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Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
Hey, this is me the future. This is recorded in the now Haalcion days of January twenty twenty five. Lots of things have changed. Basically everything everywhere has gotten worse. This is the story about the oppression of trends people in the United Kingdom that is very bleak. In many ways, United Kingdom has gotten worse since then. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the definition of sex and the Equality Act of twenty ten is quote binary and is
decided by quote biological sex. So whatever the sex that some fucking doctor assigns you at birth is your sex specifically under the Equalities Act. A bunch of people in the UK have decided that this means that like the courts have ruled that like sex in general means quote unquote biological sex. That's actually not what they ruled, but
they're doing anyways. So there's been a whole bunch of things where, for example, the Labor Party has started purging trans women from any like one of their bodies that's supposed to be a woman's body. So through the oppression of trans people continues to escalate. Yeah, our only path out is just open and active resistance against them. In a more positive note, Mira, our guest for this episode, has since since this episode, has struck out on her own and is now the mind and genius behind the
outlet Free Radical. She will link to here and you should go support her work because it's great. Now to our episode, it's it could happen here a podcast that is largely about the US.
That my that might.
Exaggerate the e sat to which is about the US, but it is most episodes are about the US, but sometimes it's about other places. And one of the frequent places that it's about is the United Kingdom. And specifically we're here to talk about the United Kingdom because the UK is both an image of the presence and the future of the oppression of trans people and there have been a bunch of just absolutely horrible things happening there
that have gotten very little press attention. And one of one of those things is what appears to be a like I guess I would call it like a two stage cover up of a bunch of suicides of trans kids on waiting lists for healthcare. And with me to talk about this fucking terrible shit is Mira Lazine, who's a freelance trans journalist. Miro, Welcome to the show.
Great to be here, Thank you for having me.
Yeah. So, I mean, God, this is one of those I always am excited to talk to people, but I swear to God, like one out of every four times this happens, it's like a I have to pull do I want to say, I'm excited to talk to you about this because, like Jesus christis is the most depressing shit I've seen in ages.
Yeah, it's not a fun story. It's an important one, probably one of the most important I've ever boarded on, but not remotely fun.
Yeah.
So let's go back to the Halcyon days of mid twenty twenty four. I don't know, thanks for she really bad then too, but they're worse now. But they were also bad then, yeah, So can you talk a bit about how this story started and about what was going on with the National Health Service, the NHS, which is the British basically the British healthcare system is run out of National Health Service. Can you talk about the whistleblowers there and what was going on with them?
So, yeah, I first became aware of whats going on independently. I was working with Alejandra care Bio the Clinical Instruction of cyber Law plant at Harvard sheets a friend of mine, and we work together on subjects. She and Ira and Almos some other people were talking about the horrific waitlists going on with the NHS. It's terrible there. I mean not even just for trance stuff. There's only millions of reports of people having to wait months to get essential healthcare.
Some people have died just from like their conditions being on the wait list. We had both stumbled upon some old news reports from like years prior, about trans kids who had unfortunately committed suicide as a result of not getting the essential health CUY getting need on the wait list. These stories are not talked about their media at all. They got like one art mentioned naing what happened to them, and then that was it. So we started to invest
gate it. She was compiling a spreadsheet of everything she could find, every news report of kids who experienced this. I was pitching helped and contribute to that spreadsheets. And then right around the same time, the director then of the Good Law Project, a civil rights organization that does a lot of legal stuff in the United Kingdom. His name is Jolyn Mogam apologized if I mispronounced that. He came out with a Twitter thread revealing and this was
very suddenly. He hadn't contacted anyone about this. He just kind of posted it right when he got enough of a story and everything. He revealed that he was talking to a couple of whistleblowers within the NHS about what was going down. And not only did he talk to some whistleblowers, but he also gained some independent evidence from himself, his own investigation, from meeting it's from officials in the NHS, and so what he found kind of again at the
first was still beliller. This one was someone who did not reveal much about who they were publicly and presumably to protect their job. But Logan said that with his whistleblowers he independently confirmed that they did work for the NHS. He saw their ideas. Mangham's that typic guy to lie. He's a trusted figure in the UK political scene. First one said that there was only one reported suicide prior
to twenty twenty. Significance of twenty twenty in relation to trantelthcare at United Kingdom was that the infamous Caspell versus Tatstock. Not going to go into detail of this case because it condoluded messy and hellish, but the gist of it is that it led to tightened restrictions on gender priman care for minors, particularly in the new realm of puberty blockers. This ruling ended up kind of restricting how might act as puberty blockers. Some it was the leader overturned, but
it already led to lasting damage. Even after it was overturned, a lot of doctors for even prescribe puberty blockers because they were worried about political consequences. So a lot of miners weren't getting the care they need.
Yeah, and we should also mention here too because I think this has been lost in a lot of the reporting on this, because like I mean, I guess this is the story where a lot of the reporting was done by trans people just because like nobody gives a shit.
But like, the thing about puberty blockers is that puberty blockers with the healthcare of trans youth were always a sort of compromise measure that was, you know, sort of put in place as a compromise of like instead of letting kids actually transition and like, you know, go on hormones, which is, you know, the thing that kids need, right if your goal is to like improve the health outcomes of trans kids, like the thing you actually want for them, like maximally is for them to have the ability to
get gender affirming hormones. But you know, the sort of the sort of compromise thing that was happenings like, well, you could have puberty blockers, but you know, you start horbuns later, and that is not a good compromise to begin with, but losing it is even worse because the alternative to that is like you are now spending even more time with a bunch of fucking hormones in your
system that you don't want. Thats more of more of the hormones that you fucking want, and you know you're getting you're being forced to go through puberty, which fucking sucks. Shit if you're going through I don't know. I don't know if the wrong puberty is like the correct language or whatever, but like it fucking sucks. It's awful. But now you know. And this is just something that's happening
in the US too. It's also happening in the UK, is that the compromise solutions are being knocked out and we're seeing the sort of knock on effects of these kids losing even the sort of compromise stuff they were supposed to be getting.
Yeah, and they used come deep bogus justifications for this or like we don't see any benefits of pu people loockers, And it's like, the point is not that they are benefiting these kids directly. No kid is like, oh boy, I get to be five years behind on puberty from my peers, I get to look like a ten year old, but all my peers have bull one beam everything. Oh boy.
Like no, but the point is that these kids are being deprived of the care they absolutely need to stay itlive, and it's being targeted just for the sole purpose of getting cheap political pals from what are the hell's in office. Yeah, but more back to the whistleblowers. So prior to twenty twenty, when the Belvy Tavistock ruling came into effect, only one transmitter died from suicide. I don't quite remember how I'm being the used estimated, but it was broader than the
one they used after. I believe it was like seven years, I think, and the years after which was measured up to like the very beginning of twenty twenty four. Chane, you at twenty twenty four, so not even four years, more like three years. In June months they recorded sixteen debts. Yeah, sixteen transgender minors committed to suicide, and they were all able to be linked to restrictions on compreticaters and NHS
wait lists. This was the blower says on This data came directly from a doctor who analyzes this stuff professionally, is like part of his job in the NHS. The doctor also wanted to be anonymous. Understandably, he named himself the quote named doctor for Safeguarding child. He tried to warn people in the NHS about this. He was like, hey, there's something wrong. This isn't right. We are fucking up.
Yeah, And he.
Talked to so many different people, including doctor Hilary Cass, who I'll talk of it about later.
This is a literary device called foreshadowy ETCA giant clip flashing big here, giant ominous music surrounding her remain that does he just warned.
Of people basically, and they all ignored him. They all just according to him. And this is all alleged. I have to say, you know, this has not been verified in the court of flaw or anything. This is according to the whistleblowers and mongam, but we have no reason to believe they lied or fabricated this information about this was not even revealed publicly. There is no public outcry. There was no action taken by the NHS or any of the clinics. So that is the first whistleblower and
the whistleblower's connection to that doctor. The second one basically can and gave independent verification of this. They were like, yeah, I've seen the data for myself too, I can confirm this is legitimate. Now it wasn't just these sory staff
members who were trying to raise a larm bells. According to the second whistle blower, staff and the NHS were like, hey, well this is not cool, we need to do something until they got an open letter, sent it to their higher ups and reportedly the director of the Tavistock Clinic, which was at the time the only gender affirming air clinic for minors in the entire United Kingdom. Since that's more opened up. But it's a really complicated thing. That's
a headache to deal with. But head honchos at Tavistock completely retabiated. They threatened them a disciplined interaction. They suppressed material. They're basically were like, you go public about this, if you continue talking about this, you're going to face consequences.
The thing the thing that instantly came to mind here, and I think it's just specifically because of number sixteen, but like the first time I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was there, you know, there's the sort of famous Chicago story of the police killing of the Clint McDonald where the slogan afterwards was
sixteen shots and a cover up. And this is fucking sixteen dead at a cover up, And the about a fucking rage that I have for all for this, all of this fucking shit that these people covered this up, that they knew this was happening and were just and not only knew this was happening, and not only didn't do anything about it, but like actively you contributed to fucking making it worse by threatening anyone to try to talk about it. Is just so unbelievably disgusting.
Yeah.
I was the first one who broke the story. I basically recorded on it, like almost immediately after Moldern Republic about this, because I knew not many people were going to report on this right away and it was going to kind of be a headache. I didn't know how he would, but I was the first one to report
on it. I did it for cheerlest Aaron read subsec Aaron in the Morning back in June of last year, and I had to stop writing it multiple times, like I spent the entire day getting on it because it was stomach wrenching reading some of these stories and doing everything. The only reason I even got through it was because I dissociated the entire time and just kind of impartmentalized the anger of a bunch Beretta. It's like Jesus Christ, this is horrifying. But Malcolm was not talking out of his
aspetus too. He brought receipts right in the initial thread he showed leaked to meeting minutes and like you can see water marks from the NHS on these meeting minutes. Like it is unless someone wants to suggest that he did a giant conspiracy and fabricated a bunch of very accurate meeting minutes that reflect publicly available meeting minutes elsewhere, it it's pretty reputable. Yeah, these minutes show that any test officials were aware of every single one of these debts,
every single one of them. People were in these meetings calling for an independent investigation into each of these debts, into gender firming care for miners, into restrictions. They wanted to investigate everything and had detailed data. They had information on the type of care they received, which was basically negligence, and instead of reporting on this publicly, instead of doing
an investigation, they covered this up. They didn't do anything, and they just pretended like everything was fine, like there was no debts as a result of this. They were acted nothing wrong was going on, and these meeting minutes are still public too. Mangan is not believed in that it's still on his Twitter account. Good Law Project is not fully a thing any more of the kind of dissolving their stuff right now, but Magan is still keeping
all information up. It's all detailed, it's publicly there. People can see for themselves these minutes and it's horrifying seeing the physical proof. It's yeah, it's horrifying.
Yeah, and we need to go to ads and when we come back, we'll get to the second fucking cover up because there was a second one. Did it again this time with the British broadcasting What the fuck does the C stand for corporation?
That one British broadcast in corporation leading the charge.
And we are back. So let's talk about the fucking second cover up because normally, normally you only get one cover up when your fucking healthcare policies kill a bunch of people, but no, two, they got multiple cover ups. Before we get to the second cover up, we need to talk about what the cash report is because that's also part of this. And we kind of bounced around a little bit but then didn't. Yeah.
Well, yeah, so the cast report is probably one of the worst things to come out at the anti trans crowd in the past decade.
Yeah.
The gist of it is, it's essentially a supposedly independent report commissioned by the Knighting government to investigate the efficacy of huberty blockers and gender of herman care from liners authored by doctor Hillard Cass, who they claimed is an expert in the subject. I'll get to that in a second. The gist of what it was claiming is that no puberty blockers do anything. They actually hurt the kids. They don't improve mental health, they don't protect anything, suicide to
stay the same, it's all bad. Get rid of them and actually restrict gender perman care two and also maybe we should de transition these kids too. It's a very long documents, actually a set of documents, but the primary one isn't incredibly long. I remember when it first it came out last year. It's been in the works for the better part of the last decade. Still get twenty tens.
It's been in the works. I don't remember the exactly gear that it was initially commissioned, but it's been something the United Kingdom government has been waiting on for a while to take action for gender reforming care. Now to understand the CAST report, you gotta understand a little bit about Hillary Cass. Hillary Cass is not an expert in gender firming care seeing up for minors. She has never treated a transgender patient aimed her professional practice.
Whatsoever, which, thank god yes, because holy shit, oh she is such a transphob Oh my god, yes, but yeah, also utterly unqualified.
Completely unqualified while she was writing it instead of talking with single trans person as like part of the consulting because she didn't do it by herself. It's wait too long for anyone to do buyers by themselves. She got a bunch of unknown advisors to help her with this, one of which is a Finnish psychiatrist who has been campaigned against transgender rights for the past twenty years. But she did not have any trans people on the consulting board,
not a single one. Well, of course, why would you talk to a transperson about trans healthcare? Like that's why would you. Trans people don't know anything. They need to be regulated and told exactly what's best for them by people who have never even talked to them before. She actually, while she was writing it, she talked to Florida Healthcare officials during the Ron DeSantis fstration for information YEP on what to do like and these officials, by the way,
they weren't just like leftovers from the prior governor. They were appointed by Ron de Santis and have literally been Jews bidding and restricting healthcare.
Yeah, appointed by the guy who in the last campaign cycle had to fucking add with a son and rat in it. So like, you know the level of Nazi we're dealing with here.
Uh. And not only did she work with them, but there's even more. She worked with numerous people who were tied to anti transit groups, most notable of which is the quote Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine.
God.
