Cold Zone Media.
Am I introducing the podcast. Welcome to the podcast.
This is It Could Happen Here Executive Disorder, our weekly news cast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world what it means for you.
I'm Garrison Davis.
Today I'm joined by Mio Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode recovering the week of October thirty first to November fifth, one of the most exciting weeks in politics.
Yeah, because it's onon finite if.
You remember the poem that's right, And that's not the only exciting thing to happen, but also not the only sad thing to happen this week, because as exciting as election Day was for people in New York, there was like a looming sadness throughout the day because earlier that morning, obviously, Vice President Dick Cheney passed away and that was rough for many people, not rough many others, but that certainly
was illuming presence over the day. Does anyone have any words to say on the passing of mister Cheney.
Yeah, I mean, I just want to let everyone in hell know this too shall pass. You know, you won't be stuck with him forever. Just try to grin and bear it. I know it's going to be hard for a lot of you, especially Saddam Hussein, but I know you can get past this. You know, he will get reincarnated as a Senate Republican staffer within the next six to eight months, so so you won't have to put up with him long.
I guess this is also just your reminder that it's going to date to practice see full essential rooms of firearms safety at old times.
Don't shoot with Dick Cheney if you see Dick Cheney while you're hunting quail?
Right?
Do the kids even know about this?
Now? Oh?
The kid the kids know? The kids? No?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is.
Cheney Laura is permeated throughout generations of American culture.
Yeah.
When I was a kid, there was like a whole thing where we all thought the song Jamie's Got a Gun was Cheney's Got a gun.
In front of excess.
Because it just lined up with everything you knew about the world.
What's funny about it is that my actual thinking on that shooting hasn't changed since I was a Republican kid. Like when I was a young right winger, I thought, Wow, Dick Cheney's so cool. He shot a man and got him to apologize to him, And now as an adult on the left, I still think that's kind of the coolest thing Dick.
Cheney ever did. Like it is a head of a feat.
That man apologized for getting in front of his sights. That's amazing.
Now it is.
It is unfortunate that Dick Cheney did not live to see the election of Zormumdani as the mayor of New York City, which happened, and that would have been funny on Tuesday. Later that day, Zoran has become the first candidate in New York mayoral history to win over a million votes since nineteen sixty nine. Nice this election itself saw over two million votes. This is a million more votes in the last in New York mayoral election.
Huge turnout.
Currently, as of Wednesday afternoon, Zoran has fifty point four percent of the vote. Former governor and sexual assaults enthusiast Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, has forty one point six percent, and the bray wearing Curtisilwa as seven point one. Not a spoiler candidate in many ways, nor would it be correct to say that all of Silver's votes would
have gone to one candidate or another. But even if you do add all of his votes on to disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo's total zoron still comes out on top well.
Which was something that there was legitimately a lot of question about as to like whether or not will Sila staying in matter?
Right?
Uh, And it's it's a really good sign that it didn't.
It did not Sliwa. So no one really knows how to pronounce the name, including in the city. You hear it different pronunciations with different people at different times. Sometimes it's Slilwa, sometimes it's Silwa saliwa.
All I know is he got stabbed on the subway, right.
And shot five times in the back of a cab in the back. That's right. How did they fail to kill him? Jesus Christ.
It's harder to kill people by shooting them with a handgun than you might think.
Yeah, apparently hanggum ballistics are just different.
Yes, and he does have seventeen cats.
He ran on the Republican and the Protected the Protect Animals party. You can have some criticism for for past ills that that he has contributed to, but he is certainly mixed up for that some way.
For being a fascinating character.
He's a very New York kind of figure.
Ed.
He was the only mayor all candidate to call and congratulate Zora Mom Donnie last night. Both Clobo and Mayor Adams did not call Mamdani, but Curtis did, which is kind of beautiful. It's kind of beautiful.
He's a classy man. You don't get to wear a red beret like that unless you have some manners.
The British Parachute Regiment would beg to disagree about having nanas and wearing red hats.
No, he's my head cannon now is that he is the British paratrooper.
Just drop him in with seventeen cats and he and he starts milling immediately.
Yeah, he saves that fucking mall in Nairobi.
Or tell you what, the Argentines wouldn't have funcked with the Falklands of Curtis and being there now with all those cats. That's where he's going now that he's been banished in New York like piss.
Guys, shouldn't take this just.
An island, Yeah, Staten Island, which.
You're you're a real New Yorker now Gary, you shed on Staten.
Island, which is the only borough that went for Cuomo, where he was up thirty three points.
That was very funny.
Mamdani won every other bureau up twenty in Brooklyn, up ten in Manhattan, of five in Queens and eleven in the Bronx.
From what this should tell everyone everywhere in the country about what is possible in politics, even in times as dark as this is that he was what eight percent a year ago?
They six percent, it's like in January, six percent in January.
And he he didn't just eke it out because there were a shitload of guys. This isn't like an Arnold thing where everybody's on the fucking ballot and it's like a crazy cartoon election. He legitimately votes nowhere and one.
