Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #2 - podcast episode cover

Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #2

Feb 07, 202543 min
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Episode description

The gang discuss Elon Musk's cyber coup of the federal government, trade wars with Mexico and Canada over immigration, and we follow up on Trump's order to require misgendering and detransition in schools.

Sources:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-netanyahu-washington-ceasefire-1c8deec4dd46177e08e07d669d595ed3
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lackeys-general-services-administration/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lieutenant-gsa-ai-agency/
http://wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/
https://x.com/USAO_DC/status/1886537850390483276
https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3lhfjn7ires2h https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/02/politics/usaid-officials-leave-musk-doge/index.html
https://bsky.app/profile/chadloder.bsky.social/post/3lhc52j6kns2d https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-gsa-terminate-office-leases-f8faac5e2038722f705587c8dd21ab26?user_email=dabc81d5ec766cfb0c88230c077bd88afdc57894c6b8dcdfcf8102146e6c

https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/pr/2024/dojpr-041224-former-border-patrol-agent-sentenced-18-years-prison-drug-smuggling-and-bribery.pdf

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/san-diego-border-agent-nicknamed-goalie-took-bribes-to-let-drugs-into-u-s-prosecutors/3259608/

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Fentanyl_FY23.pdf

https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/frontline-against-fentanyl

https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1886606794614587573?mx=2

https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/el-salvador/

https://apnews.com/article/eu-us-ukraine-defense-trump-greenland-tariffs-c3e454c8f0959d273c2b6dd5941395e3

https://www.theverge.com/news/605483/shein-temu-amazon-trump-tariffs-de-minimis-exemption

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/americas/mexico-military-migrants-killed-int-latam/index.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/local-politics/denver-health-pauses-gender-affirming-surgeries-minors-federal-funding/73-e61f598b-e32d-474e-94b4-4b11d4c5c8af
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/nyregion/nyu-langone-hospital-trans-care-youth.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2025/02/04/transgender-hospitals-gender-affirming-care/78204417007/

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/school-systems-across-us-declare
https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2025/02/04/nyc-parents-push-for-statement-from-schools-chancellor-opposing-trump-executive-order-on-race-gender/
https://www.seattleschools.org/news/commitment-to-sps-students-staff-and-families/ https://bsky.app/profile/erininthemorning.com/post/3lhh7qpjygk27 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Cools Media.

Speaker 2

This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This week we are covering the week of January twenty ninth to February fifth, and oh boy, has this week felt like a month. I am absolutely exhausted. And let's start, I guess by talking about what Trump did.

Tuesday night. He had a press conference with both himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo to announce that the United States would qute unquote take over the Gaza Strip, resulting in quote unquote long term ownership. Previously on that day, Trump also signed an order pulling out of the United Nation When Rights Counsel and cutting off aid to UNRA. Let's start with this topic. Hopefully we will have a later episode, maybe next week, covering what's happening in Palestine.

But you know, this is as of right now, the current most development.

Speaker 3

This is one of the more like crazy things that he's like, like you could see net and Yahoo even like in the room clearly finding out about this for the first time.

Speaker 4

Yeah, that there was a real, oh shit really vibe.

Speaker 2

I'm not sure how long Trump and Nantyaho actually had this like entire thing planned that that is a distinct possibility that like, this has been Netanyahu's goal for a while, and this was like impacted his negotiations with Biden, like knowing that he wanted this to be like the outcome where the US basically just takes and holds the territory of Gaza as a US territory, like indefinitely.

Speaker 3

I think Babe knew that Trump would give him a positive outcome in any number of ways, right, like to include just saying like bomb it off the map, Like I think it's reasonable to assume that.

Speaker 4

Well, I mean something like this was I think the obvious outcome as soon as Trump, I mean, from before Trump won, right, Yeah, net and Yahoo never had any intention of letting things go back to the way they were before October seventh, And Trump has a vested interest in giving Netanyahu whatever he wants the most, Like it's a I don't know, I'm not surprised by it. I guess I'm a little bit like Okay, at least now we know what they're going to do next.

Speaker 2

It's in line with the manifest destiny territorial expansion Trump has been talking about the past few weeks. Yeah, I mean, Joe Biden laid the groundwork for this by giving like Israel the actual like bombs and materials to to like do the demolition side of this project. And now Trump continues to discuss relocating Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, while promising to turn Gaza into quote unquote the riviera of the Middle East, level it out create an economic development unquote.

Speaker 3

He has also said that he's gonna again said he's going to withdraw US troops from Syria, which would leave two thousand people in senth Coom to deploy to Gaza. I guess if that's what they want to do.

