably to be able to do some of this
stuff with other tariffs. So basically, immediately after this ruling, Trump imposed a ten percent tariff across the board using Section one twenty two of the Trade Act in nineteen seventy four, he says, So he implements it at ten percent, and then the next day he says it's going to be fifteen percent. The current rate as of data of recording on Wednesday, the one that's actually being assessed at customs is ten percent. Because he hasn't signed executive order
to actually lift the fifteen percent. It's all very weird. It's all very sort of extremely chaotic. So right now the fifteen percent hasn't gone through. But I want to talk about this Section one twenty two thing that he's using right now, because this is a significantly less broad authority than the authority he was claiming before. So okay, first off, it's worth noting that Section one twenty two has literally never been used to enforce Harris before for
reasons i'll get into in a second. Because it's very weird, and it's also going to be very, very difficult to do the kind of Calvin Ball tariff policy Trump wasn't implementing, where he just sort of says a thing in a
tariff appears. So the thing about one twenty two is that instead of the thing that Trump was doing before, where he was just tweeting out a tariff rate for an individual country because he was mad at them, section one twenty two it only allows you to set a flat tariff rate for every country in the world, and
the maximum tariff rate is capped at fifteen percent. The other thing that's notable about this is that Section one twenty two tariffs also need to be approved by Congress after one hundred and fifty days, at least in theory. The Cato Institute interestingly is arguing that Trump theoretically could just extend it for another one hundred and fifty days after the first one. But this this would be a huge mess because there's no way he can win a
terrorf vote in Congress. There's just absolutely no way. Now. The other important aspect of this that's very weird that I think is going to become a very large sort of point of discussion in the coming weeks is that section one twenty two. So I've read this section. It says specifically, quote it can only be used to levy tariff's quote whenever fundamental international payment problems require special import measures to restrict imports one to deal with large and
serious United States balance of payment deficits. Now that's vague. Oh yeah, well, but here's the thing though. Here's the thing. So I tried to write a version of this where I tried to explain ballant of payments and what a balanced payment deficit is. I'm going to do that in the other episode. It's too convoluted. But what's really important about this is that Trump has been complaining about trade deficits, and the state of emergency is over trade deficit. A
trade deficit is not a balance of payment deficit. Balance of payments is an accounting identity that has to do with like it's literally like the sum of all exchange between everyone in the US and everyone outside of the US.
So you, by definition, can't have a deficit in it because it's the accounting identity attracks both sides, right, So if someone in the US is sending money to someone, it tracks both the fact that the used person set the money and the fact that the other person got the money, So you can't have a deficit because it's always one to one because it's tracking both. Right, So you're.
Saying the limit does not exist.
Yeah, it's unhinge. And like you know, and specifically for the US, it is. It is possible to get into trouble with ballance of payments if you can't just print your currency, like if your currency is on the gold Standard, you couldn't theory get in trouble here. Now, a notable thing about the United States is that we are not on the gold Standard, so we literally, even if you use definitions of ballants of payment where you could theoretically have one of these problems, the US cannot have a
balance of payments crisis. It cannot. It definitionally cannot have one of these, right. And the thing about this right is, you're gonna hear a lot of people talking about how the US is a balance of payments crisis. If the US was having an actual serious balance of payments deficit right now, there would be riots in the streets. And
that's not an exaggeration. This is normally what happens. Normally, balance of payments crises are a country owes a bunch of money and they straight up do not have enough US dollars to pay that off. And when that happens, things happen, like suddenly there's like five hundred person lines outside of every gas station because there's not enough money to import gas, right, like you can't import food. It's like,
like that is what happens when there's balance of payments crises. Right, this is like Sri Lanka in twenty twenty four, and like that's the kind of thing where you get a balance of payments crisis and people burned down the presidential mansion like we don't have one. Yea, this is not happening. So there's already becoming an attempt to be like, oh, the US is a balance of payments deficit, there's a crisis. No no, no, no, no, no nonsense. Gibberius, You're gonna hear this
a lot. It's complete nonsense. And it's one of the things that makes me look at this and go, Okay, this is the immediate one that he picks. But like, this is not going to survive in court because the specific line here where it says fundamental international payment problems, like we don't have fundamentally international payment problems, like we paid all of this gets paid every years. It's funny in the Executive Order it says the US sometimes has
international payment problems, and no it doesn't. It has never had international payment problems like on any kind of real scale. The closest thing you can do is look back at periods when the US was again on the gold standards, and even then we were fined like it's it's completely gibberish. I'm pissed about this. I'm annoyed that I have to go back to balance of payment stuff this. So this is probably not going to hold up when the inevitable
next lawsuit goes under. However, come up. There are a couple of other trade authorities that he can use that they've been talking about using, and some of them have been used already. So broadly, we've been talking about like two kinds of tariffs on this show. We've been talking about the tariffs that are on a specific country, and those are the ones that are basically gone. We'll get to the one exception to that in a second. And
then there's been the ones that are on goods. So if you remember, like THO, there was a there was a tariff recently on like vanity cabinets like stuff like yeah, yeah, I do remember that one. Yeah, really weird niche thing. Oh gamps, wait wait wait till I talk about what the legal authority of tariffs on kitchen cabinets was. There's a special constitutional exemption for those. It's so bad. Okay, So so this this is this is the section two
thirty two of the Trade Act, Nextivity four. These are these specific tariffs and these ones are supposed to be tariffs on goods in response to threats to national security. So it's yeah, hang on, join the DUTs for me. The price of impointed cabinets are being too low.