The most votes for a mayor old candidate in almost fifty years. Yeah, nearly reaching the the like the vote totals in this election for like a presidential election in the city.
Yeah, it's very impressive for like a mid cycle off cycle election turnout wise, yep.
Specifically, he won a whole bunch of votes that he did not gain the primary. Among uh, some like black and Latino voters. You can see that in the turnout at like the Bronx.
And these these people aren't overwhelmingly at least at this stage, folks who have been convinced of every aspect of ideology that Zorn has ever put out there. People who looked at who was available are like, this guy seems like he genuinely wants to do something. Yeah, and they told me to the specific policies. They're not they're not paying attention to the fact that he quoted Eugene V. Debs.
They're talking, they're listening to his his policies on like creating municipal grocery stores and stuff.
Right, it's about affordability, not ideology. And Zorn's strict focus on affordability not running a campaign that like falls back on fear, not running a campaign about foreign policy when you're in fucking New York City. Strict focus on affordability was the key to winning this campaign.
A strict focus on affordability while not pretending not to have the ideology, which is also really not worthy. Right where he's still he's still he isn't he's not like talking around it, right.
No, he's not apologizing or hiding the fact that he's a democratic socialist. Yeah, and this produced some super interesting results if you if you refer back to the last election twenty twenty four and in everyone bemoaning like, how how come young men are so politically lost? Why are they all going so far to the right? Sixty eight percent of men age eighteen to twenty nine goes to mom, Donnie, sixty six percent of men thirty to forty forty five
percent of men forty five to sixty five. Among women eighteen to twenty nine years old, eighty four percent.
Donnie Booking said, dom number larious bath party election numbers one.
Actually Saddam Hussein out to Creedy did in fact vote, but he went for He broke hard for Cuomo. Honestly at the end, it was the sex crimes that that that that did it for UNI did vote for Slowa though that was kind of weird. I'm gonna be honest with you. We're all trying to parse that one out.
It's a cat thing.
Yeah, like I said, like not hiding his political inspirations in any way, quoted Eugen Debs ten seconds into his victory speech. Yeah, immediately you understand, like, oh, this guy's like player, he knows what's up.
Eugene V. Debs, the socialist who ran for president from prison. Yeah, yes, for to know who Eugene V. Debs is, like arguably the most radical national candidate who has ever existed in this country.
Yeah, and his speech was extremely poetic. It got a very strong positive reaction from the people who I watched this with in Bushwick, which was the district that was the most pro Mamdani out of the entire electoral mathemicity. But he started by talking about how power has been kept out of the hands of working people by the hands that keep the city going by lifting boxes, by gripping the handlebars of delivery bikes, and collecting burned scars from cooking food.
Quote.
Over the last twelve months, you have dared to reach for something greater tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands unquote. The whole speech was kind of a rife with little like metaphors and allegories like that.
It was very cute.
Went on to discuss how the campaign toppled a political dynasty and gave one of the most like fine tuned dishes I've ever seen quote, I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life.
It's a phenomenal cook.
But I hope I never have to say his name.
Again, or but let tonight be the last time I utter his name.
Only the best in private life is down.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's basically this is like, he's not the originator of this particular kind of disc It goes back a while, but the gist is like everyone's moment be a family man, get out of a way.
Yeah.
Repeatedly, Mam, Donnie has has used the word mandate to describe this selection and the results.
Quote.
New York has delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, mandate for a city we can afford, a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that. I'm going to play a short clip here.
Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refused to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past. You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you because we are you, or as we say on Steinway an amincom wile.
Coum the Arabic there wild wild that we've moved this far in New York that it's in credit wins you an election Like that didn't win him the election, but like they really tried the nine to eleven shit. Rudy Giuliani posted today a crude photoshop of his own face in the fires of the twin of the burning twin towers. Yeah, we forgot written across it, and that did None of that shit did anything.
The last month of the campaign against Mamdani, whether that's from people like Bill Accurate as Bloomberg or Cuomo's actual team, has has used what people have been calling the nine to eleven card, incessantly playing clips of nine to eleven with like zoron like emblazon, like over overtop plank from
Hassan talking about nine to eleven. But the Islamophobia that the Cuomo campaign has resorted to as a last ditch effort to stop Mamdani has been despicable, And the fact that this did not scare Momdanni into like hiding or like restricting that part of himself is incredibly admirable.
Yeah, but they wasn't just nine to eleven, right, like you said, it was the broad Islam, like they deployed as they always do, like every urban area in Britain is now like the Caliphate, like this bullshit that that exists only in the American conservative mind and it failed, which is.
Good specifically for a lot of the speech, it was about juxtaposing like how we used to have good things in the past, like we have this idea that like good things now are always out of reach, and juxtaposing this like idea of like hope or or like past exceptionalism that we just don't feel like we've access to anymore, and showing that if you actually involve young people, we can actually do do good things in our city now.
