It Could Happen Here Weekly 196

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This is it could happen here.

I'm Garrison Davis.

One place that it is happening right now is Washington, D.C., where Trump has undergone a quasi-military takeover of the city.

And to discuss this, I'm joined by Bridget Todd, D.C.

resident.

Gare.

So I was on the podcast a few months ago talking about Trump's history of threats to DC.

And that has really all come to a head.

So I'm really happy to be sitting down with you to talk about it.

It has been a rough few days here in DC.

I mean, if I am coming off like I sound tired or weird or stressed, it's because I do feel those things.

It's been a lot of feelings.

Most of them, I just hate watching Donald Trump get up in front of America and straight lie about my city and my home, a place like DC that, you know, it's where I'm from.

It's where I spent most of my life.

It's it's pretty difficult to have the national conversation be about what a bombed out shithole my home is.

So I sort of wanted to get into the basics of what's going on and what I think it all means for everyone, not just people in D.C.

So by now, you've probably seen that on Monday, the Trump administration announced that they were federalizing D.C.'s police force, the Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD.

They also announced that they'd be sending National Guard to D.C.

Because D.C.

is not a state, Trump actually, and any president would actually have authority over D.C.'s DC's National Guard.

So despite not being a state, D.C.

does have a National Guard.

The authority over it is just in the hands of the president.

So with a stroke of a pen, he can just deploy D.C.'s National Guard whenever he wants.

He's also sending in National Guard from other states.

To do this, Trump evoked what's called Section 740 of DC's Home Rule Act, which allows for the president to take over MPD for 48 hours with possible extensions up to 30 days in times of emergencies.

I'm kind of putting emergency in quotes because the emergency that he is saying is crime, but we'll get into why that doesn't really hold water in a moment.

So I really can't overstate

how unprecedented this is.

No president has ever done this before.

Yeah, no, I somewhat relate to your pain here of your city suddenly being thrust into national spotlight as Trump sends in

military style police.

I guess

a version, although with very different methods and justifications, happened to my then city, Portland, Oregon, in 2020, which I'm sure most people listening are familiar with.

With very similar reporting on how it's burned to the ground, it is only a husk remains.

There's just one massive bonfire where downtown used to be.

And of course, it's fine.

But the actual presence of

groups like Bortak actually create situations where there's massive amounts of violence being done by men in army fatigues.

What's in DC is, I think, notably different and like a semi-extension of how he was testing out this type of thing in LA earlier this year, but with less of like an end point.

Like LA's stuff was more about trying to push forward these deportations and renditions as quickly as possible.

So he's just like taking control of the whole city, like indefinitely, it seems now for DC.

In some ways, yes.

To be clear, because D.C.

is not a state, it is unique from any other place in the country in that the president kind of does have more authority over D.C.

than he would in other places.

And so he definitely, this is definitely a federalization of our police department.

In terms of it being a larger takeover of D.C., we're not there yet.

This is something that he's definitely threatened.

This is something that he loves to talk about.

That would include the president taking over pretty much every aspect of life in D.C.

So our public schools, our roads, our social services, all of that, revoking home rule.

That's what that would be.

He definitely, that is definitely a threat.

We should all be very aware of that.

And like, it really makes clear why D.C.

needs full statehood yesterday, right?

Like this is an issue that should have been solved forever ago.

But right now we're talking about, you know, specifically law enforcement and the police, which on its own is like pretty bad.

No, that's always the first step.

Like as soon as you take control of the enforcement mechanism, then no one really is able to stop you from doing other things.

And that's why the first steps in

all of these like, you know, weird, weird, like far-right Silicon Valley like plans for how they can fix, quote unquote, fix the government, being able to take total control over the law enforcement apparatus is always the first step because then you can kind of do whatever you want from there and no one's going to stop you.

Yeah, in order to revoke home rule, it would take an act of Congress, which this Congress seems more than willing to do whatever Trump wants.

So that's something to keep in mind.

Yeah, I think that for residents of D.C., I think the changes have been so stark in the last just couple of 48 hours that I think it's very important to keep in mind what could be coming down the pike and definitely be aware of it.

But, you know, residents need to know what this means for them and us today.

And I think that like.

It's just really important to like highlight that.

I think that because of the nature of DC, it being the nation's capital, but also where more than half a million people live, I think it's really easy for people to forget that, like, the experience of like people who live here, like me, you know, and

I think it's in this moment, the people that I'm talking to on the ground really are like focused on making sure that folks know what's going on, have resources, you know, understand their rights, understand that their rights have not changed just because of this act this week.

And so, I mean, the thing that I am emotionally and personally struggling with is

this smear of my city being this like dangerous hellhole.

How did you manage that?

And what was the, what was the experience of going through that like like the dissonance of like your experience every day navigating the streets of this place where you live and then hearing the national conversation about it be so different from how you were experiencing it?

I think eventually it is kind of became like a point of pride and

more like an absurd aspect, which keeps like unwanted tourism down.

I don't think it really in the end bothered people in the long run.

And the reason why people had a big problem with it specifically was because of federal law enforcement who were taking over blocks of the city.

Like that, that was the actual

crux.

Like Republicans constantly talk about how, you know, insert any city here is like falling apart, is overridden by crime, is

a fallen state.

You can't go out.

And like, they just kind of pick a new one to put all the attention on like once a week.

So we're kind of like used to this to this rhetoric.

It's more so the actual like physical presence of law enforcement and how that changes the way that you're able to go throughout the city and the presence of like militarized federal law enforcement that yeah affects like just regular people.

It's not just rhetoric.

It actually changes how you get to interact with your city.

And I guess that that's the thing that actually caused people in Portland to be much more upset, which results in tens of thousands of people going out into the streets and saying, no, we don't want you here.

So I think more so than just like the rhetoric of how XY city is burned to the ground.

It's more so the actual physical daily life that produces the actual tension within the city and how that gets changed and altered with federal law enforcement.

Exactly.

I mean, that's pretty much what's happening on my streets in DC.

So about 850 officers and agents took part in this, what they called massive law enforcement surge across D.C.,

where they had between 100 and 200 soldiers out patrolling the streets like beat cops at any given time.

And so, you know, some of the things that we've seen in the last couple of days, just simply as a longtime resident, like, just simply do not make sense, right?

Having federal agents patrol places like Georgetown, which is very safe at 10 o'clock at night.

That happened last night.

Well, Georgetown actually might be the most dangerous place in the city.

Well, in some ways, right?

If you're thinking about like the kind of crime they're talking tough about.

Yes, yes.

Or like the National Mall at 2 p.m.

on a weekday, places where it's like, it don't even make sense for y'all to be posted up there.

You know, there was a big display of force and arrests on my block just last night in the middle of the night, where we looked out the window and it was car after car after car of Border Patrol.