Speaker 5

Yeah, I mean I feel like there's no possible way this can go quote unquote, Well this is going to be a fucking catastrophe.

Speaker 6

The basic plan here is to do a genocide.

Speaker 2

And then I mean, this is this is part of a genas title operation. Yeah, it's like, this is like what we're doing. We're doing at second larger genosiside this is like the finishing touch.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 5

But then but you know, like on a sort of practical level, it's like, Okay, the US couldn't hold Afghanistan, right like, and like obviously this is this isn't like a quote unquote easier occupation, but it's like, this is gonna be a fucking ship like a nightmare, like and I don't know, I mean by my assumption is that this is going to be just like if he if he actually like you know, does a deployment of US troops,

this is going to be hideously unpopular. People are going to be coming back in body bags and it's gonna fucking I don't know's it's.

Speaker 6

Going to be a nightmare for everyone involved.

Speaker 5

And yeah, it's a it's a absolutely terrible idea.

Speaker 2

I'm more scared that they're gonna get away with it. I think it's I'm more scared that things will go fine for them and this just becomes like an actually stable US territory in the Middle East.

Speaker 3

There will be significant pushbacks not the word right like that there will be guerrilla warfare right Like, It's very hard to take and hold significantly large urban areas as

the US has found out for twenty years. Whether or not people will accept that, I think I think they might, Like I think Trump kind of needs an enemy, you know, like a war, and and like a quote unquote you know, he can he can paint almost anything as a win, and I think people might be more willing than we'd like to think to accept people coming home in body bags.

Speaker 4

From that, I'm not really sure. I think we're actually going to see the kind of troop deployment that people think based on what Trump has said as opposed to expand and support for what the Israelis have already been doing, which has like done a significant job to depopulate the

area as it stands. Like, Yeah, I think we have to be has a tempt to draw too strong a line between the rhetoric and what Trump is actually going to do, Which doesn't mean I don't think that it's not very likely that you're going to continue to see massy population in Gaza. I think it's just that, like, I don't know that. I think the only way that happens is something that looks like most of the occupations of the last century have looked like from a US point of view.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and the new model is this serial model, right, make of a relatively small footprint and then in a local partner forth at the IDF pulling security for US contracts and in US money like that.

Speaker 4

Right, the IDF and a lot of third party corporate PMCs. Yeah, PMCs, you know, like that's what that We've We've got guys champing at the bit to do that. And like I that looks a lot likelier to me than the tenth Mountain Division, you know, occupying large chunks of Gaza.

Speaker 3

Agreed, Yeah, Eric Prince is ready to ready to get sadly All.

Speaker 2

Right, let's let's transition to our new segment titled Stinky Musk, which I came up with last night. Delirious and yes it's bad. No, I'm not going to fix it. South African Gang does a hostile takeover of the United States.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you're hidden, you're hdden Today Garrison.

Speaker 2

Elon Musk and a gig of overly online gen z interns are doing an oligarchic cybercup of the federal government, starting with the Office of Management and Budget and moving on to USAID, A, General Services Administration, the Treasury, and as of Recording uh Noah, as well as many other agencies, smaller agencies, bigger agencies that they are infiltrating both physically

and digitally. Employees of these agencies have been locked out, both physically and digitally as the DOGE team ransacks various departments and accesses sensitive data with no oversight. And that's like government data about you, possibly in the hands of a literal Nick Fuentes pilled Groper. Intern security officials who tried to resist Musk's seizure of classified materials have been fired, and do personnel threatened to call the US Marshals to

be let into buildings. I have some more info on this, as will as we will go on, but I guess this is this is an okay time just to discuss.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I think the response to this is one of the more hopeful things going on right now. And kind of what led me to think that is looking at twenty twenty, looking at the fallout from twenty twenty and what worked and what didn't largely what didn't work, and thinking like, okay, well, if we're going to actually get any kind of functional resistance to what's happening, what does

that look like? And it doesn't look like the same cruise of people doing the same thing that they did four or five years ago, Which is why I've got some hope in the fact that you've got a different crowd of people who are radicalizing and taking to the streets. And you know, we federal employees federal employees, right, and you've got a lot of like or former Yeah, most of them are still current, but you know it's a

mix of former and current federal employees. These are these are the people who do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff at the Office of Personnel Management, Office Management Budget like. These are the people who like make keep things functioning at like a ground level, and a lot of them are are pissed off in a way

that I don't think we have really seen before. And I think there's a potential And who's to say, Like right now, we just had a big protest in front of Treasury about a full city block or so of people, many if not the vast majority of whom we're federal employees, rallying alongside a lot of Democratic members of Congress. And you know that's not that doesn't accomplish anything on its own,