And I really liked the line about like politics that speaks to you without condescension, and how much this campaign was like ran by and for you know, young candidates and young voters.
Sorry.
Went on to thank the people who have been forgotten by the politics of our city and how they've supported his campaign quote Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican ubuelas, Sengalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks, and Ethiopian aunties unquote, and he went on to mention the kind of people that this campaign is about, and towards the end of that section, he talked about the hunger strike that he participated in four years ago in order to
win debt relief for cab drivers, And it's about people.
Like Richard the taxi driver I went on a fifteen day hunger strike with outside of city hall, who still has to drive his cab seven.
Days a week.
My brother, we are in city hall.
Now.
That is that is the energy of like the campaign in the city right now. Like that that sort of framing, and that's the energy that people are like carrying.
Through I saw among the right wing fever spawns responses to this, Mike Cernovich taking a clip from the election night party where one of the people who is attending Zoran's party made a comment about how like white people need to get on board with the idea that like our culture is multiculturalism in this country right, Like it's it's not anything else, Like that's that's like what has made America. And Mike did not react well to that.
I can't imagine the declaration of wars and Avich mad, Yeah.
But no, like especially in New York, out of like anywhere in the country, like, especially in New York like, the culture is made through the mix of immigrants that have built this city, and this is something that discussed throughout. Zaran went on to thank the one hundred thousand campaign volunteers and specifically how their efforts quote eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics.
I liked that line, and.
Then he asked New Yorkers to breathe this moment in quote. We have held our breath for longer than we know. We have held it in anticipation of defeat, held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, held it because we cannot afford to exhale. Thanks to all of those who have sacrificed so much, we are breathing in the air of
facity that has been reborn. There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us to simply more of the same. And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn New York. We have answered those fears unquote.
And while we cast our ballots alone. We chose hope together, hope over tyranny, hope over big money and small ideas, hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now it is something that we do. Standing before you, I think of
the words of Juan lal Nehru. A moment comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance. Tonight we have stepped out from the old into the new.
The line about politics not being something that's done to you, yeah, yeah, that really outlines how politics has felt in this country
for as basically as long as I can remember. He then outlined what his central agenda to tackle the cost of living crisis is, including freezing the rent for more than two million rits, timbolized tenants, making buses faster and free, and delivering universal childcare across the city, saying quote, this will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too
timid to attempt. Let's go on a quick break and we will come back to talk a little bit more.
About the election.
All right, we're back.
During the second half of this speech, Zoron turned to address Donald Trump. Right this looming thing across politics nationwide, but specifically New York, as Trump has threatened to start to fuck with New York even more if Zoron is
elected and people in New York know this. And about halfway through, Zoron addressed Trump directly, which we will get to you in a sec But before he directly talked to Trump, in this speech, Zoron laid out what types of people the city government will be focusing on protecting from Trump's division and hate.
In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another in this moment of political darkness. New York will be the light here leave in standing up for those we love. Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump is fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with
their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours two.
Specifically, I like this idea of in the darkened political moment, this United States is in New York and the Zorn administration and how that reflects New York and general though will be a beacon for the rest of the country. And naming like the trans community is like the second group mentioned there was heavily appreciated in the Bushwick Trans Watch party that.
I was at.
Zorah went on to say that quote, no more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election. This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed in odds with one another. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbors that this
new age is something that should frighten them. As has often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making thirty dollars an hour, that their enemies are those earning twenty dollars an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking along broken system. Together, we will usher
in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.
I think this whole section is something very important, and this has been something that's been very consistent about Donnie's entire campaign, which is there's been on the left for a very very long time, a just interminable, intractable conflict between this idea of like purely focusing on class politics or talking about race. And but I think what Montdammi is doing here ha's been very effective, right, is you
can just do both. And in fact, as the left over the last you know, sort of senses kind of the reemergence of this kind of left in like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, as it's gone on, it's gotten less white, it's gotten more to verse, has gotten more multicultural, and it's been able to fuse these two things together, and it's been able to fuse that with just you know, like being very very openly pro trans and like there was you know, there's also a pretty big response that
I saw from people talking about the fact that he specifically mentioned that it was black women who were being fired by the Trump administration. Right, And you can just do all these things together and it works, and it's
worked the whole time. And refusing to pit these things against each other, like refusing to pit affordability against trans rights, refusing to pit yes, yeah, you know, like fusing to pit the politics of like defending and this is some thing that like fucking Bernie is terrible at, right, where like Bernie like has been like has a whole rant about how Trump has been right on like we have to reduce immigration, right, and you don't have to do that.
You can be pro immigrant, you can be protraned, you can be pro black women, you can be you know, and and you can also want everything to cost less, and you can be in favor of the fact that the US is a is a multicultural society and can only function as one. And it's it's a winning form of politics. And I'm glad we're finally getting there.
Yeah, and it will be great if this New York City as a beacon can actually shine and not get rectifled out in.