They set up the lights.

They made arrests.

And my block is residential.

So it's like places where it's like, it doesn't even seem to be making sense.

And that's why we know it's really not about crime.

All of the stuff that Trump said about crime and his presser, I mean, it was, it was all just lies.

Like not like, I guess I don't need to tell anybody listening to this, but like in case you are curious whether or not there's any credence to the fact, well, like, oh, well, is crime going up in D.C.?

That is not true, right?

So violent crimes have been going down the past two years in DC consistently.

Absolutely.

So it is true that D.C.

did have a spike in crime in 2023, but since then, crime is going down.

If you watched that press conference, he threw out a lot of stats about how crime is going in the wrong direction.

By every measure, that's simply not true.

He said that in 2023, the murder rate in DC reached the highest rate.

This is him, he said, probably ever going back 25 years, but that they don't know what that means because the data just only goes back 25 years.

Saying basically that they didn't collect crime statistics way back then.

Think about that for a second.

25 years ago was the year 2000.

Do you really think that crime data was not being collected in the year 2000?

It absolutely was.

We absolutely know what crime in DC looked like in the year 2000 and beyond.

And so if there's one thing people might know about DC is that in the 80s and the 90s, we were hit hard by the crack epidemic.

Crime was genuinely very high.

The city's own crime statistics, which we did collect from the 70s, 80s, and 90s when the population in DC was smaller, show that there was much more higher numbers of homicides and murders.

So that's not just a lie.

It's also a weird, obvious lie.

And one that when when I watched the presser, I almost didn't catch.

It wasn't until I sat down and went through the notes that I was like, oh, this is not just a lie.

This is like a weird, glaring lie.

I can't believe I like, I guess I say that to say there are so many lies being thrown out in a short amount of time.

When they're all washing over you, it's kind of hard to catch them one by one.

But then when you actually sit down, you're like, wow, this was just bullshit.

Yeah, that's the intention.

That's what Steve Bennett calls like muzzle velocity.

You have to shoot out these things constantly, one after another, so that that it's impossible to actually hone in and quote unquote debunk each and every one.

Because by the time you're doing that, they've already moved on to 15 new things.

You can never keep up with it.

And that's like the whole intention.

That's like how they craft literally just like their sentences so that you can't just like debunk everything they say because they just throw it all out there.

And it creates this massive structure.

that even if you try chipping away at the sides, it doesn't actually make any effect and it doesn't matter at all.

And like, what's the real effect they're trying to do here with sending in

National Guard federalizing the police?

It's to like scare black people and it's to scare homeless people.

And that's really what they actually mean when they say there's high crime.

And I think DC is what, like the, has like the third, third largest black population in the country.

That's right.

We formally called Chocolate City.

We're more like a latte city today.

But yeah, we are, we have a heavily black and brown population here.

Yeah.

And that's, that's what Trump's actually like focusing on.

That's actually what he's doing.

I feel like that's, that should be pretty clear to anyone who's familiar with crime panic narratives and how they've been strategically deployed throughout the past 25 years and 30, 40 years of the country.

Yeah, I mean, I don't see how somebody could see what's happening and see the way that he is clearly like even at that presser, the list of cities he was planning on going to next, Chicago, Baltimore.

It's like, okay, heavily black cities with black political leadership and black mayor.

Oakland.

This is very clear what's going on.

Yeah, interesting, interesting choice, buddy.

Yeah.

Like, what do all these places have in common, right?

One of the things I've seen people say is that this whole thing is about the attack on the former Doge staffer known as Big Balls.

Big Balls.

I think that's his technical term.

Yes.

Possibly to receive the presidential medal of, I think, freedom.

I think he got a medal.

I think it happened.

It's quite possible.

So we should show Big Balls some respect for his

struggles, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I never thought I would see the day where I'd be like reporting on a story happening in the city and talking about somebody named Big Balls, but here we go.

Really?

You didn't see this coming?

You didn't see this?

This isn't on my bingo card, Gare.

For a podcast that I host about local DC news and issues called City Cast DC, I interviewed Mark C.

Graves, who was like a longtime DC reporter.

And I said, oh, is there any truth to the idea that this attack on big balls is like, what was the impetus to all this?

That Elon Musk was like, Trump, you need to federalize DC's police department because of what happened to my former staffer.

And I understand why people, like, where that narrative is coming from, but he really pointed out something, which is that, you know, Trump has been talking about taking over DC's police department for a very long time.

He referenced it during his first administration a little bit, a lot less than he did it the second time around.

He really dialed it up in his second campaign.

He began talking about it even in his first few months in office by threatening to take control over MPD if our mayor, Muriel Bowser, did not make certain concessions like clearing homeless encampments near the White House and removing Black Lives Matter Plaza from outside the White House.

He also threatened to take over MPD and DC in general when a former Trump administration staffer, Mike Gill, was shot and killed during a carjacking in DC back in February.

So when that happened, again, he was like, I'm taking over MPD, I'm taking over MPD.

So, well, the big balls thing,

alleged carjacking of big balls.

I will say this.

You know, those stories where you're like, we're going to get more information about this.

So it's best to just wait.

I have a, I don't know anything.

I don't have any special details.

But like, my sense is, this is one of those situations where it's like, you know, first the story was I was with a girlfriend in her car and we were carjacked by two unarmed teens.

Then Elon Musk, super spreader of misinformation that he is, was like, oh, he was attacked while trying to rescue an elderly woman.

Like, I just have seen enough about crime in DC.

I am, I'm looking forward to hearing more information about what actually went down there.

I'll just put it that way, if that makes sense.

With Mr.

Big Balls.

With Mr.

Big Balls.

I guess Mr.

Balls, I guess.

Big is the first one.

Mr.

Balls.

Please, Mr.

Balls is my father.

And so, yeah, like, I think the Big Balls thing might have been very convenient timing or like a good excuse to actually move forward.

But I think narratives that big balls got attacked and now Trump is taking over MPD.

Yeah.

I think that like doesn't really tell the full story, which is that this has been a long time coming.

This has been something that Trump has been like obsessed with for quite some time, even going back from before his second administration.

And there's, and there's been like a media campaign the past few months of specifically taking like public transit robbery videos and making them super viral of like

teens who will like steal like designer clothes on public transit yeah and and turning turning this into like a national epidemic and again you can you could look at look at the like the shoplifting videos from from a few years ago that even though crime was going down there was videos very visible videos of of shoplifting that went super viral to help form this this crime wave narrative that the statistics don't necessarily support to the point where you have republicans actually like denying the FBI's own crime statistics.

The FBI, famously soft on crime institution, the FBI, but Republicans saying saying that these stats have to be wrong because we all know that there's crime everywhere.

And like, how do we know that?

