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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.
This is it could happen here, I show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Robert Evans to discuss the Prairie Land trial.
Yay.
This month, the Trump administration got their first conviction in an Antifa terrorism case. On Friday, March thirteenth, eight people were convicted by a federal jury on charges of riot, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and providing material support to terrorists. One of the defendants was convicted of attempted murder of a police officer, and another person was convicted on two counts of concealing documents, bringing the total
number of federal defendants to nine. Originally, this federal case had way more defendants, but last year seven of them pleaded guilty to providing material support terrorists, four of whom were later called to testify for the prosecution during the trial.
Have they gotten sentenced yet the folks who pled.
Out, No, They are going to be sentenced later this summer, along with all of the defendants that were convicted.
Gotcha, though their sentence will.
Be a maximum of fifteen years, which is shorter than the defendants who were convicted.
Yeah.
Yeah, The Prairie Line Defendants Support Committee did ask me to read their names. The defendants are inns Soto, Liz Soto, Savannah Batten, meg and Morris, Autumn Hill, Mari Ruida, Benjamin Song or b Song, Zachary Evitz, and des Estrada. The prosecution tried to argue that this was a coordinated attack on an ice facility in Prairie Land, Texas, while the defense argued this was a noise demonstration protest outside of
this detention facility last summer. On the night of July fourth, after protesters through fireworks and vandalized property, DJs personnel called local police for assistance. One officer arrived, drew his handgun and yelled stop at a person in all black clothes who was running away. One of the defendants, b Song, then yelled get to the rifles before firing toward the officer with an Air fifteen, hitting him in the neck. Song fired eleven times. The officer returned fire three times.
Song then fled the scene. Most of the defendants were arrested in the days after the attacks, some that night near the facility, though Song camped out, hiding in the woods overnight and evaded care for eleven days with the help of others. Many of those who assisted Song of ad capture after the shooting pledg guilty to providing material support to terrorists. On the first day of this trial, the judge declared a mistrial because one of the defense
attorneys wore a shirt featuring civil rights leaders. A week into the trial, US District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled that defense attorneys could not argue that the defendants, including the accused shooter, were acting in self defense or the defense of others against unlawful force just because the officer
had already drawn his handgun before Song fired. The prosecutors compared this to Waco, and Judge Pittman ruled that the officer drawing and pointing his handgun at a fleeing suspect does not qualify as quote excessive as a matter of law because the officer did not actually use deadly force or shoot first.
Yeah, that makes sense. Like if this were a civilian on civilian situation, the fact that he had drawn his gun, especially in Texas, would have been enough to at least argue self defense. But absolutely, police officers have the right to pull guns on whoever they want, whenever they want pretty much, so yeah, yep.
Cool.
In court, the government argued that, based on the situation at the protest, that it was reasonable for the officer to decide to draw his handgun because there was crimes being committed to property damage the fireworks, even if he did not witness fireworks as he pulled up to the scene. Now, headlines have framed this story as protesters being convicted of terrorism for wearing black clothes or possessing radical political writing
also known as zines. There is like a kernel of truth to these statements, but they're designed to serve primarily as clickbait rather than useful information. So let's take a closer look at these claims. Sure, let's start by getting into the action planning so this action was originally planned on the encrypted messaging app Signal, primarily in a group
chat called fourth of July Party Okay. The plan was also discussed during an in person meeting the day before the action, referred to during the trial as a gear check. Participense in the planning chat agreed to where black block and bring armor and rifles. Song advertised the action in a larger group chat of dozens of quote unquote trusted individuals. The event was characterized in this chat as a low
risk noise demonstration involving fireworks. A flyer was sent to this larger chat, reading share with trusted folks only, do not post mask up, be loud on quote. According to cooperating witness Susan Kent, in the fourth of July Party Signal chat, when asked about bringing guns, Songs stated, I'm not going back to prison.
I'm not going to jail. I'm bringing guns unquote.
Okay, that's a terrible thing to have in writing, boy, okay great.
This sentiment was also expressed at the gear check meeting on July third, where the Fundans discussed bringing guns, and Song repeatedly stated that they would be bringing guns because he would not be quote unquote going to jail. They talked about guns as a deterrent. Yeah, they talked about how in previous instances the presence of guns deterred police from engaging with protesters. And this is how the presence of guns at the protest was largely framed in these
meetings and chats. It does not look good in writing in a court case though.
Yeah, and this is what the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club had done, like sweep defenses and stuff where they'd shown up armed.
That incident was brought up. Yeah, that was specifically referenced.
It had in fact worked that way more or less. I mean, there's a number of things to drill into here, but one of the issues is just while that's a thing people have used firearms for and have done so in a way that worked in the past obviously, which is what they were referencing, the problem is that you can't ever lose sight of the fact that, like, a gun is a gun, and if you're bringing a gun into a situation.
There's potential for that gun to be used.
There's a potential for that gun to be used. And if you're bringing that gun into a situation around a police station. The odds that you will use that gun in a way that is not going to cause a life ruining legal nightmare for you and everyone else are a lot lower. That's a real issue.
Yeah.
Also at this gear check.
On the third, song proposed to free detainees using quote unquote suppressive fire. Oh my god, this idea was shut down by other attendees, according to Susan Kent, who testified after entering a guy plea. Kent testified that after looking over photos of the facility, Song said, quote, this is as easy as it's going to get. We can take the place and free the people inside using quote unquote
suppressive fire. This idea was meant with quote unquote general disagreement, according to Kent, Yeah, of course, also saying that it was not seriously planned for or discussed the support committee rights that. Kent also testified that the group quote discussed stealing U hauls to move free detainees, but this did not have popular support. Defendant Autumn Hill asked do we bring our guns? Song replied, yes, I'm not getting arrested unquote.
Yeah, just a lot of really horrible things to have read out in a courtroom. Just yep.
Cool, okay on Signal, song shared a YouTube short about suppressive fire. Another defendant wrote that she didn't want to quote unquote fed post Yeah. Someone else wrote that rifles at the action may increase risk. Defendant Evitts sent a timeline for the actions that day, writing things heat up after sunset. Royeda wrote quote if people inside get rowdy, people in this chat would be charged for conspiracy question mark. And then after the fourth of July shooting, someone messaged, quote,
please delete signal chats. Chats still on phone even if removed from groups unquote yeah. According to Support Committee notes, some Signal messages were recovered from phones using Apple's internal notification system, though even though Signal had been removed, incoming messages were preserved in the internal memory on the phone.
Outgoing messages were not preserved because there's no notification system for outgoing messages, and you can set your settings on Signal to not display the message in notifications, and it seems like that was not the case for these messages that were taken from defendants phones.
Yeah, and this is a known I mean, just the fact that having notifications on with Signal as a privacy issue has been known for a while but.
Yeah, two defendants, Liz Sojo and Savannah Batten, were neither in planning chats nor attended the gear check. But all the defendants who attended the protest did carpool together in two vehicles and brought a total of eleven firearms, body armor, individual first aid kits, and all these were presented as government exhibits. I'm going to quote the Department of Justice right up about this case.
Quote.
Evidence at trial revealed most of the ANTIFA cell involved in the Prairie Line attack looked to Song as a leader. Song acquired firearms that were distributed to co defendants and recruited members that gun ranges and combat sessions that conducted unquote.
Yep I just as a general rule, like because the potential consequences of having firearms in a protest are so high. If you are showing up at a protest or organizing one and people are talking about bringing them, it behooves you to pay close attention to how they talk about them.
And if someone is talking about, for example, suppress a fire, that's not something that is really relevant to a defensive shooting in a legal situation, that's like a combat thing, like very rarely do self defense shootings involve suppressing fire. I just you have to be very very careful. Yeah,
And this is like a judgment thing. Like if you hear people talking about guns who are going to be bringing firearms to a protest or another event, and they are talking in a way that sounds as if they are like planning or eager to shoot it out with the police or right wing count with anyone, that's a thing to be very wary of. That's a real warning sign. Yeah, that's a real red flag. Yeah, that's a real red flag.
The defense argued that when Song shot at the officer, Song was using suppressive fire, claiming that Song aimed for the ground and the officer was perhaps struck by a ricochet.
We don't know if that is true.
No, And there really is no legal precedent no arguing suppressive fire in this way.
In a self defense shooting.
No, if you're shooting the direction of someone, yeah, they absolutely can start shooting back, even if that absolute fire is intended as being quote unquote suppressive. Right, Like, there's there's really no legal precedent for arguing in this way.
And from a legal standpoint, if you were saying I had to shoot at someone in immediate self defense. And then you said, but I wasn't actually aiming at them. I was just trying to suppress them that immediately. Like I mean, I don't think they were ever going to be able to argue self defense because this was a cop.
But if this had not been, if this had been like, you know, a right wing counter protester or something, the fact that you're saying that you were like shooting to try not to hit them is something that can get you in trouble. That's an extremely dangerous thing from a legal standpoint to talk about.
Especially if you're the one like initiating the use of deadly force.
Yes, if you have now if they if a group of people start shooting at you and you are firing and you're just trying to keep it whatever that you're in a say it because they've started shooting at you. But like this person started shooting, Like just from a legal standpoint, this is a nightmare for the defense. Yeah, from the jump. Yeah.
Some of the defendants attended a daytime protest outside of this facility earlier on July fourth, and after which they then reported back to fellow defendants details regarding the facility security prior to this nighttime action. I think it's time for a quick break and then we'll return to discuss the Antifa terrorism cell aspect of this case.
Great, well, I hate all of it so far, Garrison, here's some ads. I guess we're back.
So let's talk about quote unquote Antifa.
Yeah, let's talk about quote end quote Antifa.
The government argued that the defendants were members of a quote unquote North Texas Antifa cell. The indictment describes Antifa as a quote militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups, primarily ascribing to a revolutionary, anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law unquote. So basically, they view Antifa as
left wing anti authoritarians. Right, That's how we can kind of collapse the use of this term down into like a single sentence, it's left wing anti authoritarianism. Though the defendants never actually or organized altogether under the Antifa name, the prosecution argued that they were linked through a triple ven diagram of the Socialist Rifle Association the John Brown Gun Club and the Emma Goldman book Club, and it's
all converged on quote unquote direct to militant action. I'm assuming people are familiar with the SRA or the John Brown Gun Club in some way.
Yeah.
The Emma Goldman Book Club was a local zene distributor and publisher that also put on community events from a radical, anti capitalist, usually anarchist friendly perspective, Emma Goldwyn obviously being an anarchist yep.
And like the fact that obviously these three organizations aren't actually tied together in any sort of like like they're trying to frame it as like, you know, an al Qaeda and an al Qaida affiliate type deal, right, which is not sure accurate to how these organizations work or what's going on here. But I'm not surprised they went with this line of argument.
I mean, yeah, the defendants had connections to these groups, right, And because these groups have an ideological underpinning that can be seen as being quite similar in some ways, they're viewing that as as part of the connection, right, that connects the individuals who were involved in these sorts of organizations or community events.
Yeah, And I'm not surprised. That's how they tried to argue it sure.
A sticky notepad found at the Soto residence contained passwords for the Emma Goldman book Club Twitter account and an Antifa Dallas fort Worth Twitter account, which prosecution usedes evidence linking defendants to quote unquote Antifa. The government also called on David Kyle Shittler as an expert weitness to testify about Antifa. Shittler is a member of the Center for
Security Policy and SBLC designeded hate group. He also helped draft the definition of en Tifa given in this case, and used that definition while testifying in front of the Senate last year. The defense missed a deadline to challenge the prosecutions and TIFA expert qualifications, which would have needed to be filed as a pre trial motion as opposed
to an objection during the trial. Prosecutors also cited Trump's Antifa Executive Order, despite this order being signed months after the Prairie Land incident, and the prosecutors also claimed that the International Antifa Defense Fund contributed over five thousand dollars to the prairie Land defendants give Send Go crowd funding page.
So much of this case was spent arguing over whether the defendants were in fact Antifa and what that even means, like, what does it mean to be antifa and if that's actually relevant to the charges that they were facing, And by the end of the trial it became more clear that the defendants weren't exactly being prosecuted for being members of Antifa. Rather, the government asserted that their proximity to this idea of Antifa provided evidence to their motive and
preferred tactics. Quoting the Support Committee courtroom notes quote, the government's strategy was to display zines, stickers, pamphlets, flags, and other political materials anarchist, anti fascist, anti ice, animal liberation and argued that this shared ideology proves conspiracy and motive. FBI case agent Casey Bennett testified that the materials quote show a group of people sharing an ideology and that this quote might lead us to intent behind the attack
and shows a conspiracy unquote. Towards the end of the trial, Judge Pittman asked the prosecution quote, is it necessary to prove this stuff about Antifa? The Support Committee courtroom notes say that the prosecution responded by saying that Antifa ideology, particularly black block was how the group operated. The judge pressed, quote whether it's Antifa or the Methodist Women's Auxiliary, why does it matter?
Yep.
The prosecution argued that they took quote unquote direct action against the ICE facility, and argued Black Block and Antifa ideology were central to how the alleged attack was carried out.
Unquote, Well, that's yeah, that's positive at least, I guess.
The government described black Block for the purpose of this case as quote dark clothing with head and face coverings that concealed their identities, designed to hide each individual's identity, but also to aid and those members engaged in illegal acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to law enforcement unquote. The jury was shown clothing from all the defendants as evidence, as well as body armour and a
quote unquote resist fascism flag. Now, all this does raise the question about whether this press acution is against the defendant's political ideology or the specific criminal acts of throwing fireworks or shooting at a police officer, rather than being convicted of being members of Antifa, the terrorist group, something
that still doesn't really have legal precedent. The prosecutors argued that the Antifa ideology left wing anti authoritarianism played a role in inspiring the defendants formed the basis of political affinity that brought this collection of individuals together and relate to a collection of security practices, subcultural practices, and associated tactics which were employed before, during, and after the criminal acts related to the Noise demo quote unquote, opsec practices
like you know, black Block are using signal were used as evidence, Yeah, that there was some sort of conspiracy at foot.
Sure, yeah, I mean, yeah, that makes sense from a prosecutorial standpoint, right, these people are talking about like just the fact that there are zines talking about the purpose of black Block and people are having a planning meeting ahead of time where they're like checking their gear and talking about how they're going to come in block, Like yeah, yeah, that's uh, that's that's unfortunate. Yeah, I can see why the prosecution went with that line of argument.
But how does this relate to like terrorism, right, because right, conspiracy and terrorism are different things. Yes, So to get an idea of the government's own preferred language regarding antifa terrorism all quote from the guilty plea drafted by the government for a former defendant turned government witness.
Quote.
The terrorism was calculated to influence and affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion. Co conspirators adhered to an Antifa anarchist ideology and organized cells or affinity groups. Co conspirators began planning direct action at Prairie Land. Co conspirators agreed to address in black bloc to provide cover for each other to commit crimes, including concealing the escape
of those who committed destruction of govern property unquote. So this is how it relates to the actual legal definition of terrorism, right, which is certain criminal acts intending to change or influence government policy by intimidation or coercion. Right. That's how the government uses the term terrorism. And this section of the plea written by the government shows how the government is self asserting the terrorism that happened at Prairie Land.
Right.
There's been a lot of headlines talking about the role of zines at this trial, and zines did play a two part role. Prosecution did argue that the presence of insurrectionary zines is indicative of some alignment with Antifa, even if the possession of these zines itself is not a crime. The government's Antifa expert testified that owning political texts does not necessarily indicate group membership or personal allegiance to an ideology. Quote just because I own a copy of mind KOMF
does that make make me a Nazi? If I own the Capital, does that make me a Marxist?
Unquote?
Sure?
Stunning? Stunning A first example given here.
Yeah, interesting call, but base, I mean, but also like a valid argument. Yeah, but this is true, right, Yes, and this is I've seen people framing the verdict as having zines or whatever, like it's an act of terrorism. That's not what it was decided here.
No, what's happening here is a bit more complicated and harder to explain.
Yes.
The other relevancy of zines to this case relates to the concealing documents charges against des Estrata and his wife, Mari Rayuda, based on transporting a box of political zines from his wife's house to a friend's house in Denton, Texas. The government claims that Roda called des from jail on July sixth, instructing him to conceal evidence. Now, we don't have access to a full transcript of this call. The full call was into the jury, but sections of it
were read or listened to in court. The most detailed account of the call segments played in court come from notes taken by the Prairie Land Defense Support Committee. The actual evidence exhibit is not yet available to be purchased on PACER. Not sure if it will be or if that'll just be after sentencing. But I tried to actually get the transcript with the call and it was not available. Des told his wife that he already talked with her mom, who she had previously called the day before. Rita talked
about fed's confiscating property. FBI Special Agent Whitworth said in his opinion, Rieda was concerned about the evidence. Rieda then voiced concern for her car parked at the twenty four hundred block of fifty sixth Street, which had her phone stored inside. This was the staging site before she went to the action. She then instructed Dez to quote unquote, toe it. My phone is in the back. Do what you got to do, Just tow it unquote. The Support
Committee wrote that quote. Prosecution replayed this section, characterizing it as Rida trying to get rid of evidence. Rada says to quote unquote retrieve her items from the vehicle, does not refer to her items using the word evidence, and does not say hide, destroy, or conceal. Des never actually got to this car or the phone. He explained that the vehicle would be repoed. But Rayeda also said in this call, quote move whatever you need to move in
the house. The support committee wrote that quote. Prosecution argued this meant moving evidence. Defense noted she was talking about pets at the time. On the call, Des mentioned that he had already been at the house and replied, quote unquote, were good in reference to moving stuff from the house.
The defense questioned how they could have conspired out of order right because the government claims there was a conspiracy to conceal documents, but Des here said that he moved things before he actually got on this phone call with his wife. The FBI answered that Des just had already acquired the necessary information to act, just not directly from
his wife. Now, Des was found guilty of quote corruptly concealing a document or record by transporting a box containing numerous Antifa materials such as insurrection planning, anti law enforcement, anti government, and anti immigration enforcement documents and propaganda, intending to conceal the box's contents and impair its availability for use in a federal grand jury and federal criminal proceedings unquote, that's from the DOJ.
He and his wife Rida.
Were found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and other objects that would implicate Raeda in the riot and shooting at the Prairie Land facility also according to the Department of Justice. So basically this was an evidence tampering charge of concealing evidence charge. The actual presence of the zines was not the crime, but the government argued that the zines themselves were evidence, or that des suspected they could be evidence, and that's why he moved them from his
wife's house to this other location. We're gonna go and rumber break and then return to discuss two more charges.
Okay, we're back.
Nine of the counts, count one, two, four, and five through ten cited Pinkerton versus United States nineteen forty six.
Okay.
The judge explained this to the jury by saying that a defendant can be criminally liable for the offenses committed by another co conspirator if the offense was quote reasonably foreseeable and committed and in furtherance of the conspiracy, with the judge writing in jury instructions.
Quote.
A defendant can be found guilty and held criminally liable for an offense under Pinkerton co conspirator liability, even if the defendant was not charged with conspiracy. It is not required that the conspiracy agrees to commit or facilitate each and every part of a substantive offense that is in furtherance of the conspiracy. A defendant must merely reach an agreement with the specific intent that the underlying criminal objective
be achieved by the conspiracy unquote. Early in the trial, prosecution argued that song firing on the officers was quote unquote reasonably foreseeable based on the planning of the action and previous statements made by Song, But this Pickerton liability also applied to the other charges, including riot materials, port terrorism,
and the explosive charge. The jury found all defendants that were charged guilty of counts one, two, three, and four that's riot material support and to explosive charges, but did not find the other defendants besides the Song, guilty of attempted murder or discharging a firearm. Using the Pinkerton co conspirator liability the prosecution wanted the other individuals at the protest to be found guilty of the charges of attempted murder using the liability, and the jury did not do that.
Let's talk about two of the charges that now carry some worrying potential to be used against protesters in the future based on the precedent that this case sets. First, the conspiracy to use and carry in explosive and using uncarry in explosive during a riot. The only quote unquote explosives at this noise demonstration protest were fireworks, and the judge even confirmed that it was established that the fireworks
caused no damage to the ice facility. Yet Steven Brennemann, ats Explosives Special Agent testified that fireworks meet the statutory definition of explosives under eighteen USC. Section eight four four IJ because the fireworks contain gunpowder as defined in the statute. This could have some pretty wide reaching implications. A lot of protests use fireworks. This was a protest on fourth of July, a day full of the use of fireworks.
Robert and I have been to a protest covered a protest in twenty twenty outside of a federal government building that also had a lot of fireworks and fireworks shot towards the building. Yep, if that happened, now it's possible that people at this protest could be charged with this conspiracy to use and carry an explosive.
Yeah, yeah, And I mean they've clearly been wanting arguing for this ever since twenty twenty, right, like, yeah, fire Well, because it wasn't just Portland, wasn't the only place where people were using fireworks. Generally, people were using fireworks as kind of a response to the police using flash flashbacks, right like it, it was a force equalizer. Both were
used quite often. But you know, like I had so many of those fucking things blow up in my face and then every day, Like these are not bombs, These are not pipe bombs. Like it's not fun to have them blow up right next to you, but it's these are not like deadly explosives.
Yes, agreed.
And even the agents investigating this case mailed materials from these fireworks for testing using regular FedEx, not labeling them as possibly dangerous or explosive, and the government argued that it was because the amount in the FedEx package was just so small that they didn't need to label it as being dangerous.
Yeah.
Now, lastly, I need to discuss count two. It's providing material support to terrorists. This is eighteen us C.
Two three three nine.
This is the charge that a lot of people are talking about when they're mentioning someone has been convicted of terrorism for XYZ, for using signal, for wearing black block, for possessing zines. They're referring to this charge. Now, this statute has two sections. Section B refers to knowingly attempting to, conspiring to, or actually providing material support or resources to
a designated foreign terrorist organization. This is not how the government used this statute, right, They're not considering Antifa a foreign terrorist organization for the purposes of this case.