These in these next four years.
Because Zorn is, unless unless things happen, will be the mayor for the remainder of the Trump term, right like this is he will be mayor after second Trump administration is over, barring any unfortunate incident.
Make sure your private security is really good.
Way whoever ypd detail get your own guys. Yeah, it'll be fine. But it also it means like like from I guess a national perspective, it is likely that mom Danny will become like the enemy number one of the Trump administration, where they probably Newsome or prish Karan now right, like it's it is easier because of the obvious bigotry that underlies a lot of the Republican Party to go after a brown dude. Yes, and that is what they are going to do. And they're going to use.
Brown democratic socialists.
Yeah, who stands up for trans people and migrants. And likely you saw how acceptable islamophobia is in Cuomo's campaign, right, like you just go on to every mainstream network and say shit, that it is fucking disgusting. Yeah, and so we should prepare our sales for four more years of that, I guess. And I think he does a very good job of repudiating that, and obviously the electorate in New York did too. But that is going to be what we are going to see as a result of this.
Well.
No, and like so much of the resistance to Zoron came from this idea that if he wins, that means that this is going to be what people point to as a future for politics, specifically democratic politics, And a lot of people wanted to stop him because they knew that's going to happen. If he is in control of the biggest city in the country as the Democratic mayor, that's going to be influential for what democratic politics will
be after they got completely clobbered last year. And he's showing that a different type of politics is possible, even even within the Democratic Party. And that's that's true, like altering what the party is fundamentally, Yeah, and I think it's it is. It is a cool little side note that Zoron voted for himself on the Working Families party line and in fact not the Democratic Party line. Becau's
called the New York mayoral ballot's work. I'm gonna pay one more clip from the speech of Zorn, specifically addressing Trump. It's going to be a teeny bit longer, and I think we'll cut We'll shorten some of the applause bits because some of the applause sections gone for quite long.
But this will be the last club.
After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stopped Trump, it's how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.
We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants.
We will put an end to.
The culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small. Indeed, New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight,
led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of.
Us, you will have to get through all of us.
The ship rocks.
It's good, it's good.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool for a mayor alection to.
Say that he didn't manage to get in the New York is the anchora of America, which I was hoping for them.
Otherwise, great, that's Eric Adams this bit.
Yeah, yeah, sad day for sad day for Turkey today.
I guess on an actually important note, I think it is really important that you know, all of this energy against Trump, right and against all the shit that he's doing that's so hideously unpopular, it's starting to be channeled into politics that can actually defeat him. Yeah, and that are actually good, you know, and that he's talking about specifically the fact that you have to deshoy the conditions that created it and so they don't create the next one like this fucking rocks.
This is good.
Yeah. For so long, like for I mean most of the twenty sixteen to twenty twenty period and for a lot of this year, we've seen so many people turn the obvious disgust that people have a what Trump is doing into grifts into some reporting of politics which fundamentally allowed for the conditions we are in now, right, And to see someone repudiate that and to see more than a million people turn out to support that is fantastic. Like it's genuinely hopeful.
It's something like zoronas like acknowledge. It's like this is not like the end, right, this is a means, not the means either, Like this is this this is a
means to an end. And this whole campaign started, as he's referred to it as a quote unquote electoral project by the New York City DSA, Like this was largely an experiment and an experiment that grew wildly, wildly kind of out of what I assumed they kind of saw it as in the earlier in the earlier days, and now they're in this like moment and they have to
they have to keep rolling with it. But it is it is an experiment for a a version of doing this, and he knows this is not like the only method or tactic to be utilized, but as as an experiment, I think it's so far pretty well done now, as is on closest speech by calling to chart a new path as bold as the campaign has already been, saying that conventional wisdom would claim that he is far from the perfect candidate. Quote, I'm young, despite my best efforts
to grow older. I am Muslim, I am a democratic socialist, and the most stabbing of all. I refuse to apologize for any of this. And yet if tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution. We have paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party, and too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they've been left behind.
We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that
Democrats can dare to be great. Our greatness will be anything but abstract unquote, and he concludes by saying that the greatness will be felt by rent stable ie tenants who will wake up knowing they are rent hasn't sword by grandparents who can afford to stay in their home and whose grandchildren live nearby because the cost of childcare is not driving them out of the city, And by the single mothers who don't need to rush their kids to school because they can commute to work on a fast bus.
Quote.
Most of all, it will be felt by each New Yorker when the city they love finally loves them back unquote.
The stuff about like worshiping at the altar of caution for like the past, the past like twenty more than twenty, but especially the past like twenty years of like Democrat politics, and how he is also recognizing that like this is this could mark a fundamental shift in what the Democratic Party actually is because the people Democrats included, who've been trying to stop this have failed miserably so far, putting tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to try
to crush crush this version of what the future of New York Democrat politics is, and more people since nineteen sixty nine showed up to deny that future. That's all I have for Zoran right now, it's literally, you know less than twenty four hours after the Yeah, but this was not just a New York City mayoral election.