Because you're seeing like a TikTok video about it.

And that's your proof?

Is you see, you saw one or two videos of like people robbing an Apple store.

And now you think that crime must be statistically higher everywhere?

Okay.

Yeah.

And I think that's why the big balls narrative continues to really be so sticky.

Ooh, I don't like that.

Yeah, I don't mean it how it sounds, but like, it doesn't matter if you have statistics from the FBI saying that crime is going down, whatever, whatever, when you, if you have a visceral image of like a bloodied big balls beaten on the street, right?

Like, and so I think that it's, it's really interesting how, I mean, I guess I'll just say it, how easily manipulated people are.

Oh, yeah.

And how, how, how they're able to go against the facts when they are confronted with an image of like teens robbing a CVS or like, oh, yeah, like a looted out CVS because that is so visceral.

And so that's something I really struggled with: is like, I don't know how to counter these emotionally charged, visceral TikTok videos and images that present one thing with facts.

Like, it's like very difficult to be like, well, the data says this when people are being motivated by a different thing.

No, and that's why it's almost kind of fruitless to go about that strategy at this point.

And like, I don't know how to approach this.

And I think it's also worth mentioning, like, you're.

We are not immune to this either.

We might get targeted with like different narratives.

Maybe, maybe a CVS robbery doesn't do it for us.

But no, like, everyone's motivated by emotional reactions to things that we see as bad or often horrific.

And that does change the way that we understand the physical aspects and the statistical patterns of the world.

Very clearly,

we're emotional creatures.

That's what drives us.

The fact that the emotional plight of Big Balls is driving the ruling party in the country right now is just a little bit more notable because it's one white guy named Big Balls.

Yeah, it's true.

And it almost doesn't even make sense to like combat the idea that this is about crime.

But I know it's not about crime because one, the Trump administration recently made very drastic cuts to DC security funding.

And so if he was really very invested in crime in DC, seems like something that his administration would not have done.

Also, something that our mayor, who I do want to talk about, has said is that.

As you were sort of alluding to earlier, federal agents and military personnel are not the people who are going to be useful when it comes to DC, like street crime.

These are people who probably aren't even informed about DC's local ordinances and laws.

Why would they be?

Right.

And so these are not people whose jobs it is to be out engaging with civilians about quality of life crimes like open containers or drinking on sidewalks.

I saw a pretty viral video of the police going up and stopping somebody.

for he says smoking a joint on his porch.

In DC, you are allowed to possess marijuana.

But he also is like, just so you know, Trump is cracking down on all of these quality of life crimes.

So you can't drink a beer on your porch anymore.

That's incorrect.

In the District of Columbia, you absolutely can drink alcohol on your private property outside.

And it's like, well, how, how would he know?

He's not even from here.

He's a federal agent.

So like, these are not people who are.

trained or skilled in combating the kind of civilian level street crime that we're seeing them do.

This is just not an appropriate use of these people.

And so the thing that kind of gets me is that for the amount of money that we are spending on having federal agents deal with low-level street crime, like per MPD and per the DOJ's own statistics, the kind of crimes that they have been combating this week are things like open container, fare evasions.

It was like, yeah, you needed, you needed an FBI agent to deal with this.

What are you talking about?

With the money that we're spending, we probably could house every single unhoused person in the District of Columbia with the money that we are spending on this nonsense.

It's like, that's the thing that makes me so angry.

I don't want to live in a city that's full of crime.

Luckily, I don't because crime is going down.

But if you genuinely wanted to combat crime, there is a reasonable way to do this.

And this is just a big show of force to freak everybody out and basically demonstrate that Trump can go into cities and do this.

It's not actually about lowering crime.

The reason why they would never want to house people is because they don't actually want to.

They don't want.

homeless people to live good lives.

They want to exercise power.

That's the primary motivator.

And not only can bringing in out-of-state police be like inconvenient, it can have lethal consequences.

Right.

Because they do not know the areas that they're policing.

They do not know the people in those areas.

They don't understand what it's actually like.

When I was at the Republican National

Conference Committee, I don't know how do I not, how do I not know what the RNC is actually called?

I think it's the convention.

It depends on if you're talking about the event or the like entity.

The entity.

When I was at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last year, I responded to the scene of a police shooting where police from out of state who were brought in for the convention were policing outside of the area of the convention and shot and killed a homeless black man because they did not understand where the homeless people like have their encampments, how they solve disputes, how people can get into fights, but that does not mean like...

you have to kill people who are having a fight.

So, no, this has drastic consequences, something that the the police in Milwaukee would have been aware of this encampment would have possibly been aware of the normal way that homeless people can get into fights with each other, but are not going to kill each other.

Instead, you have an out-of-state cop from like Ohio or something get freaked out that two people are fighting and then shoot one of them.

And stuff like this is why, like, out-of-state police are so dangerous when they're being brought into communities that they really just don't understand.

Exactly that.

You know, I did an interview with a local community organizer in DC, and they told me pretty much the same thing that there is an aspect of trust and relationship building that goes into not just like solving crimes, but combating crimes before they start, right?

Like there is a level of deep relationship building and trust building that has to be in effect there.

And that is what actually can sometimes make communities safer.

When it comes to unhoused people and immigrants, these are not people who are committing crimes.

These are people who are statistically more likely to be the victims of crimes.

And so when you bring in outside forces who do not have trust, who do not, who have not built that relationship, and they're terrorizing the communities that are statistically more likely to be the victims of crime, that's going to be the thing that results in the opposite of crime going down, right?

Because you are damaging whatever trust and whatever relationship and whatever understandings have been built with this community and law enforcement.

going forward, right?

And so if we're genuinely interested in building safer communities, bringing in all of these outside military and federal personnel is simply not how you do it.

That's how I know it's bullshit.

They don't actually care about any of this.

And like, it is, it is sort of crazy making because I feel like they want us spinning out about all of this stuff, all of this bullshit that they're spinning, which fucking guiltiest charge for me this week is all I've been doing.

But, you know, it's just, it's this, they're so effective at the spin and the manipulation.

No, one of the former Fox News hosts who somehow has a position in government.

Hank Seth?

No, it was another one.

No, no, there is another.

This is...

Which one?

It was one of the ones who looks like your evil aunt.

Oh, Janine Piero?

Yes.

Oh, my God.

I'm glad that we could figure that out based on that description.

That's all you had to say.

But she was specifically asked, like, what are you going to do to address the root cause of crime?

And she says, we don't want to.

We're not going to.

That's not what we're actually focusing on.

We're focusing on just like eliminating crime.

Yeah.

through like force through intimidation and not even actually eliminating crime just just just exercising power which is what they're actually trying to say and that's that's the whole point of this yes and it's not just crime writ large through force it is crime in cities that are run by democrats that have heavily black and brown populations because yeah you don't see them going into white communities that have crime, which white communities do have crime.