That's not how are using this.
The defendants were charged with Section A alleging that they provided and attempted to provide material support and resources, and did conceal and disguise the nature of their material support and resources, including property, services, training, communications, equipment, weapons, explosives, personnel, including themselves, and transportation, and intending that they were to be used in preparation for, and in carrying out an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism, or carrying
out the concealment of an escape from an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism.
That's a lot.
Yeah, that's a long sentence. This is certainly a very confusing charge.
Yeah.
Now, this statute lists at least twenty eight possible terrorism offenses. Now relevant to this case are three eighteen Usc. Eight four four f, which is maliciously attempting to damage government property by means of fire or an explosive. For the purpose of this case, that is throwing fireworks at a building.
Eighteen USC. One three sixty one.
That's wilful depredation against any property of the United States exceeding one thousand dollars. For the purposes of this case, this would be damage a government property in other ways like slashing tires, graffiti, that sort of thing, right. And finally, eighteen USC one one four killing or attempting to kill an officer or employee of the United States.
That's pretty self explanatory.
Yeah, So the government accused the defendants of providing material support in furtherance of committing these three crimes of terrorism, even if each individual defendant themselves did not actually commit one of these three crimes. To quote the jury instructions, quote the government does not have to prove all of these to you for you to return a guilty verdict on this charge. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt on one
is enough, unquote. So the jury does not need to find proof that all of these three terrorism offenses were committed, that the explosives charge, the destruction government property charge, or the attempt at killing charge. They just need to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt that material support was provided
for one of these. Part of what makes this charge kind of dangerous is that we don't I don't know which terroristic crime or crimes the jury found sufficient evidence for, or if they used different offenses for different defendants, Nor do we explicitly know what the jury thought qualified as material support. It could have been driving people to an action, mere presence at an action, wearing black clothes, providing money to buy fireworks, all those could be considered material support.
But because of how the jury just writes guilty on this charge, we don't actually know what the specific justification they used to find this.
To be true.
Because the discharges so is so broad and can contain a lot of things that qualify as material support, including just being merely present at an action. Like personnel can be material support in furtherance of a federal crime of terrorism. So wearing black block at an action where no crime happens would not constitute terrorism, but wearing black clothes at a protest where someone does ideologically motivated crime of terrorism could be seen as materially supporting that crime or concealing
the escape of the person who committed that crime. I want to quote from the judge's instructions to the jury regarding the First Amendment.
Quote.
Constitutionally protected speech can be properly used as evidence to prove a defendant's motive, intent, and knowledge to commit the offense or further the unlawful purpose of any jointly undertaken
criminal activity. Stated another way, if a defendant's speech, expression, or associations were made with the intent to knowingly provide material support or resources to be used to prepare for or carry out a violation of federal law, or to carry out the concealment of an escape from such a violation, then the First Amendment would not provide a defense to that conduct.
Unquote.
So it is possible now using this case as precedent, if you're present at a protest before someone commits a serious crime and you have a tangential link to that person, you could also face similar charges. Yeah, if you're in a group chat with someone and then they commit a crime, you could face similar charges. This is not the first time the government has tried to use this sort of like conspiracy against a large group of protesters. Notably, they
tried to do this in Atlanta unsuccessfully. But I think it's worth noting they were only unsuccessful on their rico charges because of procedural error, not because of actual evidence argued in court. It's that the prosecutor in that case did not actually have justification or the legal justification to bring this charge. So we never actually saw this get argued out in front of a jury and find the
jury's verdict. But this is a part of an ongoing strategy the prosecution has done against protesters the past few years, and in this case successfully.
Yeah, it's also like as bleak as this is, and this is very bleak, This is not the final say on how any case like this will be a ge dicated everywhere. This is a case in Texas, right, Like, this is not Yes, this isn't the fucking US Supreme Court. It's not even the Texas Supreme Court, Right, Yeah, not to minimize how fucking awful this is. But this does not mean this is how cases like this will be adjudicated every time they come to court everywhere in the US.
Yes, And the vagueness of the material support charge is like a double edged sword, right one. It can be used in cases like this, and we don't actually know how they were exactly able to successfully argue that, because we don't know which specific federal offense of terrorism the jury found material support was provided for, or if it was multiple offenses. Nor do we know exactly which things
the jury found constituted material support. But because we don't know these things, that means when prosecutors try to argue this charge again in the future, they kind of have to start from the ground floor all over again. It's harder to apply this exact precedent because the specific things that constituted material support and the specific crime that material support was provided for are sort of ambiguous. But the vagueness of this charge certainly leads to a lot of confusion.
And you can now look at this case and see that legal possession of firearms or firearms training and possession of political paraphernalia could bolster ideological links between you and defendants, which could be used as evidence for a charge like this, right yep, or for conspiracy charges, and that obviously is worrying. Now a Song faces a minimum penalty of twenty years
a maximum of life in prison. Other defendants of Prairie Land face sentences ranging from a minimum of ten years to up to sixty The husband convicted of concealing documents faces up to forty years in prison, and those who pled guilty face the sentences of up to fifteen years in federal prison.
Though their cooperation may lower that.
Another man faces charges for evidence tempering because he allegedly removed Prairie Land defendants from discord chats last year. But this is a state charge which will be going to trial later in April.
Yeah, that'll be interesting to watch, I guess. Yeah, this is bleak. This is extremely worrying. That's part of the point is to scare people, to make people feel like they can't trust other activists, to make people scared to organize, to make them scared to be in group chats. And yeah, there's very real reason to be concerned as a result of this. However, none of this should be seen as like the final word on all of this stuff. And this certainly is not as simple as just having a
zine or wearing black is terrorism. Now, that's not what was adjudicated here.
No, these things do all relate to, or they're trying to be connected to, you know, actual crimes which did occur.
And that's certainly the goal by the way that the right has, but that's not what they've achieved quite yet.
I mean, it's definitely a way to try to scare people out of organizing in the sense that you know, you cannot be found a terrorist just by calling yourself like Antifa, just just by being Antifa alone by yourself, you're not going to be a terrorist. The same way
you can't be put in jail just for being a Nazi. Right, But if you are part of a Nazi group chat where you're planning an action and then a Nazi does something at the at the action, like shooting a power substation, then that Nazi and the other Nazis that he's organizing with, you know, could face terrorism charges. That That is how those sorts of like cases work, and a very similar thing is being done here.
It's it's not the.
Actual like political ideology necessarily at trial, but organizing with other people in furtherance of a political ideology is what the government is trying to suppress.
Yep.
Cool, Well, I don't have anything else to add at this point.
You know, no way will certainly cover this. One's sentencing happens later this year in June.
Be careful. And if you're in a group chat with somebody who keeps writing shit that you're like, wow, that would be a terrible thing to hear read back in court, really reconsider, say, in a group chat with that person. Just be wary about what you say and what other people say to you online, not just because of court stuff, because like, if somebody is being incredibly reckless with the things that they are putting down and writing, they're probably
being reckless in other areas. Just be careful, you know, folks, Be careful.
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co author with longtime journalists Betsy Freeoff, of the history of eugenics in Texas called The Purifying Knife.
I'm Stephen Monchelli. I'm a journalist who specializes in covering political extremism and far right internet culture for The Texas Observer, The Barbed Wire, and other publications. Today we'll be talking about the Fifth Circuit, and we'll start with a man named James Hoe, who, on what might have been the biggest day of his judicial career so far, couldn't have picked a creepier setting.
The fifty two year old's legal career has rocketed forward at light speed. Born in Taiwan and a graduate of Stanford, he signed up as an attorney for the white shoe law firm Gibson Dunn in California in two thousand. At age twenty seven, he joined a high powered legal team that forever shaped the history of the United States.
From NBC News in Washington, this is Meet the Press with Tim Russer Our Issues.
This Sunday, thirty six days after the election.
Al Gore ends his campaign. For the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
George W.
Bush will be the forty third President of the United States.
I'm thankful to the American people for the great privilege of being able to serve as your next president.
Young and almost entirely unknown outside of legal circles. James Hoe joined some of the most famous conservative lawyers in the country in the year two thousand to convince the United States Supreme Court to stop the hotly contested presidential vote count in Florida. That move elevated President George W. Bush to the White House. In this effort, James Hoe rubbed shoulders with right wing luminaries like the man who in five years would be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.
Ho rocketed to judicial superstardom. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for a couple of years, then from two thousand and eight to two th and ten, he succeeded Ted Cruz as Solicitor General of Texas. There he handled appeals filed by the state in cases heard by the state Supreme Court and the U. S Supreme Court.
On January four, twenty eighteen, Hose celebrated his next rapid climb up the judicial ladder when he has sworn as the newest judge on the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees federal cases that are originating Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Hooe'se swearing in ceremony took place at the mansion of
Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crowe. You've probably heard that name before because Crow has made news with the revelation that he lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and favors on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including cruises to Indonesian islands on the businessman's one hundred and sixty two foot superyacht and a one hundred and nineteen thousand dollars bible that once belonged to leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Crowe flew Thomas to Dallas on his private jet so the Justice could swear in his former clerk. The surroundings included Crowe's unnerving souvenirs, once described on the program Inside Edition.
Questions are being raised today about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's friendship with a billionaire who collects Nazi memorabilia. Published reports say Dallas tycoon Harlan Crowe's controversial collection includes Hitler's notorious autobiography Mind Komfe, signed by Hitler, oil paintings by Hitler, and Lennon Napkins embroidered with the Nazi swastika. The collection is housed at Crowe's mansion in Dallas. I can't get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia, said one guest who
saw the Nazi treasure trove. You sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.
The estate also includes what Crow has called the Garden of Evil, a collection of imposing statues of past authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mauzedung, Nikolai Chacchescu, the eccentric Romaine and tyrant violently deposed in nineteen eighty nine, as well as a bust of Gavrilla Prinsep, the Bosnian Serb nationalist who triggered World War One with his assassination
of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Crow claims that his clutch is somehow a statement of his hatred for both communism and fascism.
The creepy artwork perhaps foreshadowed Hoe's ominous career in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On that bench, he has become infamous for weirdly written and extreme opinions in which he has suggested that the children of migrants might not be eligible for birthright citizenship because the country is being quote invaded, and that abortion actually somehow injures doctors because
they are denied the intense pleasure of delivering babies. Those antics might lead him to one day occupy a seat on the United States Supreme Court, potentially succeeding Thomas or Samuel Alito, the two oldest justices on the nation's highest bench.
In this episode, we'll look at the career of Judge James hoe, is alarming right way judicial activism, and the strange history of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which since the Reagan administration has transformed for one of the most liberal judicial bodies in the country too, perhaps the scariest court in America.
Given its current reactionary reputation, it's a bit ironic. The Fifth Circuit Court convenes in a New Orleans courthouse named after John Minor Wisdom, a New Orleans native who formed a critical part of a quartet of liberal judges known simply as the Four who in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties issued a series of revolutionary rulings that advanced the civil rights movement. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Wisdom to
the bench in nineteen fifty seven. He quickly formed an alliance with three other liberal judges on the Fifth Circuit, Albert P. Tuttle of Georgia, John R. Brown of Texas,
and Richard T. Rivis of Alabama. Rivers was the only Democrat on the squad that came to be known as the Fifth Fore, these liberals typically prevailed over the conservatives serving on the Fifth Circuit, and at that point, the Fifth Circuit heard cases from states that spread across the core of the one time Confederacy, including Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia. This placed the Fifth boar on the front lines of the civil rights struggle. In nineteen fifty eight,
the Fifth Circuit began shipping away at Jim Crow. The court heard the case of Joe Dorsey Junior of New Orleans, challenging the Louisiana law that outlawed matches between black and white boxers. Wisdom wrote the majority opinion, which declared such legislation made a mockery of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That opinion like many, Wisdom wrote, would be upheld the following year by the Supreme Court that was presided over by Chief
Justice Earl Warren. Louisiana integrated boxing matches, but for years outside the ring, the arenas divided into black and white seating. In the coming years, the Fifth Circuit Forest and parish in Louisiana to reopen their schools. After that school board voted to close all campuses to prevent integration. The Fifth Circuit Court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit an African American student, James Meredith. In his opinion, Wisdom wrote that Ole miss as it's known had engaged in a
carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment, and masterly inactivity. Riots broke out as federal troops had to enforce the order.
James H. Meredith is formally enrolled at the University of Mississippi, ending one chapter in the federal government's efforts to desegregate the university. The town of Oxford is an armed camp following riots that accompanied the registration of the first Negro in the university's one hundred and eighteen year history. Much of this film record was destroyed when our cameraman Gordon Yoder was attacked, but he did salvage. Pictures of Governor
Ross Barnett at the scene. The governor thought the court order long and bitterly before modifying his stad saying Mississippi was overpowered by the federal government. President Kennedy appealed to the students and to the people of the state to comply peacefully with the law and bring the crisis to an end. Even as he talked, riots were breaking out in Oxford. Americans are free, in sure to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it.
For any government of laws and not of man.
No man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a.
Court of law.
In nineteen sixty three, the Fifth Circuit ordered the desegregation of community centers, cultural centers, playgrounds, and public parks. The next year, the Court ruled that jury selection system in Orleans Paris, where as Wisdom noted, no black had ever sit on his grand jury or trial jury panel, violated
the Constitution. Two years after that, the Fifth Circuit overturned Louisiana's photo registration literacy tests, which required a citizen to pass in the judgment of white officials a written test on the Constitution. Such laws had long disenfranchised impoverished African Americans and whites.
Perhaps Wisdom's most significant opinion came with the nineteen sixty eight United States v. Jefferson case, which blocked states from avoiding compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education decision by setting up so called quote school choice plans in which parents allegedly freely chose to send their children to segregated schools.
Wisdom wrote, the Constitution is both color blind and color conscious to avoid conflict with the equal Protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is color blind, but the Constitution is color conscious. To prevent discrimination from being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination.
Quitting a phrase that would later ignite fierce white backlash against civil rights North and South, Wisdom said school systems needed to move beyond ostensibly not discriminating and to take quote affirmative action to bring about a unitary, non racial system. That phrase would provide a legal foundation for school bussing as a means of genuinely integrating schools, and also introduced the concept of affirmative action hiring practices in other stubborn aspects of racial exclusion.
The Fifth circuits record of judicial progressivism continued through the nineteen seventies. A nineteen seventy six decision by the Fifth Circuit, for instance, required public colleges and universities in Texas to recognize gay student organizations. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans tried to persuade Richard Nixon to nominate Wisdom for the United States Supreme Court. However, Attorney General John Mitchell, who later went to prison for
his role in the Watergates scandal, squashed the idea. He complained that the judge was a damn left winger who would specially be as bad as the famously liberal Chief Justice Warren. President Clinton would give Wisdom the Presidential Medal of Freedom in nineteen ninety three. Wisdom died six years later. If he miraculously returned, Wisdom would not recognize the Appeals Court that he spent so much of his life serving.
We'll talk about the transformation of the Fifth Circuit of Appeals, the extreme and disturbing decisions that has made since the start of the Trump era and the career of one of that court's most infamous judges, when we come back from our hopefully less infamous sponsors. In nineteen eighty one, the federal judiciary was reorganized. The Fifth Circuit Court now heard appeals only from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. A new
eleventh Circuit Court. Now here's cases from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. We should provide a hopefully brief civics lesson here. The Fifth Court consists of seventeen active judges and nine senior judges. When a side loses a case in a federal district court, they can appeal to a circuit court, where the case is heard by a three judge panel. In some cases, if one side disagrees with the judgment of the panel, they may appeal the decision to the full judicial court.
Among the act of judges, those appointed by Republican presidents outnumber those appointed by Democrats by a margin of twelve to five. Donald Trump appointed more than a third of these judges, six in all, each of course, could serve on the court for the rest.
Of their life.
The Fifth Circuit also has eight senior judges who are semi retired but preside over a limited number of cases. Six of them were also appointed by Republican presidents, stretching back to Ronald Reagan.
Even in that hyper conservative company, James Hoe has stood out. Mike Davis, the president of the Pro Trump Article three Project, a group dedicated to pushing federal courts further right, has said, quote on every crucial but controversial legal issue, Jim Hoe is constantly the tip of the spear.
It has been a cliche among the American right wingers that liberal judges fin the time of Franklin Roosevelt Laan had become judicial activists for abusing their positions on the bench to advance their political agendas rather than impartially ruling on the law. Calling balls and strikes. Hoe's open political advocacy, however, has raised no alarms for those saying presume advocates for judicial neutrality.
While he served as Texas's Solicitor General, Hoe did pro bono work for the First Liberty Institute, a Christian right organization headquartered in Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas, that won a case for a Washington State high school football coach who was fired because he violated school policy by leading his team in prayer after each game. The group has also represented bakers who refused to make wedding cakes for same sex couples.
As a judge, Hoe led a boycott of legal clerks who graduated from Yale Law School to punish that institution for its supposed leftists, cancel culture and intolerance and conservative views. During his speech to the far right Heritage Foundation, the authors of Project twenty twenty five, Hoe ridiculed lawyers with fancy credentials, fancy law schools, fancy clerkships, fancy law firms, and government jobs. He claimed that issued liberal opinions for no other purpose than winning popularity.
He arged young.
Conservatives to assert themselves against the supposed popularity of political correctness.
In addition to serving on the bench, Ho could be considered an activist, particularly on culture war issues like abortion. He's condemned abortion as the quote immoral, tragic, and violent
taking of innocent human life. In twenty eighteen, he upheld a Texas law that required the cremation or burial of fetal remains, a potentially costly burden for women receiving medical treatment, and the state of Texas argued that any potential financial burdens to women or clinics were irrelevant, since the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops made a pledge to bury the remains for low cost or even for free. Such a promise, of course, was not legally binding.
A district court overturned the law, but Hoe in the Fifths Circuit reinstated it, arguing that coarse burial protected religious freedom of the Catholic Bishops. Quote the First Amendment expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion, including the right of bishops to express their profound objection to the moral tragedy of abortion, Hoe wrote, Texas still requires that fetal remains
receive burial or cremation. As we'll explain later, it's not only on the issue of abortion that Hoe has staked out in extreme position. In Man's first secessions, the Fifth Circuit Court, by an eight to seven vote, narrowly avoided overturning a federal gun law that prohibited interstate gun sales. Hoe offered a bitter descent, quoting his mentor Clarence Thomas, complaining that in spite of the wide open access to firearms in this country, the Second Amendment had become quote
a second class right. In his opinion, how ridiculed advocates of gun control is suffering from hoplophobia the irrational fear of guns.
Hoe in the entire Fifth Circuit achieved national infamy after the Supreme Court raised almost half a century of abortion rights when it overturned the Roe Vwaid decision in the Dobbs Vwomen's Health Organization case on June twenty fourth, twenty twenty two. A little more than a year after that landmark case, on August sixteenth, twenty twenty three, the Fifth Circuit upheld tightened access for women to mifipristone, the so called abortion pill, which accounts from more than half of
all terminated pregnancies in the United States. Originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration in two thousand but only for prescription by hospitals and other medical facilities, the FDA expanded access to the medication in twenty sixteen and gave doctors the right to directly prescribe mifipriston in response to the COVID nineteen pandemic. Starting in twenty twenty one, women could receive it through the mail.
In twenty twenty for an anti abortion organization, the Alliance or Hippocratic Medicine intentionally incorporated in twenty twenty two and Amarillo, which placed it in the jurisdiction of the famously anti abortion Federal District Judge Matthew J. Kasmeric. Like Judge Hoe, Cosmeric belonged to the First Liberty Institute. While being considered for the federal bench, he unsuccessfully tried to conceal his authorship of legal articles on gay rights he thought might
jeopardize approval of his domination by the US Senate. Cosmeric has described gay and trans people as mentally disordered. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine filed student Caasmerics Court seeking to overturn the FDA's approval of mythi press Stone, even though decades of research had demonstrated its safety and its effectiveness for treating Cushing syndrome, a severe endocrine disorder.
None of the doctors in the Alliance had ever been involved in a medical case in which the use of mifiprestone had been considered. In his opinion, Kasmiric showed his disdain for medical personnel providing women reproductive care, referring to them as quote abortionists and called terminating pregnancy through medication quote, starving the unborn human until death.
Courts require that parties have what just is called standing in order to file a lawsuit. That means, for instance, that one party has been in some way directly injured by the other party. President Joe Biden's Food and Drug Administra I should question how the doctors in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine had in any way been directly harmed Because women have access to abortion medications, Chasmeric found a fans full way to grant the alliance a right to sue.
He claimed that treating the rare complications from Mytha pristone overwhelmed hospitals in placed quote enormous pressure and stress on the doctors during emergencies and complications. After granting the alliance standing, Chasmeric issued a preliminary injunction suspending the FDA's approval of the drug. The decision would go into effect in seven days in order to give the federal government a chance
to file an appeal. In his decision, Cosmeric cited two studies that claimed the drug was harmful, but both had been retracted by a medical journal. In effect, Chasmeric had banned MiFi pristone nationwide. The United States Justice Department and dan CO Laboratories mif for pristone's manufacturer appealed, and the case went to the Fifth Circuit. Judicial chaos surrounding the status of Mytha pristone reigned within hours, as ABC seven in Los Angeles reported.
In a judicial bombshell involving abortion that could have an impact in all fifty states, a Texas federal judge revoking FDA approval of an abortion pill that's been used for more than twenty years, but another federal judge in Washington State then issuing a contradictory ruling, setting up another major battle over.
A woman's right to choose.
I went aso's reporter Amy Powell, joining us live in studio with more tonight, Amy and Michelle.
This is causing a lot of concern.