but it's a potential start to accomplishing something. You know, if you get those people out in the street, it provides, among other things, a lot of cover for everyone else. And it also is the start of, you know, what

you might call a reverse January sixth. You know, if January six was a bunch of random people taking an occupying government buildings without any knowledge of what they are or how things actually function inside of them, the kind of thing that we might be looking at in the near future is the opposite of that, where a bunch of people who absolutely do know how those organizations and buildings function trying to take and occupy them. And that's the feeling I got because I talked to some folks

who are at the Treasury protest. One person that I talked to most extensively as a federal contractor who was present in twenty seventeen at the travel ban protests if you remember those, which is back when Trump announced his first Muslim bound and a bunch of people started occupying like airports and stuff like I was at the LAX

for that. This person was at some of those protests and it was out in front of Treasury, and the quote that I've got from them there was I was expecting it it being this protest, the Treasury protest to feel like the travel ban protests.

Speaker 6

It didn't.

Speaker 4

It was a lot angrier than the travel ban protests. The travel ban protests were kind of an indefense of another person's sort of anger, and this was narrowly focused anger at a very specific group of people. There are a lot of people yelling and screaming outside of their congressman's offices and the like, and like, there hasn't been that much disruption compared to what we're going to see, right,

Social Security payments haven't stopped going out in moss. So if we're seeing something like this at this early stage, I think there's a lot of potential there. And the thing this person brought up repeatedly is like when we start seeing congressmen kicking indoors is when things are going

to get interesting. If that happens, Like that's kind of the stage at which there's a lot of potential for this to turn into something that could actually cause change, Like if you actually start getting government employees who are willing to do more than stand outside of their offices, like who are willing to take direct action to occupy those buildings or stop other people from and you've seen little bits of that. Right. One of the things we did see is as these doge kids came along, federal

employees refusing them entry, keeping doors locked. Now that was not illegal because these were literally, as it's been described in me by multiple people, just kids showing up demanding entry without any kind of a badge or evidence of who they are. Right right, when you when you get people who are willing to escalate from that and refuse entry, that's when we might actually see some things start to seriously shift here.

Speaker 2

I mean based on how much of what Musk is doing is just like bypassing Congress and doing like like a very kind of like typical like like Ola garcic Co coup, Like he's doing all those steps. And if you look at like what happened in South Korea a few months ago, we are not at the point where congressmen are literally like like you know, climbing over like fences barricading doorns.

Speaker 4

We're not in South Korea territory yet, but yeah, but like.

Speaker 2

Their lawmakers like we're willing to do that. And there is like I think waiting from people to like wait and see if our lawmakers are going to be willing to do the same to like protect the actual like functional aspects of our government, and like things are already happening, like we are in some ways kind of already at this point. The USAYED website is now like completely removed, leaving only a note that claims that all personnel have

been put on administrative leave, including overseas personnel. But and this essentially leaves a whole agency shut down, but all done with like without an Act of Congress or even

like an overstepping executive order from Trump. It was just it was just the unelected Elon Musk who decided to and carried out the closure of a government agency, which like should be like like should actually be like a criminal like there is like statutes that are designed to stop this from happening, just no one's enforcing them because

they control almost every aspect of government. Musk has also closed the IRS direct file tax system, which which has now forced taxpayers to use third party paid services, so like he's doing this like one by one.

Speaker 5

I think the weakness that they have right now is that because you're causing so much chaos, because they're you're gonna talk about the FBI, pers they're trying to do like you know, but the thing that they're relying on is everyone is just going to let them in and just let them get walked over. But it's like, Okay, the thing about acting this muscleside the law is what guys with guns do you have who you can use

to enforce this. That's the thing where it's it's legitimately like if theyre's serious resistance to them, they might start to crumple. Because the reason you work inside of the legal order or you have your own paramilitaries is so that you can have like the guy with the gun to make you open the door. And the more people who are willing to just be like no, fuck you like and like force them to actually like find guys with guns who're willing to.

Speaker 4

Do this, the odds are lower that you get a positive shift because people engage directly and aggressively with the cops. Then you have when some sort of like mid level military functionary is asked to drive a tank over a school teacher, right Like, Historically, historically, if you look at when regimes fall, that happens more often than the waving

a flag on top of like a pile of corpses. Yeah, right, Like demands are ordered illegal illegal orders are given to people with guns, and they're like, no, I'm not going to shoot at a bunch of teachers today. That's not the only way this kind of thing happens, but at least, like for my money, that's the likeliest positive outcome, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5

And if you look at the last world historical empire run by it incredibly unpopular geneotocracy, it was the Soviets, and look at how they fell apart.