You don't see them going into like cities where they have Republican mayors, where crime is also quite bad.

No, that's not even, that's not even like part of the conversation.

It is very clear what they are saying.

This is an attack.

It's about power.

Yeah, this is a show of power to communities that we don't like.

And I have to say something about this, which is that, you know, when this first happened, when I was interviewing that longtime reporter, Mark Seagraves, something that he told me that really scared me was that the administration is doing this entirely legally and by the book.

He was like, oh, it's clear that they are following every letter of the law to the point where the first statement out of our mayor's office was that they were not challenging this takeover of MPD because they did not feel like they had any kind of legal grounds to do so, which is grim.

That really tells me that they've got their act together.

There was a time where people were like, oh, they're just going to do things and see what sticks and see what, you know, see what gets challenged in court, see what they can get away with.

It really tells me a lot that in this instance, they're like, we're doing this by the book so that there is no legal challenge to what we are doing.

What has the reaction been like from like city government?

I mean, I will say I came on this podcast a while ago, and I'll say, like, I don't want to say I defended our mayor, Muriel Bowser, but I did want to say, like, she is in a position that no other elected official in the country is in where she has to sort of play nice with a madman.

I came on the show and I said that she had this strategy of appeasement and making concessions, which, you know, say what you will about it, I believe was grounded in an attempt to like work with Trump to avoid worse outcomes.

To avoid this from happening.

To avoid this from happening.

So my point is now, I mean, it really shows you the futility of trying to make concessions with a fascist, right?

What's the point?

Yeah.

Because the thing that we were trying to avoid, the thing that all of these little appeasements and concessions were meant to avoid has happened.

To be clear, Trump has not taken over DC entirely and home rule still stands.

And so the very worst outcome has not happened yet, but this is pretty damn bad.

And so part of me is like, what did all those concessions get you?

And today, just this morning, she has totally flipped her tune on this.

She actually flew to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump yesterday and she came back saying, well, maybe having more law enforcement in communities in DC will make people safer.

And I just cannot express to you how much it feels like.

I'm gonna speak for myself.

It feels like we have been abandoned by leadership when we need it most, right?

In DC, we have the mayor, Muriel Bowser, who I just told you about.

We have a congressional representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has a long time history of being a fighter and protector of DC's autonomy.

However, she can't vote, so she doesn't really have a lot of power.

And a big conversation in DC has been the fact that she is really aging.

She is like, I think the second oldest member of Congress in the United States.

And it just, we don't feel like we have anybody who can fight for us, who can speak up for us.

And I will say this, like, I'm very disappointed in our mayor.

I'm very disappointed in the fact that she has seems to have really been behind Trump on this.

She does have a not terrible relationship with Trump, which in some ways can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

But I went into this having a sense that, oh, well, I think our mayor is going to fight for us.

Our mayor is going to fight for DC's autonomy.

And I'm coming out of it thinking, I don't think that she is fighting for us.

Like the way that I would want her to be positioning herself in this moment, I'm not seeing her do.

And the reality is, unfortunately, the mayor of DC doesn't really have a lot of power and protection.

She doesn't, when you, when you compare that to somebody like Gavin Newsom, who when Trump sent the National Guard into LA, knows that he has like the power of two senators behind him, right?

Like.

Our mayor doesn't have that.

And it just really made clear when it comes to protecting DC,

we're really on our own.

We're really all we have.

We don't really have a lot of power.

We are really depending on folks like you, Gare, to get the word out to people who do have elected officials that they can call and advocate.

Because, like, there's really nobody to call.

And I will say, I will say this: if the worst thing happens and DC's home rule is overturned, which would be a disaster, like I should come back on the show and talk about what that would look like.

If that happens, DC will have no one.

The only people who will be in charge of how D.C.

is run is Trump and a small handful of people that he would personally appoint to be the commissioner of D.C.

So the last time that D.C.

did not have home rule, it was the only people who were in charge were the president.

And I think it was three commissioners that he personally appointed.

None of these people lived in D.C.

other than the president who lived in the White House.

And so down to the smallest aspect of city life, I'm talking about social services, D.C., health link, unemployment, the streets, the schools, all of that would be run by President Trump.

I cannot express to you what a disaster this would be.

And the smallest thing getting done in D.C.

down to a pothole being repaved would take congressional oversight.

So anybody who thinks that that is a reasonable way to run a city, oh my God, wake up.

Well, I am not thrilled about the idea of Commissioner big balls because that would happen.

You know that.

I know, and it's funny you mentioned Newsome.

Newsome is another guy who was trying to make concessions with Trump, specifically around like trans sports.

Oh my God, don't even get me started.

And he tried to, you know, make, make those sort of like concessions and like roll back some aspects of supporting trans people in schools and trans kids.

And then Trump's Department of Education still went after California schools.

So like, yeah, no matter what concessions you give, they will still go after you.

Earlier, you mentioned there was like arrests on your block last night.

Like how has this affected daily life for you and other residents of like DC so far?

It has been grim.

You know, we've seen Border Patrol, ICDEA, FBI, National Guard just walking the streets.

And again, like something about DC is that in August, pretty much everybody leaves town.

So it's a bit of a ghost town.

There is nothing that justifies the massive disruption in city services that has happened.

On my street last night, they had a row of Border Patrol SUVs blocking traffic for genuinely no reason.

Like

the level to which they are purposely disrupting the flow of city life cannot be overstated.

And, you know, I want to make it clear.

Also, this is, as you said, a real attack on the unhoused community in DC.

We have already seen very disturbing images of unhoused people being taken away by police.

Yesterday, the White House said that they were going to be forcibly removing unhoused people, forcing them into shelters, hospitals, or jails.

And if they didn't go, they would face fines.

I mean, finding somebody who was living on the street.

I mean, like, what are you doing?

Yeah, finding someone who has no money.

Yeah.

And DC has a long history of having an issue with the unhoused community.

We do not have enough shelters to accommodate people.

And even if we did, not everybody's going to want to go to a shelter.

And so this has been an issue long before Trump was ever in DC.

And it does take some complexity and thoughtfulness to solve it, not just going in and removing people by brute force.

Like that is the absolute worst thing that you can be doing for this.

No, I mean, that relates to Trump's like anti-vagrancy executive order from a few weeks ago, where he wants to lock homeless people up in like mental hospitals and jails and like

forcibly so and like change, change the rules for how shelters work, how shelters can get funding, mandatory like drug treatments.

And yeah,

really actually just trying to like involuntarily commit people into.

civil institutions.

Exactly.

I see parts of what he's doing in DC is trying to demonstrate his like plan for that and how he wants that to spread across the country and just taking people off the street, but then locking them either in a jail or onto like a hospital bed.