They are probably one of the leading anti transgroups right now. They are southern poverty, low centered, desic hate group. They're not very fun people. They all have a financial interest in opposing transgender rights. Many of the people with them have been quite orderly paid to oppose transjunder rights in court. There's a whole rabbit hole to get into there. The point being she's worked with hate groups, She's worked with the Santa's appointees, She talked to no trans people, and
she lied a lot. When the cast for Brew first came out, I was one of the people who was working around the clock to try to be like, hey, let's not just assume that this is immediately accurate, because we should wait for independent scholars to evaluate this. There's a lot of shady stuff going on here, and why didn't you know it? A lot of things were wrong for starters. Ass misrepresented a lot of what she did for the review. It was supposed to be a systematic
review into all the literature and pubi blockers. The problem is she left out a bunch of studies, especially more recent ones with better elogies. She and her method degrade them, basically changed it up last minute and didn't seek peer review for it from her institution's review the board, which she didn't speak any ethical verification on anything.
Yeah, which, which is which is amazing. It's like, do you know how fucked your report has to beat and like your anti transferport has to be and not be able to survive a British peer review board like Jesus Christ.
It's like yeah, like it's it gets even worse because as time went on, a lot of journalists, myself included, found a bunch of little pact role in art seat there.
She was misrepresenting this study. She was misterpreting that study. Lots of little information it was she at one point fighted a YouTube channel that is dedicated to opposing trans rate. That be the YouTube channel in your fucking secitations. It was a tangential citation, but the point being the fact that she even discovered that shows her allegiances. She was in the CAST Review. She was trying to cast doubt on the leading medical association for trans people, the war
Professional Association for Transgender Health. She was like, Oh, no, you're actually not good. They're politically biased. I'm not though, don't more eyes, don't investigate me.
Yeah.
And in the time since, there's been a shit ton of medical experts coming forward opposing the CAST Review, being like, no, the methodology is garbage. Not just journalists saying it. There are quite littly been hundreds of metabirds who have come forward to publicly imposed the CAST Review. These are people across a variety of fields, psychiatrists, pediatrician and anechronologists, basically everyone you could imagine who would be relevant to the
study of transunder health and minors. They have come forward against it, including most of the leading researchers in the field, including people who have actually important with trans people in a professional capacity.
Yeah wow, And this review.
It's the reason the United Kingdom went on last year to ban puberty blockers in all four countries within it. They started in England, then they spread it out to Scotland, Wales with their beauty blocker ban, and was recently right before New Year's they banned it in Northern Ireland. And because of this, so many clinics are now just not treating transple including transgender adults. They are out transgender adults
not getting the care they need. Yeah, because of something ton't even discuss trans adults in a meaningful capacity.
Yeah.
And that's and that's part of the thing with the Cast Review, right, is that, like, you know, it literally like it could have just been like seven hundred pages of fuck you over and over again and it would have had the same effects, because the point of the Cast Review wasn't actually to like establish anything medically. It was to just have a document that you could point
at and then justify any policy whatsoever. Like it's it's kind of like it's kind of like the way the Gambits and the Bell Curve works were, like none of the actual policy recommendations follow from any of the arguments that they're making. But it exists so that you can make those policy arguments and then point to like, oh it's because of IQ and this is this is the same like bullshit IQ, like fake IQ science, right, Like.
There's literally IQ science used to justify the puberty blocker band.
Of course there is why they are claiming that puberty blockers reduce IQ using a STO from like two thousand and one on one of the and a separate study on show god, a separate study on fucking sheep.
How are you measuring the IQ of sheep?
Like yeah, okay, yeah, we wheeled in the sheep to do the fucking Army standard amplitude test. Like ah, it' scored real bad. Give it puberty blockers and it scored even worse.
It gets garbage science.
Yeah, but one of the important things, like cocclusions here is that, like so one of the one of the sort of things that's happening now is that fucking feral attack dog. I don't know fuckings sue me, you motherfucker. We won the revolution. Each shit west Streeting who's now running British Healthcare, issued a fucking thing to to ban puberty blockers for trans youth, you know, and he cites the Cash Report. Do you know what's not in the
Cash Report? A recommendation to ban puberty blockers? Do you know what these fucking he doing you anyways? Because that's the actual sort of purpose of the report is to serve as sort of like just a kind of like talisman you can hold up and say, ha, see this is justified. Yeah, and can you talk about the whistleblowers and the Cast report too, because this is the thing that I has seen very very little coverage that is extremely important.
Yeah.
So the whistleblowers, they literally reached out to the Cast while she was writing the review. She had to be like, hey, restricting puberty blockers isn't good. And like you said, Pass did not recommend to ban puberty blockers. She called for more research into it and like some restriction, but not an outgrade band that was not anywhere within it. Even with her extremism, she's like, maybe we shouldn't restrict everything completely, you know, maybe we should just de transition some of
the kids. But she did not advocate for a full on ban, and she has even gone public into the media to clarify that she has does not believe in a hole on ban and yet she ignored the whistleblowers. She ignored them when they came to her being like, hey, there's evidence that restricting pubery blockers is haunting these depths record and she didn't do anything. We don't know the
specifics of that conversation. That's not public information. But you read the cast review, you're not coming away with it thinking, oh boy, she's really concerned about kids who are killing themselves. Yeah, you're coming away with it thinking she doesn't believe a shit and she has her own agenda.
Yeah, And so okay, we're going to take another ad break, and then we're going to get to the promise second cover up, and we're back for cover up number two. So okay, we have now introduced briefly the fucking spawn of Satan himself, West Reading. Can you talk a little bit more about him and the cover up that he commissioned of this?
So yeah, when I broke this story, it was getting no coverage. No other news outlet wanted to touch it. There were actually some journalists I talked to I'm not going to name any names, but journalists I talked to you who are trying to get their editors to publish a story on these claims and they were like, m I don't think so. I think we're going to do that. It's too speculative and things like that. People were actively
shutting it down, especially in the British media. Yeah, and for about a month the NHS was nordness and not getting public comment. Enter West streaming. You said, he is the head of British Healthcare officially, is like fucking the head of the Secretary of State for Help and Social
Care some shit like that. But he's a sellout. He's a labor guy, you know, the party that's supposed to be at least kind of left wing and some and he threw trans people under the bus the first chance he got, right after Turf started pressing him for it was streating in all his awful, awful glory, looked at Mullgan's thread and thought, what if I denied this? So he commissioned Professor Lewis Appleby or Appleby. He is a
leading suicide researcher he at the University of Manchester. Except even though he's been in the field of suicide research for decades, in the past year or so he's been cozying up to a lot of antutrians people. Yeah, there's shipped ton of tweets of him basically talking to turfs, repeating the oh you can't have men and women's sports nonsense, you can. What does him going down the pipeline?
Yeah, he's just he's a he's a turf. Yeah, like that's the.
Yeah, he's a the turf. He's a turf. Who I do you does not professionally really work with Transius commits suicide. He does not discuss LGBTQ issues in his brieft arch as his primary focus. He does it for the general population.
Yeah.
I haven't read every single study of his, so it's probably as like one or two that talk about LGBQ suicide rates. But by no means is he like the guy you go to to learn about why suicide attempts and suicide rates are a thing in the LGBTQ population. West Reading was like, Hey, Lewis, do you want to write a quote unquote debunking of Margam's dread. So enter the I have it up right now. They quote review of Suicide from Gender Dysphoria at the Tavistock and Portman
NHS Foundation Trust Independent Report. This guy, he basically claimed that Nope, there's no data for this. Actually Mogam's wrong is that data pans it out. The data doesn't lie.
It's also funny because his argument is that trans people were already killing themselves. Yeah, it was just like it was really fucking plaque you think about it. But now there's.
Gripes a million breaths of people could have with this. For start, the data set is obviously too small to analyze fucking statistically. Makes no sense to try to do a fucking in death satistical analysis on what marg was claiming with sixteen kids. That's not but you're not going to get shit out of that. That's not really a big issue with it. The big issue that Mogum himself actually pointed out. In the same day that this came out, Logan pointed out that this analysis was just wrong from
the start. For starters, this guy analyzed quote current and former patients of under Identity Service. Malcolm's claims weren't about that. Malcom's claims were about those who were on the waiting list.
Which is which which is just nuts. Like it is up here for a second, it's like the difference between again on the waiting list and have finished care, like, what, yeah, what are we doing here? Oh god, how did this get past any be the outlet? I mean tretsphobia?
But like really yeah, now there's other problems with what It's kind of suspicious. So applebye, Applebee. However he pronounce his last name, He's.
Gonna call him Applebee's because fuck him Applebee's.
Fuck it.
He used data directly provided by NHS inclin. Now student viewers will notice something. Magham never claimed to access data directly given to them from NHS Acland. He was given data from whistleblowers. Magham actually in this direct because he wrote a whole debunking this debunking, and Morgan was like, he revealed that he actually a month before this was published, he reached out to NHS angling to be like, hey,
can I have your data on this subject. I've gotten a lot of information I want to try to corroborate it. They denied him the data. They just denied him it.
Yeah, I remember incorrectly. Part of it was they claimed the data didn't exist.
Yeah, yeah, they claimed it didn't exist, that they just didn't have it at all, and something. They pulled that up in air for good old Applebee's well, there's some other insure inconsistencies. As we know, Mogham had receipts he provided information on minutes directly from NHS meetings discussing these suicides. The minutes don't match up to the data Applebee's has. Applebee's is underestimating everything. And yeah, very recently, this has
not gotten any media coverage at all. Those who have been following UK politics for a while, especially trans politics, remember the unfortunate case of Alice Linn. Yeah, she was a young trientleman who committed suicide as advantage of this wait lists years ago. Her mother, Er Litman, has been a staunch outline trans people since. She's been one of the excusest people in the UK to be like, hey, no, I'm I'm putting my all behind trans people. She's wonderful.
She came out publicly revealing that Alice Litman was not included in Applebe's data set, even though she should have been. She was within Yeah the years. So what this says is that Applebee's had bad data that didn't include every kid.
Yeah, well, here's the thing we don't know about that, right, It's possible he had bad data. It's possible he's also just been falsifying his data because like again, he won't show it to us, so we have no fucking idea what like what he was, what he was actually provided with and what he was like you know what, or what things he did to the It says that he was given beforehand to produce what he's analyzing in his report.
True, and there was of course a bunch of smaller issues you could point out with Applebee's review, but the crux of it, it's bogus data is a matchup. As you said, he could be falsifying it. He could have just been given bad data. We don't know. He's not sharing anything. The NHS isn't sharing anything. Yeah, but all we know is that there's major inconsistencies and they they're
not doing shit with it. And this is where we enter everyone's favorite mainstream media, the lovely British media specifically outlooks like the BBC right literally within the first twenty four hours of this review coming out, they've applored it on it. At this point, my coverage has been there for a month. It loggam's claims have been out there for a month. They weren't touched them, and yet the moment someone came out with the NHS trying to be like,
actually it's false. They were rush to report on it something they claimed was not newsworthy Previously. Yeah, and mind you, Mougam's rebuttal to this review was posted publicly at this time, at the time that this media coverage was going up. At the BBC article breaking the story up, the only discussion they give to basically any issues with this is just a couple of brief sentences talking about Mogam's issues
with him. At the beginning, they just claimed that Morgan had profound difficulties and at the very end of the article, buried at the bottom, they gave Mogam like three sentences, and they left out a lot of information, like the minutes Muggham showed that he got from whistleblowers, the exact claims he got from whistle blowers. They just didn't report
on it. They they gave such intense coverage to alt these Applebee's claims in the review, and then they just plot o ignored everything Magham was singing, everything everyone else was doing. Now again I add, sure we don't know for sure whether who's telling the truth, but the NHS has an incentive to lie here, Magham doesn't. Magham is getting his career torch basically because they go going forward about all this.
And you can tell which side the BBC is on. You know, they give the game away at the end where they give the last word of this article to Ken Barker, who is the chief executive the LGB Alliance, which is an anti transait group, and you know, and they give her the last sentence saying that trans people are spreading misinformation to serve a dangerous and homophobic ideology.
And I like, quite specifically, like Kate Barker, if you ever fucking listen to this, fuck you eat shit, Like this is direct evidence that of the BBC's fucking political line here, because again they're giving the closing statement to a group that is literally just an anti transacor because the BBC is the institutional is to institutional fucking media arm of the British government, and the British government is institutionally transphobic.
Yeah, and I'm not gonna say that what the information right now, we have a definite news that's not the problem. The problem is this have been being investigated any non biased fucking NHS, any non biased British, Yeah, would look at Moggan's claims and think, oh wow, we should look into this, we should independently verify. Yeah, we should try to cor operate everything saying, or at least see if he's accurate, which which again, and I want to put
this out this is the job of a journalist. The job of a journalist is not to fucking literally reprint a press report from fucking like commissioned by the fucking government. Your job is to go find the fucking whistleblowers and talk to people. Did the British Did the fucking BBC do this? No, of course they didn't, because they're fucking
PR hacks. Yep, they're PR hacks for a transgendocide. And like quite frankly, and I will say this on the fucking record, because I'm not a journalist, fuck these people, like this is this is what the BBC wants, Like fucking dead trans kids and a cover up is what they institutionally what this fucking organization wants because they fucking hate trans people and they are completely okay with all of this shit happening as long as long as they fucking get to do another story about how fucking JK
Rowling is a brave truth teller or whatever like this, this is what these people want. I agree, and I also agree with your statement. Uh, the British media cannot call fuck themselves and I hope they've Robben. Hell yeah, I don't know how you can, as a journalist, someone trained to prioritize the truth and nothing but the truth, look at all this and think this is suspicious going
on here. There's nothing that warrant further investigation, even if Malcolm's claims are false, right, even if everything Malcolm says he made it up. He's an influential guy. He has been covered by the media for his lawsuits with the Good Law Project countless time before. He's made national headlines there.
And they don't investigate this at all, Like, yeah, they're rushing to report on everything fucking JK Rowling says everything some random fucking turf is saying, May Angelou whoever ter if you want to run?