Speaker 4

That's that's more or less what happened.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, And like it's interesting that if we use a Bavarian definition of the state like that has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, right, that they've dismantled their apparatus for state violence as well. And this could just be like the blunt instrument of apparently offering every federal employee I know. I've heard that they've tried to unretire Worldland firefighters who accepted their offer of retirement.

It's extremely funny, but like it's it's very Yeah, if you're going to work, you're going to retire a bunch of FBI agents or fire them because, like Mia said, they are going to need hitters. They're going to need to use coercive force at some point, possibly very soon, Yeah, to get what they want to do done.

Speaker 4

And I think when it comes to that, the question is like which hitters, Yeah, because the FBI and the CIA, I mean are getting are getting gutted at the moment right now. Like so you're looking at like in the NSA, you're looking at local police, Federal Protective Services, Department of Homeland Security, you know, and the marshals, right like like these are kind of like the shooters Trump has to play with, and the military will remain an open question until the critical moment, right Yeah.

Speaker 3

I mean, FPS is infinitely expandable and it's mostly contract through wordman. I aspect about it before, but like that's the one that has a lot of potential to grow. And I think within local especially sheriff's departments, you got some people who weren't bat annihilateding some of those.

Speaker 4

Oh no, no, no, absolutely not. And I do think that, like sheriff's departments are kind of what haunt me the most. But that's also it's not purely a matter of like which agencies and organizations are going to back Trump in this it's also a matter of like geographic location and DC. In DC, at least he can count on a lot less of those guys because like the Capitol Police aren't thrilled right now.

Speaker 2

You know, essentially what Elon is doing right now is exactly what he did to Twitter, except to the entire United States of America. And like, by the end of this process, it still might function on some level, right, Like Twitter still kind of functions, but it's just worse in every way. It's worse. It doesn't have the quote unquote good features it used to. It's it's buggy, it's

full of Nazis. It's just it's it sucks more Like the previous version was was already bad and harmful, but the new one is just worse without the aspects that

made it semi worthwhile. And like I'm going to do an episode like next week, like kind of about this, like specifically and how Musk is twitterifying the entire government using like all of the same tactics, like refusing to pay leases on buildings, installing beds in agency headquarters to make employees sleep there overnight, having teenagers review code of

like long standing employees. It's the exact same process. And if you didn't like what happened to Twitter, that process is now happening to the government itself.

Speaker 3

I can't wait for the I R s to send me a letter saying my pussy and bio like that.

Speaker 4

That will be Hey, now now you've now you've gotten me back on the Trump trained you know what. I'm peacing out for the day. I'm on board.

Speaker 5

Now.

Speaker 2

Before we close the segment and pivot to adds, I do want to shout out the work that Wired is doing right now.

Speaker 4

Man.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Wired magazine is doing for some fantastic reporting on this. The DC Attorney is currently promising and to go after individuals who post about Doge employees. They might end up going after some of these Wired journalists who identified this gen Z Doge team that is wreaking havoc throughout the government with no oversight. Wired provided what should be you know, legally required and necessary identification of public workers who Musk is trying to keep secret. The DC Attorney, and like

Trump's DOJ, is very mad about that. They might end up like going after these people. But fantastic work coming out of Wired right now. If you want to keep up to date on Musk's takeover. I strongly recommend checking out their work. I'll post some of those in the sources below. Let's go on a quick ad break and then come back to talk about the continuing kind of fake trade wars and immigration sick. All right, we're back.

I'm going to pivot towards James and Mia to discuss tariffs and immigration take it away.

Speaker 5

Yeah, So on Monday, Trump sort of averted the market collapse that he had set off with his declaration that they are going to be twenty five percent tariffs on all goods and hanna in Mexico and also ten percent tariff on China. So let's let's go into like what actually happened. So the tariffs on Mexico and Canada are on hold for a month. However, the ten percent tariff on all Chinese goods did go into effect, and we'll get some more about what that's going to do in

a second. But much more importantly, Trump eliminated the Deminimus exception, which allowed like people and companies to ship goods from China that were worth under eight hundred dollars and not have to go through the formal customs process and you know, pay tariffs on it and also have to spend all

of that time paperwork and shit. And before we get into the sort of devastating effect this is going to have on businesses, I want to make it clear that, like regular people in China used this to send things to people in the US, Like that's a that's a very normal thing.

Speaker 6

Yeah, that is now really really difficult.

Speaker 4

And about a third of YouTube ads are supported by people who run companies that make use of this loophole.