Yes.

And there was also an ICE raid at the Home Depot out in Northeast this week.

Basically,

I do think that First and foremost, this is an attack on DC's black, brown, immigrant, and unhoused community.

But, you know, I've seen images of of empty bars and empty restaurants where ice and border patrol are are inside the place yeah why would you want to go out to if there's the like the military parading around yes it's up the vibes right like that's i will say like so in addition to the attacks on these vulnerable communities like if you want to have a community where people feel safe to go out they want to spend money they want to like enjoy the city the vibes are terrible this is this is just everything that makes dc great and a good place to live and a place that people want to come and spend time and have and start their families, this kind of show of force goes against that and threatens that.

It really does threaten.

Like DC is a particular place.

It's like, why this is my home.

This kind of stuff really threatens our way of life in ways that are just, it really is just sad.

I'm not sure if you have like examples like what people are trying to do to

cope with this or

try to like

stand their ground in their community, I guess.

But like, how are people like channeling their frustration right now?

Well, there was a very viral video of somebody throwing a sub sandwich at a military personnel on U Street.

So well, that's a start.

As long as if we can get 50,000 people with sub-sandwiches, we might be onto something.

Hero DC needs.

So that's one.

Literally the Hero DC needs.

Yeah.

I see what you did there.

Yeah, I would say, so there are, I feel grateful that there are organizations in DC, like local organizations that were preparing for this.

And so organizations like Free DC, I spoke to one of their representatives earlier this week about what they're doing.

And they're really focused on giving residents resources.

And so they're running cop-watching trainings.

That's good.

That's good.

They're making sure that folks know that their rights have not changed, know their rights.

If an agent comes up to you to talk to you,

they're making sure people know what they do and don't have to say in those situations, which I think is important.

People should definitely check out Free DC.

They've been around since the 60s, so they have been protecting DC's autonomy for a very long time.

One of the things that they were telling folks to do was, do you remember how in 2020, people would go outside and bang pots and pans to thank essential workers and medical personnel?

Yes.

They were telling folks, because the streets feel so militarized, not everybody's going to feel like going out to a protest or going out to a march.

At eight o'clock at night, make as much noise as you can, whether it's from your open window or from your block or from your stoop, as a way to like.

demonstrate opposition to this.

And so if you want more information about the kinds of that kind of organizing that they're trying to provide for folks, definitely check out Free DC.

But I do think, I mean, the vibes are

rage.

And I hate that that rage feels so impotent that we that like, this is just another of a million examples of why we need full statehood.

We've needed it for so long because we are being disenfranchised.

We have the possibility that people in power in DC could be people that nobody elected.

Trump could appoint anybody as commissioner of DC.

And big balls.

Yeah, it could be big balls, right?

And so we are in a situation that is so grim.

And I think that shows, you know, people, people are really feeling that.

And I guess one thing I want to, I want to add is that I was talking earlier about how it's frustrating that I find that I'm often in this conversation, like trying to combat Trump.

And I feel like I'm in a stance that I hate, which is this reactive stance where he spews bullshit.

And I feel like it's my job to debunk it.

And it's like, well, it's bullshit.

I could be doing other things.

I hate that we have gotten this narrative that cities are bad.

And that goes against our shared understanding of this country where cities are good.

If you live in a city, don't let Trump turn you against city life.

Don't let Trump turn you against cities.

People want to be in cities.

Cities are good.

Cities are safe.

Cities are cool to live in.

People want to be in the city.

If people didn't want to live in DC, my rent wouldn't be so goddamn high, right?

People want to be here for a reason.

When Trump got up on that presser and talked about how tourists come to DC, this and that, he's right.

If DC were truly a bombed-out hellhole, tourists wouldn't want to bring their families here.

Cities are good, and I don't think that we should let Trump rewrite the narrative that our cities are bad.

Cities are good, they are good places to be.

We don't have to get caught up in his fake bullshit narrative of demonizing cities.

So that's why I think everyone should travel to DC.

Let's all go to the Capitol,

put on some masks, wave some flags, and just get in there

to show

we can take it over.

We can take the city back.

Joe Biden 2028.

Let's go.

Yeah.

I mean, I did see this interview on News Nation where I think it was Mehdi Hassan was talking to some shithead.

And he was like, oh, if Trump cares about crime so much, why did he pardon a bunch of January 6th attackers who threatened and attacked law enforcement?

And it's like, oh, he would, the interviewer was just like, oh, come on, come on.

You want to talk about that?

Come on.

And it's like, okay, I thought tough on crime, huh?

Tough on crime.

Okay.

No, it's it's it's crime with three ellipses

not the actual category of crime exactly crime wink wink yeah it's like we know what they're what they're trying to say but honestly just talking to you about this has made me feel a lot better i've been raging all week so this is the first time that i feel like i've actually like gotten it all out so thank you for talking to me about it

yeah no we will we will certainly uh keep up with what's happening in dc with you know how long national guard's going to be there, how long this federalization lasts.

Maybe they'll eliminate all crime within 30 days and things will go back to normal.

Who knows?

I mean, the day that he took over,

there was a shooting like an hour or two later.

So I was like, oh, I thought y'all were going to handle this.

Well, I guess not.

But no, we will keep up with this, as well as Trump's promises to go further and expand to.

to five other cities.

So thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences as a resident of DC, Bridget.

Thank you for having me.

And yeah, like if you're out there in D.C.,

stay safe, keep hope alive.

We're all we got.

Where else can people find you on the internet, Bridget?

Besides, you know, on the on the steps of the Capitol waving an American flag.

Yeah, in a mask.

Yeah.

You can find me at my podcasts.

I have a podcast on iHeartRadio called There Are No Girls on the Internet.

I have a podcast about local D.C.

news and issues called CityCast DC.

You can also find me on Instagram at Bridget Marin DC, on TikTok at Bridget Marin DC, or on YouTube at There Are No Girls on the Internet.

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I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co-author of a recently published book about the eugenics movement in Texas called The Purifying Knife.

And I'm Stephen Monticelli.

I'm an investigator reporter in Dallas, where I contribute to a variety of publications, as well as CoolZone Media.

I cover political extremism in Texas and beyond.

Elon Musk has dominated the news since the 2024 presidential campaign, and for a lot of reasons.

There's a billionaire's flirtation with neo-Nazi politics.

There's his gutting of the social safety net through Doge.

His soap opera estrangement from President Trump also grabbed much of the spotlight.

In the past two years, Musk has resuscitated in two Texas communities one of the worst ideas from the robber baron age.

In an effort to control his workers' lives on and off the clock, Musk is bringing the company town back to life.

On May 3rd of this year, on the South Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, people went to the voting booth on a peninsula called Boca Chica.