The reversal of Roe versus Weighed by the Supreme Court was supposed to mean that abortion laws would be left up to individual states, but today a Texas federal judge issued a ruling that could end access to an abortion pill in all fifty states. Shortly after the Texas judge issued his decision, a judge in Washington State issued a ruling ordering the FDA to make no changes to the availability of MiFi pristone. Those conflicting orders mean this case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
The mifipristone case went to the Fifth Circuit, where Judge Ho would write an opinion critics characterized as disturbing, baffling, and bizarre. We'll talk about what happened in the Miffi pristone case and how Judge Hoe, an immigrant himself, has suggested that the children of migrants might not be eligible for birthright citizenship because of the United States is, in his words, being invaded. But first we'll hear some, hopefully not two bizarre messages from our sponsors.
When the Fifth Circuit heard the appeal of Kasmeric's ruling, Hoe didn't recuse himself from the case, even though his wife, Allison, a lawyer, has repeatedly appeared at events sponsored by the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the litigants, and even received speaking fees from the organization. Hoe brushed off this obvious.
Conflict of interest on August sixteenth, twenty twenty three. That court didn't completely uphold Chismeric's ruling, but it did impose numerous restrictions on the abortion pill called MiFi pristone, claiming that the FDA didn't fully consider its potential health risks. If the Supreme Court had upheld the Fifth Circuit's opinion, women would not have been allowed to receive a prescription
through the mail after online medical appointments. They would have been able to receive the prescription only after a direct visit with the doctor and after three in person follow up appointments. The window in which women would have been allowed to take mif for pristown would have been cut from seventy days of pregnancy to about forty nine.
Hoe wanted to go much further than the Fifth Circuit's majority. He wanted to rescind the FDA's approval a myth for press though, which would have removed the drug from the market entirely. When judges agree with a majority on a panel, they can write a concurring opinion that gives them a chance to grandstand about a case. This is what Hoe did in his concurrence when he bitterly complained that some believed that quote no one should ever question the FDA.
Hoe then asked the public to pity the obstetricians, he claimed suffer because of women's abortion rights. Pe drew on environmental case law, which acknowledges that a member of the public might believe that they've suffered a loss when, for instance, a park is destroyed because it is the location of a new mining operation, and then they can sue on that basis. Hoe argued that doctors could suffer the same
sort of damages when a pregnancy is medically ended. In his concurrence on MIFH Pristowe, Hoe wrote the following.
Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them. Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones, friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child, and doctors delight in working with their unborn patients and experience an esthetic injury when they are aborted.
Leo Yu is an assistant professor of law at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. It specializes in civil rights law. You actually receive law degrees in two countries. Is Native China and in the United States at Southern Messogist University in Dallas. While he lived in Texas, he lived under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit and saw close hand the legal chaos. The Fifth Circuit is created in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. In twenty twenty one, he
created a podcast, Plead the Fifth Professor. You believes that when Hoe writes extreme opinions, such as in the Mesaprostone case, he's desperately trying to get one man's attention.
He is auditioning all the time to the Supreme Court, and he went so far to create something that is quite honestly just not even sensible. It's like, you know, Peopaul wants to see cute little, you know, ultrasounds of babies, and that makes important, you know, of them having the standing to challenge abortion pills, that they wouldn't be able to see those cute little alta sounds anymore. And it just that part of rationale is quite just insane.
I think that part.
I don't know if that is something that he truly believed, And I would say that it's hard to imagine for anybody who truly believed that sort of analysis. So I put that part of analysis as another way from justice hold trying to audition for the Supreme Court like, Hey, you think you found a concern to the judge somewhere in DC, Look at me.
I'm even more. And that's what it is.
No one would accuse the United States Supreme Court under John Roberts of being moderate, but repeatedly Roberts and the other justices have taken the Fifth Circuit to task for going to extremes in its ruling. As Texas Tribune writer Eleanor Klibanoff put it, quote, if the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals was a boxer, you'd bet on the other guy.
Writing a Supreme Court's reaction of Fifth Circuit rulings in July twenty twenty four, Clibanoff noted that only three of the tribunal's decisions had been upheld, while eight had been overturned, a one lost record that ranked amongst the worst among circuit courts in the country. In a meth of pristone case, just as Brett Kavanaugh, hardly a Bolshevik, expressed dismay that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine had been granted standing.
Kavanaugh wrote this quote for a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what the governing law is. The plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a personal stake in the dispute end quote. If the standard set by Judge hon his peers in New Orleans remained in place, Kavanaugh warned, quote, virtually every citizen would have standing to challenge virtually every
government action that they do not like. Governing, he suggested, would become impossible.
It wasn't just on the issue of legal standing that the Supreme Court found the Fifth Circuit Court's judgment lacking. In the case of Rahemi versus the United States, the Fifth Circuit overturned a federal law that prohibited domestic abusers from buying firearms. The Highest Court on June twenty first, twenty twenty four, overturned that decision by an eight to one margin. Chief Justice John Roberts, who generally supports a very broad view of gun right, said that history quote
confirms what common sense suggests. When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed. Roberts also suggested that the Fifth Circuit misunderstood the Supreme Court's view of the Second Amendment. Fusser, you told us that as conservative as Supreme Court majority might be, outside of Clarence Thomas, they have found the Fifth Circuit's rulings to be an embarrassment conservative judicial philosophy.
On that again, I think that was the a to one opinion, and Clarence Thomas was the only person who would agree was the Fifth Circus. So in general, I think the Supreme Court is definitely conservative. But the Supreme Court appreciate a certain type of conservativeness that they can shounon, and it is something that it can lays with some academic legitimacy and knowledges, some sort of attention seeking paragraphed that would make people hold feel some sort of feeling.
On the last day of its twenty twenty four session, the Supreme Court sent back to the Fifth Circuit a case involving a twenty twenty one Texas law that limited the ability of social media companies to suspend user accounts
for extremist or violence inciting content. The law was inspired by the decision of what was then called Twitter and now x, as well as other social media companies to deplatform Donald Trump after the president encouraged his supporters to ransack the Capital and stop the counting of electoral college boats.
On January sixth, twenty twenty one, the Fifth Circuit previously upheld the law, claiming that it rejected quote the idea that corporations have a free, willing, First Amendment right to censor what people say.
Ho and his allies on the Fifth Circuit, however, our find was censoring free expression by members of the LGBTQ community. In March twenty twenty three, Walter Wendler, the president of West Texas A and M University, a public institution, cancel at drag shows schedule at Legacy Hall, a campus building. Organizers plan to use proceeds from the performance to raise money for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit group that seeks
to prevent suicides in the LGBTQ plus community. In a statement canceling the show, Wendler explicitly said that his private religious beliefs guided his decision.
West Texas A and M University will not host a drag show on campus. I believe every human being is created in the image of God, and therefore a person of dignity. Does a drag show reserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not. As a performance exaggerating aspects of womanhood, sexuality, femininity, gender. Drag shows stereotype women in cartoon like extremes for the amusement of others, and discriminate against womanhood. Drag shows are derisive, divisive, and demoralizing misogyny.
No matter what the stated intent, such conduct runs counter to the purpose of West Texas A and M. A person or group should not attempt to elevate itself or a cause by mocking another person or group. As a university president, I would not support blackface performances on our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor, it is wrong.
Spectrum WT, a pro LGBTQ student organization, file a suit challenging the band and requested an injunction blocking Wendler's action. Judge Kasmirick, the same jurist who initially blocked access to MiFi pristone, sided with West Texas A and M and issued a preliminary ruling preventing the drag show from taking
place pending a trial. He said the performance supposed sexual content lacked free speech protections quote the First Amendment does not prevent school officials from restricting vulgar and lewd conduct that would undermine the school's basic educational mission, particularly in settings where children are physically present, Cosmeric wrote in his September twenty two to twenty twenty three opinion.
Spectrum w T appealed. The case went to the Fifth Circuit, where three judge panel heard arguments on whether the fundraiser could proceed. On August eighteenth, twenty twenty five, by two to one vote, the panel reversed Kasmeric's ruling. Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, and a Bill Clinton appointed US Circuit Judge James Dennis ruled that West Texas A and M had violated the gay student organization's expressive right.
Predictably, Hoe dissented. He simply echoed the arguments used by the university president, insisting that banning drag shows somehow advanced inclusivity.
University officials have determined that drag shows are sexists for the same reason that blackface performances are racist, and Supreme Court precedent demands that we respect university officials when it comes to regulating student activities to ensure an inclusive educational environment for all.
Spectrum wt's victory proved temporary. The panel's decision would not go into effect until the case was heard by the entire Fifth Circuit Court. Meanwhile, a full trial unfolded in
Kasmirics Court in January. Not surprisingly, he ruled in favor of West Texas A and M. He said that the student group had not proven that the show was meant to convey a message that might be protected by the First Amendment, and that by their nature, drag shows have sexualized content and the university had the right to regulate on campus grounds. The hearing before the full Fifth Circuit was canceled, although Spectrum's legal team at the Foundation for
Individual Rights and Expression plans a different appeal. On twenty fifth, a panel of the Fifth Circuit also upheld a new state ban on certain types of drag performances. Judge Kurt Engelhardt, appointed to the Fifth Circuit by President Donald Trump, expressed doubt that such shows were protected by the Constitution, especially said quote in the presence of miners.
While the Fifth Circuit chipped away at free speech rights or the LGBTQ plus community, the advanced the rights of
states to impose speech on public school teachers. The full court by a twelve to sixth margin, lifted a district court's hold on a Louisiana state law requiring teachers to display post or size copies of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms in spite of the First Amendments prohibition establishing a state religion or requiring religious practice in the efforts of the founders of the American Republic, liked time Ms. Jefferson direct a wall of separation between church and state.
James Host celebrated the decision. The Louisiana law was the only constitutional Host said it quote affirms our nation's highest and most noble traditions. That claim left Professor u baffled.
The question is is he a historian when he said that the founding members of this country would like that?
What historical record is he relying on?
But isn't that even anti common knowledge that our founders would really resent that To push our newly establed republic to a situation where we push our citizens to bleeding certain things religiously, that is exactly the reason why they left Europe.
The Fifth Circuit has presented a threat not only to the separation of church and state, free speech, and LGBTQ plus rights, but it's also placed the rights of workers
in its crosshairs. On Angust nineteenth, the United States Fifth Circuit of Appeals upheld an injunction requested by attorneys for Elon Musk's SpaceX Corporation, ruling that the structure of the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional and prohibiting it from acting against that company and two other corporations the NLRB
charged with labor law violations. As has often happened, the Fifth Circuit court ruling conflicts with that of another circuit court, the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the power granted by the NLRB. This split almost certainly guarantees the case will end up in front of a Supreme Court that has been no friend of American workers.
On rare occasions, the Fifth Circuit might still acknowledge as society is tilted against the poor and people of color. A panel made up of Fifth Circuit judges ruled that Lebine Conan could proceed with our lawsuit against the United States Post Office, a landlord who owns two properties in Uless,
a suburb between Dallas and for Worth. Conan claimed that, beginning in twenty twenty two, law postal employees abruptly stopped delivering mail, first to her and then to her tenants, because she said they didn't like the idea that a black person owned the properties.
The Post Office is mostly shielded from lawsuits by a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, under which, as legal analyst Ellie ms Dall explains, quote, the government cannot be held liable for monetary damages arising out of actions taken by the government. What was unique about the United States Postal Service Bucanan case, however, was that in this circumstance, the
government was causing intentional damage to a private citizen. This time, the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of a marginalized citizen and ruled the suit could go forward. This rare progressive ruling was for not. However, the Supreme Court overturned the
Fifth Circuit once again. Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the five four majority, essentially ruling, as miss Stalls summarized the case, quote that the post officers immune from liability even when its workers intentionally refused to do their jobs. Misstall suggested that this decision carries ominous implications for the upcoming election should the US Postal Service, for instance, refuse to deliver mail in ballots in spite of james Hosts
status as an immigrant. His most alarming opinion might be regarding birthright citizenship. Ratified in eighteen sixty eight, just three years after the end of the Civil War, fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution declares in its opening sentence that quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the state wherein they reside. For one hundred and twenty eight years, Supreme Court has rejected claims that citizenship can be denied to persons born or naturalized here based on their race or the immigration status of their parents. In the eighteen ninety eight United States versus Huang Kim Ar case, the Supreme Court upheld the citizenship of a man born in the United States to
Chinese parents. The government tried to block Arc from returning to the United States after he visited China, based on the eighteen a two Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the Chinese from immigrating here. The Court ruled sixth to two that ARC's birth in the United States established his American citizenship and his right to reside here. James Hoe has not always attacked the concept of birthright citizenship, and in fact, he used to defend it.
Quote.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right no less for the children of undocumented persons than for the descendants of passengers of the Mayflower, Hoe said in a two thousand and seven opinion piece for the Des Moines Registered.
However, as the political wins shifted strongly against immigrants, particularly in the Trump era, Hoe is also tilted in a dramatically different direction. In a twenty twenty four interview, Hoe claimed that the United States was being invaded by the foreign born, and that denying citizenship to the children of the undocumented was necessary to defend national sovereignty.
Hoe said, birthright citizenship obviously doesn't apply in case of war or invasion. No one, to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship, and I can't imagine what the legal argument for that would be. It's like the debate over unlawful combatants.
After nine to eleven, everyone agrees that birthright citizenship doesn't apply to the children of lawful combatants, and it's hard to see anyone arguing that unlawful combatants should be treated more favorably than lawful combatants.
The question of birthright citizenship might now be out of the hands of Hoe and the rest of the Fifth Circuit. On December fifth, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of Donald Trump's executive order that would deny citizenship to those born in the United States if their parents were in the country temporarily or lack
legal status. Doctor you thinks that the Supreme Court is likely to accommodate those restrictions, even as they reject James Hoe's more extreme theories.
I think that Supreme Court would roll back some portion of the Fourteenth Amendment protection over people who are born in this country.
But I don't think they are.
Going to what justice Hoe is going after, that is the invasion theory.
That doesn't mean that James Hoe may not one day bring his extreme views on immigration to the nation's highest court. The two most far right judges on the United States Supreme Court are James Hoe's mentor, Clarence Thomas, who turns seventy eight on June twenty third, and Samuel Alito, who celebrates his seventy sixth birthday on April first. Court watchers are speculating that Alita might step down as early as October.
His wife, Martha Anne, has expressed eager anticipation that the couple might soon be able to openly exp rest their political views. As though the Alito's opinions have ever been a mystery, It's still an uphill battle, but the odds of Democrats retaking the Senate after the off here elections have improved significantly in recent weeks. Alita may want to retire, while a Republican controlled Senate would still be able a rubber stamp Trump's choice for his successor.
Alito also has a book coming out on October sixth, the day after the Supreme Court starts its fall term. Continuing to serve on the Court would interfere with any book promotion tour. Such an opening might lead to James Hoe getting a promotion, but Professor Hugh said that the
Fifth Court judge shouldn't pack his bags just yet. Trump has largely outsourced the job of picking new federal judges or promoting them to the far right Federal Society, and you think that Home might lack the polish that a powerful lobbying group would see.
I think, you know, it's not a secret that he's trying to get there, but I honestly think it's not going to be him. He does inter fit into the full file of a person who would get there. I think the Festoc, you know, the Federally Society is basically the handler of that situation.
They would be able to.
You know, screen in and you know, make short list to the White House. And so what kind of people they're looking for. I think that they're definitely looking for a conservative. If a little is going away right, Uh,
They're looking for a conservative. But I don't think Justice Whole is in their favor because I think they are trying to find another person who is more sophisticated than Justice Whole, if I may say, may say that they wanted to find a person who is definitely a conservative but being able to rewrap the message with with academic legitimacy and to forge a need for majority at the Court to push through their agenda.
Recently, Trump said he was considering Ted Cruz of Texas for the next Supreme Court vacancy. If so, James Hoe may be enjoying his lifetime post at the Fifth Circuit for the foreseeable future. Hoe celebrated his fifty third birthday
on February twenty seventh. That means his legal philosophy will shape gay and trans writes the limits of free speech, who can buy firearms and where, and how how much autonomy women have over their bodies, and what access they will enjoy the healthcare and where the boundaries will be
drawn between church and state for years to come. Hoe may not make it to the Supreme Court, but he could still be the loudest voice on the scariest court in America and shape the future of forty million Americans in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi for decades to come.
We'd like to thank our friend Steve Mason for providing some of the voices today. This is Stephen Manchelly for it could happen here, and this.
Is Michael Phillips. Until next time, Thanks for listening.
Hello everyone, welcome to That could Happen Here.
My name is Dana L.
Kurd. I'm a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics, and today I'm joined by Ilia Ayub.
Would like to introduce yourself.
Yeah, yeah, hi Danna, thank you for having me. My name is Idiah. I'm emotioning it from Lebanon. My background is in both history and journalism, and I often write about the region and more support Palestinian and I also write a lot about this aid in Palestine, and obviously in the past few years I've been covering and also worrying a lot about what's been happening.
Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, especially at such a difficult time for the listeners. We are recording March twenty second, twenty twenty six, and is Uel's attack on Lebanon is ongoing. So we're really grateful to Elia for joining us and talking to us about what this means and what we're seeing on the ground. Yeah, So maybe I'll start there. Can you lay out for the listener what is happening in Lebanon right now?
So what's been happening in Lebanon?
Is that really connected to the US Israeli war on Iran which started what about twenty two twenty three days ago something like that, That was in itself in the context of negotiations between Americans and the Ionians in Switzerland mediated by Arman, and just moments later, really that same night, the bombing of Iran started.
In Lebanon, or rather the way Lebanon enters.
This story is a couple of days after the assassination of Chraminid atl of Ion has Boler launched the cockets towards Israel. And this was used by the Israelis as effectively them saying that we will only head on Lebanon.
And that's often how it's been reported. What is often missed even in that context I mean, is that there was a so called ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, and Hasball obviously for thirteen months before that, but that so called seasfire, the reason what I'm saying, so called seasfire had already been violated by the Israelis. And this is the figures that come from the uniform the unp Is keeping forces in Lebanon over fifteen thousand times, whereas they themselves.
In fact, even the BBC today I saw an article today I acknowledged that has Bulah had not violated the ceasefire, which you know is just I guess still is. You're also where the where the mood is add inters of the coverage since then, like in the past three weeks, the hell and this term was used by israel officials themselves that has been unleashed on Lebanon has been unprecedented, and even even by Israeli wars on Lebanon standards, which
is saying a lot. As of time of recording, at least twenty percent of the entirety of Lebanon has already been displaced, and for the most part, these are people that had already experienced this placement at least once in twenty twenty four when this war started, if not older patterns of displacements going back to the Civil War and the Israeli occupy of South Lebanon in the eighties and
nineties and so on. And pretty unclear where this is headed because just hours before we even started recording, they escalated their bombings of bridges connecting South Lebanon to the Gust of Lebanon, which is over the Littonia River, which is one of the rivers in the south, as part of the attempt to cut off the entire region of Lebanon,
of South Lebanon from the rest of the country. And yeah, we can get into oftenly more of the details and the impact that this is having on Lebanon itself, of course, because this tends to be unfortunately like not covered.
A much, Yeah, thank you, So to kind of summarize, because they decided to launch a war against Iran, and obviously there's so much to say about that, we're not going to be able to address every aspect of this conflict. But because of that, and after particularly the assassination of the Ayatola Hasbolo launch rockets, and then the Israelis, who had already been breaking the seasefire between them and Hesbola that had emerged over the past year, decided to kind
of ramp up their attacks. And when we say ramp up their attacks, you know, you've mentioned like the destruction of infrastructure, cutting off the south, basically clearing villages, et cetera. The Israeli officials, including Natanya, who have said they want to impose what they called the Gaza.
Model on Lebanon.
So what can we understand from from this kind of comment?
Yeah, thank you.
It's important to note that such comments are not new at all, and they have also been uttered in times of quote unquote peace. So when there isn't any kind of active conflict in my own article for nine seven two, which I wrote about it, don't know two weeks ago. So I quote in a number of those politicians, and I'll just mention a few of them. Here you have Galant, who has of course since been and still has in against warrant by the International Comment Court. He's hadned to
send up on back to the Stone Agent. This was in November twenty twenty four. The Diaspora Affairs Minister Amishai quickly declared in September twenty twenty four that n quote does not mean the definition of a state, and he described all of the Shia population of Lebanon as quote unquote hostile, which is genocide the language by definition. And even about what two or three weeks ago, so smart Hitch who was one of kind of the main for great politicians in Israel today said that very soonly some
un quoting, very soon Dahi will resemble Harne Newness. Dahi being the southern suburb of Bayhood where a lot there's a lot of support for has Bola and has always been talked about by the Israelis as like one of
the quote blas songholds. In fact, they pioneered you might say that Dahi doctrine in two thousand and six, so named after Dahi, and there was a war in two thousand and six as well, Pteninsula has Butla, which is quite explicitly a policy of bombing civilian infrastructure in order to put pressure on the enemy.
In this crist As Butler, which is basically in.
Acknowledgment that they viorate international law as state policy. And on March eleven, a member of the Pignesset for the same party of smot Riach said, and I'm quoting, we must conquer territory in southern Lebanon, destroy villages there and annex the territory to the state of Israel.
End quote. There's another one.
Gadi Eisencote, who was the former chief of staff of the Israelia Media Idea, said around the same time, I think it was a couple of weeks ago.
Quote the dog Hit.
Doctine has never been more relevant than right now, and it must be implemented end quote.
Die here doctrine being the one that I just mentioned.