Oh yeah, I'm realizing there are people listening to this. I don't know, maybe you're still listening to the episode and you don't know about the JK rolling Turf stuff, but like to get an understanding of like how vehement of like an anti trans hate figure she is, Like anti trans groups literally wear her face as a mask. Like I'm not joking. She she she fucking retweeted them an anti trans group literally wearing like printed out copies of her face as a mask. Like that is that?
That is the status that she has in the anti trans world right, Like and then the VBC fucking loves her so everything she does and she's not even an expert in anything.
She's a fucking author of children's books.
Like yeah, you know it's like, well, we'll talk to the authors of Sheldon's book when we talk to trans people, know, And I mean that's what ever thing about this is, Like the BBC never talked to a transperson. They did talk to an anti transhaite group though, so you know, you know, you know what fucking side of this is
considered valid by the British political and media establishment. Oh and also at the bottom and like, I know that they're doing this because this is just like standard policy for like if you're doing a thing story about suicide, but the very end of the article is a is a link to a bunch of suicide and crisis hotlines, So uh, one last fuck you to every transperson reading this. Yeah, the one two punch of we quoted an anti trans hate figure, here's a suicide hotline is like real, who.
Yeah, it's a it's a fucking insult it.
Yeah.
It just gets me how they didn't report on these claims at all when they were initially made, Like it didn't even have to be a big story, Like most fucking outlets I've written for would have just reported as like, oh this, this guy said this, we're waiting more information, okay, whatever. It wouldn't be a good reporting, but it'd be the bare minimum. We didn't even do that. They rushed to
just to repeat whatever the fuck. A commission review from the government said, that's more reputable, I guess than you know, leading advocates who actually cited their sources instead of just during shit at the wall.
Yep, And I think that's that's That's as good of a place as endy to stop. Less you have anything else you want to make sure people know about about this, No, I think that's it. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. And where can people find you in your work?
Yeah? Thank you for having me. I I can primarily be found on Blue Sky That is the main place I post now. Yeah, I'm at meural u gene a blue sky dot social. Beyond that, you'll probably see one of my articles published around because I am constantly working my ass off.
Yeah, so this is what it could happen here. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's still time for this not to happen here. So yeah, go go organize and go make West Reading and the BBC have a bad day.
Hell yeah, hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here. It's me James today here to bring you more terrible news about migration and deportation. And I'm joined to share that terrible news by Gillian Bruckell, a journalist who has been tracking deportation flights to dbooty. Hi Gillian, Hi, how are you?
James?
I'm good. Well, amidst the crumbling of everything, that's wonderful.
Yeah, I mean, this is terrible news, but I'm also very excited to be in the Cool Zone Universe.
I love all of the shows.
Yeah, welcome, welcome to the called universe. It's the Sophie Lichtman comic universe.
Oh my god, such a fangirl.
Okay, the United States government attempted to deport twelve men, none of whom are Libyan, to Libya on the seventh of May. Right, it got so far as to take them to the airport right in San Antonio, in San Antonio, Texas. And then thanks to a injunction court injunction, those people were not taken to Libya. Those people were in said,
returned to an intention center. Where as listeners the show will now be aware they were informed that they were being deported renditioned, how you want to say it, to
South Sudan. This news broke a couple of days ago, now, I think Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon, yeah, yeah, and that was when you were able to begin using your or like o in aviation knowledge looking for like this this flight right that was taking him to Seal Sudan, because at the time, yeah, the United States government was claiming that the flight was was classified or like a state secret. And even in court the judge wasn't aware of the flight was in the air on the ground, could it
turn around? Judging the anthony was going to ask it to turn around. So I wonder if you could like walk listeners through the time none of this deportation and then how you were able to find of millions of maybe not million, thousands of planes in the sky the one that was taking these people to as it turned out to Jubooty.
Sure.
Yeah, So I've been a journalist for fifteen years, but before that, I was a flight attendant. And you know, I'm an av geek, an aviation enthusiast. The shorthand you know, the hashtag for that is af geek, And so you know, I'm always looking at flight Radar twenty four. It's an app where you can track different aircraft. And so when I heard that the flight might still be in the air, I just thought, I wonder if I can find it,
so I win. First I went on to flight Radar twenty four, and first I looked at all of the departures out of San Antonio for like the previous twenty four hours since the previous flight that was supposed to go to Libya that was stopped, that departed from San Antonio.
And so I was.
Looking there and you know, didn't see anything just commercial flights, very obviously military flights, and I know they've used military aircraft sometimes, but I said, I'm not going to try and touch that right now. I want to see if it's one of these charter companies, you know, global X, a Vello, that have been doing these deportation flights.
Can you explain those to people, because I don't think everyone's aware of those.
So these are you know, commercial carriers, but they're they're contracting with DHS to deport people on their So you know, the A three twenty that you take across the country is sometimes used to deport people to other countries. And the main companies that are doing that right now are a Vello, global X. I think Omni does some of them sometimes. And I should say there are a lot of people, especially on Blue Sky, a lot of av geeks who are tracking and cataloging all of these flights.
I wasn't even aware of that community until I started looking for so I didn't see anything, you know, in San Antonio, and then I realized, oh, these people had been transferred to Port Isabelle in the last few weeks, so they would have departed out of Harlingen Airport, which is nearby. It's you know, a deep deep South Texas, and so I looked at departures out of harling and it's a small airport. They have like ten departures a day, and it's generally puddle jumpers from one small Texas town
to another small Texas town, you know. And there was one global X flight to Miami the day before. The timeline wasn't exactly right, but I know that DHS, you know, has been slow to notify attorneys. Yeah, so I thought, well, maybe this is the flight, and they just didn't tell the attorneys till the next day.
So then I spent way.
Too much time looking at all of the departures out of Miami to see if there were any Global X flights. I saw a few things, but you know, nothing heading across the Atlantic. And so at that point, Flight Radar twenty four will show you publicly available information on flights.
It won't show you all flights.
But there is another you know, for like deep deep ab geeks, there's another website called ADSB Exchange, and this is a pool of all feeder data all over the world of all aircraft in the air that aviation enthusiasts maintain themselves. And they will have military flights that aren't going to be on Flight Radar twenty four. They also have a lot more information about planes that have a
lad designation, which stands for Limited Aviation Data displayed. I don't know how much you want me to explain about that.
Yeah, explain, explain. I think it's interesting for people.
Sure, So LAD designation is used most often for like private jet owners, like celebrities and you know, the ultra rich. And basically it means that they have an extra layer of privacy for their movements in their private jets. So if you try and find a specific private jet on flight.
Radar twenty four, it won't come up.
You know.
So, the the tail of this plane that did the Jibouty flight is N five AA eight eight a T. If you search for that in flight radar twenty four, you won't see it.
Nothing will come up.
However, if you know what you're looking for, if you know, like, oh, I think the flight is heading to Jibouti right now, you can see on flight radar twenty four that there's a Gulf Stream five headed to Jabooti right now, but the registration information is obscured. Okay, you know it's not like that on the ADSB you can you can see it. Yeah, your filters have a lot more power. Basically, you know your search terms, they're going to go around different designations, okay,
and so some people hate that. You know, Taylor Swift had beef with some guy a couple of years ago because she has a LAD designation on her private jet. He was using ADSB exchange to post her flights, you know, ostensibly for to shame her for her carbon footprint. But then she threatened to sue him. And she was like, I have stalkers, like I don't want them to know when I'm landing in Nashville. You know, not going to get into that, but you know, that's basically the LAD
designation and ADSB doesn't care. And so I went on ADSB and I said, well, since I've already seen all the publicly available flights, let me just look at LAD flights, okay.
And so I set that filter.
And that took it down to a couple hundred planes in the air, and I honestly just got lucky. I just started clicking on planes because I don't know how to search for all departures out of one airport on ADSP exchange. I'm sure AV geeks who are better at it do, but I just started clicking on planes and I clicked I think like the third plane that I clicked on had taken off out of Harlingen a couple hours earlier and was over the middle of the Atlantic, which is not a usual departure for Harlingen.
Right, Yeah, that's quite a.
D and so you know, I posted on Blue Sky to the other av geeks who were looking for it.
I think this might be it.
You know, it's a private jet with a LAD designation that took off from this very obscure airport and is traveling internationally. Nothing else really fit the profile, right, so we all started looking at it. Another reporter named Jacqueline Sweet. You know, I looked up the registration. It's registered to a man named Igor Smirnov, which there are a lot of Igor Smirnov's.
Yeah, it's a pretty common name.
He's not the Chess guy, he's not the Moldovan guy. He appears to have once owned an airline in his Pakistan and has been in the US for some time. So he has, you know, this private jet. And then Jacqueline Sweet looked up that yes, he has DHS contracts.
Okay.
Then the other thing was.
I just googled the tail number M five eight eight.
One of the first things that came up was that this was the.
Private jet that carried Britney Griner home from Russia when she had been released in a prisoner swap. Yeah, and so that, you know, was the thing where I was like, okay, this this plane's been used for like weird government business before.
Yeah, like I think I think this might be it. Yeah, so that's when I posted.
Once I realized the Britney Grinder thing, then I posted it and other people, other av geeks were saying, yeah, I think that might be it, and then you know, Jacqueline got more info on the contracts and so this is for about two hours we watched it and JJ and DC said I think it's about to land in Shannon, and you know, soon enough it descended and landed at Shannon.
So Shannon Airport in Ireland is a frequent refueling stop for the US military, and you know that's something that a lot of Irish people really fucking hate.
Yeah. Not a US base, to be clear if people don't.
Away, Yeah, it's not a US base. These are this is US military that are just they're just refueling, but they're refueling to you know, do a lot of things that the Irish are not okay with Yeah, and so there's there's an organization there called Shannon Watch, who you know, they're watching all these US activities and you know, pressuring the government to stop this. So, you know, I tried
to email them before the plane even landed. And I don't know if it was the user air on my end or you know, if I don't know why I didn't work, but they didn't get the message.
I only found that out like half an hour ago.
Yeah, But so I messaged them, and then I like messaged a couple friends in Ireland like.
Hey, wake up, wake up.
You didn't call somebody, you know.
But there's two thirty in the morning. I'm glad my friends were asleep. And yeah. So I don't know how how much I wanted to get into my personal hedging or my journey. But you know, I used to be like a neutral, objective journalist at the Washington Post for ten years and I left a year and a half ago, and I've been enjoying being an opinionated journalist. I've been writing a book. But you know, there's a difference between
being an opinionated journalist and actually interfering in a story. Yeah, and so I kind of hedged from an of like should I should I do anything else? Should I actively participate in trying to stop this flight? You know, am I not going to get a columns job someday if I do that? Yeah, you know, I'm ashamed to say that. But I have to tell the truth. That's what I thought. And then I just decided, you know, screw it, I have to do the right thing. So I called the Shannon Airport police.
I called the Shannon Garda.
I called the police, the garden in Ireland and h I talked to you know whatever man answered for like a minute, and then he was like, let me let me, you know, knock you up the chain. And I was forwarded to someone else, to a woman who you know, she sounded smart, urgent, interested, It sounded like she was taking notes. It sounded like she was taking this seriously.
And I was saying, there's a play with this tail number that landed fifteen minutes ago, that may have people on board who have been illegally removed from the United States, who have not consented to go to their destination, who are being sent to South Sudan when they are not from Sauth Sudan. You know, and I made clear that, like, I don't know that this is the right plane, but I'm pretty sure that it is. This plane has been
used before for US government business. And I said, I know that our judges' orders don't matter in your sovereign country, but a judge has said this is not allowed, and it might be happening. And I don't know what your human trafficking laws are like, but you should know that if there are human trafficking or kidnapping laws in Ireland
that might apply to this, like maybe check the plane. Yeah, and you know, I didn't record the call and I didn't take notes, but I do recall her saying that she was trying to send someone to check the plane, and she was, you know, taking detailed notes.
What are their nationalities? How many are there?
You know?
And yes, so you know, the call lasted thirteen minutes, and then I waited, you know, was talking with the other av geeks on Blue Sky who were at this point, you know, this is around ten pm.
It's getting a little late.
And then yeah, I don't know what happened, but the plane taxi to a parking stamp near the terminal for a while, and I thought, oh, it's been it's been turned off, it's parked for the night. I don't think they're going to let him leave. Yeah, and then the plane took off. It was two hours after it landed.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it went to JABOUTI where it remains at the time of recording. Yeah, it's been raised since you first kind of identified this plane, it's been raised. I talked to Dallas or like an Irish member of parliament raised it today. I saw there was an exchange about it. I spoke to Paul Murphy, who's the TV for Dublin's Southwest. Paul,
get me a statement I'm going to read here. The very least Sierrish government must do is to inform the US authorities that no more deportation flights are permitted to use our airspace, in our airports. We must not facilitate this in humane an illegal deportation policy. It does seem like even if nothing we're done in this instance, hopefully this isn't something that will be able to happen again. I know, as you said, people have been upset about
that use of Shannon. I think they used Knock Airport as well, like for a long time because the US use them a lot in the in the in its war on terror. An Ireland has been a neutral country for a long time, and that's a feeling that it
compromises that among some people. But this raises a really interesting question for those of us who are following the deportations, right, which is like we've been thinking that it was happening on military or commercial flights, like you said, but there's this possibility that these smaller planes are being used for deportation, and like that's very concerning. I means we could have
missed things absolutely. It also shows the timeline here is extraordinarily rapid, right, Like from the people being informed at six pm, I believe it's six pm Pacific. I've been spending a lot of time on Pacer this week. Yeah, good old Pacer yep, A lot of the money generated
by the adverts in this show on Pacer. So six thirty five Central time and M who is one of the Burmese people in this this class action lawsuit, right, So, the lawsuit a number of people trying to get attentative restraining order against being sent to South Soudan now previously Libya, six eighty five Central time. That person's lawyer was told that they had an order of removal at nine am Pacific.
The lawyer had scheduled of video conference, but at eight twenty seven Pacific, they were told that that person had already been removed. Yeah, so pretty fast. And like perhaps that's why they're using these like small can you give an idea of like, I guess a lot of people weren't a phone on a small aircraft, but these are quite like this isn't a usual thing, right to be be No.