They voted to turn their one and a half square mile patch of unincorporated land into a city called Starbase.

Almost all of the voters were employees of Musk SpaceX rocket company.

So were the candidates elected to govern Texas' newest city.

But Musk is clearly the power behind the throne.

Meanwhile, in Bastrop County, near Austin in central Texas, Musk gobbled up local real estate in loosely governed, unincorporated lands.

That's where, in addition to Starbase, he's working to create another company town he calls Snailbrook.

Many Bastrup residents say Musk's businesses are poisoning the water, air, and soil in their community.

On this episode of It Could Happen Here, we'll discuss the unfortunate history of company towns in the United States, how company towns have always undermined democracy and workers' rights, and what these Elon Musk company towns may mean for the future of United States capitalism.

Speaking of capitalism, we'll be back after a few words from our sponsors.

Roughly between 1880 and the mid-1930s, An astounding 2,500 company towns dotted the American landscape.

A product of gilded age greed, at best these corporate planned communities represented paternalistic experiments and mind control.

At their worst, they became miniature police states.

In Steinway Village in New York, where, not surprisingly, workers manufactured Steinway pianos, Pullman, Illinois, where employees made train cars, and Hershey's, Pennsylvania, which was, of course, a chocolate manufacturing center, employers built the houses that the workers lived in, the stores where they shopped, the saloons where they drank, and the schools where their children learned.

Chad Pearson is an historian of American labor at the University of North Texas, and he's the author of a noted book called Capitalism's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long 19th Century.

We talked to him about the rise and fall of company towns from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century.

Could you explain how company towns got started in the United States and the motives of the businessmen who started them?

Certainly.

So really, I think we can identify three periods, three phases.

So the first phase would be we might associate with the so-called Lowell girls in Lowell, Massachusetts, which began in the 1820s and continued into the subsequent decades.

These were young women, girls, and

basically, you know, they lived on the campus.

The town, the boss would decide when they would work and when they would eat and that sort of thing.

After that, we have another phase which we could identify with George Pullman and the Coleman Company just outside of Chicago in the late 19th century, really in the 1880s.

Again, these were very controlling environments in which the employer had all the say.

Workers would live in company housing.

Again, they'd go to the company church and were really controlled both during and after the workday.

And then we have a whole bunch of them, mostly in mining and textile lumber communities.

By 1939, there were 70 planned industrial settlements built after 1900.

So quite a few.

So whatever period we're talking about, these places were infamous for management's use of surveillance and power.

This is designed really to fundamentally control folks, which found expression again in homes, workplaces, and churches.

You would have to sign contracts.

So in a place like mining towns in West Virginia, you'd have to sign a contract that gave the boss the authority to evict labor activists or people, you know, workers workers who might be involved in trying to improve their conditions by fighting back, or they would be evicted for so-called undesirable behavior.

Again, that generally involved things like union organizing.

Pearson described these company towns as mini dictatorships in which fighting for better conditions could result in harsh retaliation.

and in which ministers that were hired by the company at a church built by the company bosses fed workers a steady stream of propaganda.

This happened in places like New England, textile mills to coal mining areas in Alabama and West Virginia.

What might happen?

You know, say you're active in a union or you're resisting your boss, right?

The boss or his underlings might send in mine guards and say, you and your family, get out.

throw their stuff, their furniture on the street.

And there would be no accountability, no way to address

that problem.

You'd also have company towns, you'd have a religious, you'd have preachers who would preach the company line as well, right?

So that kind of pro-business, pro-capitalist indoctrination was expressed both in the workplace and from the pulpit.

A key way that company towns control workers was by not paying them in actual American dollars, but in paper certificates called scrip that could only be spent at company-owned stores.

This gave the company monopoly of power over what their workforce bought.

A 25-pound sack of flour costs $2.50 at the company's store.

It costs only $190 elsewhere, right?

So this was a way for companies to sort of corner the market, if you will, right?

They could jack up prices.

You were basically a slave to the system.

George Pullman, who established the company that made luxury railroad cars, created a company town in Illinois in 1881.

Pullman presented his experiment to the world as a utopia.

The workers' houses there had natural gas and running water, which was not the norm at the time.

Some even had indoor plumbing.

The town had retail shops and well-supplied markets, and tourists visited it as a supposed ideal community of the future.

In spite of the apparent shininess of Pullman, Illinois, the relationship between Pullman and his employees turned violent in 1894, as Dr.

Pearson explains.

So, Pullman, George Pullman, began creating this utopian community in 1880.

Okay, that's shortly after this massive nationwide strike in 1877 of railroad workers.

So, a lot of bosses in the aftermath of these massive confrontations were like, okay, we got to do something.

We've got to do something to solve what they called the labor problem, the labor question.

And one way they did that was through welfare work, trying to be more benevolent, right?

Carrots as opposed to only sticks.

And so Pullman was established in 1884, just outside of Chicago, had about 12,000 residents.

And it was at the time the largest, most famous company town in the nation.

And he did, I mean, let's give credit where credit is due, some things that did improve the conditions for employees.

So he had a company doctor.

He oversaw a good school system.

funded athletic programs, a company band, and he modeled this on a company town outside of Bradford, England.

So what we see is, you know, the company towns do not originate in the United States.

They're sort of a phenomenon that we see across the industrialized world.

But of course, there was also a darker side.

He banned alcohol.

He restricted tobacco use.

He imposed a curfew, right?

So you want to go out, you know, it's five o'clock somewhere.

No, it's not, right?

And so it was also pretty expensive to live there.

Residents had to spend something like 30% of their money on rent.

And when they saved enough money, an impossible thing to do often, when they did save that money,

they would get out.

Pullman's experiment in welfare capitalism came crashing down when the United States sank into an economic depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897.

At one point, 3 million people, or about 20% of the country's workforce, could not find jobs.

Hunger and suicide became rampant as hard times dragged on.

And Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages by 33% during this time.

Residents of the company town in Illinois struggled to pay rent at the Pullman-owned housing, where management refused to lower prices.

Eugene Debs, who would soon emerge as the leader of the Socialist Party of America and would serve five times as that party's presidential nominee, led the 150,000-member American Railway Union.

The ARU staged a strike calling for a rollback in pay cuts and a reduction in rents at the company housing.

The strike spread nationwide with railroad workers refusing to handle trains carrying Pullman cars.

President Grover Cleveland dispatched 12,000 troops to crush the uprising and reopen the rail lines.

Federal marshals shot two strikers to death in Kensington, Illinois, not far from Chicago, while authorities arrested Debs and put him in prison for defying the court order by continuing the strike.

In a SOP to workers, the House and Senate unanimously passed a bill creating what we now know today as Labor Day.

Later on, in jail, Eugene Devs becomes radicalized, reading Marx, runs for president a few times after that.