Speaker 5

Yeah, okay, So on the business side, this is actually really interesting because I think it's one of the I mean, not the first, but I think it's going to be a very very early example of Trump completely fucking a base that's been very very supportive of him, because this is going to liquidate huge portions of the drop shippy economy, right, like all of the stupid YouTube shirts, like all of that stuff is just going to be annihilated.

Speaker 3

Can you explain drop shipping if people aren't familiar mere just like ten second versions.

Speaker 5

Yeah, so drop shipping is a thing where you do an order and instead of having like an inventory, normally you'd have a warehouse at had shirts in it. Drop shipping you don't do that. You are now the intermediary and you have these manufacturers like print to consumption basically, and you can do this very cheaply, and then you can run the entire markup. But it works because of how cheap it is to get these like sort of small scale Chinese firms to like make stuff for you.

Speaker 6

Those people are screwed.

Speaker 5

Companies like Tamu and Sheian are either going to have to just completely eat shit or they're going to have to figure out a way to move their entire supply line through countries like Vietnam, which is going to be very difficult. I mean because Temo even getting stuff to the US has been kind of hard for them because of how the logistics network works. Yeah, and so obviously, like I don't, I don't think most people who listen to the show are that sad about she and Temo eating shit.

Speaker 4

But no, it is like a mixed bag because a whole lot of the the MLM industry is going to take a header as a result of this.

Speaker 5

Yeah, yeah, there's some stuff to like fuck them. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are going to eat shit who are not those people. And this is there is a huge like range of industries that are run by very very small businesses, like it was even just like an individual person who like makes crafts and sells it. And those people are also screwed because they rely on getting the resources in from China.

And there's a lot of sort of you know things like like people who build like hand like retro handheld consoles. Oh yeah, and like out a like custom ariosoft rifles I J you talk about, like there's a whole bunch of industries like that that are these like small scale production things that are just screwed that rely on this stuff. And so the ripples of this specific part of it are going to keep playing out basically no matter what

else happens in this trade war. Yeah, it's also worth noting that Trump's tariffs on Mexico and Canada aren't gone.

They've just been postponed for a month. So there is a real chance that we end up in exactly the same place that we were going into the weekend, where no one knows where these terrifts are going to take effected, basically blow a smoking crater in the world economy, and we get another round of the negotiations that James is going to talk about it's already setting off a really sort of staggering right wing i mean, not even necessarily

right wing, just like a nationalist backlash in Canada. That's kind of been like tearing up this sort of international right wing alliance and nationalists because suddenly Trump's coming after them and now they're they're really mad about it.

Speaker 2

Well, and because Trudeau announced that he would be targeting, you know, like rattal laitary tariffs is specifically at red states, we now have people calling him dark, woke or dark Trudeau, you know, for very different reasons than they used to call him Trudeau.

Speaker 4

Yes, yes, that's magnificent.

Speaker 6

All right, all right, shop my high.

Speaker 4

Right, all right, you're gonna get canceled if you're not careful.

Speaker 3

No outstanding.

Speaker 5

Speaking of getting canceled, what hasn't gotten canceled is the ten percent tariff on all Chinese goods, which is just now in effect. It's just happening. That's bad. It's going to increase inflation. It's also it's you know, it's it's sort of the opening round of this escalation to a

trade war. China has retaliated with tariffs that are not a very big deal on US goods and some product control stuff, on export control stuff on some rare earth minerals actually do with the rare smills, but like minerals, you need for production stuff that isn't a big deal yet but could be.

Speaker 2

I mean, and we were all expecting Chinese tariffs. Having twenty five percent tariffs of Canada was not something I thought was like looming.

Speaker 6

Now yeah, yeah, I mean, I thought they'd do Mexica. I didn't know about it.

Speaker 3

I'm very worried about the offshoring of Chinese labor and the impact that we'll have in places like Myanma, where China has these special economic zones. I mean, something we will cover. We obviously have a lot of.

Speaker 6

So Monday, on Monday, we're going to cover this war.

Speaker 5

So I think something that's important to understand about these tariffs is that these terrorifts are not economic policy. This is this is the mistake that all of the capitalists who backed Trump made, is that they assumed that just like every other's president who's made promises like this, like Obama's promised to renegotiate NAFTA, they all assumed that because of economic policy, they'd be able to just like get Trump to be pro business and then he wouldn't do it.

The miscalculation they made is that these are not economic tariffs. These are directly foreign policy, geopolitical tariffs. Right, their international relations are to the deal bullshit and the goal of it. And he's been deploying this against like I mean, Columbia, Denmark, He's threatening the EU. Now he's going to keep doing this with China. The goal of this is to directly use American consumer powers as a weapon of imperialism to

make this country fall into line. Yeah, and now I will pass the jam to talk about what he was specifically trying to get out of Mexico and Canada in this round.