This is a luxury jet.
Yeah, that you know is moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for for kidnappers. And I just I'm so struck by the dichotomy of the law luxury of this vessel transporting them to Hell, to a country where they do not speak the language, they have no family or friends, to you know, a prison where people are being tortured that is about to descend into civil war, may already be in civil war. I mean the economy of that is so striking to me. Yeah, and so perverse.
Yeah, perverse is a right word. It is, like it's uh, perversely ludicrous. I don't know, Like it's so striking to me as well that somebody who has the financial means to own a private luxury jet to find themselves around the world. Is also profiting of the rendition of people
who are trying now to plead in Convention against torture. Right, they will be tortured if they are flown via luxury private jet to South Sudan, and that South Sudanese government seems to have stated that it would just return them to their countries from which they have withholding in for movement in the first spaces. Why the US can't send them to their countries.
Right, That's why the US hasn't done it, right, It's like, you know, it's a diplomatic pickle. But like the solution is in, we'll just you know, dump them somewhere else.
Right, Yeah, and then they have someone else do iday work, like send them back. Right. You found these contracts. Do you know how much DHS is spending like per flight on these things?
I have no idea.
I mean that is something that other reporters, I think, are you know, going to be better sources of that information. I've really just begun tracking these flights, right, you know, I like to track flights all the time.
Just because I have ADHD.
You know, it's a wonderful activity if you're neurodivergent to spend some time on adsp exchange. But but like I said, I was just like, I wonder if I can find this plane?
Yeah?
And I did.
Yeah, And that has opened up a whole world to me of you know, really dedicated people. Tom Cartwright is one, and then JJ and DC is another. He wants to remain anonymous, got it who have been tracking these planes for some time And I'm really inspired by them and you know, want to join them and help them.
We see a number of issues like that. We can questions that we can answer with these things, right, the United States deporting people to Venezuela, but there are lots of eies in Venezuela which are under sanctions, right, So like how is it doing that? Who is it paying to do that? Like where is our taxpayer money going? How much is it costing to achieve this rendition of a dozen people? Right who at the current time of our recording, which is Thursday afternoon Pacific time, the twenty
second of May, they go. I just checked the pacer again, which is what I do all day now, and Judge Murphy's most recent order had clarified that these people would have ten days to present their reasonable fear right, so to present their reasonable fear and convention against torture proceedings that they would be they could face torture right if
they were sent to these places. If the Department of Homeland Security determined that they didn't have credible fear, then they would have fifteen days to again petition for reopening of their migration case. So that's twenty five days for those who accounting that these people will presumably now have to be accommodated in Djibouty. The DHS is claiming that they can do all these interviews and that one assess tate translators, Like one of them speaks Korn, not a
language that we have. I mean that there are lots of Curren speaking people in the United States, but it's you know, it's not language that many immigration lawyers speak. So I'm guessing there will have to be a translator provided. So all that is now happening into Booty and like we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able to track these flights, right, and so it's a very
interesting way of approaching this. And I think like increasingly the government have recently lost a number of fire requests. I guess, like public records do not move at the same speed as the news cycle does. I file a lot of public records requests, most of them I don't get anything back.
The ones that I can take like eight years sometimes.
Yeah, literally, Yeah, I mean I have public records requests that I made under the previous Trump administration that I believe are still ongoing. Yeah, it's infuriatingly slowly. You have a right to inspect these records, but you don't have a right to inspect them in any particular time period. And so doing this kind of open source tracking offers us a window into this deportation machine that the government is building right exactly in cooperation with the super rich,
like using your taxpayer resources. I would if people are interested in doing this, like, how would you suggest they kind of get going? They could explain it out there.
I mean, the first thing I would do is that I would follow Tom Cartwright and JJ and DC on Blue Sky. Then you know, get the flight Radar twenty four app. You can see a lot of the charter planes on that app. ADSB Exchange is pretty buggy and hard to use. If you don't have any aviation experience
at all, but you know you can learn. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, like I said, if you're neuro divergent, this is a terrific activity to just kind of like massage your brain and hyper focus, and you know, putting it to good purpose to maybe witness or maybe even stop some of these activities from happening, you know, would be great.
Yeah.
No, I think that's like there are countries which have strong legislation that could possibly prevent these you know, these either planes transiting their airspace or if they're refueling there as you as you said in an Ireland, like perhaps prevent these people being renditioned to somewhere where they might face torture. And I think it's a really valuable absolutely thing to try, Like we should try whatever we can right now.
Yeah, and I mean now that Ireland knows this is happening, you know, I don't know what happened with the Garda on Tuesday night early Wednesday morning. I don't know if they were able to board the plane, if they tried to stop it and couldn't.
I have no idea.
Yeah, now that they know this is happening, maybe they can look a little bit deeper into their laws and regulations and find a justification so that if this happens again, they can be prepared to respond. You know, I know that the Irish are exemplars in human rights, and so you know, if anybody is going to do something, it might be them.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Artie and now camped out at the airport wing for the plane to come back, which.
Yeah, I know.
I wish they had checked with the av yeks first because the plane's not on the way.
Yeah, no, it's not here.
It hasn't left.
Look at the court proceedings are going to be three weeks. But yeah, yeah, it's great. You've made this an issue there, which I think, yeah, it helps, Like all this stuff makes a difference.
I mean, I just I want the Irish people to realize, because none of their lawmakers have said it yet, that Irish authorities knew when the plane was on the ground at Shannon that there were people who were possibly being illegally detained on this specific airplane.
I just want them to know that.
Yeah, yeah, you know, And I'm I hear that their public information laws are also not great, but the police there recorded the call, so there's a recording somewhere if they can.
F right, I guess I can't find anyone who can answer the satisfactory the question of like, whose jurisdiction in the plane is under?
Yeah, I mean, and it really depends too, like was the plane parked in the international transit area? Was it in a place where you know the guard I didn't even have authority.
I have no idea, right you know?
Yeah, these are real questions that we can now ask because we know right that it was there, and I think that's very valuable. Gillian, Where can people follow your work? Said? You published this on your ghost newsletter?
First?
Right, Yeah, I'm writing a book, so I post extremely sporadically, but I do have a ghost newsletter. It's hard, g History because it's hard. G Gillian har Ghistory dot ghost dot io. And then I'm on Blue Sky at g Brackhill.
Nice.
Do you I plug your book where you have the opportunity.
I mean, there's there's not like a you know, pre order links.
I'm very much still writing it, but you know, my agent will be mad at me for saying this. The working title is people that didn't know what was wrong back then? The lie at the heart of American history.
I will look forward to reading that.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, James. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us. Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. It's me James today and I'm joined once again by Kirsten Zitlao. We've heard from her before. She's an immigration lawyer who takes asylum cases, and we're going to talk about the asylum system or I guess what's left of it. Today. Kirsten is representing somebody I met, the Darien gap Primrose, who you've heard from before. So we're going to talk about that case, and then we're going to talk a
little bit about ice detentions inside immigration court. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, James. It's good to be here.
Yeah, thanks for thanks for coming. I know you're extremely busy. Can you explain to us, like the asylum system is essentially coming to an end? Right we are not getting new asylum cases, Like what is the situation for people in the asylum system right now?
Yes, that's a correct statement, James. So there are no new asylum cases. In other words, people who cross at the southern border are now detained, only to be removed immediately basically or as soon as possible, under what's called two twelve F authority.
It's under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Trump has used this authority, which basically broadly says that if the President finds a certain class of immigrants or the entry of immigrants would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, they may, by proclamation, you know,
spend all entry have said immigrants. So that was the purpose and the effect of the executive order discussing the invasion at the border, and all the other executive orders discussing invasions and criminal aspects such as cartels and trender ragua, which we all know now is the justification for alleged justification for just shutting it down at the border. So whereas people used to get credible fear interviews or were paroled into the United States to be allowed to fight
an asylum case, none of that is happening anymore. And people are, if anything, only screened for what's called Convention against Torture screenings to just determine, like, hey, are they going to be tortured by their government or with the acquiescence of their government if they're returned to their home country. But even then they are not allowed to remain in the United States or fight any relief in the United States. That just means that they will be deported to a
third country. So that was the situation. And like when we saw the Iranians sitting in the hotel room and Panama, that's what happened there most likely. So that's the situation at the southern border. Whoever is still in the United States, you know, who came in before an operation day, is still allowed to fight their case as of now, but there are no new asylum cases essentially, right.
So for those people fighting their case, the asylum system was already an uphill battle, right, and it became harder after Biden's asylum ban. It was already harder after title forty two. Like people who listened to the show would have known about the people who crushed in twenty twenty three, and of course they would have followed those people who I'm in the Darian Gap, some of whom very few of whom crushed before January. I literally one I believe
that I'm aware of. Can you explain what the asylum system is like for those people now?
Yeah?
So I think the biggest two factors affecting asylum cases these days is what you just referred to, which is the asylum called the circumvention against Lawful Pathways that barred people essentially from asylum if they did not use CBP one the application to apply for an appointment, which of course only allowed I think fifteen hundred a day or something absurd, forcing most people to cross unlawfully. So that's still very much in place. The litigation has been stalled forever.
There's no hope of you know, I don't think there's no movement on that. I haven't seen or heard anything, most likely intentionally because when Trump did a similar ban, it was overturned immediately. So this is like a new strategy that we're seeing where things are just lagging in court.
You know, for example, just a quick side detour the birthright citizenship issue got up to the Supreme Court real quick, whereas the asylum issue, meaning the border shut down to asylum, is still languishing somewhere before I think even just a federal district, I just is not even in any appeal court yet. So this is all I think, it's strategic, So that circumvention against Lawful Pathways ban is still very
much heediment. You know, we all of course argue that every migrant in Mexico was in danger and thus qualifies for the exception to the CLP that their life was in danger and they couldn't afford to wait the many many months for the CBP one appointment.
But judges it's been met with mixed reviews. They generally like.
To see like somebody basically near death for the exception to apply. And of course the immigration bar argues that all migrants are basically under threat of death. I mean, any any cartel or even immigration official contact in Mexico could have been a death sentence very easily, as we
all know. Yeah, so that's a big thing affecting. The latest thing that's also being implemented as a result of this cartel terrorist organization designation is you know where it's not just the cartels, is MS thirteen and ten deo ragua, is that there's a what's called a trig bar that's applied then also to asylum and the bar is basically about materials port of any of these groups, but it's construed to an absurd degree where even if you made a bowl of food for Samaras under duress or you
made payment because your kid was about to be killed, right, that's considered material support, and you're barred from asylum.
Jeez, I wondered if they would do that.
Yeah, so we're seeing that too. Other than that, I mean, I have been fortunate to win asylum for folks under Trump two point zero.
I mean, I don't know how long.
That'll still last, but judges are still you know, granting cases. So I'm glad to see that.
Yeah.
So that's generally what it's looked like these past four months for Assil's.
Okay, And yeah, I think it's really important that we do. There are still possible, like victories to be had within the court system, and asylum is one of the places where, like there's no more getting me on the train. I guess like the people who are on the train now we can and people should if they have the financial means, and we'll talk about how they can do that later.
People should support those people because there's no one else who who can go through that system, and like, there are people who have gone through horrific things to get here and horrific things in the places that they came from. And even if it's not everyone, we would like to keep safe. We should do everything we can to keep those people safe.
One hundred percent, you know, just to say, I mean and funding somebody's legal fees, I mean an attorney makes all the difference in navigating these types of issues that I just talked about and other issues and presenting your case. I mean, asylum cases are still incredibly difficult to win, and so representation of council is often key.
Yeah, I think that the rates of success people who don't have counsel are dramatically lower. I haven't lived on Track recently, but you can normally find that on the I think Track is no longer in the University of Syracuse, but it did some place where you can find information statistics. Let's talk about one of those cases, if that's okay. And obviously you know we won't intervene in anyone's prihapsy any more than we have to. But like I want
to talk about Primrose. Primrose is Zimbabwean woman who I met in Bo when I was in the Darien Gap reporting on my series. People heard from her in the series.
Even me. I was crying myself. I was like, I want to just put myself in the water. Then I can just go what the genuine tough really really tough, the mountain, the stones, the river. It's not easy at all. It's it's not a very I don't even recommended someone to say you use that and give no. And even myself, I did know about it. Yeah, I was regretting myself. I was crying. I was like, God, I don't know my family and my family they don't know where I am right now.
But I make it yeah, I make it safe.
Yeah.
She is now in the asylum process, right, can you explain a little bit about like where she is in the process. And I will eventually do a scripted series on this, but like I guess, can we get an update on her situation and how it's progressing.
Absolutely, so.
I came into the case about I want to say, a month or two ago, she had somebody supporting her, a friend living in Texas, and that situation, a living situation has changed, I believe, which is also not the worst things.
But she will be moving.
With a friend to southern California or moving in with a friend brother. But just this situation is very different in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and those types of states, markedly so, and her case is a good example of that. And there's a reason that people like mamou Khalil and many others are sent to detention centers in that area because it's in the Fifth Circuit, first of all, which is widely renowned to be not a favorable circuit court
of appeals to immigrants. Yeah, but more so than that, even the judges themselves are very different from what we would encounter in California, for example. So my first encounter with the judge was, you know, this is all very I submitted a motion to appear for her. She had
a master calendar hearing in June. I submitted a motion to appear for that telephonically, explaining I was representing her at lower no cost, you know, whatever funds could be raised, and could I please appear for a status it's a status type conference telephonically, And that motion was met with a really strange response. I don't to this day, I don't really know exactly. It was sort of approved, but then moot because eventually a final court hearing was set.
So that's where we're at right now.
She has a final court next year, in about a year and a couple months, but in ruling on my WebEx motion, I was emailed the order of the judge along with a notice that Permers should self deport. So judges are sending out these notices with routine other orders in cases where the immigrant has council is fighting their case. Yeah, it's obvious they're fighting their case Jesus And yeah. So it's one of the things where you just feel very strongly this administration's influence.