Bottom line, workers lost the strike, but Pullman's experiment soon ended.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that George Pullman's ownership of the community was in violation of its charter and dismantled the town in 1898.

So a dramatic period in U.S.

history, one of the most important struggles in U.S.

labor history.

And it really showed the way in which bosses, the state came together to really fight labor.

By around the end of the 1800s, about 3% of the American population lived under the almost complete control of their corporate masters.

Meanwhile, an extensive network of spies filled company towns.

These corporate agents posed as fellow workers, bartenders, mailmen, or just another customer at the store.

They reported to management any malcontent who complained about working hours or wages.

Fired workers were often placed on a blacklist that was widely distributed among corporations and made landing a new job even more difficult.

Some mining towns resemble prison camps.

Armed guards surrounded the towns to keep out union organizers.

And the corporate overlords in company towns use violent means to maintain tyrannical control.

We asked Dr.

Pearson to explain this.

Now, Dr.

Pearson, you titled one of your books, Capitalism's Terrorist, and you were referring basically to the fact that corporations, including the ones that own company towns, often use private armies, armed militias, or they basically hired outside violent groups to control labor.

Could you go into that a little bit more?

Let me read you an anecdote from Vandergriff, Pennsylvania.

Vandergriff, Pennsylvania is a company town not far from Pittsburgh.

It's a steel town.

And in July of 1909, during a strike against the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, the company's superintendent was a guy named Oscar Lindquist.

He led a mob of hundreds to a hotel in the nearby town of Apollo where the union organizers were staying.

So there's an effort to build union membership in this company town.

And Lindquist was so pissed about their presence.

So he informed the organizers that they had an hour to leave town and that he would burn the building down if they refused to comply.

When they protested, insisting that they had free speech and assembly rights, Lindquist claimed that, quote, his word was the law.

A local town official reinforcing Lindquist's demand gave the men until the next morning to leave.

So we have threats of like burning places down, killing people, right?

And ultimately, no accountability.

I think it's fair to call these people terrorists.

The harshness of of company towns inspired worker resistance, including what came to be known as the Colorado Coal Field War.

We'll hear more about that and a tragedy that came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre after this break, sponsored by some companies.

One of the bloodiest confrontations between a company militia and striking workers in American history took place in Ludlow, Colorado in the early 20th century.

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company controlled several coal mines and it was owned by the world's richest man, John T.

Rockefeller, who also owned the Standard Oil Company.

The coal workers were unhappy with several things.

They were working 12-hour days, six days a week, sometimes seven.

Through their union, the United Mine Workers, they asked for a raise and for their workday to be no more than eight hours.

They also demanded the right to live in housing that wasn't part of the company town controlled by Rockefeller and to spend their hard-earned money in stores that he didn't control.

The relationship between the United Mine Workers and Rockefeller broke down when he refused to negotiate with them.

Between September 1913 and December 1914, the coal miners in Ludlow staged strikes against the richest man on the planet at the time.

Instead of negotiating, Rockefeller assembled a private army of local sheriffs, deputies, and private detectives.

The militia armed itself with a motorized gatling gun that Rockefeller's goons named the Death Special.

The nation recoiled in horror when on April 20th, 1914, militia troops attacked a company miners' tent colony.

They were living in the tent colony because they had been kicked out of company housing.

During the armed assault, Rockefeller's troops killed 66 men, women, and children.

They doused the tents with kerosene, incinerating 11 hiding in a pit, including a pregnant woman.

The folk singer Woody Guthrie immortalized the horrific scene at Ludlow in his ballad, The Ludlow Massacre.

You struck a match in the blaze, it started.

You pulled the triggers of your gadling guns.

I made a run for the children, but the firewall stopped stopped me.

13 children died from your guns.

About 200 people in all died in what came to be called the Colorado Coal Field War.

So we asked Dr.

Pearson about the long-term impact of the Ludlow Massacre and what happened to company towns in the subsequent years.

So basically on the morning of April 20th, 1914, National Guardsmen who were aligned with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which is owned by John D.

Rockefeller, attacked this camp of strikers, mine workers, strikers, ultimately killing 21 people, including 11 children.

This brutality, this brutality lasted for 14 hours.

The guards torched the colony.

And this came in the midst of a strike that had been going on for months, which

started in September 1913.

And so this was a real struggle.

It was a terrible public relations disaster from the vantage point of Rockefeller and the company.

The pressure to do something was great.

And so what we see is we see government officials meeting and discussing this event.

There are these various gatherings of business people and labor unions trying to resolve it.

And in the aftermath of this, Rockefeller worked closely with what we might call industrial relations specialists.

And he became a champion of welfare capitalism.

Welfare capitalism like company unions, these sort of top-down initiatives designed to win, as I pointed out, factory solidarity instead of class solidarity.

And so how successful that was, probably not.

These bosses continued to exploit, but they did so with smiley faces.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, company towns never completely died, and they're making a bit of a disturbing comeback via Rockefeller's successor.

as the world's richest man, South African native and Texas transplant Elon Musk.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been a big ally of Musk, at least until his nasty split with Trump over the president's tax and spending policies.

But nonetheless, Musk is still popular in Texas, and the state and local governments, for instance, have given Musk $64 million worth of tax breaks to establish his Tesla factory called Giga Texas in Travis County, not far from the state capitol.

COVID-19 restrictions in California during the pandemic enraged Musk, who for a time defied state law.

He derided California as defined by, quote, over-regulation, over-litigation, and over-taxation, poop on the sidewalk, and scorn.

In contrast, Texas stood out for its lax environmental and labor standards.

As Abbott bragged to the Fox Business Channel, a need that Elon had was speed.

He does everything fast, and this would have taken five, maybe ten years to accomplish in California.

I told him that Texas moves at the speed of business.

He was able to complete a mile-long gigafactory in a year and a half that is unheard of, probably not replicable in any other state.

Whether Bastrop residents liked Musk or not, it soon became clear that he was making a very large local footprint.

Bastrop County has always been famous for its beauty.

This is how Bastrop sold itself to tourists, businesses, and potential residents in the early 2000s.

Next time you're on the way between Houston and Austin, or points in between,

you'll want to stop here in Bastrop.

We've got a pretty little place here along the Colorado River, a place with charm and great natural beauty.

We're the home of the Lost Pines.

So cross the bridge into the old town and have a look.

We've been growing here since 1832.

and growing in a good way, a way that looks to the future and that preserves the landmarks of the past.

Bastrop has more than 120 homes and other commercial and public buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some people come here just to drive around town and see the pretty houses.

There's a heavy price for moving at Greg Abbott's speed of business, however.

Chap Ambrose, a landowner in Bastrop County, 33 miles southeast of Austin, said that he admired Musk for being a high-tech titan.