And this is I said, not new, whether in the context of talking about Palestinians in the res a long before the ongoing genocide, whether in the context of talking about the Lebanese and so on, there has been this stain of open utterances of genocidal framing on behalf of like Israeli politicians and military leaders. One needs to notice to understand why they act in certain ways in Lebanon. If it was just about like you know, targeting their enemies or whatever, that would be like one one way
of doing warfare. But it will then explain like detonating entire villages as they've been doing during the so ceasefire. It wouldn't explainplaining herbicide, which they did about a month ago over like large parts of Stuft Lebanon, including parts of Celia for that matter, which killed cops and so on. It would explain them not allowing farmers to harvest their cops. Know,
it would explain all of these things. What would explain all of these things is if you take into account what they say the intentions are in Lebanon or the valley is what they want it to happen in Lebanon.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, it really seems like the Israeli policy, especially now that there's been really no accountability for what happened in Gaza. It's like basically to pursue maximum violence, including against civilians, and create I think kind of like a no man's land buffer zone around Israel. Now, there are some elements of Israeli society that are like religious scientists, like messianic
types who want to like settle and like expand. But aside from those those people, like I think even we would call like centrists in or like the liberals in Israel are like, okay, well, yeah, we do need we do need a buffers, so we need a flatten gaza.
We need to flatten Southern Lebanon.
And what this translates to, I mean in Lebanon in particular is I think you know, some estimates say over a thousand have been killed in just the past like two and a half weeks. Yeah, and then millions displaced.
Right, Yeah, twenty percent of the country.
Lebanon is one of the smallest countries in the world, and South Lebanon is one of the only regions in the country that you might call like a bread basket in terms of agriculture. So yeah, twenty percent of the population has already been in this place, and those are those that could be registered.
You can imagine number as being higher than that.
And as I said, like a lot of those people have already been displaced a number of times before, even in twenty twenty four when there was the kind of the initial escalation, but many of them even going back to two thousand and six when there was the war, and in some cases even further back in the eighties and nineties when day is Lightlies occupied southern Lebanon. And I guess this is really important to note because obviously what's happening today is connected to the war on Iran.
Of course it's directly connected.
But if one only knows this, I think we missed what I would describe as a bit of an israel obsession with Lebanon specifically for a long time.
There's like historical roots to all of this.
It even goes back to the Israelis like having ties with like the local Christian far right in the sixties, especially as the seventies and.
Eighties, like during the civil war, during the Civil.
War in Lebanon, and a bit of this almost I mean ideological thing of like we will focus on the non Muslims and hope that they're on our side, that sort of thing, which is a policy that these Raelies have done within is A Palestine and in Syria. You know, this is an ongoing thing as well, and so on
and so forth. I really want to emphasize this because I have had the experience when I hit a lot of the coverage and you know, listen to podcasts what have you that even among people who don't support the state of is read who are very critical of it, there tends to be understandably because Lebanon is less powerful than Iran, as you know, not as influential on a global scene or whatnot. But there's usually a tendency to link what happens in Lebanon directly to what's happening in Yon.
And this has been two in the past few weeks. And as I said, says, of course partly the cases, it's not like completely un irrelevant. Has Bala did even stated that the reason why they launched those cockets was to avenge the assassination of Dietolus, of course is directly created.
But there's all of this, like why they're in all the context that can help at the very least explain why the Asaetias are doing that in Lebanon and also help extain what's happening to Lebanon itself, which tends to be not as focused on.
I mean, yeah, let's discuss for a moment where Lebanon was before these latest attacks, before the ceasefire, before October seventh. For the Lebanese people, it has been increasingly unlivable. There's been a financial crisis and economic crisis. Lebanon has hosted
huge amounts of refugees from Syria from Palestine. Continues to these conditions now where effectively like what like half of the country is like inaccessible or some large portion of the country is inaccessible, The capital city is being bombed,
residential buildings, like there's nothing kind of off limits. What is the situation now for for regular people who first and foremost have not had any kind of like sense of accountability from their own government and have had also his Babla sort of you know, acting unilaterally in some ways. Obviously this does not excuse it's really actions in any way. But what's the kind of like sense of emotion right now among Lebanese people?
I mean, despair is I guess one word to describe it. There's there's definitely a sense of helplessness. His bubble is not a popular party in the country in terms of like the percentage of the population there is in actions, whether this one or like after October seventh, the decision to join the war was unpopular.
Instead it is unpopular.
There's something that the Israelis are trying to capitalize on, obviously, either because they want to just descoy the party, you because as part of doing that they also want to destabilize all of Lebanon sort of that both of those things are happening at the same time. The current government in Leblon is led by the guy who was the head of the ICJ when South Africa had started this case of accusing is that of genocide like a year or so ago. So he's by no means a naive
of what Israeli intentions are. But I think what's really important to understand of what's kind of the mood of the country is the sense that no matter what we decide as a nation, it's completely out of our hands.
And this goes beyond even questions related to has Buddler and has Bula's actions, because, as I said, even when Hesbula does not launch cockets or whatnot, the Israeli Is continue to violence as far as anyway, they in coach Land anyway, they dynamite entire villages anyway, they sprayed those herbicides and so on and so on anyway, And it's one of those things that it's also important to know this to understand why there are people, for example, in
South Lebanon that, regardless of their personal feelings towards his bud Law, don't see any alternatives because in fact there are none. Something that I know isn't talked about as much and certainly not covered as much, is the fact that the armed force that is supposed to be the alternative to Hasbola. The thing that we hear about all the time that the Americans what they want is for Hasbola to be disarmed and for the Lebanese army to
take over, and so on and so forth. And this is basically the stated goal of the entire world in a sense, but is a good chunk of it, and in fact it's officially the stated policy of the Liberines state itself. That is their intention as far as like their public declarations and so on, and they have made certain moves to that end as well. But the Libanese army is the army of a very poor country that
has been in economic crisis for a long time. When we had wildfires in twenty nineteen, there wasn't even enough like equipment to tackle them, and like foreign government had to donate helicopters and stuff like that. And that Libanese army is also heavily subsidized, if you want to say, like funded in any case by the United States itself, the same United States that obviously heavily funds and arms
the Israelis. Of course, the weapons that the Lebanese get is nothing compared to the weapons that the Israelis get. There's no such thing as an iron dome in Lebanon. None of these things are available to the Lebanese. And so effectively, what is being asked off Lebanon itself, and especially of South Lebanon, of the Ahia and East Lebanon, ultimately of all of Lebanon, is that just accept your fate.
Just accept that there's nothing you can do about the Israel least, there's nothing you can do about their actions
in Lebanon proper. I'm not even talking about any actions like rockets towards this, and I'm talking to their actions in Lebanon itself and they're also asking has wella for example, to this arm which in itself I am not opposed to, but in the context of what has been happening, in the context of what's happening now, I think it's ludicrous to imagine that people in any context, like in South Lebanon, who have decades now long experience of seeing Israeli occupation,
of seeing Israeli troops on their lands, no matter like multiple different you know, different prime ministers in Israel taking the charge and whatnot, but that continuing to be this kind of almost eternal fact. In a sense at least, that's how that's how it feels they're being asked to just disarm and hope for the best. That's really like
effectively the policy towards Lebanon at the moment. Like I saw an interview with one of the French ministers a few few days ago, and she was asked like, why aren't we doing more to help Lebanon by someone in the audience or whatever, and she said that, like, we're sending humanitarian aid, and we have UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon and so on, UNIFUIL forces those and peace keeping forces.
As I said, don't have a legal right to even retaliate against the Israels, including when Israel bombs them, which it has done at least twice in the past few weeks. The Lebanese army really engages with Israelis, they don't even have the means in the first place, And so what
do people expected to do? And this is sort of the context in which everything else almost doesn't matter, Like in terms of whether you personally like the Hasiboddla, I certainly don't, and whatever, like ones personal feelings or even politics is towards a political party because they're also members of the Lebanese Parliament, towards the state itself. It is that it really feels it ultimately, it's like out of
our hands. And this is like a component of this entire thing that I really see, to be honest discussed as though like there are like two sides to the story, or like two equal armed actors for that even none on like equal states for that matter, and it's just not the case.
Yeah, thank you so much for laying that out like that. I think that you're right that it's not well acknowledged how disempowered the international community basically expects people in the region, including the Lebanese, to behave and like accept the fact that they are collateral damage in Israel's you know, perpetual desire for domination. American political scientist Nathan Brown just published this article called Israel's Forever Wars for the Carnegie Domat.
His argument is that there's been a shift in the Israeli policy where he says it used to be the domination and diplomacy have long blended in Israeli statecraft, and today he says, they've been eclipsed by something Harsher quote a preference for domination, degradation and the prevention of the
adversaries recovery. I mean, I think he's right, though, I think that we've seen kind of a at least a lower intensity, maybe not as high intensity, but we've seen a long scale policy of domination even before this moment. But I think this moment does definitely bring it out, which brings me to my question of like for Hesbola in particular, in the last year two years, like, there
have been assassinations, we saw the Pager attack. You know, it seems that Hesbola has been very effectively weakened, and since the Israelians are now kind of going all out. What do you think is going to happen to Hezbolas as a group, set aside perhaps their public support or you know, lack thereof.
So it's important to note that Hezbola comes from a certain context, are they as in the context of South lebanojing the isla ocupation of South Lebanon. There goes as the alternative to existing parties that were either seen as to complicity with the Israelis or maybe too weak or complacent or whatnot. And essentially because there was a need
for something like has Ball at the time. And again this is completely regardless of my personal opposition to a lot of their politics, whether it's in Lebanon or especially in Syria. But that question, if you're going to call it the Lebanese question, it's completely being side stepped.
It's not being tackled whatsoever.
And in fact it's not that dissimilar I think from the Israeli attempt to erase or high to pretend as of the Palestinian question as well as can be completely side stepped. But they can just continue to pursue this policy of just complete domination, as you said, you know, make these Applemic codeas with the UEE and other some of the other Arab states, for example, without any mentions of Palestine and Palestinians and so on and so forth.
And in the case of Lebanon is like less official because there isn't that component, but sort of the spirit of it is pretty similar. There is a sort of like illegally legalistic framework of the Land for Peace, and I think explaining that at least briefly would I think could actualize the quote that even you just read out to us here that you know, the Israelis occupied Arab terriatories in nineteen sixty seven. Palestinitary there obviously they're being
guzz at the West Bank, and is Jerusalem. Egypt, of course was the Sinai and Ciria was and still is the Golden Heights. And so that the Land for Peace quote unquote worked. In the case of Egypt, they occupied the Sinai and then as part of a peace deal with Egypt they returned the Sinai to the Egyptians.
It didn't happen with Syria.
The Sian Golden Heights have been occupied since nineteen sixty seven, were effectively the factor annexed in nineteen eighty one. They've been annexed for so long that Smotrich himself was born
in an illegal settlement in the Sying Golden Heights. And I'm mentioning this because the Lebanese state, the Prime Minister I mentioned earlier about what a week ago, ten days ago or so, said that he's hoping for a Land for Peace framework, which to me shows just how desperate even they are, like they don't know what to do,
they have no options in front of them. So what they're hoping is that by doing all of these things public declarations against hezball law I, declaining some of the activities illegal by I think like a few days ago they said that the media cannot call them the resistance, for example, which is there in Arabic how they would be referred to, and so on and so forth, these attempts to placate the Americans especially, and so on, and maybe like show that you know, we're doing something about.
This, can you stop?
The Israelis essentially haven't achieved anything there is really have just escalated, continue to escalate, continue to bomb more and more and more larger in larger parts of the country. But that Land for Peace framework which is the frame of since the sixties basically is as far as I can tell right now, the only thing that the Debanese
government hope that they can even use. But the difficulty in all of that, like a, I don't think it's it's realistic because of the same example, like they haven't they have never given up their Golden Heights. I don't see any reason why they would if they do decide to occupy all the stuth Lebanon. And also because the shift and this is what you're referring to with that code of that person you mentioned, the shift in Israeli
politics in the past few decades. Isn't even that if you might call it strategic that like we're going to do the thing even if it's illegal. We're going to occupy land if it's illegal. But sort of like the ultimate purpose of it is something that resembles some kind of diplomatic negotiation. It's domination almost for its own sake. There is no end goal necessarily. You mentioned there of course religious Zionists, but you also have others that are
not interested in settlements. They're just interested in destroying the land, like destroying having this so called buffer zone, which is a euphemism for just in no man's lands, just destroying everything. And so the policy can shift in a sense, but the intention is to just try and dominate for as long as possible for its own sake. And this is a wider pattern in Israeli politics that I don't know
how well understood. It is maybe a bit more now than before, because even before the ongoing war you unstarted theft. Tally Bennet, who was the Prime Minister of Israel and reportedly wants to replace Natanya, who in the upcoming elections,
said that Turkey is the next Evon. But virtually any Israeli paper center and further to the right, which is most of them, you read them, there is someone who has at some point in this I'm not talking to this a random person, I'm talking like a high ranking politician and military official at some point this hype like Turkey as being next. And what needs to be understood with all of this is not or can they actually do this or whatnot?
Because maybe they can't. I don't know.
I hope we never find out, but it's that like they can't stop. It's becoming an end in itself. There has to be an enemy there has to be a constant creation almost of like an external enemy in like in Israeli political discourse today, because nothing else works in Italy politics.
And this is a shift in Isaeli politics in the past.
I'm going to say, I don't know, two three decades, don't know how one would start counting that shift. And it does go back to the Palestinian question, and in the sense of like them not wanting to address it at all, not even pretending that they're going to, because they've been pretending, you know, obviously not actually doing it, but even pretending that, you know, they were doing so
with the Austro accord and whatnot. There isn't even that I think it's useful to understand their attitude towards Lebanon as at least in part, a continuation of that attitude towards Palestinians, and in many ways, like the Palestine question itself, he means the one that they want to avoid at all costs, and whatever that means, bombing Iran, bombing Lebanon, bombing other countries later I don't know, obviously bombing year they've already done it, you know, and so on and so forth.
Genocide as a tool of concept management.
Yeah, yeah, it's just domination, I said, for its own sake, because they can't imagine any kind of other alternative, and they haven't had a need to do so, because you know, as you said, they've gotten away with a livestream genocide for over two years now, why would they think differently about Lebanon, a very poor country that you know, doesn't have that many resources and whatnot. Which isn't to say that they would succeed and they will win and so on.
But what they've been saying this is the intention.
I think that's very valid.
I mean, it's not a coincidence you said, you know, you would try to trace it back to like the past two or three decades. It's not a coincidence that this mentality and this you know, reorientation of Israel's entire policy especially comes after the end of the Second Pausani Intfalda and then not even just no meaningful negotiations, no negotiations at all. Like you said, there was the Land for Peace mantra. The idea with that is that they were going to get peace if they give back land.
But the underlying assumption of that is that they would be held accountable by the international community by their own allies. After the Second Intafauda, basically the Americans and the international community gave up, essentially even pretending that Palestinians would ever get anything. This has culminated now and Israel that as you said, it's domination for domination's sake, and they think that they can maintain control in this way. Now Turkey
is going to be a different beast than Iran. Turkey's and NATO member. But as we've seen in the last couple of weeks, like they don't care about blowing up the entire region, they don't care about the Strait up Hormus being closed, they don't care about oil fields being attacked, and they don't care about you know, the global economy tanking. Like it's not inconceivable that they attack Turkey, even if the outcome might be different or we might see like
further escalations, it's not inconceivable. And now I just want to point this out the very kind of pro Israel think tank in Washington, the Foundation for the Defensive Democracy. Their new line now is to say land for peace is outdated. Now we need to pursue instead peace for land, Yeah, which means acceptance of Zionism earns these people a right to govern themselves.
It's a politicular vision that does not see the other as humans, as having agency, as as as deserving anything. It's not like they have an opposing side on an opponent that they want to defeat, but ultimately have some kind of settlement or or and move beyond that or whatnot.
There is no long term plan, is what I'm trying to say, I guess.
And maybe to emphasize a bit more in the case in the case of Lebinon, like, so, what happens next for Hesbela, for example, I'm not entirely sure.
I don't I don't think anyone really knows.
It's it seems clear that the Israelis underestimated their capabilities. But to what extent that will matter if the Israels continue to just bomb and bomb and bomb Lebanon for weeks on end, if not on end, and so on, I can't tell. What I can tell is that in the same way as the Israelis want to ignore the Palestinian question, but it's still it's still there. It haunts them in a way because I work onontology, and in case of Lebanon.
There is also that in many ways that.
If you look at the shift in this course, even within Israeli politics from like let's say seventies, but especially
eighties onwards. I'm not going to say it was never good, but there was a stronger component of the Israeli politicians, let's say, like a higher percentage of them anyway, that were, for lack of a better term, pragmatic that we're willing to have concessions, that we're wanting to have whatever, because if only because they just did not want to deal with like occupying a foreign country that they had no intention to legally annexed, as they did with the legally
none of this is legal, but like within Israel law, I mean, as they did with the Golden Heights. And so that's what I'm saying in the case of Lebanon, that it's almost like the worst case scenario is what's currently happening.
And that's like completely.
Regardless of what happens to Hesbola, because Hezbola can disappeared tomorrow and the problem will continue to be the same, if not just get worse. The country has no economy to speak of, the currency was already devalued during the economic crisis, was one of the.
Highest value in the world.
And there are no prospects going forward in terms of like making this accountry that can even sustain itself. It's already very like import dependent. But if you exclude the South Lebanon and it being a bread basket, East Lebanon as well, by the way, it's also a bread basket, and that's another aa of Lebanon that the realies have been constantly bombarding, to paraphrase, that is really ministered that like,
Lebanon is not a state, it's not a nation. It doesn't, it doesn't, it's just a place that's on the map.
And that will.
Pose a problem obviously first and foremost for us, like for the Lebanese and people who live in Lebanon, but it's also a problem geopolitically. It's a problem internationally. It will freak out the EU in terms of the refugee crisis because the EU has actually counted on Lebanon to keep a lot of people in Lebanon. They extend like a billion euros. I think it was two or three years ago or something like that. I got about it twitches a year at the time. Actually because Lebanon had
the highest percentage maybe still does now. I don't know of refugees per capital, so to speak, like compared to citizens in the world one million or so sceneor refugees with got three five million Lebanese or something like that along those lines.
There's no census in Lebanon.
So I'm saying all of this to sort of emphasize the why there is this sense of despair in the country and why if that's not even remotely addressed. Whatever fires we're seeing now, whatever like hors we're seeing, I just don't see any any way. They will stop anytime soon, whatever happens, even to his bottle next. There's no reason to imagine that some other group wouldn't be formed at some point because people live there, people are from that lane.
We're talking about a million people. They have nowhere else to go. It's not like the Lebanese passport is so good that you can just you know, go on a flight and go so but there's nowhere else. They're just going to stay in Lebanon, and many of them would want to, of course go back to South Lebanon.
This problem is not going away.
But if you hear the rhetoric of your Nitanyajo, you're you're in your other politicians, like this is not part of the picture. This has nothing to do with what their intentions are. They're exclusively talking to other Israelis. Is not whether we should destroy South Lebanon or whether we should destroy Lebanon itself.
The debate is what do we do once it's destroyed?
And even that it is barely a debate, but like that's the extent of where it goes in terms of like it's really discourse. And yeah, I guess maybe just to drive the point home that if the Israelis themselves are not stopped in one way or another by their allies, obvious the America has the biggest leverage, or the EU being the second closest one in one way or another, whatever the means are. Economic boycott withdrawing your ambassador as
Pain has done a couple of weeks ago. But just like on a global scale, like even maybe dwarfing the and the boycott campaign against Aparthe South Africa at the time, this problem is just going to expand, and people in listening to this of course see that seeing version of that Iran can just close the strait of Homus and then suddenly everyone this is everyone's problem is well and America bombing those oil depots, and of course Elon has
also done that in retaliation, but proportionately still more the Americans in this Ali has polluted like I forgot the number, but like the equivalent of like eighty four countries combined in terms of like the toxins release in these are things that people in Iran are breathing in. And the entire region relies on design nation plants. And the Americans bombed one in Iran, Iran retaliated and bombed another one
in Bahrain. If that continues, who knows. There's been increasing attems, not as attems, actually strikes, including just yesterday against like nuclear facilities or like close enough to nuclear facilities, so who knows what would have happen.
Then to say it's out of control.
Would be like meaningless at this point, But there are levels of where this can go. And Lebanon is in a sense like deceivingly small. There's a book Would Beware of Small States that talks about Lebanon because a lot
of the world is happening in Lebanon. To put it to kind of put it maybe metaphorically, and the trends that are being done to the Lebanese or two people in Lebanon, like the DOJ doctrine in two thousand and six was then used in Gaza, obviously, and now they're saying that they're going to use the Gaza methodology in Lebanon's. It's like it came back to Lebanon in a sense.
But the point is that this will continue. There is no objective reason to believe that if has Bola is destroyed and completely disarmed and what have you, that this problem is going to go away, because if anything, a new beast of some kind is going to be to be created in the fires in the same way that
has Bola was hated in the initial ones. And so yeah, the problem ultimately, and I say this as someone who has been campaigning, writing, gotten the death threats from like Hesballa supporters in twenty nineteen when I was as part of the protest, we were beaten up by them. This
comes from no sympathy whatsoever towards them. It's just an acknowledgement, I'm also a historian, that they come from a certain context and if that context is not acknowledged at all, and in fact the conditions that brought them are now much worse than even the eighties. Why would we believe that something else won't come along later on in one way or another. And this no that the Aeties have they're just a buffer zone and then destabilized Lebanon endlessly
or whatever it might be. It also comes from like the sort of imperious hubiists that they believe that this won't harm them in one way or another, that they can endlessly and permanently have enabled to their north that has a lot of armed components and also constantly.
At war or whatever it might be.
It's Hubans, it's imperiadt hubids, and it's also extremely extremely dangerous even beyond just what would happen to people in Lebanon.
Yeah, it's hard to, like you said, underscore how apocalyptic this is turning out to be, whether it's we're worried about the refugee waves that are going to be generated because of this, whether we're worried about the ecological impact, whether we're worried about non state actors, militia groups, violent groups emerging in the future.
Like, on every level, this is not sustainable.
I don't know.
I feel like I'm screaming into a void. Except we've known, We've known, like you said, for decades that this is not sustainable. This is this is not a sustainable situation in the Middle East. And I want people to know that this is not a trumpet problem.