Are they obliged to do that or is that a choice that the judge's making.
Not at all, and in fact it's completely inappropriate.
So all of us are okay. The immigration bar is taking a different approach to it. You know, some are filing motions to recuse, telling the judges, hey, you need to recuse yourself. You're a non neutral judge. To send this out in the middle of the case is absurd. It's a due process violation. They're entitled to a neutral judge. Yeah. I think my approach would be more one of playing dumb,
because often this has happened. The system, if you will, of ECASS, the electronics system that we use for court immigration filing systems that Elon Musk briefly had access to or whatever was going on there. But anyways, I digress, you know, will send out automatic notices with the emails
with the judges orders. So my approach, I think will be to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and ask them if this was an electronic notice and if they say no, then I've gotten it on the record, and if they deny the case, I have that in there for the appeal. But yeah, it's happening all over the country with all sorts of different judges, and it's definitely something that we're grappling with right now.
And it's just it's.
Very ballsy for a judge to say, hey, leave the country and oh, by the way, I'm a neutral arbiter.
Yeah, I mean, what's the point of having the judge or having the whole process right if then they're going to declare this clear bias.
Yeah, it's absurd.
I mean, it's you know, I mean, it's such a violation of due process rights. And I think I know everybody in this country now knows the importance of due process, whereas before only attorneys through that term around. But no,
I mean, this stuff really matters, you know. Yeah, And then also another thing that happened in Primosa's case is that when you have a work permit clock right, which is another absurd thing for assiles that once they file their asylum application, they have to wait one hundred and fifty days before they can apply for a work permit. And of course they're expected to be independently wealthy during those five months or you know, or star o or I don't know what they're expected to do.
Yeah, rely on the jeder rusty brothers.
Like exactly.
So if you do something like try to change venue or a motion to continue, if you do something in your case that the judge perceives as not moving the case along and rather like kind of trying to stall it or possibly pausing it or slow it down, the judge will stop the work permit clock the days and it's a whole thing. So Primroses was stopped because the judge wanted her to get an attorney. So usually when the case is set for a final hearing, that code
adjournment code they call it. I know from we have the access to the codes and what stops the clock and what doesn't, and it always restarts the clock because you move your case along because you're setting it for trial. It's you know, obviously moving your case along hers was not restarted for whatever reason, and my only remedy would be to write some court administrator who may or may not ever respond. I can't even go to the judge
about this, you know, it's it's absurd. So that's just the situation that one assilie is one asylum seeker is dealing with in Texas. So you can only imagine what goes on in detentions that, you know, detained cases in those states.
Yeah, people who don't have counsel, like getting that self deportation. If you don't have counsel, like you could assume that you are just obliged to leave, like, yeah, that your your process is.
Over one hundred percent, And there's no legal basis for the judge to be issuing that. In fact, it's completely unlawful to be issuing something like that at the beginning of the case, at the end of the case, and at the beginning. The judge does have to give certain advisals, but telling somebody to self deport is never an advisal that should be given under the law.
Ever, right, Yeah, like it kind of nullifies the whole system.
And plus I should mention real quick that it's disingenuous and harmful and that with these you know, this administration on purpose isn't telling people with the thousand dollars, take a thousand dollars in self deport and you know, will pay for your flight and all this stuff. But they're not telling people is that when you leave, you're then subject to a deportation order and that comes with a ten year bar. This is not mentioned. And that's a big deal.
Yes, yeah, I mean it seems even like I think the executive order said permanently leave the United States, right.
Well, it did, and then but then they switch tactics a little bit with the app to self support, saying like, you know, leave now, leave now so you have a chance to come back later or something like that. Right, but you know without mentioning that, hey, you no, you're barred from the United States for ten years and if you ever return unlawfully, then you're a subject to a
whole series of you know. I mean, it's just there's all these warnings that need to come with the deportation order that are strategically left out of all the administration's latest messaging on this topic.
Yeah, that's it's pretty bad. Let's take a break for advertisements here and then we'll come back. All right, We are back, and we've spoken about these like self deportation orders right for other people who have entered more recently, right, entered within the last two years. This has been happening we're recording on the twenty second for the last two days now. It seems like ICE is dismissing the cases against them and then detaining them directly in court, if I'm correctly informed.
Yes, So this has been happening periodically throughout the past four months, but in the past few days, like this week, it's been dramatically ramped up. Like right now as we're recording this, ICE is arresting people in the downtown San Diego court and also courts throughout the country. It's been reported everywhere, happening widely this week. And this is another thing the administration said they were going to do and is doing. I mean, you know, they're doing what they
said they were going to do. Yeah, and it's to use what's called two thirty five authority. More broadly so, INA Section two thirty five applies to people who entered within less than two years, like you said, and they
can be then said to what's called expedited removal. That means that they have to take a credible fear interview and be detained, and that they only get to fight a case if they pass their credible fear interview, and then they do not qualify for an immigration judge bond, So they only get out if ICE lets them out,
which of course I is letting nobody out. So the administration wants to have people detained under this authority, this two thirty five authority as much as possible, to have them have to fight their case detained and either lose the will to do so and or not be able to afford an attorney, because detained cases move along a lot quicker and are very costly as well for that reason.
So what they're doing is anybody who was here two years or less but was parolled in so they're in the regular immigration court proceedings they got out there under two forty proceedings, that's called so DHS attorneys in court are terminating those proceedings. They're asking the judge to terminate the two forty proceedings, so then that case is closed, and then they immediately restart a case under section two thirty five. And at the second they do that, the
person is subject to mandatory detention. And Ice is right there in the courthouse to arrest them and detain them.
Jesus, yeah, I thought Ice couldn't arrest people in California. Is that California state courts, no federal courts which are in California.
I believe so, And colleagues and I have been talking about this. I haven't researched it thoroughly, but I think also the nature of these proceedings, like the two thirty five proceeding, like you are mandatory detention, like you okay, you were taken into custody. It's as if you just crossed the border and you know, are taken in a custody. It's treated like that type of situation, like no warrant is necessary.
I don't believe you.
Know, oh okay, right, yeah, so they could. They have very broad authority to detain people anywhere. That makes sense exactly.
So.
The real issue here is the ethical I mean a lot of us are grappling with this and of course fiercely opposing these motions in that the justification that the DHS attorneys are attempting to use is that circumstances have materially changed since the issuance of their initial case that they're in now, which of course is not the.
Case, right, whose circumstances.
Exactly exactly, Like the rise of fascism doesn't constitute a change circumstance. Yeah, So it's just there's no, there's no basis for this motion. And secondly, the only basis, like, there's zero justification for this other than filling detention centers, lining cour Civic and Geogroup's pockets. Yeah, and intentionally prejudicing an immigrant to have to fight their case attained. I mean right, there's no there's no good or legitimate justification for this period the end, you know.
Yeah, and fighting it detained will be a lot harder. They will be obviously in like terrible situation they are, as we've covered before, often moved to a different state from their council. Will make it a lot harder for them if they choose to go that route. I'm guessing that ICE is hoping that people won't fight and will just DHS is hoping the people will choose not to fight.
Percent that's the whole point is this full Administration's the messaging and their actions are all about forcing people, breaking people's spirits, and forcing them into a situation where they feel their only option is to self deport.
Yeah.
It is heartbreaking, it's very sick. Yeah, it's it's very disturbing. It's very very different from Trump one point zero.
Yeah. I think that's worth sort of focusing in on that this is a completely distinct and much more radical disassembling of the asylum system as we know it.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think we can all agree or disagree as far as how we feel about the past four months and what has happened, but I think everybody can agree the pace at which it has happened is extremely concerning.
Right, we have four months into four years, and we have seen like a constitutional crisis, like a full blown defiance of courts. We at the day we're recording, the Trump administration is attempting to deport people to South Sudan, many of whom eleven of twelve of whom are not South Sudanese.
Right.
I guess from what I understand, their attempt at giving those people a credible fear screening was that they didn't hear them shouting from the cells they were detained in that they were afraid of being tortured.
Yeah, they're supposed to give them opportunity to be heard, essentially and give notice of this third country that they're going to be deported to. That nobody and no judge is ever considered whether they have a fear or if
they would be in danger or deported to this country. Right, So again, this is a due process situation where hey, before you can be sent to some random country, especially South Sudan, maybe you should be given an opportunity to present why you have a fear or that something bad might happen to you over there to a judge. And so this was recently ordered. I believe the case is called DBD versus DHS. Was what stopped the Libya situation from happening, where yeah, judge said, this is exactly what
needs to occur. These people need to be give you given real notice, not this whatever has been had, you know, and and an opportunity to be heard. And then yeah, and they immediately thereafter attempted to as you said, or I think I don't know if they actually accomplished it with South Sudan.
Yeah, my understanding is they are in a country which is neither the United States nor South Sudan on an aircraft at this time, and DHS is arguing that they can do their credible fear screenings there on the aircraft. I don't know how they've planned together people privacy, translation,
access to council. I just looked on court listener right before we recorded, and Judge Murphy clarified Massachusetts District Court judge that ten days would be the amount of time that they would need to assert a credible fear and then if DHS determined that they didn't have credible fear, they would then have fifteen days to ask for the reopening of their case. TBD. Is the United States going
to like somehow accommodate them in where they are. People are speculating they're in jow Booty, which is the largest US military base in the continent of Africa and close to South Sudan, And so if that's the case, Yeah, I don't know how they will get due process. We will find out if they will get due process.
I guess yeah, they probably won't, but will be told that they did, or will be or will be told that they were criminals in the first place, which is the other theme of this administration, right with the Alien Enemies Act, which has basically been put on pause by a number of Satan judges who have said, there's no invasion, there's no war.
This is absurd, This just flat out doesn't apply.
And I have to say that the immigration bar is very I think not just the immigration bar, I think all of us are very frustrated that the Supreme Court has not yet come out with a definitive substance of ruling on this because, for the people who don't know, the Alien Enemies Act allows the administration to circumvent the i NA, which is the whole immigration court system, and immediately to port supposed criminals who were invading the country.
I mean, we all know this with the Venezuelans who are accused of being trended Aragua just for having tattoos, and so that is to me and I think all of us the biggest threat to just be able to put somebody on a plane to another country and in a prison in another country, as we've seen the Sea cot.
In El Salvador.
I mean, we need our Supreme Court to speak on this, then we need it quickly.
Yeah, like if we no longer have habeas. It's a frontal assault on the Bill of rights, like most of them.
And there's so many assaults on the Bill of rights. And then we need our Supreme Court to really to step up. And I think I'm not the only one who's extremely frustrated by that, because we're in crisis and as we've seen, it's fallen on courts and lawyers and judges to try to defend the semblance of democracy in this country.
But the highest court in the land needs to help out soon.
Yeah. Yeah, and like this is where like the Reba meets the road right for like maintaining people's basic rights, dignity and yeah, the right not to be sent to a labor camp in El Salvador or you know, seuth Sudana country, which is rapidly descending into conflict. Again, I thought the government was barrel bombing this week.
Well, and just real quick, another note on the Supreme Court is that they're they're also concerning I mean, as we know, there's a lot of Trump appointees there and so I mean it's not even that that's the answer, it's just we're you know, but we need answers more
quickly than what they're they're giving us. And it's just given the rate that this administration is working at, I don't know that they will if they ever get the case for the asylum ban at the border, would even overturn that because historically they've sort of supported his two twelve F powers. So I'm not saying that's the answer to everything, but it's definitely frustrating to not have basic things yeah already decided, like the use of the alien enemy that.
Yeah, like just notes in where we're at, Like when you know people are trying in good faith to move forward with the legal processes that they have spent their entire life savings on to get here and do the right quote unquote the right way. You're still fighting a number of asylum cases, as we said before the call, like you probably won't be forever, right Like, at some point there's just not going to be any more asylum cases.
I know that you're accepting donations. I think through venmo On behalf of Primrose, that will be sure to link to that mo account in the description of this show, so people can donate if they'd like to. Now it's the time to do it right, It's not like this is going to be an ongoing thing. Like if people don't help now, then there won't be migrants to support
or assylies to support later. So like, how can people materially support maybe in other ways, right, if they're like on hard times and have the financial resources, what else can people do to I just to make this a little bit less cruel to some people who are among the most unfortunate people on the planet.
Often, I think even mental and emotional support for the immigrants in your life, I think is something that is underestimated because speaking as a very privileged white woman attorney US citizen, this has taken a tremendous toll on me, and the mental toll that has taken on the actual
undocumented community and a siles. This messaging is so harmful and so disgusting that I think I would just caution people to not underestimate the power of human kindness to those already in your life and just empowering them distributing Know your Rights cards and information that still matters. But also I think the people who are, as we've been discussing, going to be at the most disadvant managed in terms of being able to keep up morale are these people
who are going to be mandatorily detained. So, in terms of what we were talking about, I believe before we started recording, reaching out to any organizations I know in San Diego there's detention resistance, or even reaching out to the detention center that's near you to be able to determine how you can send a letter, how you can put money on somebody's books so that they can have phone calls with their family or phone calls with you even I think these types of things are key in
light of the administration's clear messaging that immigrants are very much unwanted and criminals. So I think that's where I would come at this from. If you cannot donate, again, like we were talking, if you have a few dollars to spare, I mean, if everybody has a few dollars to spare, there is a finite number like we were saying of asylum cases left, like for Roses. So if people can spare a few dollars here or there whenever they can, it does make the difference.
Yeah, no, it does, and it shows that like even if the government doesn't want you to hear a lot of people want you to be protected. We want you to be safe. Like, yeah, the mental damage it does, I think it's hard to overstate. Like I was talking, I remember to a young woman Ino and like she
was the only surviving member of her family. The government had killed everyone, and so she came to the US right to be safe, and like, now the government is coming after her in addition to the trauma she already has from watching her entire family die. Like, now the most powerful government in the world is coming after you. Like I can't imagine how that feels.