There were there were other races, including other other things. In New York.
There was a Prop one amendment to the state Constitution to retroactively authorize the winter sports facilities on Mount then Hovenburg, which is protected forestland and would require the state at two thousand, five hundred acres of newly protected land elsewhere in the ad Ranak that's how I'm saying it at Irondack Mountains. Yeah, which was passed, and this allows them to continue to build and maintain the winter sports facility.
Propositions two through six were New York City Charter Amendments. Two to four were housing reform proposals to fast track the approval process for affordable housing and simplify zoning reviews and establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board.
All of the passed.
These will limit the ability of the City Council to control and slow down housing development and empower the mayor specifically to build more affordable units faster. And Prop five, which also passed, creates a new digital methnic city. The only prop to fail, which was Number six, was to move local elections to be in line with presidential elections on that four year basis. Basically, the ballot that Zorn filled out himself was the one that passed for all of these, all of these proposals.
Yeah, you get. They call it a coattails effect in political science, right, like the idea that the.
People announced his ballot that morning. He did not.
He he didn't, and he didn't even announce it like a journalist asked him what he was voting on. He specifically did not advocate for any of these or or try to dissuade anyone from any of these before the election.
Yeah, for sure. But you get a generally aligned politically electorate, right, a relatively progressive in American terms, electorate coming out to vote for him, who will look at these things and say that seems to make sense with the way I see the round.
Absolutely.
Democrat Abigail Spenberger won the governor of Virginia flipping blue. Jay Jones, a Democrat candidate for Virginia AG also beat
the Republican incumbent. This was after a month of attacks for a series of text messages from twenty twenty two where j Jones said that if certain Republican delegates died, he would quote go to their funerals to piss on their graves unquote, and wish for the hypothetical deaths of Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert's children quote only would people feel pain personally?
Do they move on policy?
I mean, do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil and that they're breeding little fascists?
Yes?
Unquote.
That's also not really hipathetical deaths like he did in a call with a with another Republican politician.
Then after the call, they continued texting about it. So the proof is in these texts, and he is admitted this, and basically he was like, Yeah, if these people's like children were to get killed in mass shooting, maybe their opinions on guns would change.
That's essentially what he's expressing there.
Yeah.
And then he also he also was.
Quoted in these leads text messages as saying, quote, three people, two bullets, Virginia Huse Speaker Todd Gilbert Hitler, and Paul Pott Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.
Spoiler put Gilbert in the crew.
With sorry, just as an elected official, as an attorney general, someone going to be a call that you put in the fucking text message spoiler.
Put Gilberts in the crew with the two worst people you know, and he receives both bullets every time. It's insane, up sec hero, But that is the new attorney general. That's a new Democrat Attorney general of Virginia who the right has been attacking for quite for relentlessly the past month, because you really fucked up.
If you can't like, no, if you can't run attacks on that guy, and you still.
All of those jokes about the wine moms in the suburbs, like wanting blood and like there looking at this Oh no, hell yeah, yeah, give me four ward bullets will put in this guy.
It's pretty crazy. It's it's it's pretty astonishing.
Maine voted no sixty three percent on a voter restriction measure. Voters extended the Democrat Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and the California Redistricting Measure or Proposition passed with sixty three point eight percent.
James, Yeah, do you have stuff on this?
Yeah?
So Prop fifty in California, California, it was like a one issue ballot, right, you said the Prop fifty this would temporarily redistrict I think people maybe have not been like like often it gets missed, and it is temporarily redistricting California until re establishing the non partisan committee that does districting in twenty thirty one. For the twenty thirty two those districts will come back, or that they will return to a non partisan districting in twenty thirty two.
This is one of the most expensive propositions in state history. One hundred and twenty million was spent in favor, forty four million against. There was also outside money. Newsome already called on New York, Illinois and other Democrat majority seats to do the same. Right, it's going to likely remove about five Republican seats, or those Republicans are going to struggle.
Right.
One of them would be at ser Diego's Mountain Empire and East County seat, which is currently the forty eighth. That seat has been redistricted a few times, right, it's moved around. It's currently Darryl ISO's seat. In response, California Republicans have already filed a lawsuit. Suit was filed by high Meet Dylan's law firm.
Yayyay so Dyland of the party.
Dylan is in the Trump administration now.
But yeah, Elean is in the Trump administration and occasionally in my inbox making threats.