This has long.
Been a problem of American decision makers. Biden in particular, also like bears a lot to blame for this situation. It's just like you said, it's an imperial hubris, both on the part of Israel and the United States. But it's also at its root the fact that they completely dehumanize people in the Middle East, like they don't see them as as human beings that will have human reactions. So, yeah, I'm not saying I'm not adding anything to what you're saying.
I'm just emphasizing here because I'm, you know, as outraged as you.
Yeah.
Yeah, And like the thing is that it's it's sort of the same principle in a sense of the same understanding that also led me to like for years now, to oppose the Ionian regime. It's the same understanding. It's not just that their brutality towards people within Iran of course, but they have. They have engaged in plist campaigns in Cim most notably, but also in Iraq and in Lebanon.
Is like a different kind of thing, but there is that that component of it as well that hasn't contributed to make them like a better opponent of the Israelis or the Americans.
If anything, it's made them weaker. One of the many problems.
But I think the biggest one now is that this is and this is completely regardless of the ethics of the Iranian regime, which I've opposed for several years as well. This has nothing to do with supporting them or excusing their actions or anything like that, but just understanding why the Israelites are acting. Specifically, the Israelis are acting the way they have been acting for years now.
There is this tendency.
I mean, if you go on the Garden for example, now you see like crisis in the Middle East, and you can click on it, and then you just go book years and years and years as though it's the same thing as like you know, it's just displays that has crises, and it's sort of like you expect that this will happen. But as I think people know a bit better. Now the global component of it. This also
has a global ramification. Even the technologies that are being pioneered if you want, by the Israelis and also by the Americans to some extent in places like Gaza, then get exported elsewhere. Palenteer is now going to be a penalty AI is now going to be a core component of the US military. These are things that are like because that's what I mean by like. Lebanon is deceptively small. It's like, it's not important geopolitically for the most part.
But because that is the case, and of course Gaza as well, then it allows it has allowed the Israelis to get away with a lot of things. So maybe this is, I don't know, a cliched or I don't know, it's a meaningless thing to repeat. But the problem really goes back to impunity. The problem really goes back to the fact that nothing the Israelis have ever done, at least in the past several decades, has had any consequences to them, to what they do to the region and
so on. And this is absolutely a biparthisan problem in America. None of this would be possible without the Americans. There's a very good argument to be made that if we're talking about the iscaely occupation of Palestine, we need to say the American is raely occupation of Palestine, the bombing of Lebanon, we need to say. It's also none of this would be physically possible, diplomatically possible, economically possible were it not for this unconditional support that the Israelis have
gotten from the Americans for decades and decades now. If Biden had done anything about Israel's genocide and Gaza, really almost anything, I don't think we would be aware we are today. And so no, this is not a Trump problem. It's just that Trump being Trump is making it much worse. Speeding it up, is just exploding everything even faster, speeding it up and adding new dimensions to it, and so
on and so forth. But the problem goes back to American imperialist hubris, a lot of people not knowing what they're even doing in the region, and the consequences of
it all. So, yeah, I'm not someone who tends to be very pessimistic necessarily and stuff like that, but there's a lot of ways in which what is currently happening in terms of the iscaily and American war on Iran, and it's Gaily war Lebanon and so on that can just go to different levels that I generally, and I'm someone who has report even reported on conflicts for a
long time now, generally struggle to even imagine. And I don't want to stand like I'm just panicking or anything like that, or d is there is a component of that, but it is a real problem that if Israel is not stopped in any way at this point, this will continue and there's no objective reason to believe otherwise.
Yeah, extremely alarming to say the least. But thank you Elia so much for making the time to explain this. I'll link to the fire these times in the show notes. Ilia has a excellent podcast and it's not Lebanon specific. It's kind of an internationalist perspective. For disclosure, I've been on it many times. I've produced some episodes, so yeah, there's not a bias. But it really is a good, very good podcast. In any case, Thank you so much, Ylia, and hopefully we'll have you on on better times.
Thanks, thank thank thank you having me.
Welcome to it could happen here podcasts where a bunch of incredibly convoluted and very silly financial instruments to shore the entire world economy. I am your host, Mia Wong, and with me today is someone who does not spend all of her time deep in the bowels of arcane bullshit written by different Federal Reserve boards. And that is Maldy Conger, who is the host of the absolutely delightful I mean, okay, I guess this is a who is
really winning here kind of christion? In terms of things, research.
Spent a lot of time reading stuff written by Federal Reserve guys. I read a lot of stuff written by guys who want to kill the Federal Reserve guys. Yeah, you know what, I still don't know what the Federal Reserve is, and I'm not gonna find out.
You know, I don't actually think knowing what the Federal Reserve is somehow.
It doesn't change anything.
And I don't think it's actually relevant to this app I mean it kind of. It's obviously it's relevant to everything.
But means to say is the reason I'm here is because I don't know what the economy is, and at this point I'm afraid to find out.
And unfortunately, your worst fears are happening.
Don't worry. By the end of this I will not understand.
I am going to attempt to explain the economy, and by by the economy, I mean shadow banking. Yeah. Also, before before I go into this, though, you should, you should listen to Weird Little Guys. It is. It's it's really good. I like it. All my friends really like it. Thank you. Yeah, it's somehow a come a kind of relaxing show about neo Nazis. So that's got very chill vibes.
Yeah for a show about guys who are trying to like blow up school bus ypes.
Yep. So all right, you know I'm reading this. I'm looking over this script miraculously this isn't Oh wait, hold on, I think I cut the part where people blow up school buses. There was legitimately a segment in here that I might put back in or someone blows up a school bus.
But what a crossover event.
Oh boy, oh boy, the Saudi is really good at that shit. It turns out. Okay, okay, but let let's get back to the topic at hand, which is what is shadow banking and why does it matter to all of us people who live in the normal, real world and not in fake finance world.
Does it have anything to do with shadow wolves?
Unfortunately? No, what about shadow facts? Sadly? Actually they're probably is a connection between the financing for the Lord of the Rings movies and shadow banking. I'm just too tired to work it right now.
I've dragged us off track. If we haven't even gotten on track yet. What is shadow bank?
Okay? So the good news, the good news this this is this is the first. It's not the last piece of good news. We're gonna get this episode. But come, the definition used by most non academics is actually not that bad. There's a pretty good It's very wishy washy because it's a congressional report and so it's specifically not supposed to be taking a stance in either direction on anything because it's it's the Congressional Review Office, and they're
supposed to be neutral, et cetera, et cetera. Allegedly, Yeah, right, you know, and like obviously they're not, but like you know, it's like kind of fine congressional report on the subject. And they do the thing that almost everyone does, which is they go back to the definition created by the Financial Stability Board. And I'm just gonna I'm just gonna
quote that because it's not that bad. Quote financial activities facilitated by institutions other than central banks, banks or public financial institutions.
So it's banking that doesn't involve a bank canceled. I'm out, I'm out already.
Yes, And they.
Don't mean like me loaning you twenty.
Dollars No, no, no, of course not.
They just mean unregulated banking. Oh yeah, which you can't legally call banking.
I mean, you actually can't legally call it banking. It's just things get weird really quickly.
I mean, I'm not a bank understander, but I know, at least in Virginia, you can't incorporate a business that has the word bank in the title unless you are legally a bank, because that's like misleading.
Yeah, I don't think they can legally call themselves a bank, but I guess you can call it banking activity that's stupid in a matter already.
Yes.
Oh, you're going to get so much more mad by the end of this. So the base definition is it's not that complicated, right, It's something that does banking stuff that is legally not a bank, you know, And so we could talk about what what kinds of things is this? Right, It's like private equity firms, it's hedge funds, it's venture capital firms.
So it's like evil stuff that ruins the world for no reason except for like ten guys make money.
Yeah, but it's also you know, pension funds, it's like insurance companies. It's sovereign wealth funds, business development companies, repo markets, broker dealers, special investment vehicles, securitization vehicles, money market mutual funds, assey backed commercial paper conduits.
Hey thing, Bud, Most of those things you just said to me are fake and they make me upset.
It's really bad. Sovereign wealth funds shop that's not that's not me.
I still, you know all these all these things are just like different ways of saying like you're poor and you're gonna die.
Yeah. I mean the funny thing is sovereign wealth fund is like kind of a less fake one in that it's like, hey, this is like sol fake. It's the well, It's like this is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has pooled all of the money it's gotten from its like horrific crimes and put them together into one giant thing, and that's a sovereign wealth fund.
Oh so it's good, it's what you mean.
No, I am a notable. There is, by the way, a camp of people who believe that sovereign wealth funds are like a socialist thing and that you could use them to do socialism.
I'm gonna jump out the window.
I think this is so stupid. Yeah, we haven't even gotten into the nightmare stuff. So remember I was talking about the Financial Stability Board definition in that congressional report right where it's like, okay, this is a bank that does non banking stuff or a non bank that does banking stuff. Sorry, oh, I.
Guess we should say I guess we forgot to say at the top. The reason you're explaining shadow banking to me is because we saw an article last week that what those not banks were putting a stop on withdrawals from their not banks and I didn't know what that meant.
Yeah, that's amazingly, this is so convoluted. We're not even gonna get to that this week, right, But like that why we're exciting, That's why, right, there's like, yeah, there's like there's like a mini bank run going on with these like shadow banks, no banks. Yeah, so we're gonna get into how that can happen and why. But but before we get there, we need to talk about all, right,
to get a sense of the complexity of this. Right, the Congressional report, like the accepted terminology for this is not shadow banks, it.
Is, right, that can't be their official name. That's not their government name.
No, it's it's non bank financial intermediation. Now what the fuck is that? And this is where this episode goes completely off the rails because the components of what count as intermediation are so complicated. I Am not going to try to describe it until literally the end of this I.
Mean, is it like what is Venmo officially?
Really?
Venmo's not a bank, but it provides like financial services.
Actually, I why.
Because it's because it's like a financial intermediary.
Right, Yeah, it might technically be a non bank. I don't know what the regulatory structure is legally about. Yeah, I think I think that technically is.
One score one for MOLI.
Yeah. But okay, so this is this is gonna get really bad. Okay. So when I first started researching this episode, right, the first thing that I click on is is the Federal Reserves chart of how the shadow banking sector works compared to the normal banking sector. Molly, you have seen this because I posted it as a joke in our group chat. This chart. I have like a very very large, like it is like a big, normal ass size monitor
that I like to do my work on. I had to zoom in to three hundred and eighty percent just to make out the letters that label the boxes on this chart. If you want to read it, you have to zoom into five hundred percent.
That doesn't seem like a well made chart.
No, here's the thing. It's actually really good. It's just this complicated. I learned later from a paper by Copenhagen Business School professor Odny Helga Daughter. We're gonna come back to Hellga Daughter's work a lot in this episode, but I learned from from her because she has also experienced seeing this same chart and going what the is this
fuck ass chart? I found out that the Federal Reserve recommends that in order to have the diagram be legible, you're supposed to print this chart as a three foot by four foot poster.
Oh that makes sense, like meeting style, but like we're on easel.
Yeah, right, But like again, this is this is a diagram that he's just labeling the parts of the system and making and making like a line that shows how stuff moves through it.
I guess I still don't know what we're talking about.
Yeah, so this is what we're going to get into in a second. But first we have to talk about something even more bleak, which is that.
Oh.
Yeah, by the way, these like non banking bank things like these like all these like venture capital firms, all these hedge funds, all these fucking weird, ghoulish banks that are off banks. Yeah, they have twice as many assets than the regular banking system. Oh that doesn't seem good. Oh, it's about to get worse. It's about to get worse. Molley'.
That's like saying I keep seventy percent of the food in my house outside on the porch, like it goes in the fridge.
Oh, oh, it's so bad, it's so bad. So okay, there's a pretty good congressional report that I was talking about earlier that has this terrifying quote quote. As of twenty twenty three, the broad measured total financial assets and narrow measure assets at NBFISIS is the shadow banks reached eighty five point seven trillion dollars and twenty two point two trillion dollars, respectively in the United States.
But that's more than our GDP.
That's almost three times our GDP.
So that's a fake amount of money. Yes, that's not real.
At all, but it kind of is. Right. These compared to total financial assets of thirty one point one trillion dollars at banks in the same period. So again this is this is almost three times our GDP in assets that they manage or control. So where does the money live? In a whole bunch of unbelievably convoluted bullshit like combinations of like loans and real estate and stuff like that, not real money.
So like, okay, imagine this is schoolhouse rock and instead of the singing bill, you're like a dollar bill, Like where are you?
We are about to explain this where does the money live? Yeah? So okay, okay, we're we are about one huge paragraphs away from getting to this, or like one paragraph. Okay. So the other thing that's very important about this, and this is something Molly was kind of touching out to the beginning to get the appen So maybe I should have opened with this. Yeah, these people, these are the people who blew up the economy in two thousand and eight.
Well, yeah, because they're making stuff up.
Yeah, it's so, it's so bullshit, Molly, you're gonna get so mad if this is Calvin Ball, fuck you I win. Yeah, it literally is. It's nonsense. It's gibberish. They're doing fucking betting markets with the entire world economy. Oh yeah, we can all do that now. Yeah, it's fun. It's like we we now have the power to do the shit that destroyed the entire world economy in two thousand and eight.
So that The thing about shadow banking, and the reason why it's complicated to explain, is that it's a catch all term for like a million types of institutions that do different things, Right, the commonality they have is that they're all not regulated by the banking regulations.
Right.
It's like, we found a way to do financial crime that's not illegal because they forgot to make this illegal.
Yeah, and you know, but but the thing is it's so embedded into the system that, like the US debt working is dependent on the shadow banks buying it. Like I don't believe in that either. So I'm good. Oh it's so fake, Molly. I'm not even gonna attempt to explain what an o night repo purchases to you, because it's the fakest thing I've ever seen, where they they make one trillion dollars exist overnight and then it stops existing at the end of the night. It's incredible.
I love how much of the economy is based on guys just imagining stuff and agreeing on the thing they imagined and then trading their imaginary tokens like this is fucking POGs.
Grow up, yep, this is this is this is unfortunately, what our entire world is based on. It's so fun. Oh god, Okay, So what is actually shadow banking? I've given you like the broadest definition possible, which is like it again, it's the it's doing bank ship without being a bank. But let's go back to the beginning of the term, which is where most people tend to start or get to eventually. This is from an IMF paper quote.
The term shadow bank was coined by economist Paul McCauley at a two thousand and seven speech at the Annual Financial Symposium hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in jacksonvill Wyoming. And basically it's institutions that borrow money in the short term through money markets to finance long term loans. But they aren't banks, so they can't go through the FED. They're financing loans with other loans. Yeah,
we're gonna so from a not bank. Yeah, but the big loan is from a real bank, and then the little loan is from a fake bank. Give me, none of the money is real. Hold on, hold on, Okay, we're going to get there. We're going to explain this in terms of burgers. It's going to be Okay, I
believe in us perfect, perfect, Yes. But the other thing he describes is, and this is from Helga daughter quote in the speech, she describes shadow banking as the whole alphabet soup of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures.
So what he's talking about specifically is these are the guys who blew up the economy two does eight like these specifically, this is what he's talking about, right, These are the people who took a mortgage and then did a bunch of bullshit to it and what's called a securitization chain. They did a bunch of bullshit to it, so you could give the loan to someone else, you could sell someone else, and this blew up the entire
world economy. That's what she's talking about. He's talking about the banks that are not banks, the shadow banks that did all of this bullshit to turn like someone's mortgage into a fucking thing you could bet on.
So selling debt is like selling the idea of future money. Yeah, and then sometimes that future money doesn't come. Yeah, so it doesn't exist.
So so okay, I will say, you do not need to understand this yet, because we haven't. We still have not already the actual explanation.
I'm never going to.
I believe in us. We can do this. It's not that bad, okay. I'm not torturing your on purpose. I'm
just no, it's okay, I believe in you. So I want to mention that I'm very indebted here to the paper I mentioned earlier from Copenhagen Business School professor Adny Helga Daughter, who wrote of She wrote a very good fight explanation of this in her Review of International Political Economy article called Banking upside Down The Implicit Politics of Shadow Banking expertise, but Okay, as you can tell by the fact that it's called banking upside down, the implicit
politics of shadow banking expertise this has been when she's simplifying it. She's simplifying it from like economists down to like a political scientist or an anthropologist can understand this. I am about to attempt to simplify this down to a regular person. Can I understand this? So I'm drawing on a lot of her stuff for the first part of this explanation, but I am I've turned it into burgers.
So I'll do my best. I'm being very brave.
Okay.
So a shadow bank, right, it's something that does banking shit. That's not a bank. So what do I mean by banking shit?
That was my next question. Yes, I think we need to start with what is a bank?
Yes? So first, so okay, okay, and this is this is where we're starting here. What does a bank do?
I put my money in it and they hold it for me?
So no, actually, and this is the interesting part.
No, they do stuff with it. Oh yeah, they're holding onto the promise of my money.
Yeah.
So okay, let's let's just let's just look at this for a second. So Okay, So regular people give them money to store in the bank. This is called a deposit. The bank takes your money and loans it out right and uses that to make more money. This is how it pays you interest, right, is that it's it's taking your money and it's loaning it out to other to other people, it's buying things with it.
That part I understand.
Yeah, And this is obviously a cartoon image. And I know there's gonna be econ people who are gonna be mad at me. Look you, if you understand, why are.
They listening to this? If you already know what this means, go away. This isn't for you. I'm not humiliating myself for your entertainment, like like for.
The political economy people here. When I say stuff that might that's like technically kind of fuzzy. It's for me the podcast idiot. Yeah, like you you understand this, Like I work at the level of Hamburgers here, so like we have to do some abstractions. So okay, the important thing for our purposes, right, is that there's two things here. Right, There's like the deposit to the money you give them, and then there's the loans, right, and these operates on
different timelines. Right. You can take the deposit out at any time, least in theory, but they can't get the money from the loan back at any time right now. This is like one of the critical things of what a bank is is this timeline thing. Right. It turns your money, which you can take out at any time, into a different kind of thing, this loan, which can't be taken out immediately, right, and then they use that
to make money. So this is called maturity transformation. This is a very simple concept they have made very complicated. This is one of the core aspects of that definition I was talking about earlier. This is one of the four things in it. But you now understand this. It's not that complicated. It's takes short term, make long term, and we'll get to doing the reverse in a second.
Oh, I don't think it works the other way.
It's gonna go so badly, really so badly.
I don't know about bank, but just generally speaking, like in terms of time and like how like material reality works. I don't think it works the other way.
It's it's not great. It's not great, Molly, it's not great. Okay, So okay, there is However, a problem here, right, which is what happens if everyone tries to get their short term money back at the same time.
I only can't, yeah, right, because you have deposit insurance.
Yeah right, because the banks aren't holding short term cash. What they're holding is long term loans. And those loans like you can't pay someone alone. Well okay, actually, this entire the crux of this episode is they faced that they did do that. Yeah, yes, and it blew up the entire world to columy.
But if but if I wanted forty thousand dollars out of my if I had a checking out it was forty thousand dollars in it. Yeah, and they gave me my neighbor's mortgage as a prompt Like that.
Would have worked for me, That would have worked for no fuck that, No no, no, no. You need you need, you need, you need something that can buy a burger, and they're not giving you that. So okay, this is very very bad. If people try to do this, it is called a bank run. It is not good. It's bad. Yeah, And so this this blew up the entire world economy so many goddamn times that eventually we got financial regulation
now this. This regulation requires banks to have money that is like actual cash they can hand you like right now, on hand at all times, and the government gets to and this is that's a little bit simification, but like yeah, that's how.
It works, right, Like, and it's insured by the government.
Yeah, I think the government will give you your money back if if the bank goes under up to like a certain amount of dollars ensured. Yep, this is this this that's that's what that means, right, the government will give you your money back. But also there's a there's a trade off to this. So this is a massive benefit for the banks, right the fact the fact that if they go under, all of their assets will be repaid
by the government. It's a it's a massive benefit for them because it means that putting your money in the bank is like safe.
Yeah, I love that for me, right, Yeah.
It's good. Now. The cost to the banks is that the Feds get to see their balance sheet, right, the Feds get to see what they're doing with their fucking money, and they get to make sure that these banks aren't doing insane shit. Okay, that makes sense because they're insurance. Yeah, and that like they're not doing like unbelievably risky, awful shit, and also that they're actually holding enough money to be able to pay people out right.
Okay, so far, so good, I understand bank.
Yeah. Now, shadow banking boldly asked the question, Okay, but what if you did all of the banking backwards, no one had access to the books, and the governments will only pay you back if the entire world economy looks like it's going to die. I feel like at that.
Point the government should just just step back.
And here's the thing. Here's the thing, right I I I yeah, Like I'm so down with this, Like yeah, I don't know, fuck it, Like every single one of your motherfuckers is gonna pay this off by working as a barista for thirty years, like fuck you. But the government was like, nah, we want like we want capitalism to keep working.
Make every hedge fund manager work at a waffle house.
Yeah, fuck them.
Okay, I'm gonna say something and then I'm gonna make a disclaim. So the kind of shadow banks that did two thousand and eight work in the opposite direction. They start with debt, they take that debt, and they turn that debt into like cash, right.
Can I do that No, does that work for me at my hed No?
So okay, And I also want to mention there's a bunch of other kinds of shadow banks. The kind of shadow bank that's going under right now is not really this. The kind of shadow bank that's like exploding right now is a kind of shadow bank that's like what if a bank that wasn't a bank gave a completely unregulated loan with secret terms to a corporation, And that's the
one that's going under right now. But for a long long time, the kind of shadow bank that was really important to the global economy, and this is still like a massive portion of how all of the economic system works, is these ones where you're trying to take debt and turn it into something you can trade for cash. So, okay,
you take debt, right, you start off with a mortgage. Okay, so these mortgages pay out over the extremely long term, right, But you want to be able to trade this mortgage for cash, right, And this is a process called securitization. Turning this mortgage into something you can sell for cash
is making it into what's called a security. So now what happens right when is packaged into a security when there's a securitization process, and then like the regular bank, the regular bank sends the mortgage to the shadow bank, and the shadow bank like does like stuff and turns it into a security. And now what this means is that instead of you, who paid the more gage, owing money to the bank, you own it to the shadow bank or whoever the fuck the shadow bank sells it to.