That's a very good point.
I mean, yeah, people are coming already traumatized, only to be further traumatized by this administration in the system. And yes, I mean emotional and mental and any kind of support is not to be underestimated in the slightest during these times.
Yeah, like have people over for dinner if you can, or yet like the detention center and put money on someone's commissary, Like just showing people that they're welcome is important. Like I know a lot of the migrants. Like if I look at my phone right now, in the time we've been recording one of the migrants, I meant that Darien Gap will probably have texted me. They're in Mexico, right, and they just want the world to know about the situation.
They know they can't come to the US anymore. But sometimes people will say, I guess the Americans don't want u s anymore, and like that breaks my heart because I think most people, if they knew these people's circumstances, right, Like hundreds of people have reached out to me since the Darien Gap stuff to ask how they can help, and like most people do want those people to be their neighbors, and it breaks my heart that they think that we don't want them, that we would rather leave
them to die wherever they're at. Like it's genuinely really horrible for me to think of that. So yeah, I would really encourage anyone listening if you can, to do what.
You can, absolutely and just remembering that again, these asylum cases are finite. So if you know any asylum seeker or can support any asylum seeker right now, they made it in Let's give them their best shot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like we can still help those people, and while we can, we should absolutely. Yeah, Well, thank you so much for joining us. We do appreciate it. I know that your time is very valuable and you're really busy right now, so we really appreciate your time. You're always welcome back, and if there's anything else you'd like to say before we finish.
Up, yeah, thank you, James.
I think the only thing I just want to emphasize is that, you know, from the standpoint of immigration attorneys like I feel that we're obviously a subject of an executive order. And you know, big law firms are being extorted by the administration to represent causes that the administration believes in and not robono immigration work, and so forth and so on.
So it's not like too many of us have.
Been personally attacked, although you know judges have been arrested, even judges for just hiring an immigrant to do work around the house.
So it is.
It is a scary time to be practicing immigration law, but unfortunate. I do see there being a time when
it won't happen. I mean, I see the writing on the wall where I will not be able to continue mentally and or economically, because a side effect of all this, and a very intentional side effect, is to make it so that we can't do much for people anymore, and or they can't afford us, or there's not people here to do anything for because their spirit was broken, or their finances or all of the above and they had to leave. So it is a very intense time. But
I came from different areas of law. I've only been in immigration seven years and it's the first time I've thought of, Okay, where am I going to go to next in these seven years, And it's a very real thing. So, like I said, it feels very different than Trump one point zero.
So no, yeah, this is considerably most severe.
So in other words, take care of yourself if you are an ally, because you know the attack is on immigrants and anybody who advocates, supports and so forth, and it's a very very targeted, direct attack and it's very easy to get run down, yeah, and consume by it. And so definitely do what you need to do to take care of yourself. And if that means stepping back, then you know, I mean, I want to keep my foot in the door as much as possible these next
four years on something immigration and recite asylum related. But there's also economic and other realities that are happening. Yeah intentionally, so.
Yeah, definitely, And I think it is important for people to do whatever they need to do to self preserve and take care of themselves as well. I think that's a good place to end. Thank you so much for your time, and again, like if you're listening, please check the description of the show and we will have a link to primorise Who's go fund me if you'd like to help.
Thank you so much, James, thank you. This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world of what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.
Hello, what's up? Everybody? Who's got ed.
Us?
You everybody, we're giving you ed this episode, we're covering the week of May twenty one to May twenty eight. It was a really busy news week for the latter half of that week, so we're going to be mostly catching up with that.
Jesus.
Yeah, and let's start with the biggest news from late last week, domestically the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. The shooting took place around nine pm on Wednesday, May twenty first, outside of an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According to witnesses and surveillance video, a thirty one year old man named Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people leaving the event.
As he walked past them, he turned to face their backs and shot two people and continued to fire as they felt the ground. One of the victims, a twenty six year old woman, tried to crawl away after being shot. Rodriguez followed her and fired again Jesus while he was reloading, She sat up, and then Rodriguez shot her several more times before throwing his gun into a bush. He ran into the museum after the shooting. Security let him in thinking that he was a victim. Witnesses say he appeared
traumatized and in shock. People from the museum event brought him water, and when they asked him if he was okay or if he was injured, Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted to the shooting, and, according to witnesses, quote grabbed a red cafea out of his pocket. And started free Palestine chance quote there is only one solution, Antifada revolution unquote. While being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free Free Palestine.
Israel's ambassador to the US claimed that the two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees, and that Rariguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee, disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register for their event but was denied entry following a background check.
Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun in Illinois and flew with it to d S the night before the shooting. This event was an American Jewish Committee Access DC Young Diplomat's Reception. The description for the event reads quote, this special event brings together Jewish young professionals age twenty two to forty five and the DC diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and
celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce this year's theme, turning Pain into Purpose. Here from members of the Multi Faith Alliance and Israel as they delve into humanitarian diplomacy and have a coalition of organizations from the region and for the Region are working together in response to humanitarian crises through the Middle East and North
Africa regions. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah Milgram and Ran Lisinski, twenty six and thirty, who met through their work at the embassy. Lozinski identified as a Christian, though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in the IDF. There is an alternative claim that he was born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager, but most reporting says that he was born in Israel.
In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this as anti Semitic violence. The acting US Attorney said that they are investigating the cases a hate crime and an act of terrorism. Dan Bongino, Deputy FBI Director, said the
shooting was a quote act of targeted violence. The Israeli foreign minister and net Yahoo have laid blame at college protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France, Britain in Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking about Israel's quote supposed genocide and crimes against humanity unquote, and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel quote unquote incitement. Natanyahu said, quote free Palestine is just today's version of
Hyle Hitler Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for three thousand, five hundred years.
This is, obviously, I think, in a lot of ways the kind of thing net yahoo has been waiting for, and probably the kind of thing that a number of folks in that Trump is put in federal law enforcement have been waiting for because it provides them with some opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student organizing and organizing against.
Israeli war crimes.
Right like.
The argument they want to be able to make is that just saying free Palestine is an active terrorism and there was an act of terrorism here, right, Like shooting two embassy employees for the crimes of their government, Like, that is a clear act of terrorism.
Right.
You can feel however you want to about it, but like that's the definition of what was done. But the things he was chanting were not part of the active terrorism. The fact that he shot people to death was the active terrorism.
Yeah, it's the murdering people that's the terrorism.
Yeah, and that is already illegal, by the way, and quite heavily, I'll be interested. We don't seem to know much about where he got the firearm.
Yet that I've come across.
So he legally purchased it in Illinois.
Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has like fairly strict.
Gun laws, Yes, some of the strictest in the US.
So it's one of those things where there's already quite a bit of regulation around everything that he did here. But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you are because this, you know, if there's an amendment, there will be people who carry out attacks like this. And I don't really know there certainly didn't seem to be outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends. A lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar.
He had been at like a PSL Party for Socialism and Liberation march in twenty seventeen or something, but like, this wasn't a guy who had a history of violence or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a reality of the country that we live in, is that when people like this decide to carry out shootings for whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low.
It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like like this because there's a lot of them out there.
Yeah, yeah, and most of them don't do shootings.
Yeah, this active been widely condemned. Like pro Palestine commentators have said that this style of like adventurist terrorism does nothing to help the Palestine people and in fact only hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby and Natya who have been like wanting to happen for a while.
Yeah.
I think kat Aboukazela, a Parastalian American woman he's running for office in Illinois.
Worked it for Media Matters for years.
Yeah.
It does a lot of videos. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, I saw that she'd she had something about how like yeah, this was something that evidently should be condemned. Right, that is wrong, and it's not advancing the cause of Palestinian freedom, Like I think adventurist terrorism is a good way to describe it. Geah, just getting panned by people on the internet, which like I don't know people engaging with this like from a place it doesn't come from, Like it's bad when random folks get shot killed.
No, people have have used the horrific genocide as a way to like channel their general societal frustration and find a way to like just act incredibly hostile like to actual Palestinians. Yeah, yeah, yeah, who don't share the exact same like anti imperialist TM views that they might have. Right, it's just permission to abuse people online.
Yeah, deeply, like verbally violent and like no like psycho shit.
And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as well as well as we'll see.
Let's talk about that.
Let's get a little bit into his background. So he has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.
And it's it's kojent like in terms of it's not the ramblings of like a madman or something. There's nothing like it.
All He has an English degree, right, you know, to write. Yeah, he has worked as a writer for like almost a decade.
Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean that in terms of, like it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not any evidence here of like a disconnect or whatever. He's not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the weather bad or whatever, right, right, yeah.
Yeah.
The manifesto is title to Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home, and he attempts to explain the rationale behind his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale of dead Palestinians, writing that quote atrocity is committed by Israelis against Palestine. Defy description and defy quantification. He writes about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the US government has continually refused to reign in Israel and
instead moves to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action. Quote. An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares in many unarmed actions.
Yeah, and I do find you know, one of the first things that happened when this attack was carried out was people started theorizing that this had been some Nazi who was using this to using the propouse and cost like camouflage as Nazism, and I don't think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things. One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name was Habbo eighty eight, and he was not born in eighty eight, obviously whenever you see an eighty eight in.
The Native Curse Millennial. And the other is.
That the bring the war home reference in his manifesto, which is basically a reference to something that I believe was Louis Beam, who is a neo Nazi organizer, said about trying to get Vietnam veterans to essentially bring the war home to the United States in order to spark
a race war. And those two little things are weird. However, the rest of this guy's fairly well documented history and background does not suggest anything like that, So I don't think that that's the credible thing to blame this on.
Quite frankly, Yeah, I'll go over some of that background in brief.
Yeah.
He also talked about targeting government representatives, quote the impunity that representatives of our government feel at a Bedding that this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then tells the story of a man who tried to throw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea.
He finishes with his thoughts on the quote unquote morality of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize the perpetrators of atrocities as a method for us to cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of.
Quote.
This action would have been morally justified taken eleven years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible. It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane
thing to do unquote. It did find it interesting that on December fifth, twenty twenty four, Rodriguez posted on his Twitter account that quote eighty percent of the country applauds the targeted annihilation of a healthcare insurance executive.
Quote.
As for his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist third worldiest yeah, and believes that the global seuth alone has quote unquote revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to journalist KNK Clippenstein like this quote. He was a big proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran, Hesbula, Assad, Syria.
How'd that go?
He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years, way before twenty twenty three. He'd always hated Israel and would call it, quote the little Satan.
For fox sake, they Asad test are in supreme as Yeah, it's a fucking ab test for someone having shitty politics.
Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by aside.
Yeah yeah, Asad who gaffed his own people who murdered little children.
Including thousands and thousands of Palestinians by the way, Yeah yeah, Like, but again, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well informed opinions out of folks.
Yeah.
This.
His online presence mirrors what I would call like the typical like anti imperialist TM poster where he's there is most of his frustration at the Democrats sometimes at Republicans, but mostly yeah, posts about being pro Russia, Iran, Hesbala, pro Asade, and particularly the past few years posting a lot of a Palestine right with explicit defense and like veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein also said, quote, it's driving me crazy that people are
calling it a false flag. This development is shocking, but not completely out of character. Yeah, he always had strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's the same as he was.
Quote. Yeah, and I mean that seems true.
Again, we still don't have a like a perfect knowledge of all of this guy's you know, online life. No, this is just a week away, but based on what Kin's posted, based on this interview, that makes complete sense. Yeah, right, I like I don't have any trouble believing that for a number of reasons.
No, absolutely, this is this is not a false flag attack. That's that's conspiratorial nonsense.
Yeah, I think that's this guy did a thing that he's sincerely believed in, and it seems like everything he'd been expressing in the year or two leading up to doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did.
Now, Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL Party for socialistm in Liberation back in twenty seventeen, and spoke to the media on their behalf, though he would later regret his association with the group, telling friends quote, PSL sucks shit. I wish I had just done a misadventure with the Freedom Road Socialist organization rather than the PSL.
Lol YEA.
Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In twenty twenty three, he posted video from a local pro Palestine march on his Twitter account. Clippenstein spoke with at least five friends of his, who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez express anti Semitic sentiments. Now, one of Arigue's friends gave Clippenstein access to a years old private WhatsApp group chat that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day
before the shooting. Clippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things, especially Israel and its Warren Gaza unquote, and from what we conceived of the chats that kind has posted, this matches pretty well, well, A chat member wrote, quote, I'm almost surprised you're not anti Semitic elias. It usually goes hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong mantra.
Yeah, and his response to this was like, Stalin ended, you know, among other things, Stalin ended the greatest anti Semitic state in history, which I've seen his evidence that he wasn't pro Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know, defeating the Nazis. But he says like among other things, So he clearly got a number of reasons he likes Stalin.
Yeah, from the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly like a like a tanky anti imperialist type.
Yes, yes, yeah, a million such examples.
The only time he talked about race explicitly was the lambast white people quote. Lol, you probably would have to actually genesied white people to make this a normal country. Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens of millions of white people.
On quest, Uh, there's a Stalin did nothing really. Yeah, there's that rained type that we were looking for.
Well, and again, it's one of those things we're talking about this because there's a bunch of guys who expressed similar views. This is the only one who's done as shooting. When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking about this like as evidence that like, oh, someone who's a fucking tanky type is like is likely to commit a mass shooting, right, they go hand in hand.
No, this is the first time of take he's done anything.
This is the first one of these I've heard of in quite quite a long time.
Yeah, it's just this guy.
There's a bunch of people who expressed similar things to this guy, right, yeah.
Yeah.
On October seventh, he celebrated the Hamas attack. Quote just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters. I am ao love checking back in with the news every few hours, like, hmm, I wonder if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly wonder if Israel is over yet today or not.
Unquote yeah, and again, like that just kind of shows the general lack of knowledge.
A level of political delusion.