Fastic great, But with Dylan's law firm that that father case right. The case has claimed that California drew the new lines to quote specifically favor Hispanic voters, which it is a similar claim to the Louisiana versus Calais. I think Calais. There is the way they say it here case which is currently before the Supreme Court, which the Supreme Court seems to be suggesting it might be it might be amenable to this argument right, that the consideration
of race in redistricting is discriminate free. Yesterday Trump truth quoting here, the unconstitutional redistricting vote in California is a giant scam. That part is in block capital as is characteristic. The rest is sporadically capitalized. I'm going back to the quote now, in the entire process, in particular, the voting itself is rigged all quote mail in ballots where the Republicans in that state are shut out. It's under very serious legal and criminal review. Stay tuned. Yeah, you know,
fairly predictable what we talked about it last week. It's not entirely possible for me to pass out that second sentence, but I think we can see what direction is pushing in. Right. This was predictable that this was going to happen, and we'll keep you updated on it. Also predictable that we would have to pivot to ads again, which is what we're going to do now. And we are back a little bit of immigration news this week, as always according to report it, this is actually last week, but we
didn't have time for last week. Equalt remportant by CNN. Trump claimed he was quote very much opposed to his own administration's immigration raid on our HONDB plant in Georgia, which obviously this is what he's saying to try and get that foreign direct investment back in Georgia rape, because it looks very much like Georgia is going to pay pretty heavily for that raid. Unfortunately, another man lost his
life when fleeing ice officers last week. He seems to have left a car that he was in and tempted across a freeway where he was fatally struck by another car. Yeah, that's the second time this has happened this year. Texas acidned an agreement with a federal government to allow local DPS officers to operate as ICE officers or technically to operate under the authority of ICE officers under the two eighty seven g program. So this is not the first law enforcement agency in Texas to do this. Lots of
local agencies had, but the DPS is statewide. Right, so this would this would include offices of the Texas Highway Patrol. It has five thousand employees. It will make Texas a markedly more hostile place for migrants. The authority allows warrantless detention under loosely limited, loosely phrased supervision by an ICE officer. Right, it allows Texas cops to detain a question people with they suspect of being in the United States without documentation.
Here in San Diego, San Diego's Border Patrol Sector released a video with I think it was like, I'll have to check what song. It was like some cringe kind of pop punk soundtrack of the dynamting of land west of the Hakumber Wilderness. This is likely the construction that saw many environmental and cultural protections waived by the HS secretarynme earlier this year. Right, we're always seeing the beginning of what that looks like and what that looks like
here is just a very unique landscape. Many one I know some people who listen came out to Hookumber a couple of years ago to help out. Like it's an extremely unique high desert landscape and it's currently being dynamited. Right. These are the areas where there were little gaps in the border wall because construction there is very hard and the way that they're going ahead with the construction is
blowing stuff up. Finally, on the immigration beat, the case regarding conditions in the broad View Facility, which is in Chicago until earlier this year it was only for very short stays, like not for twenty four hour stays, has revealed some of the horrific conditions inside the facility. It confirmed something I've heard from multiple migrants who have been detained or over the US, which is ICE is using the threat of longest stays in poor conditions to get
people to sign deportation paperwork. Often it's literally in the overcrowded rooms where they're sleeping and staying right, Like, at any point you can just walk up to it and sign your name and you will presumably be removed from those conditions and place into deportation flight as soon as possible. Reading directly from the lawsuit here quote people are forced to attempt to sleep for days or sometimes weeks, on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are
denied to fficient food and water. They cannot shower, They are denied soap, high giene items and mental products, and they have no way to clean themselves. They are often denied a change of clothes. Continuing my quote here, the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable. Most nights are freezing cold, yet only some receive a thin foil blanket, sweater or sweatpants to try to retain warmth. The lights are typically
on all night. People have also reported being denied waterway agents that are being their running water in the places where they are held, and very little food. We've reported on these conditions before. Some of this is standard. Right, lights on all night, freezing cold, you only get a very thin blanket like that. That has been the case, That was the case throughout the Biden administration. Right they call these places of the ice box, both in English
and in Spanish. This has always been the conditions to people have been held in in these facilities have always been in humane, but some of this is particularly bad. People in broadview reported being so crowded they could not extend their legs Jesus Chris, Yeah, so they had to sit like sort of fetal position. They couldn't sit down and extend their legs right alone sleep. Disgusting the unclean conditions they have. Lots of people have reported paperwork not
being able to language that they read write. Bathrooms there are not private, and the lawsuit alleges that people of other genders could see each other using the bathroom, which is pretty disgusting. I've linked to the lawsuit. You can read it if you want.
To Terror Park Transition, go.
The jazz b Y Jazz Barry in the jazz rocking jazz bo.
Ah music to My Ears, Oh boy, okay, abrough shift in tone. So we got a little bit more details on the sort of partial agreement that Trump and the Chinese government have sort of come to that has staved off some of the most disastrous of the new trade war elements. Both sides seem to have gotten rid of the fees from ships both docking at their ports and also on like the sort of complicated shipbuilding stuff we
talked about last year. The US has paused the thing we talked about last week where they were using the Foreignansity list to do anything that was controlled that was like forty percent or more controlled by a thing on the foreignansity list couldn't be traded with. The US is backing off on that for a year. Chinese agreed to buy more soybeans. There's also some discussion of China buying more energy products. But this is one of these things that we just we have no idea what that is.