Right, Okay, so the real bank is involved, The real bank is involved.
Yes, oh yes, the real bank is making so much money off of this. Is this is why two thousand and eight happened.
Oh because Wells Fargo did this with everybody's mortgage.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, okay.
Because I couldn't figure out because you said this is a two thousand names and I was like, I thought, Wells Fargo did that. That's a real bank. Oh, the real bank was shadow banking.
The real bank figured out a way to sell their mortgages. And it's gonna get much worse as we go through this. But that's what causes this, right, is like turning is turning these mortgages into these like securities and like these like collateralized debt obligations and these like special packaged bullshit that you could sell to someone. So the way I would describe this is it's like, do you know how a bond works? Honestly, Mia, I do not. Okay, we
let's let's do this. We can we can do this. Okay. So the kind of bond that you are normally likely to in character is a government bond. Yeah, okay, So you you pay the government money to buy the bond, and what the bond says is at a certain point in time, you hand it back to the government and they pay you more money.
Right, It's like a promise for later.
Yeah. Right, So it's it's basically a loan, but it's a loan in a form where like the government's technically like selling it. And and then the other thing about bonds, right is if you hand the bond to someone else, well okay, I mean this is technically bear bonds, but like you can you can then give the bond to someone else, and now if they give it back to the government, they get the money in like ten years, they get the money, right, right, Okay, I get that.
And you can sell these things, and this is what these people are doing with mortgages.
That's not as like secured as like a government bond, because if I had one hundred dollars government, like if I have one hundred dollar bearers bond, I know for a fact on the date on the bond, it's going to be worth.
One hundred dollars. Yeah, they're gonna pay out right.
But if it's mortgage, the government's go pay it. But like the mortgage, the property has the work. That's not Yep, that's not real.
That's not money. Nope, yep, that's like that's a that's a promise. But like my hand, it's behind my back. Yeah, it's it's a shit show. And this whole process is the largest sort of I'm not sure if it's actually the largest that I would need to actually get I've never I haven't seen in death breakdown sectorially.
But like, none of this is real. You could just say whatever.
This this is one of the most important kind of shadow banks because in order to turn this mortgage into security the moment you do that, you do this by creating what's called a special purpose vehicle, or someone else creates one. It's called a special purpose vehicle. Yeah, it's it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
I'm gonna put this mortgage on a roller coaster.
Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. Right, it's a special purpose vehicle, is it does a loopy loop. But the moment you create one of these, the moment you create one of these like security mortgages, right, that's a shadow bank. You've created a shadow bank.
Right, because that's not real banking. That's shadow bank.
Yep.
Because because you're creating another entity that is not a bank that's doing the banking stuff.
I thought that the banking and the shadow banking were like separate things, right, because it's shadow like it's like, oh, they're doing.
Non things, they're all in all.
If the bank is the shadow banking, I would I'm stupid, but I would call.
That a crime. This is this is another thing that costs two thousand and eight because a bunch of what was happening. Isn't that a crime? Because our country is run by the bourgeoisie, Molly that that's why it's not a crime. You're just telling me this for the first time. Yeah, it's bad.
So so what what what?
What happened? What happened in two thousand and eight. One of the things that happened, right, is so all of these regulators are supposed to be looking at the balance sheets of these companies, but they're hiding stuff off the books. Yeah, they were hiding these things in these like special purpose vehicles, like in these like shadow banks.
They didn't open the trunks on the special purpose vehicles.
Yeah, so no one could see the fucking dead bodies in the trunks of the vehicles because they weren't on the balance sheet that like the government had access to.
What's the point of the balance sheet if you don't put the whole balance on it.
I'm fucking I don't know. And this is like legitimately when you read the accounts of like why shadow making has exploded, by the way it's exploded since two thousand and eight, it's like way bigger exploded.
Like in popularity, or like exploded as in like distrubularity.
There's so much there's so much more of it. There's so much more of it because also, oh.
Because it went so well, It went so well in two thousand and eight, and now.
We're because here's the thing. After two thousand and eight, we got like a little tiny bit of banking regulation, and the banks lost their fucking minds, and so more and more money went into all of these unhidden shadow making things.
Okay, but so like when a toddler has a tantrum, you don't give them a billion dollars.
When the shadow banks went under, these things were not backed by the government. The government bailed them out anyways. Yeah, they didn't have to do that. Nope.
So they really they learned their lesson. They really learned their lesson this time.
Yeah, Like they bailed out these banks and they fucking sold you out, and like you know, like and one of the things that I think people have forgotten was there's this thing called robocalls durning the Obama administration. Right, part of how the financial recovery happened was that all these banks would like go to courthouses, right, and they would just repossess mortgages on Mass.
Oh.
And they had like a robot that was like signed it. It would just sign like a blank check sign off on all of these mortgages that were supposed to be underwater. And they would just steal people's houses, people who were on top of their payings, people who liked to know money. They would just take their houses. And this happened on Mass And this is like how the banks recovered was they stole everyone's houses and that's a crime, right, it
should have been a crime, like it was illegal. It didn't matter though, because everything you're describing to me as a crime, it's so nightmarish. Well it's here's the thing, most of this of them describing is not a crime. This was actually a crime. But why isn't nobody in jail because Barack Obama went up in front of these people and said, I am the only thing standing between you and the guillotines. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote.
And why didn't he bring the guillotine with him? Because he wants the capital assistant to continue. I mean, I'm just upset. It's not good. Okay, So let's get you another question that you asked, which is why would you do this? Why would you do this to make money? Yes, but it's actually more complicated than that. Oh okay. So on the one hand, these assets, you know, a mortgage does make more money than just putting your money in
the bank. Right, That's like the basis of banking is that they can use your money that's sitting in the bank and getting interested and then they make more money by spending it.
Elsewhere.
But so they're just doing this because they hate us, not just to make money.
No, there is an actual explanation, there's a third reason. So then why would you ever have your money in a bank or like buy something like safe like government bonds you can sell really quickly, right, Why would you ever want that? And the reason why is something called liquidity?
Right.
You want to be able to spend the money, yes, rather than wait thirty years for it to get paid back.
Yes. Liquidity is just how easy is it to turn whatever you own into cash?
Right?
Real money?
Because most of it we're talking about is not money, it's the idea of money.
Yes, so, so liquidity is literally it's the burger test?
Right?
Can you buy a burger with this? Can I eat this? Money? Is like the most liquid asset, right, because you can? You can? You can turn this into a burger?
Right, So liquidity is the only part of this that's actually money. Everything else is not money.
Yeah, well, liquidity is the measure of how money is it? Basically like, how easy is it to turn this into burger?
Is this a special vehicle securitization?
That's not real? Mia, No, it's fake as shit, right, this is not that complicated, right if you if it's like like you can you can buy a burger with ten dollars, yeah, right, that's liquid. Actually you kind of can't these days.
I know.
Look, I look, I imagine a world where you can buy a burger for ten dollars. Imagine imagine a burger, yes, imagine a burger that's purchasable. Now, what you can't buy a burger with is like the ten bucks that a guy you work with owes you for buying him a burger.
Depends on how well you know the burger guy.
Yeah, but that's that's where things get bad. Yeah, right now, the thing is right, right, So the ten bucks the guy you work with like owes you not liquid. You don't have the money in your hands, and if you want to get it from him, you have to like go ask him for the money, and maybe he has ten bucks and maybe he doesn't, right at which point you can't get your ten dollars back until he has the money.
That but then ten dollars that I'm theoretically owed is an asset though I have not a debt.
Yes, okay, yes, it's stupid. Now, Loans loans are not liquid assets, right, and they're not liquid assets because you can't get the money back like immediately.
So I don't have ten dollars I can spend, but on paper, I do have ten theoretical dollars.
Yeah right. And this is also like most of what billionaire money is, hey, correct, Like most of their money is like in like a stock or some shit or like it's weird fake money.
Like they could access this amount of money, but.
They don't have it. Yeah, it's not real now, Okay, there is this question, so why why would you keep your money in fake money instead of real money? And the answer is that it gives you more money back because say you're an asshole, right, and you're charging interest on your coworker for that burger.
Love right, So that ten dollars is actually worth more than ten dollars money. So the ten dollars that I don't have is theoretically worthwll.
You're worth more. Yeah, it's worth more than the money that you do have. I can get cheese on the burger, yes, right. And this is like the fundamental thing of the banking system, Like one of them is that ill liquid assets or like assets that you that aren't money are worth more than money.
I guess like when I put a small amount of my savings into a CD. That's what I'm doing, except normal style. They're doing it weird. Yeah, basically because that's like an I liquid asset that I'm I'm I'm trading the ability to access that liquidity for the POTENTI more money later.
Wait. Sorry when you say do you mean like a like a physical like a disc, like a CD. No, a CD like at the bank, like the yeah yeah, like the investment product. Yeah sure, yeah yeah, Sorry. I was like, no, I'm not talking about buying compact. I would just leave at five am this time. It's been ever heard of it. Wow, there's there's actually a really an annoying thing researching this episode because there's like, so CDOs are like a type of loan that will kind
of get you in a bit. But there's also a tech position called cdo. It's like chief something.
Officer, a dookie officer who cares.
Yeah whatever the fuck? Right, But like when you're trying to search for stuff that's like about CDOs, right, the other one keeps coming up. I hate it. Okay, okay, locking in, locking in, right, lock and load. Now what if you both want into more money and also the ability to buy a burger.
I guess I would uh probably break one of Carl's fingers. This is the guy that owes me the ten dollars, Carl.
Yeah, but even then, and it's hard to even that's like, this is too hard for these people.
I would go to Carl's house and kick him out of it.
Well yeah, so but the other thing is like you are not very rich, okay these people. If you are really really rich, I am talking like billionaires maybe like high high class multimillionaires. Well, you can go to a shadow bank. Oh right, you can get a loan based on the loan. No, well you're saying. So the thing is that you have money, right, but you want to turn your money into more money, Like you have like actual cash, right, like you are you are, for example,
a pension fund. You have a shit ton of cash. Or imagine imagine a pension fund.
Right.
This is okay.
This is also really hard because it used to be easier to explain this because like we used to live in a world where people had pension funds and had mortgages, and now we no longer have pension funds or mortgages.
I live in an apartment, and I will always live in an apartment.
Yeah.
No, and still okay, So like imagine imagine a pension fund. Right, you have a shit ton of money from your members paying into the fund, but it's cash. You need to turn that cash into more money. But also you're a pension fund, so you constantly have to take money back out in order to pay the people who are retiring
to pay old right. Well, yeah, and this is also a thing that like, you know, if you're just like a rich person, sometimes you want your a lot of times you want your money in assets that are like you can you can turn back into real money, but also make you a shit ton of money.
Right.
They need to sort of revolve a little bit theyd be like yeah, I don't know, like a jello like partially liquid.
Yeah, and this is this is what the shadow banks do, right, because the thing that you can buy is one of those mortgages they've turned into like a security. Right, you can go buy someone else's debt, huh, but because it's a magic security now, and these are called mortgage backed securities. And again, if you're to remember, yeah, anything about anything about two thousand and eight, that's what blew up the whole economy. Is these mortgage backed securities?
Yeah, I've heard of that because it was bad, yep, terrible idea, and so we're still doing that.
Oh yeah, it's good. I mean it's it's less specifically the mortgage back ones are less bad as they started doing it with like commercial retail loans, which is incredible. Great, so that's really fun. They're also doing with other unhidden shit that we're gonna do like next episode. And what these people are really buying aren't just these like you're not buying like one person's mortgage, right right. They're like
pooled and like bundled. Yeah, yeah, they like they bundle them all together and then you you buy the rights to a percentage of the pool.
It's not like when you sponsor like an elephant in Africa or something, and they send you a picture of like a specific element, or they don't send you they doesten to a picture of the family you're arming. No, these are the Joneses. You own their fucking house.
Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's it's a ship show. No, well, I mean eventually you might have to go figure out who that is because you like own whatever the fuck percentage of like the mortgages or whatever. But like, okay, so these are these are just like someone else's debt that you're buying, and that the people who can do this are you know, people who have billions of dollars. It's not you, the listener. And by the way, if you the listener have billions of dollars lying around for
some reason, can I have some please? Yes, please please give me some of them so I can house like literally every trans woman and like transperson, I can. I can do it, Like, please give me your billions of dollars so I can I can achieve this goal. But like we're talking about you know, like like the Pension Fund of California, we're talking about mega corporations, insurance companies, the kinds of things I can actually buy these, like
you know. Now, this is where we get to one of the other problems, which is that these things are not insured. So yeah, what do you do in order to try to make it less risky? What do you get if you can't pay the loan back? And this is what's called collateral I don't know, swift punch of the nuts. Oh no, they take your house right, Yes,
that's supposed to be the thing. So okay. The way that like shadow banking loans tend to work is that they they have collateral, right, so you you give them something or or it's either you give them something directly or it's like if you promise to give them the thing. Yeah, and giving it to them directly is like a repo market thing. We're not really going to get into those right now, but this does. That's like, that's also a
kind of shadow bank. But there's a problem, right, which is what if the thing that you're paying, you're paying as collateral, Like what if your house becomes worthless? And what if? What if Molly, and it's.
Completely uninsured and there's no way to fix it because I don't even have anything to give you.
Now, now, Molly, what if And this is purely hypothetical, It could never happen in the real world, Molly, But what if somehow, someone someone decided to use the same house as collateral for multiple different securities.
Well, that could never go wrong.
What if, Mollie, they made a word for this that is so complicated, I am not going to attempt to read it on the show. What if, Molly?
What is it in German or something.
No, it's like it's just like this, it's like the it's like the length of my head. It's like hyper hyper something bullshit. Like I refuse to say it because it is just like a completely like financed goal bullshit term they made up.
So but the point of the point of collateral is that you can use it to pay off the loan if you default one. And so that literally won't work more than once because once I eat the burger, Once I eat the burger.
It's bond yep. And this is one of the things that happened in two thousand years. I can't prom I can't promise ten guys my burger, now, Molly, here's the amazing thing here, right, Because but then the advantage for these companies, right is like, if you're the bank that has the mortgage, suddenly you can spin your mortgage off into like multiple securities that you can sell.
Right, it's worth ten times more and that's great for you.
Yes, and comma, comma, we we haven't even okay, I just I just described as to where these people are promising the same house to multiple people. This isn't even the extremely unfathomably reckless and greedy shit. No it is, Oh it is, but it's not the worst of it. Oh good. Okay, So do you remember that quote from when I was giving the first definition of shadow banking, right, Like, I gave this quote from the guy who invented the term where he called it quote the whole alphabet soup
of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures. Right. So we've kind of talked about the conduits, vehicles, and structures, right, those are all of the shadow banks that like make the things. Right.
I love the conduits, vehicles, and structures. Yeah, all the acronyms.
But what does leveraged up mean?
Now?
Okay? In this case, it means that a bunch of these banks have taken out a shit ton of like risky high end loans in order to buy more of these fucking mortgages because they think they can make more money off of it.
So they took out they took out loans to buy these unsecured securities.
The regular ass banks were doing this, Yeah, they they went into debt to buy more of these shitty mortgages.
So they took out loans to buy what are essentially unsecured loans.
Yep, because I thought it would make them more money.
But there's no money involved.
Money It is about to get so much worse, right, So okay, So sticking with leveraging for a second. Right, you might have actually heard of something called a leveraged buyout. I have heard those words, and then I stopped listening. Yeah, so here's the thing. Leverage buyouts are something that actually happens in the real world that does fuck you directly, which is a whole bunch of companies that used to be like normalized companies like died because venture capital firms, you,
by the way, are also shadow banks. Oh did this right? They came in tactically speaking, they did it through like risky bond purchases, but basically they did a bunch of high interest loans and then they go buy a company and then they like strip it for parts, and then they try to raise the stock price of the company.
Yeah, and the river parts, sell everything and and get out. Right, that's what a leverage buyout is.
These people are sort of are doing kind of a version of that, but like they're they're taking on this debt in order to like buy fucking shitty underwater mortgages because they look like they're making so much money.
They're taking on.
Real debt to buy hypothetical debt.
Oh, it's about to get so much worse.
That doesn't seem like a good idea.
So not to get so much worse. So that's what like the leveraged part of that.
I don't even know how you do that in burgers.
I don't know. You're going into debt to like buy the promise of burgers in the future so you can sell those future burgers.
Yeah, but burgers are real. The thing we're not talking about a real.
Well technically technically speaking. Somewhere at the bottom of this is mortgages. However, Comma, we're about to get into a kind of asset where there isn't anything behind it. And this is where the really really truly unhinged shit starts. It hasn't, which is that these companies figured out a way to bet on whether these mortgages were going to fail or not.
That's so tight MEA, I fucking love that.
I love it.
Yes, yes, by the way, I kindatize enough, how how unhinged this is the mechanism they're using to do this is called a credit default swap. Oh, I've heard that phrase. This was supposed to be how they did insurance. Their mechanism for doing insurance on all of these insane loans they were doing was originally like Okay, I'm gonna you're don't know, so you have a you have a bank, right,
the bank has given out a risky loan. So this bank goes to another bank they shouldn't do that, and they say, hey, if this person actually pays the loan back, I will pay you money.
Okay, So the other so the other bank is like taking a gamble.
Yeah, So the other bank that's giving out the loan right gets money if the loan goes under. So in theory they're sort of like insured against the risk. They call it like hedging. They're like so like like so theoretically it's less bad from them because now even if the loan goes under, they still get money back from that other bank. So the other bank is just a bookie. Yeah, and the other bank is betting that they are going to get it. So then and if the loan does
get paid, then that bank makes money. And this is legal for everyone to do. Yep.
This is real banking or shadow bank.
This is real bank didn't know this is technically actually no, this is actually both both of them do this. Technically speaking, the instrument like like the actual like credit default swap or whatever, is made by the shadow banks, but then they're brought by the regular banks.
I'm started to think that the bank starts the shadow banks and then all of this is just fake and bad.
Like.
So here's the thing about these systems, right, is that, like a lot of the original literature on it was considering them separate. But it's like no, like the regular banks are making their own shadow banks do these things. They're all involved in these assets. They're also investing in the shadow banks, which is the problem we're having right now. It's like it's the same guy.
He just like turns his chair around at his desk and he's like, now I'm shadow bank Todd.
Yeah. Well, and sometimes it's that sometimes there legitimately is just other entities they work with, but yeah.
But there's still it's still a bank engaging. So it's like, oh, these are non banking practices, yeah, but the bank is doing it well.
But here's the thing. The important part for that though, is that like the non bank also can do this with other non banks even better even yeah, right, I.
Just feel like once we're once we're talking about shadow banking, like the real bank should not be in the room, Like go home, Wells Fargo, you don't belong here, you're drunk.
No, But like they're funding all of this, right, If the.
Real bank is involved with the shadow banking, that means like I can't opt out of being involved in this because they get my money.
Yeah, you know what we were talking about that at the top that like so some of these like bank banks had to like stop their withdrawals. Oh yeah, one of those, by the way, was JP Morgan. But that's a real bank, Yep. They're involved in the banking shit, so they are exposed to when they're like fucking seven hundred million dollar loan to like a fucking actually went home.
Which one was the seven hundred million dollar I think a seven hundred million dollar loan that went under was the one that was to a subprime auto loan company. That's a bad investment. It's why it's so evil.
So why am I trusting all of my money that I have in this world? I'm letting this guy hold on to it who's obviously not good with fucking money.
Well, because the fdi C is ensuring it. Why are you in charge of it?
Why are you in charge of having the money? You obviously don't make great financial decisions because you invested seven hundred million dollars in subprime auto loans.
So, Mollie, this is the this is the point where we need to bring debt the first five thousand years back into this and emphasize the extent to which the financial class has always been deeply connected to the military, and why has always been deconnected to war financing. I'm
starting to realize that this is all very bad. It's very bad, it's all fair, and this is this is to some extent why right Like part part of what right wing conspiracism about the financial system is is that like these people are like like the right wingers, like these people are there's like a baseline level of anti semitism, like in the US right because it is a is a Christian society that is just like what fucking happens there?
And these people are like, Okay, we can channel all of the anger at like, oh my god, by fucking house got stolen by the bank because because they were betting on the mortgage to.
Fail, and I still understand why that's legal.
Yeah.
Well, all these right wing conspiracits do is they look at that shit and they go, oh, well it was the Jews, and it's like but no, like fuck off, like these are all No, it was the band and the other thing. And this is actually a really important thing that's not well understood here is that like the actual people who run these fucking banks and the people who work at them are all fucking white Christian dipshits.
This is like a really really like persistent issue that everyone fucking has, which is that like one of one of the great successes of anti Semitism was like creating the image of the banker as a Jewish person. And no, they're not the bait, Like I fucking went to school with these people. They're all a bunch of fucking white frat bros. They're fucking white Christian frat ros. Oh right, you University of Chicago, you have a degree in economics in the University of Chicago. No, facing, I have an
anthropology degree, Thank you very much. I took a not a fucking fake degree like the stupid econ bullshit.
ID say that's actually so evil to study economics. It's Chicago, you probably met some of the most evil people.
Armed I was just like in a dorm with them, so you saw that I know all these people. Yeah, and like it is not it is not a bunch of Jewish people. It's it's a bunch of Christian frat bros.