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of kind of telegram propaganda consumption type worldview here.
Yes, and can convince you that what's happening is different from the reality.
Yeah.
In this chat, he lmented to friends and expressed sorrow at the deaths of Hamas and has been of leaders and sometimes his ire was directed at other members of this leaked chat, at one point going on an unhinged ablest rant attacking one of his friends for being privileged after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with cazophrenia. Quote, why not just have him committed. You can't possibly be gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that.
Just put him in a padded room and forget about him.
Jesus Christ.
If there was a person you loved, he's gone.
Now let it go.
Can you just chain him in the basement and slide meals under the door. I'm just tired of hearing about this guy. He's useless, we get it. Stop complaining and just dispose of him.
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
I mean this goes with the people who I don't know, aren't useful to me, are of no value? Right that people don't have inherent value and you know they don't agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them. They can die. Like, I guess there's some kind of coherence there.
Well, Robert, you want to mention the Something.
Awful, Yes, I do, Garrison.
So the other thing that came out in Ken's article is that this dude was a poster. Well, his friends described him as a dedicated poster, which is the worst thing you can be described as being, and noted that he had been There had been some when it came out that like his former Twitter user name had been like Habbo eighty eight. That was very clearly a reference to a game called Habo Hotel that if you're gen Z,
there's very good odds you don't remember. But it was a big thing for people who were on four Chan and who were on Something Awful. And Something Awful was the website that gave birth to four Chan. It's where I was raised on the internet, and many many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I think I don't remember the exact year, but we started gathering on this game for children. It was like an MMO for little kids, and like pretending to be members of a cult in
order to like confuse small children. And then four Chan did their own version of that that was a bit more racist, which is often the case.
Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there was a debate. Was this guy a channer or was this guy a goon? You know, a member of the something Awful forums? And a lot of people thought I called goon. A lot of people thought shanner because of his age, he was a little bit young to have been a part of the something awful have a hotel things.
I think it's actually likely or he did both, but his friends described him as somebody who was really into something awful, right, as somebody who had been influenced by that in particularly a subset of the something awful forms called FIAD, which stands for fuck you and Die, which kind of pioneered a lot of them, those toxic aspects of online discourse.
Apparently, Jesus.
Now, folks have found at least one of his accounts that doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't mean much because number one, he could have deleted a lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older. Number Two, he could have had another account, which is also the case. The one account that people know was his was banned for shooting and killing two him to see employees. There's reasons given in the ever lengthening something
Awful ban list when somebody gets banned. Obviously, again, I don't think there's like a positive thing to him being Like, him being on something awful didn't cause him to shoot two people, but him being on something awful was a natural part of the progression that led to him being the kind of like toxic online asshole that he was.
And sort of evidence of that is that one of the last things he had done online before the shooting was he had gotten briefly onto Blue Sky and then gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stanzel, who's another annoying asshole on the Internet, who was also a something awful goon who was raised in this same chunk of the internet, and who became a similar kind of asshole,
just with wildly different politics. And these two hated each other, and Elias like threatened to murder him over the internet because he's like, again that these guys, he's that type of guy. He's that type of guy, which doesn't mean again, which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting or had anything to do with that, because there's a lot of this type of guy and almost none of
them commit acts of terrorism. It just like his background makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we can see that he was online.
The last thing I'll say about this is that you know, beyond this like senseless loss of life, which is like an issue in and of itself. Obviously, this also contributes to further loss of life in the way this plays into like media capture. Right now, we have a whole week where the new cycles dominated by two people getting murdered in the streets of DC, and this does not
help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The exact same day that this happened, Wednesday, the twenty first, ninety three people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip and that type of stuff does not really
get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans are really good at getting desensitized to this in a large scale media environment, but stuff like this only serves as a distraction and fuels Israel's oone motivation for their continued actions.
Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by the advertisers in this show it's true.
There you go, and we are back. Another big news item from last week was the passing of the Big View full budget bill in the House. We'll talk more about this bill as it turns through the Senate, but first, our co host Mia Wong has a special report on how the bill targets trans healthcare.
So we're going to talk a little bit about the budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes in the Senate, that's been passed by the House. I am Mia Wong, and with me to talk about how this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is Maddie Castikin from Mad Cast and Mirror Levine from The Free Radical. Glad to have both of you to hear. You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this
stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First, can you can you explain what is going on in this budget with the ban on trans healthcare using Medicaid?
Yeah?
Absolutely so. The budget bill, also known as House Resolution One, is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding next year's budget and how they're going to allocate all their fun this time around. Republicans socided it would be a great idea to push through. So what it was at first was a intense limitation on what Medicaid cover, essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I began investigating first. Me and Mattie were talking about it
a bunch. She's the one who took me off to it. They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that would result in millions of people losing access to their healthcare, not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts, for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps of the I believe it was the Capitol Building in the nineties to raise awareness and help get the American
Disabilities Act passed. They staged a protest on the United States Capital during a hearing for this bill where Republicans were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple activists got arrested. They're all fine now. Apparently apparently they weren't
treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But what ultimately happened is more and more came out and it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected, but basically every marginalized group for people of course being what we were focusing on given the beat, but this will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're a low income, especially if you are a person of color, you are more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this
bill and how sweeping it is. And Republicans implemented a ban for gender ferming care for minors on it. It was a very milktoas ban that at the time was projected to pretty much get overturned in court right away if we were to pass. They didn't stop there though. They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it into a sweeping ban on gender firming care for all ages, Medicaid, and for any health insurance received through Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
And ultimately this led to a lot of panic and a lot of people assuming that their care is going to be taken away immediately. That wasn't what's going to happen on The minimum effective date that's currently in the bill is twenty twenty seven. I'm telling people to prepare if it passes for twenty twenty six, because there's a
decent change. Republicans will trying to expedite it because it passed through the House, it passed through committees in the House, it was sent to the Senate, and I think that's what we'll give to Mattie to talk about kind of what next steps for that are.
Yeah, so lake Man was saying, there's a lot of really huge This bill is tremendous. They could talk for hours about it. But focusing on the transparts, there's a ban on medicaid funding and there's also a ban on including trans cares and essential Health benefit and ACA plans. And the thing about both of these provisions is that normally with reconciliation bills, they're supposed to be focused on
budget items, not policy items. So for example, you couldn't say, hey, weed is legal everywhere now or something like that, or raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried to do in twenty twenty one and they failed because there are rules
regarding how this process works. And so what we argued in an article was that there's a possibility that, you know, if activists and advocates reach out to their senators and advocated to point out that this part of the bill is completely against those provisions, against those procedural rules for the Senate Parliamentaria could rule against it and basically strike that portion of the bill without ever even becoming law. And you know that would stay people a lot of
stress and anxiety. And you don't have to worry about the court battles and what happens with Scremetti versus us, which is a Supreme Court case that's going to be
ruled on on gender a firming care soon. So what we've been telling people, and you know, including listeners for your show, is that people really need to reach out to their senators every single day, email, call and ask them to vote no on this bill on HR one and specifically mentioned the trans healthcare aspects, and if you want, there's templates online on our website, or you can just you know, ask them, Hey, we don't think this bill is good.
We don't.
We want you to challenge specifically the parts that are attacking trans people. And I can confirm with you. I can't share too much information, but I can confirm with you that we are making real, legitimate progress on killing this provision. And the more people we have calling in every single day, the better our odds are. But there's still more ways to fight back, and I want Mara to pick up on how people can fight back on the ground.
Yeah, So in addition to reaching out to your senators, of course, to that, there's an email template, Mattie wrote of a great one. It tells you everything you need to do. You can even leave a phone call to the script. It takes like five minutes. But more long term is this is not going to be the only attack on gender affirming care. It's not going to stop here. This is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately, we cannot rely on the government to give us a
central health care. We cannot rely on the government to protect us and give us what we need, because fundamentally, the government and the laws that it aims to uphold are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy. The law is functionally something that gives police power to act as essentially an occupying army on the state and to persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are disproportionately rich and powerful decruity. And we need to start
focusing on building long term solutions. Everything we can do with legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not save us, because there will be more attacks down the line, and they'll keep coming, and they only need to win once. We need to win that every time. But there are
long term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual aid network, get plugged into people doing work on the ground in your state, in your area who are focusing on a plethora of different issues. A bit of a
self plug here. But I wrote an article, for instance, last month, where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the Twin Cities who told me just a lot about the history of radical practice in the cities, especially in light of the George Floyd riots and especially in right of corporate pride, rango capitalism whole nine yards recommend reading it. It's on the free radical dot org. Check it out.
But beyond of course, my own writing in my own interviews, there are so many people doing work that doesn't get covered because it either isn't pattalable to mainstream news audiences or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons. In every single major city this I can guarantee there are people doing work most of the time. It's not
going to be publicly visible, but they are there. I would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in gets started with something that is much more entry level and something that is much more like meant to be kind of for everyone who may not be willing to do more in depth and more treesy type of stuff. Food not bombs is the great thing I recommend for everyone to check out. Not every city has one, most two,
every state has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of local mutual aid groups in every single locality, and if there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend I'm a bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones that are decentralized and non hierarchical, ones that don't revolve around centralizing power and placing that power in the hands of people who are either good at smooth talking or
who have a lot of money. Ultimately, the way forward for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just trans people you know on document immigrants, blocking additions, people of color, low income people, disable people, and so forth. The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect all of us. Attacks on trans healthcare are not limited there. Inevitably, let's say they ban trans healthcare overnight, they're going to come for intersex people. Next, They're going to come for
gay people. Next, They're going to come for everyone. So I would just say get involved in your local groups and reach out. There are resources out there if you need some, check out the free radical dot org. I recommend a ton of them. Thank you and yees.
Our upside for Matti Metticast is m adycast dot com and you can find our templates for contacting your senators there. Thank you so much for helping yourself and helping your community.
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to close on I want to read the Route, a real line form fucking Davix manifesto from and Or. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the arguments that going to make sure that is just true is that in order to maintain their holds, these people have to win one hundred battles across one hundred fronts,
you know. But this means that there are so many different things that you can do to resist them and to make sure that this fucking budget they're trying to pass, to make sure that everyone in this country suffers, and specifically that trans people cannot use the health insurances that we need, use Medicaid, use Affordable Care Act to pay for stuff. This stuff can be resisted in so many
different ways. You can ass We've talked about. You can call your senators, you can yell at them, you can make their lives miserable until they agree to not do this. And then also you can join your local mituway groups, you can join local activist groups. You can start you know, getting a serious or organized. Other ways you can again, like we've talked a lot about unions and the role of unions and trying to struggle on the show. We've
talked of God, We've talked about so many things. I'm going to do a one second plug for the episode I wrote last year called you already know how to organize because you do already know how to organize. And Yeah, none of the things that are happening here are inevitable. They can be stopped and there are so many many different ways for you to start stopping them.
Yeah, So we're back, and we're talking about Gavin Newsome and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect. So if you remember a little earlier this year, there was a big brujaha publicly because a California transgender high school athlete won at the woman's eight feet triple jump.
This is an eleventh grade transgender athlete from Urupa Valley High School near Riverside, California, and she won the Division three girls long jump and triple jump and placed seventh in the high jump at her Southern Section championship.
A few weeks later.
There's going to be I don't think it's happened yet, a championship meet that she qualified for as a result of this. And when this happened, it was immediately left on by the Trump administration and by right wing media as evidence of this thing that they've been trying to push for forever, which is that trans athletes are a
threat to women's sports. Right now, this is something that number one, there's just not a lot of And this is also something that like I think something like two thirds of Americans when polled say that they don't feel like trans athletes should be competing with you know, quote
unquote naturally born women in women's sports. Right, Like, this is a thing that the right has built a lot of support for because they have made this a political issue for so long, and they've been largely successful in that the state of California and California lawmakers have been pushing back against this. There have been state bills in order to allow these girls to continue to compete. But Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same degree of support.
And this kind of largely came out earlier this month when he had a meeting with conservative personality Charlie Kirk on his new podcast. As Newsom said, Kirk pushed so hard on the topic that Newsom said he felt like he had to address it. Here's how Newsom characterized it. And then he asked me, tell me that's not fair. And I looked at him. I said, you're right, that's
not And so it wasn't some grand design. And I know, I know that hurt a lot of people, but respectively, I just disagree with those on the other side of this.
Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom.
He was attacked for flip flopping because again, like the California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend trans athletes, but Newsom kind of flipped as soon as he was in a room with Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom will argue that he also tried to stick up for trans athletes to Charlie Kirk. To be clear about that, this is exactly what he said to Charlie. Completely fair on the issue of fairness, I completely agree. So that's
easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well. So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think you know is inherent in you but not always expressed in the issue. And first of all,
there's no decency inherent in Charlie Kirk. And second yeah, there's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide.
What does that?
What that mean? What does that mean? Gavin, that's not a sentence. Also, like, just like I made my living exercising for most of my twenties, right, Like.
You're a professional athletes done sports?
Yeah, Like and then I've done all kinds of ether shit where I still got paid to race my bike, right Like, Yeah, sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I coached people who worked way harder than me. They trained super hard, they slept well, they ate better. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were not able to get to the same level. That sucks. But like, sport is inherently unfair. The idea that like the only difference is like this,
like you so x y chromosoonality is nonsense. Like, especially in high school sports, kids will develop at different times. That is unfair. Some kids will excel and then other kids will get better. The function of high school sports is not to find who can go like higher, faster, stronger. It's to teach people to play nicely with one another and to communicate inclusion and excluding trans kids is completely contrary to that.
Yeah, and that's like, yeah, I think that's a great point, James, is that, like number one, this is all being entirely made about like who places how which is always going to be based largely on things that like people can't control, because like people's bodies are different, you know.
Yeah, and they developed differently. Like there are people who I beat a by graces when I was a kid who have one stages at the Tour de France. Yeah, Like if our bodies developed differently, that's completely normal.
Yeah, and it's this again.