Threat to national security.
It's funny because okay, this is the the legal experts think actually can potentially survive challenges because it's national security. But it's like, okay, like I get our Supreme Court. The fact that this ruling was six to three is frankly ridiculous, given that again, Trump was pretending he had legal authority to issue tariffs in a bill that literally never says the word tariff and had never been used to raise a tariff before. Okay, So like Supreme Court
was like, okay, well that's nonsense. And even I, who was extremely cynical about the Supreme Court, do not think that you can compellingly argue in front of a court. And this probably won't even go to the Supreme Court like that you can compellingly argue that is it is part of the national security interest of the United States that the American cabinet makers mildly out compete foreign cabinet. Wow. Yeah, that's a weird one.
I mean, yeah, national security and like terrorism, Joe, the magic words when it comes to the Constitution.
Yeah, but in this case, okay, like I really seriously with a stream it's gonna walk up there.
National security, right, yeah, they've done some wild stuff in the court.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was interesting to what, like you say, you were saying, like how much he'll get past the court. It was interesting to watch the Supreme Court justices in the State of the Union just like, oh yeah, just grimacing through it.
Yep, yep, he was so mad at them.
They're usually pretty stoic, but there was a serious grimace action going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was no attempt to hide that particular face, right, yeah.
I don't know if we've ever had a sitting president, like school the Supreme Court in a state of the Union.
In that way, I.
Think maybe it is possible IFTR did it.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I can see the FTR did try to pack the court at what point.
Yeah, yeah, that was at least funnier.
Or at least back in the day when they used to like fight on the floor of Congress like something.
Back then, those were the days.
So there's there's one more trade thing I think we're talking about here in terms in terms of of where more terif aulorady can come from, and that's section three oh one of that same TERR Effact. And this is the one where so a lot of the tariffs on China are actually still in effect because a lot of those tariffs are actually from the first Trump administration and then Biden continued them because it's yeah, they hate China.
I quite seriously do not have a better than that. Yeah, but section three oh one is specifically for quote, unfair trade practices. Yeah, no, like unfair.
It's such a strange word to use in legislation, right, like what what do we what do we mean by that?
Well, so, like in the original context, it was like supposed to be an anti protectionist thing, okay, but it's also like, yeah, people are like, oh my god, it's unfair of that, Like the Chinese companies get money from the governments, and I'm like, all of you get fucking money from the government all the time. What are you talkt like yeah.
And like they're talking about it like it's unfair that the wages are lower in certain countries, you know.
Yeah, And it's just like do you look at this, And it's like, Okay, the US, the entire US agriculture industry, like all of the corn grown in this country is grown because they pass an ag bill every single year that does subsidies that are literally illegal for like any other country to have because I specifically got agreements carved out of the free trade statues. Yeah, it's it's absolutely ridiculous. But you know, this is the one that he's been
able to sort of use so far. So I think this is going to be the one that's going to be leaned on once the Trump people sort of remember they have it. But the problem with using three oh one is that there's actual bureaucratic steps you have to do, Like you have to like convene a bunch of trade authorities, and you have to have like a specific anti competitive practice. Okay,
so this is awesome. I think going to be very vulnerable to legal challenges, except probably on China because you actually have to go through and designate what the legal practices are, and I mean usually the process six months, even when you're moving quickly. So there's also I guess what I would call the sort of like the secret dark mode option where they just start doing the nightmare or stuff. This is something that I think it was hazlit.