Like that's like the thing that's actually going on. There's actually a whole One day I will write Behind the Basket's episode about leverage buyouts and about how like there was like a Jewish guy who kind of like like did a lot of the inventing stuff, but him breaking into the banking thing was like a whole thing because there was so much anti Semitism because all of the banking sector was run by all of the fucking like weird dipshit like CIA, like like wasp motherfuckers. I mean,
the Mormons have a huge hedge fund. Yep, yep, yep, yep yep.
Yeah, so like the what I say, I read an article about it, the hedge fund, that the Mormons operate like they have their like best and brightest finance bros. Like you know, Mormons do their to your mission. If you're really good at finance your mission that you don't have to go to South America and like tell people about the Book of Mormon. You can work at the hedge fund as your mission.
It's a nightmare. I'm doing a hedge funds for God. Yep. That's a SATs shadow bank, by the way, Yep, it's great. So okay, okay, coming back to this again. Right, so we're talking about like what what causes two thousand and eight and how do these shadow banks like do this?
And the answer is that they've turned all of these mortgages into these like fake securities then they can trade, right, they package them all together, and they find out something really crucial, which is that if they throw a bunch of loans that they obviously know are going to fail
together and send them to a regulatory agency. And by the way, all of these like bonds that they're issuing have like grades based on supposed to be like how safe they are, And they figure out yeah, and they figure out that they can send a bunch of really
shitty bonds. But if they package enough shitty bonds together, they could send them to the regulators and the regulators would have would evaluate some of them as being good, and then you could sell the good ones to your pension fund because I thought it was a good bond and it made money. That's just lying and then and then yes, and yes and then and then behind the scenes, right, all of these fucking companies, all these shadow banks, all
the regular banks, they're all doing these. They're all doing these credit default swaps, right, so they're all betting on which ones of these are going to fail.
I'm putting all of these boys in time out.
I'm gonna put them in the bottom of a tad so evil. And and they they start, they start doing these, making these like even more complicated instruments right where, Now what they're what they're selling to you isn't just the package of mortgages. They're also selling you the credit default swaps with the loan. So theoretically, what's happening is like they've created an instrument that, regardless of what happens to the loan, you make money. That's not how anything works. No,
it's bullshit. It's so obviously bullshit.
I made up this fake thing where no matter what happens, I get rich.
That's cool. I would love to do that. Yeah, And nobody was like wait, well, I mean sometimes a couple of people were, but like, like people didn't just be like wait, hold on, no, obviously, you can't make an asset that makes money regardless of whether the thing fails or not. I invented a money machine, Like that's fucking ridiculous. And then eventually, yeah, it was like, no, they ran out of fucking mortgages.
You know.
One of the ways that the blame for this was deflected onto regular people was that they blamed the banks or like they blamed regular people for like not being able to pay the mortgages. But the thing is, by the time you get to the point where you're like packaging all that, you're betting on the mortgages. Right, if you're a bank, even if you're the regular bank, you don't make money off of like someone paying their mortgage back. You make money on betting on the mortgages. So you're incentive.
So just keep giving out loans you know won't happen because you can sell those loans off to some other dipshit and then you and then you can bet on those loans that they're going to fail and you can make money. And that's how you make your money because you're.
You're not a bank anymore, you're a bookie who's cheating.
Yep. I don't think that's good Mia. No, this was the entire fucking financial system. We just let these people stay in power, and.
I'm just supposed to just continue living my life like this.
I don't know, like looking at this and then and then learning that all of these people got fucking bailed up by the government and none of them went to prison. And do they know they're cheating liars who are faking and making it up?
Or are they like so high on their own supply they're like they're like, no, bro, no, but this is totally gonna work.
It's totally gonna work. Well, here's the thing. Some of them know and some of them don't, because some of them believe that this is cool. Yeah, Like some some of them legitimately thought that this was just going to work forever.
Like do they believe they're negative money backed by other fake money backed by the idea of promise? Is a fake money? They think that's money?
Yeah, yep, Well, thought was gonna work. It's not. It's not. Nope, And it turned out to not be any fucking money, and it blew up again, like entire countries, countries were buying these, they went bankrupt, So like this.
Is less real than a board ape, nft, And that's really saying something.
It's it's astonishing.
Because at least the at least I can look at least I can look at the picture of the monkey.
I can't look at this no, like it like you can't look at the bet you're making on whether and whether monkey go down, Like it's like like all my apes gone. Yeah, but it's suppressing because the entire world is just this. Now it's a shit the banks were doing where you're betting on whether mortgage would a fail, but now it's your betting on whether like what day we're going to drop a bomb on a run?
Like nothing is real and everything is gambling.
Yeah yeah, And this is you know what what I would call a sort of terminal crisis stage of capitalism where alike.
Because everything is so divorced from any material reality, from any good.
Or service, Like there is a limit to which you can run an entire economy that is purely based on gambling. Like they're just there's a limit and we're going to hit it. Really, So that's God, that's gonna break, right, Yeah, yeah, it's going to break. It's going to break spectacularly. However, Comma, I do have good news for you, don't I do? I have good news. You now actually understand what non bank financial intermediation is. No, I don't. I'm gonna walk
you through it. You actually do. So, I'm going to quote the IMFs definition of non bank financial intermediation. Quote all entities outside the regulated banking system that perform the core banking functions. Credit intermediation, that is taking money from savers and letting it to borrowers. The four key aspects of intermediation are maturity transformation. We know this one, right, This is this is what the bank does.
Alone gets older, Yeah, yeah, you gets paid back over time.
Yeah.
Well it's you you turn your short term thing into a long term investment, or you do the opposite opposite. It's not good. They're both kind of a disaster, but like, yeah, yeah, the the other opposite is kind of how we got into this mess. There's liquidity transformation, which we know this too.
It's turning money into a thing that's not money.
Yeah, or turning not money into things you can buy burger with. Okay, Yeah, I got this leverage. We also know this, which is you go into a bunch of debt to buy something else. And then there's credit risk transfer, which we know that one too. It's the betting market. Were supposedly swapping the risk by both of you two are now betting on whether this thing is going to fail. So it sounds like.
Even just like regular banking is kind of just gambling now.
Yep, yep, yep. Well, and it's fun too, So this is the thing that you used to be talked about more and isn't now. But like most of like like the world's corporations are also basically this, know, like this has been a thing for a while. But it's like the auto manufacturers don't make their money off of cars. I mean they sort of do. They make some money of cars, or like most of what they make their money off of is like the forward finance company, which
is like the auto loans thing. Oh and then the auto loans thing trades a bunch of like does all of this other financial bullshit to make money? So like, I don't think that's a good idea. That's that's what capitalism is.
So everything everything is fully reliant on.
This, like stupid, gambling, bullshit, Emperor's.
Wearing no clothes, economy yep. And if anybody, if anybody points out that none of this is connected to a material reality, everything falls apart.
Well, here's the thing. The thing that stoves everything for falling apart is that the one thing you can do with your money is turn it into gun.
Now I'm listening, and that's what stops of falling apart, right, because now I'm listening. And this is also a sort of graverism.
But it's like behind every bank is a man with a gun, because the reason that this money is even sort of real is that the bank can like like the police will come get you, right, like men with guns will appear and coerce you to pay shit.
Right, But what if what if instead of burger we bought gun?
You know?
Like this is what is broadly referred to as the social revolution. Is it is broadly considered a negative by the financial sector. It is broadly considered a positive by everyone the fuck else. Okay, that's not true. It's not consider it a positive by like, I guess the people who own regular businesses. And this is like this shit that like, you know, it was kind of less unhinged
back then. But like if you go read the people who were like doing this shit in like the early nineteen hundreds, if you read the writing, it's all them being like, oh yeah, no, by the way, like a bunch of banks just like turned the entire Ottoman empire into like a debt peon, and now their entire economy is just dedicated to paying off these fucking loans. And this is like hideously fucking evil, Like they're all complaining about the same shit.
And the important lesson we learned from that, The important lesson we learned from that was to do it more more oh yeah, yeah yeah, to invent increasingly more complicated ways of doing that.
Yeah.
And like this this is why the term third world is a slur, because because instead of being a political movement, because those the countries in the political movement that was called the Third World movement, all of their economies got fucking annihilated because they had these like loans whose interest rate could change, and the US jacked up all the interest rates and so suddenly their loans were like like the amount you had to like pay on the loans
it went from like twenty percent or something to like fifty or one hundred or some shit, and you know, and like in these countries have never recovered, like Nigeria has never really economically recovered from the shit that happened
to them. This this is why a whole bunch of Latin America is like this too, Like it was, like why there's so much sort of like writing systemic poverty is that the economies were entirely transformed into machines to like pay back these fucking debts taken out by these dictators.
This is the whole fucking economy now. And you know, there's other shadow banks that do other kind of completely unhandshit, right And I've been focusing this week on like specifically the kind that blew up the economy in two thousand and eight, But there's another kind that's like blowing up the economy right now, which is called private credit, which
is I mentioned this briefly earlier. But private credit is when these like unregulated companies that are not banks, give out unregulated loans with unknown terms to other companies and then those loans go to shit. And there's a whole bunch of ways that can blow up, including by the way these companies are funding a bunch of the AI bubble.
Oh, and that's a great investment.
It's great, you know, because much much like a.
Mortgage, there's a real physical thing like a house involved, Right, it's not just vibes.
Oh yeah, oh Molly, Molly, they those motherfuckers. I'm gonna talk about this a bit. I might have d just run on for this part of it too, just because like Ed does this all the time, but like those motherfuckers out there selling securities that are backed by fucking graphics cards, Like at least the more I can't believe I'm fucking saying this, but at least the mortgage backed securities, like there was a house you could steal to get your money back graphics cards. Ball, My all my apes are.
Gone.
All my apes are gone.
Like there's other ones like it's it's so bad. It's just bad. But that's for another time because it is late as fuck and we are out of here.
Mollie.
Thank you, Thank you for sitting and enduring an hour of you knowing what a shadow bank is.
Now I almost know what a bank is. I'm still working on the rest of it, but I think I'm getting closer.
I believe in you. I think we've made for a progress today.
I don't know.
Now, now you can kind of understand what's going on. When this sting sector explodes again in like two weeks, you'll have to explain it to me again. Then I will be happy to Oh God, I hate these assholes Zoom. If you're listening to this and leaking my ship.
Keep follow this in, than you keep follow this in. Keep it all in beautiful.
Settings, beautiful stuff.
Sufferable, it's welcome to it could happen here. Executive dysfunction, disorder, I for disorder.
The weekly newscast we do that covers what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world of what it means.
For you, and Sophie's simmering rage at Zoom constantly moving the recording button.
Not even just Zoom, it's all the it's insufferable, all these goddamn platforms, but they're stupid AI features and moving of my settings.
I sound like the oldest person in the world, but that's the record. But this, sup it, it's so annoying.
Holy shit, everybody's pretty pissed about AI these days.
I mean, sufferbly stupid, but stop it, stop it, And we have to use Microsoft for work, and every time I try to copy something, it asks if I want.
To use Copilot. No, I never want to use copilot.
Fuck off, Sophie, You're really not maximizing your productivity.
Okay, this week we're covering in I CO eighteens now and no, don't do that to me.
Clavicular a shit, stop it, stop it. Okay, I'm going away now to your jobs.
What are our jobs?
Really? You're not going to join in? Oh I'm here, I'm always here.
That's Sophie Lichterman, also Mia Wong, Robert Evans, I'm Garrison Davis.
That's right.
This episode recovering the week of March eighteen to March twenty fifth. Speaking of AI, open ai is announced they are shutting down their AI generated video apps Sora as a results, the Disney deal has fell through. Disney's no longer going through with the one billion dollar investment and character licensing deal with open Ai.
Oh no.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, I know our audience is full of a lot of big Sora ads, and I'm sure this is some tough news.
The Soura community is taking hits.
So yeah, it's okay. You can still play Sora in Smash Ultimate. You can recover I believe in you want.
There's a video game character named Sora too.
Huh yeah, the key Blade. The key Blade will still be there.
I didn't. I didn't get into those games.
Actually lyricously, Also, it also a Disney franchise, also licensed to Disney.
Yeah, great, great stuff. Well, I found this very funny in part because like, when Sora came out, there was this like burst of enthusiasm for like, soon we'll just be generating our own movies and TV. You won't need Hollywood. But then it turned out that you can't actually like do like even if you want to make stuff with Sora, like even if you wanted to include like clips of it to like help augment other films you were making. And there were a couple of filmmakers who tried to
do this. You can summon critical ways where they were like, oh, well, you know, I can use like pieces of Soora generated video to like illustrate at this point I want to about AI. Well, you couldn't actually use like Sora footage in anything that you wanted to like sell to Netflix or Amazon or like whoever put in a theater, because like the terms of use basically did not allow it because of how much risk you were at of getting sued for, you know, utilizing other people's shit content other
people made. Open Ai was not willing to indemnify the users. Adobe has a similar like slop ai video generation machine that does indemnify like users of the content they make, and that is still going. Yeah, so I think that's was kind of like one of the key issues here is just that, like you can't actually do anything with your Sora eclips.
Yeah, I mean, this doesn't mean it's gonna lead to the end of AI generated video on social media. Lord, No, unfortunately, No, this is a movement that open air is making towards business to business sales and away from this direct to consumer application. It's still an interesting move. The fact that Disney's breaking off the deal also interesting. Its exact gramifications for open ai and like a generated video in the long run still unclear.
Yeah, I also just want to mention that, like, obviously, the other reason they're doing this is that this stuff is hideously expensive, Like, yeah, a lot of money to generate this stuff onfathomable amounts of money are just being lit on fire. Listen to everything ever written by our friends and colleague ed Zytron. If you want to know how much money is being lit on fire by this bullshit?
But yeah, yeah.
A few other small news stories. The US Army has raised its maximum enlistment age to forty two, and the Pentagon is planning to maintain National Guard presence in Washington, d C. Through the entirety of Trump's second term. In a special election Tuesday night, the Dems flipped Trump's own state house district in Florida Palm Beach County. Trump won this district by eleven points in the twenty twenty four election.
This Tuesday, Democrat Emily Gregory won by two points, nearly a fourteen point swing.
Are we going to point out how he voted in that.
Election vote by mail? But it's okay because the Florida system is safe and secure.
Yeah huh.
Also, I want to point out this is more vindication of the Meya of the Miya Blue tsunami theory that this is going to be a two thousand and eight style blowout if they're losing fucking Marl logo by two points.
Yeah, I try not to predict how the fucking bigger elections are going to go anymore. Yeah, just because Yeah, it's it's so hard. But isn't that you wouldn't call it a good sign for the Republicans.
This is not a good sign for Republicans.
Even though only like thirty three thousand people voted in this election, it is still interesting data.
Yeah, you would think again that he would he would have more of a lock on his backyard. But also why would he have thought about it? Like I go back and forth and people are like, well, if they were going to steal an election, wouldn't they have done the one in mar Alago? Probably not, Nah, wouldn't the thought to do it? Probably would have figured they don't need to.
The FBI is investigating former director of the National counter Terrorism Center Joe Kent for allegedly leaking class haided information, and this investigation predates his resignation last week. In an interview with Tucker Carlson last week, Kent implied Israel may have been involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk and that the FBI stopped Kent's investigation into this quote unquote linkage.
Oh my Jesus, right, God, Yeah, man, Israel killed Charlie Kirk. That's why there haven't been any other people on the right who have complained about Trump's aiding and the betting Israeli war crimes. Like what, No other conservatives have been pissed about the invasion of Iran. Just Charlie Kirk.
He was the lone anti semi He was the only one.
Charlie Kirk was the Golden dome. Sly Trump, Yeah, no, yeah, silly idea for our first big story. Let's talk about airports, Everyone's favorite way to spend five to who knows, however impossible?
How many hours? Yeah? An impossible avout? Oh god, no way to know. DHS has been shut.
Down for over a month now, and more than four hundred TIS agents have quit after being left without pay, while ICE agents continued to receive paychecks through last year's Big Beautiful Bill. This past weekend, Trump announced ICE would be deployed to airports to assist TSA during the shutdown. By Monday morning, ICE agents have been sent to airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Fort Myers, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh,
San Juan, Newark, and the two New York airports. Interestingly, come Monday, when ICE was spotted they were not wearing masks, which seems to go against agency claims that masks are for protecting agents against so called dosing. That morning, Trump truth to quote, I'm a big proponent of ice wearing masks as they search for and are forced to deal with hardened criminals.
I would greatly appreciate. However, no masks in all caps.
When helping our country out of the Democrat caused mess at the airports, etc.
Thank you.
Later on Monday, Trump was asked whose idea it was to send ice to airports, and he had this fascinating response.
Mine, that was mine.
That was like the paper clip.
You know the story of the paper clip. One hundred and eighty two years ago. A man discovered the paper clip. It was so simple, and everybody that looked at it and say, why didn't I think of that?
Ice was my idea.
I called. First person I called was Tom Homan. I said, what do you think? He said, I think it's great. Then I saw it today there was some masks so and I didn't think the masks were proper. I put out a statement and I asked them would it be possible to take off the mask, because they should wear a mask when they're dealing with the murderers and the thugs left and let into our guns.
Discovered the paper cliff, discovered the paper clip. Every now and then you get a little hint about his media diet.
It is just fascinating discover the paper paper clip. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
It's it's insane.
Somebody told them a little story about like, well, you know the person who vented the paper clip, and Trump just kind of ran with it.
That's got to be it, right, Yeah, It's like it's like the paper clip exists as like as like a platonic form, like like.
Existing, and the existing as like as like a piece of truth.
Someone chiseled it out of a piece of granite, the first paper cliff and was like, yes, I've done it. It's like forty case shit. Where Like the theory is that all technology has already been invented. So if you invented technology or discovering it, yes, the dark Age of technology gave us the paper clip, and it is actually heresy to invent a new kind of paper clip or either way to attach papers together.
Now in less funny news, also on Monday, Trump confirmed that ice would be arresting people at airports.
We see ICE arresting legal migration.
Yeah. Yeah, that's why the Democrats are going crazy because they've allowed by what they did and hold up. We put ICE who are a very high level I mean, they really are a high level group of people, and they love it because they're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country that's.
Very fertile territory. But that's not why they're there. They're really there to help.
Uh huh, there to help.
Most people who are documented do not illegally enter the country through airports.
That would be silly.
They overstay a visa that so they lose their legal presence. On Fox News, Tom Homan claimed that ICE was helping to reduce long lines at airports as well as arrest criminals.
And we're filling the holes. The weight lines already dropped. Plus we're doing a security function at the airports. We're going to arrest criminals going to the airport. We're going to look for human trafficking, sex trafficking, money, you know, money, small run money smuggling.
Yeah, they're they're just gonna steal cash off of people at the airport. Yeah, Yeah, Now, TSA has done that for a while off and on, so this isn't entirely new. But they're just gonna take money from people.
By Tuesday evening lines at atl the airport in Atlanta, the most busy airport in the world, has the most amount of travel to and from. By Tuesday evening lines were back down, but by Wednesday morning, a friend of mine took three hours to get through TSA.
God, so what exactly is ICE doing?
Mostly standing behind TSA at security checkpoints, standing behind people still doing the regular TSA work, occasionally directing pedestrian traffic, and maybe at most yelling at people to empty their pockets.
Hey, they're keeping the cookie clicker economy going. The mobile app economy is benefiting enormously for all these people standing around their phones.
ICE agents cannot actually do the job of TSA since they do not have the training nor the certification required to do so. Nope, So ICE is largely just acting as auxiliary staff and security for the airport.
But regular airport.
Staff aren't suffering from the financial strain of the shutdown because they're still getting paid. Aaron Barker, the president of the TSA union Local five five, four, which covers airports in Georgia like atl denied that ice contributed to short lines on Tuesday compared to the weekend, noting that Tuesday is a non peak travel day.
Yeah, of course it's quote, it has.
Nothing to do with ice presence being there. The ICE officers in Atlanta are not doing any screening functions. They are literally standing behind the officers while they're checking documents and screening passengers or walking the que line that cascades through the airport.
Un quote.
New York and New Jersey TSA union president Heydrich Thomas said during a press conference, quote, you want to bring a tactical force into an environment where you're required to have customer service and skill set, a mindset where you know what you're doing, how to identify something that might be suspicious.
They don't have that training unquote now, and.
The TSA doesn't really have that training. Let's be clear, No, no, TSA does not actually a TSA doesn't know what they're doing at all. There was never any chance of this helping anything. This is only going to be more of a pain in the ass for people at airports, which already are unpleasant to be at.
Now on Monday, there was viral video of plane clothes agents wrestling a woman into handcuffs at the San Francisco Airport. This incident actually took place Sunday night. Angelina Lopez Jimenez and her nine year old daughter were supposed to fly
to Miami to visit a relative. Instead, she was detained by ICE agents and sent to an airport holding room, according to The New York Times, On Friday, TSA agents flagged her name on an upcoming passenger list and in formed ICE that Lopez Jimenez was scheduled to fly from Miami on Sunday. Lopez Semenez and her daughter were detained by border patrol back in twenty eighteen, but were released
with a notice to attend court for removal proceedings. Eventually, she stopped showing up for appointments and her deportation was ordered in twenty nineteen. This weekend, at around nine to thirty pm Sunday night, two plane clothes agents approached Lopez Jimenez in Terminal three in San Francisco, and she then handed over her two Guatemalan passports, one for her and the other for her daughter. While being led to the international terminal, she tried to run away, prompting the agents
to tackle her to the ground. On Tuesday, her and her daughter were sent to Guatemala. The New York Times says that this operation was unrelated to the Ice airport deployment ordered by Trump. Also on Sunday night, Republican Senate majority leader John Thune told Trump that the Senate had reached a deal to fund TSA and the rest of DHS, except for Ice, which would be handled later in a reconciliation bill, but Trump instructed Thune to kill the deal.