It's possible by the time you're listening to this, there will be information. All we have is buy more energy. And the last thing that Trump said that didn't seem to be part of the negotiations between him and the Chinese government per se, but we're definitely part of negotiations that have been going on between Trump and his cabinet was that there's going to be restrictions on AI chip exports.
Oh though exactly what is not known. All Trump said was quote the most advanced we will not let anybody have them other than the United States. What this seems to be, and again everyone is kind of murkily hobbling
together whatever information they have. What it seems to be is Trump stopped in Vidia from selling its most advanced AI grade chips called Blackwell, to China, which was which Nvidia has been massively lobbying for because they need to expand their market to continue the giant bubble that they've accumulated. Trump has stopped them. It's unclear whether this is going to be made into formal policy or if Trump is just going to personally intervene every time a CEO asked
him to do this. But yeah, we also have so today recording November fifth is the start of the Supreme Court case against the tariffs. I think it's worth noting that this court case against the tariffs, it's framed as like a lot of small businesses brought this lawsuit, and they did. But also the reason it's gotten to the Supreme Court is because they're being backed by a huge
player in the conservative legal machine. Almost the entire thing is being funded and paid for by the Liberty Justice Center, which is it's a kind of libertarian right wing legal thing backed by like the Walton family and the Coke Network. And this is I think one of the most direct and interesting actual oppositional moves we've seen from this wing of the libertarian business wing of the party, which is very,
very pissed off at the tariffs. We've seen a whole bunch of amicus curia briefs from the American Enterpresents, the Tree and the Cato Institute, and a whole bunch of other wrote wing think tanks who are extremely angry about this. We don't know exactly how it's going to go, but the initial arguments do not seem to be going well for the Trope administration. So that'll that'll be unfolding, and we'll report on it. More is as we know more. It's this is literally recording the first day of trials.
So and finally I'm going to close on a genuinely deeply baffling piece of news, which is that the day before the election in New York, Great Abbott posted that there would be a one hundred percent tariff on anyone moving to New York after the election.
Yeah, how does that work?
Isn't it moving to Texas from New York?
Well, I thought it was to New York.
It's for me, it looked like moving to New York as well.
I mean, it's certainly unclear, because this doesn't not seem like a policy proposal. It seems more like a post.
It's just a post. It's someone post posting through it.
Because this from moving from New York to Texas. Yeah, any one moving from New York to Texas.
Interesting. I don't know that tariffs are just posts now, I don't.
That's not like a thing that there's law around you being able to do.
No, it's it's so one constitution. I think it's just a post. I don't think it is anything like is.
Yeah, I mean evidently, I think the interesting thing about it is like is the way in which tariffs have come to be seen in their Republican mind as like this is something you do to people you're mad at, which is very new development in this is this is a this is a pure Trump too phenomena effectively.
Well absolutely yeah, a marker of how intensely they're paying attention to this election. Like I mean, Abbots said doing this because I'm sure it'll show show up his local popularity.
But it's a marker of like a change that has been going on that that has been really like supercharged in the Trump era of No, No, you can't have local politics, like it's it's all national politics and any kind of vote at a state or local level that goes against whatever the party wants is something to be punished, like even if it's two thousand miles away. And that is that hasn't been as dominant in US politics as
it has been recently. We should probably talk a little bit about Texas's election night, because that was also pretty consequential. There were seventeen ballot measures passed by the Texas legislature earlier this year by a two thirds majority, And the way Texas law works is that once the legislature votes for a ballot measure to two thirds majority, it becomes a constitutional amendment after a simple majority of voters on
a ballot support it. And there were seventeen measures on the ballot in Texas, which is wild, very few states and constitutional amendments that the rate Texas dons and all of them passed, which is nuts, and some of them are like fine. There was want to create like a three billion dollar fund for dementia research with like which is like whatever, and nobody's got a problem with that really. Some questions about implementation maybe, but there's some absolutely bug
fuck nuts stuff in here. Proposition thirteen raised the homestead exemption from one hundred thousand dollars to one hundred and forty thousand dollars. It was passed by about eighty percent of voters. This lowers the taxable value of a home, which reduces overall tax bills on your primary residence. Per an article in the Houston Chronicle, the amendments will be especially felt by elderly or disabled Texans who are poised to receive a separate tax, a separate break that brings
their total property tax exemptions to two hundred thousand. As a result, roughly half of seniors and people with disabilities living in Harris and Bear Counties will no longer pay any school property taxes. Jesus I should have to say how bad that is for Texas schools and in general. This A lot of these ballot measures were about making heavy cuts and making it impossible to raise new revenue.