One of Trump's officials talked about this last year is potentially using the Smooth Harley Tariff Act.
Like the nineteen thirties as.
Like yep, yeah, yeah, the one the one that is very famous for exacerbating the Great Depression. Yeah, that when I land about in high school. Yep. It's also the other thing about this, right, is this act is not on the books anymore. Okay, because well, so, okay, so I've seen a conflicting explanation to this. Some people are just confused. I think the explanation of it that I've seen is that it was superseded by sections of the
nineteen seventy four Trade Act. Okay, so it's not even clear if this is in effect, but this is in theory, like the sort of like dark maga, like we're reaching into the bag and pulling trade authority out of something button they could reach for.
Right, yeah, we take that and before with like title forty two and stuff. Right yeah, the title thirty two it is to stop people with tuberculosis, like back in the day. That was the idea behind it, and they pulled it out in twenty twenty, right, and then Biden just like this, Harris kept it for much longer than trap.
Yeah. But I think this is and this is I think actually a very significant moment for the Supreme Court. And I think sexual bank independence will eventually become this if and when this gets this gets to the courts.
But tariffs are sort of the the redline for a couple of the Supreme Court justices who normally sided with Trump just specifically because A, I mean, it just says in the Constitution that tariffs are specifically think that Congress does so just be like, oh, they gave me the power to do this unless they like explicitly set it. But then b it's it's this is this is a financial red light, right, like this is this this is
the point at which you're fucking with the money. So this is the point where the Supreme Court was like, you know, we've we've let you just make up laws in a whole bunch of other cases. But this is this is the actual limit of it when it comes to authority that really significantly like destroys the American economy.
Yeah, like the economy has more rights and people. Yeah, absolutely, this is the way that it's always been. I also want to mention one closing thing on the terriffs is that the Supreme Court didn't answer the question of if people are going to get their money back and how
the refunds are going to work. Sure didn't, Nope, And I think it's because they couldn't get agreement on it, because this ruling is kind of a mess in that it's like this like weird fractured coalition of justices or like parts of them agree on part of it, and there's like parts of the opinion that are agreed by to by a plurality of the court.
And not a majority. It's very weird. But yeah, they have no idea how this is going to work. There's already lawsuits going on to get the money back that have been in place already, So presumably some kind of redispensation's going to happen. It's going to be unbelievably chaotic, Okay, but we will we will keep you updated on how American trade negotiations go.
Yeah, okay, we reported the news.
Yeah, put a trans girl on your couch.
Oh, actually, okay, I have one also really bleak update on put a transgirl on your couch, which is we actually got numbers, well they're technically not the first numbers we've gotten, but we got actual good numbers on the number of trans people who've moved, we've like fled their state, like just from mid twenty twenty four to mid twenty twenty five. The statistics suggests that it's it's ten percent of all trans people, which is four hundred thousand people.
I think that's likely an undercount, and that's just the first half of twenty twenty five. Yeah, that is a humanitarian crisis. Like this is an internal migration crisis, right that these are these are internally these have become internally displaced people. Yes, and yeah, it's hideous and the least that we can do at this moment is putting trans people in your couch because the violence of there folleying is intensifying.
A lot of people actually reached out to our email. Our email is cool Zone, Tips and proton dot me, and that's mostly for things that you know that we should report on, not for just like general episode ideas. If you're trying to be a be a source for us, so I have some tip of something that you become aware of this and being reported. It's not for like Robert should do this episode on Bastards.
It's not.
I just want to emphasize once again that it is not.
There is a if you want to do that, go to the Bastards subreddit. There is a section for that.
Thank you.
But a lot of people had reached out to be like, I want to do this, but I don't know of anyone, and obviously I don't want to be like posting online like transfolks come to my house, because that seems like weird behavior. So that's something we will try and aggress like in a more general kind of mutual aid focused yea a series of episodes that will work on. But those people, it is good that you are trying to do something.
Yeah, we reported the news.
We reported the news.
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