Later that night, Trump truthed, I don't think that we should make any deal with crazy country destroying radical left Democrats unless and until they vote with Republicans to pass the Save America Act, that is, the voting Restriction Act, which includes voter ID with picture proof of citizenship to vote, heavily restricting mail in voting, requiring paper ballots, as well as quote no men in women's sports and no transgender
mutilation of our precious children unquote. Senator Ted Cruz and John Kennedy are continuing to work on this plan that Thune told Trump about to reopen DHS sans Ice. On Tuesday morning, Kennedy said on Fox News that Thune told him the president is reconsidering the option and quote unquote may on board. Later that day, Trump was asked if he supports what appears to be the quote unquote emerging agreement coming out of the Senate reopen DHS. Trump replied, quote,
I'm going to look at it. We're going to take a good, hard look at it. I want to support Republicans, and sometimes it's awfully hard to get votes when you have Democrats that don't want to have voter id unquote. Trump then went on to discuss the same act and how he added no men in women's sports quote unquote, because it's nearly a quote unquote ninety nine to one issue. It's time for our first break, and we will return with more news.
We're back, So let's talk about the war that's been going on for like a month at this point in time. You know, as we're kind of sitting here right now, we've all seen gas prices leap up substantially. In California, there's samarias where you're paying like seven to fifty a gallon. Good lord, it's gone by about a dollar where I live.
It looks fairly credible. There was a lot of fear that like kind of the worst case scenario would be that oil gets anywhere near like two hundred dollars a gallon or two hundred dollars a barrel from me a gallin Sorry, that would be that'd be real bad. But what we're looking at right now, there's credible reason to expect that like this stuff won't peak any lower than about one hundred and seventy five bucks a barrel, which is pretty catastrophic for the US economy and the global
economy as a whole. Night it's bad, and Trump has been, i think, increasingly making it clear that he is looking
for an off ramp. There's a lot of reporting from inside the administration that suggests they did not think things would still be going on this long, That they thought that after the first rank of Iranian leaders were kind of wiped out, the guys behind them would be willing to play ball with the administration in exchange for staying in power, which is more or less the offer that we gave Delsi Rodriguez in Venezuela and the Venezuelan regime.
The people who kind of were behind Maduro were willing to take, but Iran is a very different country, and they're in a very different situation, and they have a very different military, and they have a very different physical strategic situation than Venezuela does than any other country that the United States has attempted to use these kind of like violent bullying tactics on and so far, on does not seem to be interested in coming to the table.
Trump has made a couple of statements about how we're working on getting out of this. You know, we've presented an option to the Iranian government that would basically allow them to get rid of all of the sanctions if they just promised to stop enriching uranium and to handover everything that they do have and to never try to get a new I think it's pretty clear they're not willing to make that promise anymore.
I think they were.
I mean, they certainly were earlier five years ago. But at the time in which you've repeatedly killed all the people running the country, you've kind of only made it clear that they need noops. And that's the waiting game that we find ourselves kind of currently locked in here is Iran has shut down the straight of hornm moves.
They've at least the last I checked, I think, hit seventeen ships heading through the straight or in the straight, and that's caused the vast majority of traffic that would be crossing through to hold back, and so you've got this massive backlog of craft just kind of waiting because they can't go through. Trump previously had made some big statements about while the US Navy will escort them through and will get like a global coalition of naval forces
to escort them through. That hasn't come to pass. For one thing, very few governments with navies seem interested in sending sizeable naval forces to the strait of horror moves.
To do this.
And for the other thing, that's not an easy thing to do. It may seem like it because it would be a real crazy thing to all of us listening if a single US naval vessel were destroyed in combat, right like the last time anything that happened with the USS coal which was hit while it was in dock
by a suicide bomb. The idea of like a destroyer getting sunk would be deeply upsetting to the American people, I think probably, and like deeply it would be a huge problem for let alone if an aircraft carrier were to take serious damage, these would be serious problems for the administration. The problem is that you can't escort fuel tankers through the Strait of Hormuz without exposing them and
the ships escorting them to direct fire. Geographically, you've probably heard a lot about carg Island recently, which is this island that, as we talked about in a previous episode, a lot of Iran's oil infrastructures on because the coast of Iran is not mostly not deep water, and you need very deep water for the boats that transport huge amounts of crude oil. These are massive vessels. These are some of the largest machines human beings have ever built
of any kind. Yeah, these are the size of skyscrapers, Like these are skyscrapers on their side. They are enormous boats. It is when people were suggested, what if we just drive the oil? You have no idea how big these fucking boats are and how much oil it takes to keep the world running. So you have a very narrow waterway through most of this, so it's not like it is in other waterways or in the broader ocean where
people have a lot of roots they can take. Big ships can only take one very well known path through the strait, right, and it's really easy to mine that path. If you've got naval vessels escorting those big boats, then you've got us naval vessels that are exposing themselves to direct fire from the mountains and hills in a way that is impossible to stop them from getting shot at, from having drones flung at them. And we have a pretty good understanding of what we can stop and what
we can't stop. And based on everything that's been happening, my suspicion is that Trump has been getting told by his officers, we can't guarantee we won't lose sailors and we won't lose ships if we do this, because you are sending them through the chokiest of choke points, and Iran has spent fifty years preparing to shit at naval vessels escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormus. There's no guarantee it's not going to be a blood bath.
So that's why the administration is looking at stuff like what should be we sending in marines, and we have marines that are moving into the area. There's been a lot of talk about having them seize islands in the Strait, potentially even carg Island. The problem with that is, obviously Iran has to deal with the bottleneck of we need this big island with its deep harbors, otherwise we can't
get our oil out. But if the US takes that island, it's in the middle of a bunch of shit Iran controls, and they can fling explosives at the forces who take that island all fucking day long. It is a very bad position to be in. If you're the Marines. I don't care how well trained you are, I don't care how much support you have. That is a bad position to be in. And any military leader who has been under fire is trying very hard right now to let Trump know this will not be a low casualty endeavor.
It will not be an easy endeavor, and you will not wind up just controlling this island and being able to dictate things to Iran. You will wind up having potentially thousands of your boys held captive by Iranian forces that surround them and flink explosives at them all day long. It's a bad position to be in.
Yeah, and this and this is I think part of like the issue with with the Trump administration's policy here is like Trump himself and the people around him just seem to have been treating the Iranian army as not a real armist and it is no, this is this is an actual they know what they're doing, Like this is this is not the Venezuelan army, Like this is an actual army. Yeah, Like you can't do this ship.
There's a lot of guys left to have a lot of experience in it preparing for this exact war for a very long time.
Yeah, and who are ideologically motivated to not have the US like invade their country. The issues here with the fact that there's there's no good way to open the straight I think it's been dictating a lot of what Trump's been doing with his newgotiations, and I've started calling them like market negotiations because if you look at whenever Trump releases a statement, So on Monday, for example, he released the thing saying like, ah, we've entered like peace negotiations.
And that was Monday morning, as the markets were opening from a very panicky weekend where people were it was sort of setting in that oil prices were going to be increasing and whenever Trump does one of these speeches where he says, oh, well, we're gonna we're going to find some way to open the straight or he does these like peace off like he sends this piece deal to a Ron, which we don't know the details of.
There was like a reported leak of it in the Israeli media, but we don't know exactly what's in it. From that Israeli leak, it didn't seem to be a I mean, it didn't seem to be something that the government would accept, right. But the reason he's doing it is because he's trying to calm the markets down on a sort of on a sort of day by day basis.
And part of it also was that there was this whole panic that Trump had been threatening early this week to start doing all of these bombing campaigns against Iranian like civilian power facilities and supposedly Onzi billion power facilities too, and then on Monday he was like, no, no, no, we're not actually doing that. Actually, we're doing peace talks. We're pushing this off for five days. And this is again market manipulation stuff, right, because he.
Walked only we're only at war during the weekend when the markets are closed.
So so this is what these negotiations are, right, and that's why and Ron immediately like it goes like no, like we're not, We're not in negotiations, and then released their own five point plan to end the war, which the US would pay war damages. And they've been really consistent about this, which the US would pay war damages and reparations. And then this one. And also you know, there was a whole thing about obviously like the US stopping the war, they're being the current measures in place
to keep the US and doing it again. They want the US to have its regional proxies stand down, which would also presumably end the other major thing that's going on in this war, which is just Israel ethnically cleansing this south to Lebanon. We just we just released an episode about this. It's very good.
Yeah, make a defensive barrier.
Yeah.
And the ever, the last part about this, and this is the part that I that I I think is the real kind of clincher here, is that it would give Iran control over the straight oh hormeuse, which is a real problem for any kind of American negotiation because this was always a thing that the Iran government never did, right, They had the military capacity to hold the straight. The reason they didn't do it was that it would start
a war. But now you've started the war, and now you've opened Pandora's box, and you can't put the fact that they can do this militarily back into the box.
Yeah.
Right, So now they're just being like, fuck it, you guys can't actually defeat us militarily before the entire world economy collapses, Like fuck it, give us the straight now. I do want to mention something about some of the oil tankers, which is that, Okay, the whole situation is very murky, but Iran has been I mean, obviously it's been allowing its own tankers to go through, which is not a huge amount of oil, but it's some We
got a reported case. The statements on this were released by the Thai governments and also a Thai oil company where the Thai basically foreign minutes like called the Iranian government and said, hey, we have an oil taker here where you let it through, and they went yeah, sure. So there seems to be some kind of process by which countries can do some kind of negotiation with the running government and be let through. What exactly the look that looks like in the details of it are really unclear.
We don't know if this is a pattern or if they were just like, yeah, sure whatever, Thailand, you can you can do this. But yeah, that's kind of the state of things.
I guess.
I guess we should also mention there's been a bunch of reporting at the US is deploying two thousand paratroopers. I've seen both one thousand and two thousand side it is the number from the eighty second Airborne into the region, which presumably would be there for that like disastrous carg Island campaign. But oh boy, which is not boots on the ground because it's.
It's doesn't the ground doesn't. We're good.
I'm so excited for US to fight an entire war in the Arctic where he's like, there's not boots on the ground because they're all wearing snow shirts.
Can't can't get us there.
You see, all the Marines are wearing jet packs. They never touched the ground.
They never touched the ground. They've got those weird what there's wearing water backpacks that you fly you can fly.
With little jet ski to get those. They're not touching the ground. They're they're all laying a corduet road in front of them, so they're not technically on the ground, they're on this road. That Yeah, so things continue to go bad. Leave for kind of everyone involved in this war except I guess the Israelis, who are they seem to be happy. Yeah, they shouldn't be having a great
time doing their doing another ethnic cleansing. But another group of people who've been doing extremely badly as a result of this, and has gotten almost no coverage in the American press to the extent that like I found out about I mean, like I was started hearing about the stuff from just like by friends who are Indian, which is that things are very very bad right now in
East and Southeast Asia and just Southeast in general. Multiple countries, including a Thailand for example, have either sent part or all of their government employees home and told them to just work from home because they can't afford to keep their offices open because like cooling the offices is too expensive. They're sort of rolling crisis like across the entire sort of Pacific rim area because all of these countries are
unbelievably reliance on oil, natural gas. This is also down to stuff like cooking oil too, which they also have not been able to get. And so you know, you can look at Sri Lanka where there are these just enormous fuel cues because the Sri Lankan governments they're four years out from the last time that they weren't able to input oil. That one was a sort of currency crisis, balance of payments issue they were having, but the moment there was there was a problem with the oil supply,
the government started doing rationing. So now you have these massive lines for people trying to get gasoline. That's I think one of the worst ones in terms of just pure inability to get gasoline. So this is a problem across the region. The BBC also said, I was just gonna read the quot from the VC that they quote declared Wednesdays a public holiday. Sure, so yeah, they're just adding another day to the weekend because they can't have
businesses open. Because businesses can't afford to like heat or cool themselves, they literally can't afford to keep the economy running. And variations of this are playing out all across South Asia. There's been a massive closure of industries in India, A whole bunch of restaurants. I think the estimates were about one fifth of restaurants are just gone because they can't get cooking oil. And you have the situations where like anything that requires like cooking oil, even other things that
are open like can't be used. Gujarat, but the Indian side of Gujarat has a very large ceramic industry and it's gone. It's been gone for like a month. Eighty percent of it is shut down. This is four hundred thousand people affected by this because they're using for pain and there's no propane and this this is playing out across the region right There's been some reporting about concerns in Taiwan over whether they're going to have enough sort of liquified natural gas in order to keep their ship
facilities running. But Taiwan is like kind of okay. It's places like Sri Lanka's, places like Thailand's, places like Miammars, India where things are getting really really bleak really quickly. There's a story that kind of did make it through into the American press about how the US temporary lifted sanctions on Iranian oil specifically so that there were these tankers the Iranian tankers that were just at sea and the sanctions specifically on those tankers are lifted so India
could buy it. And this has been happening with Russian oil too. And the reason this is happening is that if you're not getting these kind of injections of oil, the situation there would be even more bleak than it
already is. And obviously there's some places where it's just everything is continuing as normal, but you're starting to see just kind of these countries un raffle because so much of their infrastructure is based on an oil and natural gas that's that's that's coming through the Gulf, and it's really fucking bleak. And it's something to keep in mind as as this crisis rolls on. We're dealing with like gas price go up, which is obviously bad in an issue.
There are a shit ton of people in the world where it's like, yeah, I know, like four hundred thousand people are out of their jobs because their entire ceramics industry is gone. Yeah, right, and these are these are not people who have money in the first place. And this is crisis is just going to continue as long as the Trump keeps this war going.
So I guess we'll see how long that is.
Hopefully not long.
Yeah, I mean Poland continues to be bad.
I'm sure Marco Rubio and JD. Events are going to be on it as they god, as they continue their negotiations.
Yeah, there's not a long list of people that I want running negotiations less than JD.
Vance.
But like it's it's not great. It's not no, it's not great. It's there's no way to sugarcoat it here.
It says something about how much fucking Kushner screwed the pooch that Iran is like, yeah, I get.
Vance in here, bring bringing Vance, You get JD.
Vance in here. I don't want to talk to that other guy again.
There is like a legitimate problem they're having, which is like there's been a lot of jokes about how like all the DEI firings are like fucking the but like it actually is where there's like a whole bunch of the embassy staff people like got fired because they weren't white and because the Dose people were just like fuck it. And now it's like, I mean this was a situation already. The US government's, like experts on on other countries tend to be like.
I mean, if you look at what happened in the lead up to the Iraq War, anyone who knew anything about Iraq as an actual s subject matter expert was basically isolated and cut out of like the planning because they were all saying, don't do what you do, it's not gonna work well.
And and and even even even in administrations we regard
as competent. Like I I randomly, like when I was at You'd reach Chicago, like going to school, I met the guy who was who was set Calm Syria analyst like right when at the beginning of this year in revolution, and he was like reporting to Barack Obama about what was going on, and it was just like some guy like it was it was it was like some guy who'd gotten like an undergrad degree, right, yeah, like and even those guys are getting like it was just like
some random asshole with I mean, like he's like knew his stuff, but he wasn't like a he wasn't like an expert on this, right, And even those people are gone, And so now you're dealing with those people who are supposedly running these negotiations. You just have like literally no idea. What's going on? Because they fired every non white person, so it's just catastrophic for the entire world.
Yep, cool, one more ad break and we will return for a final segment giving an update on a friend of the pod, Gregory Thethno oh, Greg, all right, we are back. Unfortunately, it's time for our reoccurring Bavino segment, hopefully the last.
God what's boving on?
He just had a very interesting interview with The New York Times he did in which he said that before he was demoted from his role as Commander at Large, he had a plan at DHS to deport one hundred million people, something that DHS then tweeted about with a silly little graphic that they stole from another artist. The New York Times reported quote mister Bavino said he had a master plan that was in motion before his exile back to Eli Centro. Have neutralized protesters, he said, and
made it possible to deport one hundred million people. That as a goal that the Department of Home and Security has widely promoted. If it sounds extreme, it's because it's nearly ten times the estimated number of undocumented people in the country. It's also more than a quarter of the entire US population unquote.
Yep.
Gregory is also quoted in this piece of saying, I wish I'd caught even more illegal aliens. I mean, we went as hard as we could, but there's always a creative and innovative solution to catching more unquote. God would have been nice for a journalist to follow up.
On what he meant by that, yep, yep, mm hmm. I want to talk a little bit about that one hundred million number, because sure there was a New York Times report where Trump said in one meeting to you the twenty twenty four campaign, mister Trump said that if it was up to mister Miller, there would only be one hundred million people in this country and they would all look like mister Miller. Wow.
Yeah, I mean that's he's not lying, Yeah, you.
Know, and he he.
I guess has the numbers reversed in that in that the Bovino one is to port one hundred million people, which is the one that's been floating around in sort of like right wind circles more and this one was that there's only one hundred million left.
But it's completely disconnected from reality, and like the economic reasons for why. Yeah, these deportations are even something disconnected from the economic reasons behind this sort of immigration enforcement. Yeah, there's just no logistical capacity.
No, they're like, it's it's I mean, yeah, it would be one of the largest ethnic cleansings we've ever seen. But it's it's a thing that like people like Miller and the Boveno want. This is kind of what we've seen a lot in thro administration between the people who actually want the economy to work and the people who
have like some other ideological goal. Yeah, because there's the people who just want the white ethno state, right, and that's sort of the Boveno like Miller wing, and then there's everyone else like Scott Besting, like the Treasury people who were like holy shit, like yeah, we want we want there that we want that we we we we
need the permanently subjucated immigant under class. You can't deport one hundred and well this wouldn't even be the immigrant under class, right, This is this is like most of the norn white people in the US, right, who who they're talking about deporting? Who are just you know, people here like me and obviously like we don't know if Bavino's just lying about this, because who knows it's Bovino.
But yeah, what this master plan actually looks like or what it included also not expounded upon something that the journalists at least did not get an answer out of that was then reported. No, it's unclear, but during Bavino's like rain at border patrol, this number was something that
d just mentioned as a gold multiple times. For an example, earlier this month, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy was questioning David J. Ber, director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, about his criticism of DHS, and Senator Kennedy read a quote from Beer's social media.
They referring to Republicans think they control their way into US accepting ethnic cleansing.
End quote your your words, not mind?
Did I read that correctly?
That was in regard to.
Post about advocating one hundred million deportations. That is what DHS has tweeted from their own account. One hundred million deprit parts that would be ethnic cleansing. You would be learning one third of the country. So yes, there are people, we got homeland security.
I think this is hyperbolic.
Give me thirty more seconds.
I think advocating one hundred million pavications.
In having fun.
On February he really thought he ate with that one.
He was really he was really thinking he was going to dine out on that.
Huh Wow. What is rattling around in your skull that you listen to that and think you want, like, what is happening here?
God, you're having fun having fun with that? Huh okay.
Speaking of the Department of Homeland Security, there is a new big boss in town. Former Senator Mark Wayne Mullen has been sworn in as the new DHS Secretary. During his confirmation hearings, Mullen said he regrets calling Alex pretty a quote deranged individual who came to cause Max damage.
Those words probably should have been retracted. I shouldn't have said that, and Secretary, I wouldn't. The investigation is ongoing and there is, Like I said, there's sometimes going to make mistake and I own it that one. I went out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts. That's my fault. That won't happen as secretary. So you regret that statement, I already said that, Yes, sir, would you want to apologize to the family.
Of preddy Well.
Sir, I just said I regret those statements.
Is that the same as an apology?
I haven't seen the investigation. We'll let the investigation go through, and if I'm proven wrong, then I will absolutely.
The same as an apology.
Oh God, man, just speak like a person.
We got to bring mister Rogers in here to tell you what an apology is. Come on, bro, yes.
I also there's a lot of discourse about his name being Mark Wayne.
You can't tell me that guy doesn't look like a Mark Wayne.
He looks like a Mark wayn.
He looks like a Mark Wayne. Thank you so much, Jesus Christ. Just say sorry, dude.
Later on in this same hearing, Mullen defended the actions of the officer who killed Renee Good, saying, quote, it's very clear that an officer had to make a split decision in that case. Throughout these lyrics, Mullen reiterated that he wants to keep the agency out of the news. Quote, my goal in six months is that we are not
in the story every single day. When questioned about what ICE reforms he would be willing to put into law, Mullen said that a quote unquote better approach would be working with local municipalities.
I would love to see ICE become a transport more than the front line if we get back, if we can get back into just simply working with law enforcement. We're going to them and we're picking up these criminals from their jail.
One.
We're going to reimburse them for having the person there. And a partnership is violent important. I don't think there needs to be a wall to change that. I think I can work within what is there. But there's an approach that can happen, but we've got to have partners.
What he's trying to do here is essentially blame ICE overreach on sanctuary city policies, saying that ICE would need to be in all these places being on the ground if sanctuary cities would just cooperate with ICE for removal operations.
In response to a question about ICE and cbp illegally entering people's homes, Mullen said, quote, we will not enter a home or a place of business without a judicial warrant unless we're pursuing an individual that runs into a place of business or residence or a house.
Unquote.
If this is true, this definitely is a partial movement still with this exception, but a partial movement from the so called administrative warrants which became popular under Christine Nome, which big if like it, I think, as like James has said before, I think there is like that the wind is changing a little bit, but I mean it could very easily change back. The other way is it is simply too soon to say. And obviously none of
these things will be like satisfactory. ICE should not exist as an agency, But it is interesting to see the Trump administration slowly adjust towards pressure being put on ICE from the public. At Mullin's swearing in ceremony, Trump said, quote, generally speaking, Mark Wayne would be very much in favor of.
What I'm in favor of. He might be worse. He might be worse than me. Oh no, So.
Generally speaking, I think I can answer that Mark Wayne would be very much in favor of what I'm in favor of.
Would you say that's right, Mark?
I can't think of too many things.
He might be worse.
He might be worse than me.
That's my look at his wife is saying that's right.
But uh so, yeah, he's going to be great.
So we'll see, we'll see what that turns out to be. Great stuff, great stuff. These people are so bizarre, like they can't talk. They sound ridiculous. Nightmare. That's my only take. They can't do nor they can't human.
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