Speaker 3

Yeah, So, like we have spoke about falling into line there, and I think it's probably a good place to start. Like this kind of Trump brinksmanship is very typical of his style. Right, Nearly every media outlet I think, fell for it this time, just that it did in his first term, Like we got this, like this is going to cause the crisis.

Trump was very nebulous in his goals for these tariffs, and as almost always, like he talked a lot about like America being treated unfairly, right, he talked about the border, and he talked specifically about fentanyl. So whets begin by talking about fentanyl, It's just to be clear. It is true that some fentanyl comes into the USA from Mexico

and to a lesser degree or so from Canada. The vast majority of the fentanyl that enters the USA from Mexico, about eighty percent of the convictions made it as a result of that fentanyl entering the USA are made on US citizens, right, and ninety percent of the fentanyl that is seized is seized at ports of entry. So this idea that there are like Mexican nationals backpacking fentanel through the desert, that exists, but it is not what is bringing the bulk of the fentanyl that is killing the

people in this country into this country. There are multiple cases of CBP agents taking bribes to allow the drug into the country. I will link to two of them in the show notes, but know that there are more of them, and given the relatively high bart for cbpagent, anyone in DHS to be investigated. Right, we can assume that there's something that happens on at least a semi regular basis. So what did Trump do to stop this fencinel coming into the country.

Speaker 6

What did he get.

Speaker 3

He got this promise that Mexico will deploy ten thousand troops to its border. In reality, this isn't much of a concession at all. The Mexican National Guard has been deployed to the border for years. Specifically, it's been deployed at gaps in the US border wall for more than a year. So people will remember our coverage of the open air attention sites in the Cumbernese County San Diego.

All of those open air detention sites correspond to gaps in the border wall where migrants would enter, surrendered to border patrol, and then be detained in open air. Each of those gaps now has a Mexican National Guard checkpoint in front of it, and they're there in conjunction with the IM the National Institute of Migration in English and the I inm has camps for the migrants who do

come there. This is something that Biden obtained in I think late twenty three, early twenty four, and that's why we aren't seeing open air attention one of the reasons, the other reason being bid them to a sylum band. We aren't seeing as many people crossing the border.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 3

Mexican border towns also tend to be areas where the Mexican military deploys its troops because often they are places where organized crime occurs due to their proximity to the border and the market for drugs, and the fact that weapons from the US tend to flow into Mexico and that that's where large numbers of weapons for organized crime

come from. Right. For more than a year, I've received press releases from Tijuana constantly talking about new unit arrives, Special Forces arrives, Army arrived, and then they'll have pictures of a parade.

Speaker 6

Right now.

Speaker 3

They never tell us when those units are leaving. They just keep telling us that coming. So it's very hard to get a sense of actually how many troops are there. Sure, but the idea that Mexico is suddenly miniaturizing it's its border is kind of fossical.

Speaker 5

Yeah, and I want to There's been a lot of sort of cheerleading of shine Bomb, sort of like standing up to the US, and I don't think people in the US really understand the securitization on the Mexican border, and so something that I'm realizing that I don't think I just assume people knew about this, but I don't think everyone made it into the western press much.

Speaker 6

Is that?

Speaker 5

So Like a few months ago in October, the Mexican army just like opened fire on a convoy of like on a convoy of immigrants and this was on the border of Guatemala and just like killed six of them, shot twelve other people. So like, and like there are massacres like that, like not infrequently, right, Like, this is not a this is not a Mexico is pro immigrant, like the US is anti immigrant thing.

Speaker 3

Like.

Speaker 5

Part of the part of the reason why Trump can like, you know, sort of the clear victory without getting any concessions or whatever is because of how murderous the Mexican armies, like border policy is already.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and the Mexican leaders have succesfully been able to paint themselves as leftists, exclusively being two inches to the left of a further and further right regime in Washington, DC. People can listen to the last episode of My Daddy and Gap series for an idea of how Mexico is constantly deporting migrants to its own certain states. I'm going

to talk a little bit about the Canadian concessions. Very briefly, again, ten thousand agents and a border spending that really doesn't change much in what in terms of what was already becoming a more militarized border.

Speaker 6

There has actually been a.

Speaker 3

Significant flow of migrants from the US to Canada in the last couple of years, specifically a Francophone African people

who would take that route. I'm aware of several TikTok influencers, as one guy or following Chad who or he's in Canada now, but he's from Chad and he makes these videos explaining to Chaddian people how to go from Mexico into the US and then move up to Canada obviously where they can speak an That makes their lives much easier, right, It makes it much easier for not to not have to learn a language. Trudeau did agree to list cartels as terrorist organizations.