The cuts that are just in these ballot measures are going to cost the state about four billion dollars over the next two years. Right, But that's not all that was done. Several of the bills that were passed banned the potential to create new taxes. Right, So it is now illegal in Texas to create taxes on capital gains or taxes on the growth of assets like property in stocks, or taxes on inheritance, and to state taxes. Taxes on the operations of stock exchanges are now banned because several
have announced plans to open in taxes. Right, So you are looking at I think the estimate here that I'm seeing in the chronicles articles that the states can spend about fifty one billion dollars over the coming biennium to pay for the new cuts and maintain existing ones. Texas is a state that has had for quite a while a budget surplus, and they are basically lighting a lot of that on fire to appeal to rich people and business Note owners in stock exchanges to take their assets
to Texas. You won't have to help society if you come to Texas. We don't have a society in Texas, right, And that agenda did very well in Texas.
Jeez. Anyway, good stuff.
I guess the last thing I want to talk about a little bit, since we've got a couple of minutes here is the question on everybody's mind. Should I be flying anywhere for the holidays? Is that going to be a good idea? We're I'm saying this a day after a horrific crash of a UPS flight over Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, right, which I mean, I think seven was the death toll last I saw night maarish fireballs.
I mean at nine this morning?
Is it at nine? Because the plane just the engine caught on fire basically on takeoff, and normally, from what I'm reading from pilots, normally that should have been a manageable problem. But because it happened during the ascent, which is the most dangerous part of piloting a plane and where you have the least control, they were not able
to recover or gain any kind of control. And the plane basically plowed directly into a UPS warehouse, And it was loaded with something like three hundred thousand pounds worth of fuel because it was about to fly to Honolulu, so it was as full of fuel as a big plane can be, and just a horrific crash. Is this tied to the fact that you have a lot of
federal employees furloughed? Is it tied more just to the fact that the FAA is not functioning the way it should be or used to as a result of changes the Trump administration made as soon as they came to power. I think it's too early to say that, but this is part of a pattern of pretty disastrous near misses that absolutely can be attributed to things like the air traffic controller shortage and the fact that there's just a
lot less safety precautions being taken. And this is something the administration is aware of and has become critical enough that they're no longer able to deny it. Secretary of Transportations Sean Duffy on Monday said that all commercial flights might be stopped nationwide to protect public safety, and they were certainly going to need to cut off flights in specific parts of the countries at times as a result of the ATC shortage.
Right.
Basically, there's different like grids that the country is divided into, and you might have to shut down one or more of those at a time in order to make the shortage of air traffic controllers able to handle the rest of the load.
Right.
For an example of how bad this can get locally, on last Friday in New York State, eighty percent of air traffic controllers did not show up for work. So this is a potentially pretty calamitous problem. There have been ground delays on Monday for three major Texas airports in Austin,
Dallas Fort Worth, and Dallas love Field. And this is just in general, a problem that's only going to get worse as the shutdown looms, because I've seen some interviews with air traffic controllers where like one guy was like, look, we're not getting medicine for my kid and she'll die
without it. It's just not coming in. How do you expect me to be a fucking air traffic controller right, like the hardest job in the country that requires absolutely perfect concentration at all times without ever fucking up or hundreds of people die. So I don't know to answer the question of like, should you fly be planning flights
for this holiday season? You should certainly get the flight and share its and be paying attention the days before as to what's happening if the shutdown doesn't end, because right now we are seeing delays the likes of which haven't really been seen since maybe either the pandemic probably before nine to eleven was kind of the last time things were this completely fucked. Garrison can tell you how much of a fucking nightmare they had coming back. And
it's not just in the United States. By the way, multiple major airports in Europe over the last week and change have had to shut down entirely or partly because of unauthorized or unknown drone flights in their airspace. That's just going globally. Air travel is not doing well.
Yeah, Russia's been probing Europe with these or lands for a little while. Yeah. I think all then know Roberts flowing Garrison. I have flown this month. It fucking sucks. Use a credit card if you can when they had some protections, but maybe maybe consider not flying right now.
Yeah, just you know, keep an eye on things. I don't know what else to tell you.
Yeah, it's great. Everything's going great. That is the slogan. Everything's going great.
You know, there's been worse times.
There's been worse time, Yeah, the Blitz.
Yeah, talking of worse times. Lots of people are hungry, right because we are we're fucking with people's snap benefits now as part of the culture war. Lots of people are very worried about where their food is going to come from. Right, and we're entering a time of year, you know, kids are going to be off school, there's lots of places you can still get your free school meals, but it's a difficult time for people. It's difficult time for people to feed their families. I wanted to plug.
We All we Got is San Diego group. What they're doing it is helping people be able to rely on them by delivering groceries to them right and the way that they most need support is for people to sign up to regularly donate a certain amount. I'm not going to tell you how much you can donate, but if you're able to, that will give them the ability to plan to secure groceries for people they're supporting. The way you can find their website is to go to we
All we Got sd dot com slash donate. Also, if you want to reach out to us and you want to do it in an encrypted way, you could send an email from your proton mail address to our proton mail address, which is cool Zone Tips at proton dot me. If you're a marketing person and you want your client to be a guest on our podcast, don't email us. I'm just going to fucking block you. That's that's That's all I have to say about that. If you want to have to plug your product, I will also fucking block you.
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