The thing that should matter here is not treating a community of people hatefully, which is the entirety of the reason the right has made this an issue. It has nothing to do with fairness, It has nothing to do with sports. It's entirely about hurting a group of people.
Yeah, if these people gave a single shit about women's sports, said it being there when women weren't getting paid the same Did it been there when they didn't get the same TV covery? Did it there when they didn't get the same price money?
And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at that point in time. Now, I do think one thing that's funny here is that when Newsom was when people asked rightly, like when Californian legislators were pushing to protect trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you felt this way, and his answer was, I didn't have a podcast.
I wasn't having that conversation.
I was out there on the campaign trail and the big blue bubble, on the big blue bus and the big blue crowds, having big blue conversations. And then he went on to say that basically the backlash to him agreeing with Charlie Kirk on this has convinced him. I always thought the right overstated how judgmental my party was, and I'll be candid with you, I have a deeper understanding now of that critique than I ever ever ever understood.
It's like, now that people are angry at me, I believe there's a problem with my part being judgmental.
Yeah, now that I've faced a consequence of my shit, I hate trans people even more.
Yeah.
It must be so hard to be Gavin Newsome. It's gotta be tough and betray your constituents to get the approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around.
Who still hates you, touring.
College campuses to debate seventeen year olds. That must be so hard for you.
It's gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, Gavin.
He did say in his podcast. His kid likes Charlie Kirk, not surprisingly. Maybe this is all just a ploy to be a cool dad.
Yeah, I'm not surprised he sucks at being a dad.
Gavin usedomings, you wants to be a cool dad empty, It's embarrassing.
Reminds me that Jake Dapper just said his kid's not really into politics. He's just into World War two and gaming.
Great part of World War Two.
Tapurious, curious many such cases. Doesn't his kid want to be a cop? Is that Jake Tapper?
Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like Jake fucking Taper's kid.
So look.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, President Trump shared a truth social post, a truth threatening to yesa he retruthed a post threatening to withhold federal funding from California over the participation of this high school trans athlete in the upcoming California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field championships. Right, and he said that, under the leadership of radical left Democrat Gavin Nuskum, California continues to illegally allow men to play
in women's sports. The governor himself said it is unfair. Trump wrote, first off, the fact that Gavin agreed with Charlie INA's podcast did nothing to change the rhetoric around him. He's still radical left Democrat Gavin newscom because you can't make these people unhappy because it's not about fairness, it's about hurting people.
Right, you can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.
I wanted to talk about Maine.
Yes, yeah, So Trump made this same threat to the state of Maine when the governor of Maine refused to stop allowing trans people to compete in women's sports, and the administration attempted to freeze funds intended for a main child nutrition program.
No more food for your kids because woa, no more.
Food for poor kids because woke.
And in response, the governor made was like, all right, let's fucking go to the mat. And they filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture, and the Trump administration settled like they they backed down. They agreed to stop freezing the funds if Maine dropped the lawsuit, right like, as soon as Maine sued, Trump backed down, right, And rather than attempting to do that, even though there's ample evidence that the administration backs down and to be fair
and I think against Maine. California's got a lot more weight to throw around. Yeah, it's the fifth blackist economy on the planet. They have some they have some fucking heck behind them, and like News clearly has.
No moral principle other than advancing his own career and personal power and wealth right now. But like, even if that is the case, it's so easy to be like, yeah, I'll fight him on this, I'll fight for the trans kids and get some like resist a points.
But he's just too much of a fucking cow. The first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything. Don't treat them like people. They're monsters, their scum. You fight them every step of the way, right, Like, it doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never give pieces a shit like this a win. Yeah right, that's just not the way you fight them.
This is the problem with people like Evin who just whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist.
Yeah.
So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging against your previously held progressive DEI woke LGBTQ plus values, yeah, then you just go along with that swing and you actually don't even care about getting this getting this points anymore because you think the culture is going in a different direction. Sure, and all you care about is being in the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, you don't actually stand for anything, like you're just you're's nothing.
Yeah, and everyone can see that.
As opposed to understanding. What Governor Frey of Man understands
was that no, you stand there. You accept that the zeitgeist is a screen door and it's going to bounce off of you and back in enough for another direction if you stand for something, right, Gavin decided not to stand for something, and immediately after Trump made that tweet threatening to withhold funds from the state of California, and you know, the Department of Education has opened title for investigations in two leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF,
which is California's high school governing a sports governing body. Right after Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF released a statement saying that it had made the decision to pilot an entry process for the championship that's coming up that will alter the way they hand out awards. It will expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes.
Is the exact way that they have phrased this, and basically what they're going to be doing is giving an award for biological men, biological women, and then competitors, right, so there will be like three long jump awards.
It's like a segregated scoring field.
Yeah, it's it's some. I guess you could say it's not as awful as trying to ban people. But also it's kind of like you're not even taking any kind of stance here.
It's not it's just it's nothing.
It's nothing.
Now.
Newsome spokesperson is a garden, says cif proposed pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness. That governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach. And I should note here this has done nothing to actually calm the right or get conservatives to back down right.
Now, because they don't want trans kids competing at all. They don't want trans kids in public life.
They don't wants existing.
Yes, and so like the conservative Californians are still angry.
You can't take them for their word for it. Yeah, they don't care about fairness in sports. This is all about just eradicating transgenderism from public life. Like as as Michael Knowles said at Sea Pack like two years ago, like that's yeah, what they actually care about.
Yeah, and there's you know, there's been a bunch of statements some some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ cock because it have been like well, Gavin's you know, otherwise been a good ally, you know for LGBTQ people. And I don't agree with this is something that an Assembly member Chris Ward said basically, I don't agree with this particular move, but he's been a good ally for a long time.
Has he though? Has he though?
Yeah?
I mean when it's convenient to him, I guess I prefer.
Caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was quote just commenting on how he personally feels. He mentioned it on his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a policy direction. Announced, Hell yeah, that's a dumb podcast.
Yeah yeah, I mean you should be concerned that he has a dumb pot cost what he deemed it. I just trans people like, yeah, he signed vetos all the time.
Like again, I found a k Cira add An article on this that quotes Republican's leew Woman Kate Sanchez, who wrote a bill that would have banned transathletes from competing in girls high school sports earlier this year. This is what she said about cif's rule chains pilot policy. It's incredibly weak. We're angry, We're pissed at this. How every day that goes by, no one is protecting our girls.
This is inexcusable. We need to have something done. Governor Newson needs to pick aside, do something, do the right thing. So again, this gets you nothing with them, right, It benefits you not at all. There's another quote I want to read here from State Senator Scott Weiner, who is the leader of the Senate Budget Committee and again a member of the LGBTQ rights Caucus. Trump is now targeting California,
just like he targeted Maine. Threatening to withhold federal funds of California doesn't follow as illegal edicts targeting transgender people. California law protects trans people. That won't change Main one in court, So will California. There's only one answer to a bully. No, And as Main Governor Janet Mills said,
see you in court. Sorry I got I don't know why I said Governor Fray earlier, but anyway, the point here is that you have Californian legislators saying the right thing, and then you have fucking Newsome being like, no, no, no, actually we're totally going to cave and in a way that won't even make the Republicans happy. It's just frustrating to me that you do have Democrats trying to do the right thing here in California politics and Newsom absolutely having CIF do a run around on them out of
pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what I got.
Get him out of there.
Get him out of there. Fuck Kevin Newsom.
We tried to. That was a recall, but it was not for the right reasons.
Yeah, the last time we recalled a California governor, it was a real mixed bag.
Yeah, speaking of a mixed bag, that's right.
And we're back.
Okay, we're back.
We're back.
James don want to finish us up here.
I do, Garrison, I would like that very much. I want to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to try and keep this faster now it's already been a long episode. Let's start with agents have been arresting people in immigration court around the country and placing them
at expedited remove all proceedings. If you want to know more about exactly what they exploited remove all proceedings are and how they work, you can go back to our episode which will have aired the day before you hear this, and that would explain and I talked to an immigration attorney there and explain a little bit more about how that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed.
So previously, it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases of people who had arrived less than two years ago and placing them under two forty explanited remove all proceedings. Apparently they are also detaining other people. I am not sure how that works. I have not seen any justifications for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm
not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are going to have to fight their removal from detention, which is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience.
Right.
Detention in these in these cour civic or geogroup facilities is pretty bad. I'm aware of cases where I misidentified the person being detained cuff the wrong person. And I'm aware that there are Spectrum services who are an ICE detention officer provider officers, at least outside some of these facilities. I believe also inside spectrum services. I've noticed been posting
a lot of job adverts recently. This is something I sometimes keep an eye on, right, Like right before the end of title forty two, I saw they were advertising for ice contractors to transport detainees. So this is sometimes a sign that bad things are a foot in the immigration world. I'm guessing in this case it's either this or a plan to further expand detention capacity, which also
something the Trump administration has been talking about. Right, So they also have these various subjective orders authorizing more budget, and the budget bill or threw thing more budget for detaining migrants. Secondly, the South Sudan case rope we've covered this last week DVD alvs is known. We also covered it earlier in this week. If you go back to our episode which aired on Wednesday, you can hear more about the sort of blow by blow of timeline of
that case. In the South Studian case, Trump administration seems to have gone directly to the Supreme Court try and get an emergency stay on the injunction which afforded due process rights to the migrants who are currently detained into Booty. The administration asked for a stay of the court's injunction.
The courts injunction had given them ten days to assert their reasonable fear of torture, and then a further fifteen days to ask to reopen their case if the Department of Home Land Security determined that fear not to be credible. Justice Supreme Court Justice Jackson has given the plaintiffs a week to respond to the United States the DOJ's call for a stay right, So, in practices, people will still have that ten days from the injunction to make their
claim that they have a fear of torture. Right South Sudan has said that if these people aren't South Sudanese, it will just return them to their country of citizenship. So if the United States can't return them there because they have a fear of torture, it just seems like the whole South Sudan thing is just an end run around the Convention against Torture Right there their obligation not to return people to places where they will be tortured.
Talking of returning people to places where they will be tortured. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has deported twenty people to Mianma. This is according to reporting in Mianma.
Now.
I've also written about it on my page Patreon page. I've linked both of those in the show notes. But it should be noted that meam I now broke the story and it's getting very little coverage in the United States. I can speculate as to why that. You probably don't need to hear me to sort of join the dots there.
This is atrocious. Robert and I have both spoken to people with extensive experience of them, and like, when we talk about the worst attention conditions in the world, we get to a point where it doesn't really make any sense for us to say, like a is worse in.
Right right, that this is worse than Sednaia or whatever. But it's on like the level which was Assad's torture prison and syria As.
Sad's butchery for human beings.
Like we're talking about that level.
Yeah, Like I mean things that I have heard. People have been electrocuted to death, people are water boarded, people have acid poured in their mouths. Bodies are found without organs, people are beaten to such an extent that their entire bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people will only know that their family member is detained when they disappear, and then a few days later they get a call telling them to pick up the body. Conditions
in Burmese hunted attention facilities are atrocious. These people are currently being held at the on Tarpi Interrogation Center. It appears at seven of the early so this has been happening since March. It appears that some of these people have been released. The rest are being held by SAC that's the Burmese hunter of military intelligence units, who will
almost certainly torture them. Me and MA does have a temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple of posts about this, so I just want to clarify the TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the TPS was granted, or to people who have committed certain crimes. We know that at least one of the men they returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of these crimes are like particularly Henus felonies. Right, you can do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported
under a TPS. But I'm trying to find out who these people are. I know that you can't download our podcast in Meanma, which is a huge dub for us, But you know, I know a lot of Burmese people do listen, so you know, if you have an particular insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll
drop the email addressing a little bit here. Seem very unlikely that these people were given a chance to make a claim of fear of torture, right, because it would be a very easy claim to make, given every major human rights organization on the planet has documented torture of detainees in Meanma. I was just reading a report this morning about harassment of trans women in prisons in Myanmar. But the same thing goes for CIS folks, for straight folks, for everyone, right, no one, No one comes out of
there the same they went in. Yeah, I can't believe that these people were given a chance to claim a credible fear because it would have been such an easy claim to make, yep, and they wouldn't have been returned there. So yeah, I wish this story was getting more reporting. I wish more people in the media in this country cared about me and Ma. But that's a drama. I have been beating for four years now, and I don't
think she's going to change anytime soon. So I guess all there is to say is that I really appreciate those of you who do, especially the third of you who listen to the show and take an interest in all things me and Maa. But yeah, if these people have been returned to a country that the US press was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise about this. But this is absolutely unconscionable.
Yeah.
Yeah, these people will be tortured. It would not shock me if some of these people died.
Yeah, Now, this is I mean, there have been cases so far of I think at least seven of the people that have been sent over previously in the last year or so by the US have been released from this prison. So it's not unnecessarily a death sentence, but for a good number of them it will be, right, Yeah, especially since there are also Rohinga people who will be deported in the near future and presumably directly back to the same place.
Yeah. I mean it's documented that people deported from Thailand are immediately conscripted and yeah sent it to the military. Right, So if they get out of prison, there's a good chance that, especially if they're men, that they will be Women do get conscripted too in Meanmar, but there's a good chance that will happen to They've been conscripting a lot o Hinga people. So yeah, the outcomes of this
will be very poor. And uh yeah, the only way torture stops in Burma is when the revolution succeeds and liberates to Britons. Like that, there is no reasoning with the Burmese hunter. Yep, it's about all I got. It's pretty fucked.
Like.
Speaking of fucked, let's listen to the tariff song riffs this week now fuck it.
Well, let's just listen to it and then have the end of the episode just gets a nice song.
Let's just listen to it now.
We don't have time to listen to it. This is the end of the episode.
Wow, Garrison took it away from you complained to them online.
The constant ageist attacks on the Clash have not stopped.
Sorry, fellas, all that money for nothing.
We reported the new.
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It could happen.
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