Speaker 4

That seems to be from what I can tell, the big move that he made.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so it does allow for some economic sanctions, right if they attempt to use that Canadian border and sort of get around the United States. It's much less significant than a US listing, which we believe is coming. Canada's not going to use it to do covert operations inside Mexico. I don't think Canada's not going to be drone striking anyone. But like when Trump listed the Kodes Force, he then

structs its leader right with a drone. I don't think Trudeau is going to be I don't think Canada's going to be doing that. But nonetheless that is a concession, and perhaps there is some plan for that.

Speaker 6

Right.

Speaker 3

It certainly allows for, and I've said this before, the economic sanctioning of people who provide material benefit to those organizations, or potentially the arrest of people who provide material benefit to his organizations, which is a large number of businesses in Mexico which end up being extorted or paying protection money. Right, So we don't know what is going to happen with that, but it's one of the tools that Trump now has

who use as another cudgel against it against Mexico. The last and perhaps most sinister of all development is this deal that Marco Rubio is struck with Boukele in El Salvador.

Speaker 6

Right.

Speaker 3

El Salvador has said it will host US citizen criminals and deportees from any nation in its jail system. So I just read Bouquel's tweet, it's very short. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals parentheses, including convicted US citizens, into a mega prison second, in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the US, but significant for US, making our entire prison system sustainable. If you're not familiar, it means counter Terrorism Confinements Center

in Spanish for people who haven't heard about this. It's the largest prison in the world that Bucheli opened in twenty twenty three, and it's a terrible place. There are cells of one hundred people. In that cell, there are eighty bunks, two toilets, and two basins. They are extremely confined. I think they get six point five feet of space per person. They get thirty minutes outside a day. They're forced to shave their heads, their ankles and wrists are chained.

People are arbitrarily detained there. Sometimes the things like looking like they might be in a gang. Multiple human rights organizations including that well, the State Department is not a human rights organization. Sometimes it's the opposite of that. The State Department itself has raised concerns about human rights abuse due to the quote unquote a state of exception which exists in Elsalvador, which allows the government to do these

things without really any human rights oversight. The US has already seemingly moved some migrants to Guantanamo Bay, to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, and satellite imagery has shown tents going up there. Very few at the current time, and they seem to come from Fort Lewis McCord, which can work out. But there are tents. I guess I think I was watched the Post had these satellite images of tents being constructed there. I'm trying to keep an eye

on that satellite imagery. Of course, Biden opened the door to outdoor attention. It's not impossible that we will see that again. But this Kaylic plan, this this plan to send people to Al Salbador, especially US citizens, evidently this is unconstitutional. The courts get to decide how much that matters, right, we don't. But this is deeply concerning.

Speaker 2

All we're all waiting on the courts and we're all deeply concerned.

Speaker 4

Yeah, well, there you.

Speaker 2

Go, one final break and then we'll come back to end and discuss Trump's targeting of teachers in relation to gender ideology. Welcome back. So, last week, Trump signed an executive order titled Ending Radical Andation in K through twelve Schooling, and part of its focus was to prevent teachers from calling trans students by their names and preferred pronouns, even promising to inflict legal punishment for doing so, basically like

mandating dead naming, misgendering, and forcibly de transitioning students. And this order specifically took aim quote unquote social transition, right, this is like the non medical social aspects of transitioning, like changing gender, names, pronouns, you know what facilities you use, socialization, and like this stuff has historically been, you know, the most common form of transition for minors. It's it's the easiest to do. You don't even need you like, your parents' help.

But this order blames schools for indoctrinating children in quote radical anti American ideologies unquote, which they include gender ideology.

As a part of the order, tries to mandate a national school bathroom band, restrict participation in school sports, and states that within ninety days, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Health and you Human Services, and the Attorney General shall provide Trump with a quote unquote ending in doctrination strategy to protect parental rights and eliminate all federal funding that directly or indirectly

supports gender ideology and doctrination in K through twelve schools,

including curriculums, teacher education, certification, licensing, employment, and training. To quote from the order quote, the Attorney General shall coordinate with state attorneys general and local district attorneys in their efforts to enforce the law and file appropriate actions against K through twelve teachers who violate the law by one sexually exploiting minors, two unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses

and treatment without the requisite license, and three otherwise unlawfully facilitating in the social transition of a minor unquote. So basically, the goal is to try to make calling a student by their name and pronouns illegal and wrapping this in either with some form of sexual exploitation, practicing medicine with a license, and using those as justifications for making this

practice illegal. Now. In response, school districts in Columbus, Ohio, Harrisburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland announced that they would not comply with the order and continue to defend their students, according to journalists. To Aaron Reid, Seattle Public Schools published a statement reaffirming their commitment to protecting LGBTQ students and staff, and later the California Department of Education pushed back on

the legality of Trump's order. Other blue cities and states have stayed quiet in the week since the order, with teachers and parents calling on places like the New York City Public School System to take a stance on if they will stand up for their trans students. So this is one side of the coin right now. The other

side is healthcare, which we will close on now. In relation to Trump's executive order from his first week entitled Defending Women from gender ideology, Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. Now, some hospitals have begun complying in advance by cancelling patient appointments for gender affirming care.

Denver Health and University of Colorado Health sacrificed the care of their patients for Trump's promise of continued funding by announcing that they would no longer be offering care including blockers and hormone replacement therapy for patients eighteen and under. The Virginia Commonwealth University and Children's Hospital of Richmond have also ceased providing gender affirming care to those under nineteen.

This past Monday, thousands of people gathered outside at the NYU Langhan Hospital in protest of the hospital's choice to proactively comply with Trump's order to restrict health care as the cancelation of two appointments for transpatients under the age

of nineteen. Now after these protests, which saw thousands of people protesting out in the streets, after this, the New York at Twity General sent a letter to the state healthcare systems saying that the state law requires that hospitals provide gender affirming care and claimed that the federal funding would not be impacted by inexecutive order. And like this really hammers on the point that like none of these executive orders are self in these all require proactive implementation

by local actors. Doctor Jeremy Bernbaum was quoted in The New York Times. He's a pediatrician at the state run University Hospital of Brooklyn. He was quoted as saying, quote, I am willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care, unquote, and you really can like protest hospitals that comply in advance, the same thing with schools. These are targets that can provide actual pressure, and there's probably people on staff who are very sympathetic, and they

just might be too scared to take a stance. Right now, and we have some breaking news as of this morning. State attorney general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nevada, Vermont, and Wisconsin released a statement saying that Trump's executive order banning trans healthcare is unlawful and the hospitals have a duty to provide care. So this is like the most optimistic thing that we've

seen so far. Now, obviously these are blue states. This is not going to impact and states who already have these types of bands either in process or you know, are going to have them down the line. At Georgia just just put out a Trance healthcare band this morning for you know, a bill that'll reach our Senate in the next few weeks. But this is this is the

current situation. Protests seem to have applied a degree of pressure that has gotten the state's attorney general to actually make a statement on this issue.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I will say, like so I still teach, right a teach at community college and sometimes through that we also teach high school students. If you are an educator or someone in healthcare, now is the time to be talking to your union about like how you meet this, because like, the stronger we are, the better we can

confront this. And the only way to confront this is we all need to do it together, and like, these are conversations that we need to be having right now, Like we do not have time, and our unions are a very valuable tool for preserving our rights.

Speaker 6

Yeah, that's actually part of what I was going to say.

Speaker 5

I've talked to a few union teachers who are like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go do this, We're gonna go fight. So I expect in the next couple of weeks we're

going to see more movement from the teachers' unions. And I think there's you know, there's another I mean, there's on the one hand, there is the threat that you know, these people do want to privatize the education system, right, so there is a chance that this is you know, trying to draw a backlash out of this is something that they're going to try to use to just completely

eliminate like national federal education. But also, you know, this is something we've I want to close this episode on that we've been talking about this whole time, right, is that this, this whole coup is being carried out by a bunch of people with laptops and pieces of paper walking up the bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats are doing what they're being told. Right, this is this is not a coup that's working with like an army that is showing

up on your street. And you can go, like find the local bureaucrats who are the people who are supposed to enforce this stuff, and you can protest them and you can put some steel in their spine and make them a maze.

Speaker 6

The administration actually try to do this. It's not that hard and they'll fucking cave.

Speaker 4

Yes. Yes, that's that's entirely what I was trying to get at earlier, And you know it ties into what James was saying, is like, this is the time to be making connections across as white a swath of the country as you can, including like everyone you can get in touch with who is not someone you would normally organize with, like this is a moment of potential, and it's it's during moments of potential that you should be widening the swath of people that you connect to, because

otherwise there's just no getting through this sort of shit.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we will be covering all these topics more in depth in our regular like daily episodes. I have a mind boggling, very frustrating episode on musk and the Trump campaign's promises of abolishing different departments of government, as well as a deep dive on like affirmative action and DEI wokeness in the coming weeks, and I'm sure we will we will all be focusing on different parts of us in our continuing episodes. But that does it for us today. See you on the other side. We reported the news.

Speaker 1

It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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