He was excited when the billionaire announced he was going to move part of his business empire to the small, mostly agricultural county.

Ambrose describes his feelings about Musk's arrival in his YouTube series, Keep Bashtrop Boring.

The weird part here is I'm actually an Elon Musk fan.

I have my Tesla Cybertruck reservation here from November of 2019 and SpaceX's Starlink, their satellite service I've also signed up for last year.

All of Bashtrop's natural and architectural splendor, however, is in danger since Musk came to town.

In Texas, counties have even less ability to protect the environment than do cities.

And Musk has strategically placed his operation on land where he'll face lax local oversight.

He used his fortune to buy about 35,000 acres of what was once farmland in Bashtrop County, which is now headquarters for the Boring Company.

The Boring Company plans to build tunnels.

Musk hopes one day will provide high-speed underground alternatives to our current web of interstates.

Musk has secured permits to dig six test tunnels in Bashrop County, which is now also officially the headquarters of his social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Musk Industrial Complex also includes a 500,000 square foot warehouse where the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, more commonly known as SpaceX, builds terminals for another Musk business venture, the satellite company, Starlink.

Neuralink, which manufactures computer chips that have been experimentally implanted in test subjects' brains and resulted in the deaths of many chimpanzees, is also nearby.

The Tesla Giga Factory, which produces electronic cars, is just 13 miles west on unincorporated land neighboring Travis County.

I've seen it driving down the highway.

It's an abomination.

Construction has also begun on a company town Musk has named Snailbrook.

Plans for Snailbrook eventually include 110 single-family rental homes actually owned by Musk.

So far, fewer than 20 modular homes have been completed.

According to Teen Vogue, plans are that rent for these houses will start at about $800 a month for a two- or three-bedroom dwelling, which is well below the $1,925 median rent in Bashtrop County.

A Montessori school called Ad Astra, which from the Latin, which means to the stars, is open, along with the boring bodega, which the Austin American Statesman notes offers snacks, soda, coffee, beer, wine, a children's playground, lounge space complete with video games and beanbag toss, a pickleball court that can be rented for a dollar an hour, and of course a variety of boring company merchandise, such as a t-shirt that says Tunnel Mars.

This purported worker utopia already has a Gilded Age style catch.

If workers get fired by Musk, long famous for his volatility and mass layoffs at his companies, they will only have a month to vacate their homes.

And as with the Gilded Age, much under the snailbrook glitter is not gold.

The town's playground, for instance, lacks shade from the broiling summertime central Texas heat, and much of the equipment is broken and made of inferior materials.

The monastery school initially admitted 50 students, but the campus wasn't big enough.

Only 16 actually attended when classes first opened because the facilities were too small.

Musk once marketed himself as an environmental savior.

His electric cars would supposedly save the planet from climate change.

However, in Bashtrop County, he's a major polluter.

The boring company petitioned Texas for the right to pour 143,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the Colorado River every single day.

Meanwhile, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to date has cited SpaceX and the boring company 13 times because of the unauthorized discharge of water used to clean concrete trucks.

The company also failed to meet state standards regarding erosion control and the release of toxic chemicals in the soil.

As Teen Vogue reported, however, the resulting fines represent mere pocket change for a man who earns an estimated $1,000 a second.

The self-professed Musk fan, Chap Ambrose, who we heard from earlier, said he's disappointed about all this.

There's a culture of secrecy, and it seems they're actively trying to obscure the truth, not just from neighbors, but also our county officials.

If you're going to prototype the world's fastest tunneling machine in my neighborhood, then I expect the most innovative and transparent safety systems to go alongside it.

Why do they refuse to give direct answers?

And why won't they put their promises in writing?

Why do they refuse to follow the very minimal restrictions we have in Texas for development?

And why do I have to go to commissioner court so that they put in a legal septic system?

It seems to me that they only follow the rules and behave when they're being watched.

Transparency may have disappeared forever for residents of Musk's other company town.

One of Musk's most lucrative companies, SpaceX, launches its rockets about 20 miles outside of Brownsville on the Texas Gulf Coast near the Mexican border.

Most of the residents near the launch site, known as Boca Chica Village, are Tejanos, and many struggle economically.

The wetlands and beaches are considered sacred by members of the Carrizo-Comacrudo tribe of Texas.

The area residents were clearly invisible to Muss during a 2018 press conference when he spoke of how test flights such as those as he planned at the Bukkachica site were a necessary first step for exploration of the moon and Mars.

The subsequent controversy was reported by a local TV station, KRGV.

When asked how soon flights would be going to the moon or Mars, Muss talked about the necessary test flights that would need to take place first.

Most likely it's going to

have it at our Brownsville location

because we got a lot of land with nobody around and so if it blows up it's cool.

The people at Brownsville didn't agree that if a rocket ship blew up in their neighborhood it would be quote cool.

This comment is not sitting well with Gail McConaughey.

He's been out here before.

He damn sure ought to know that he's seen the village.

He ought to know that it's not a ghost town.

McConaughey and his wife have been living at Boca Chica Village every winter for the past 11 years.

He says he's offended that he and the other residents are considered nobody.

It also raises questions, he adds, about how safe the launches will be.

In a rocket that size, or any size, that would go up, and who knows what might happen?

It might start tipping the wrong direction.

Who knows if something happens to the engines and it explodes?

That's cool.

When you're talking about there's lives here that's a mile and a half away.

Conhey's words were prophetic.

In subsequent years, Musk's rockets did blow up, such as in April 2023, when a SpaceX vessel obliterated the the concrete launch pad, leaving behind a massive crater.

As Scientific American reported, quote, particulate debris, as well as concrete and steel shrapnel from the Bosch launch, scattered far and wide across the surrounding landscape, igniting fires and slamming into protected habitats and public beaches.

Ash, dust, and sand grains hurled aloft by this first Starship test rained down as far as Port Isabel, about five miles from the launch site, end quote.

Another Musk rocket launch, this time from Pocachica, exploded again this past June 19th, as reported by WTHR.

Whoa!

In the skies over South Texas overnight, a massive fireball after a SpaceX rocket exploded during a static rocket test, a ground test for an upcoming launch.

Ship 36 just blew up.

Ship 36 just blew up.

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, said the Starship rocket experienced a major anomaly while preparing for its 10th flight test, adding that all personnel are safe and there are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities.

The explosion rattled nearby residents who posted videos on social media, one telling my San Antonio News, quote, our whole neighborhood felt it.

It shook all of our houses.

In spite of this record of mayhem, On Saturday, May 3rd, Boca Chica Village held an election on whether to incorporate as the city of Starbase.

The proposal to create the state's newest city carried by a vote of 212 to 6.

Nearly two-thirds of the electorate lived near SpaceX's launch site.

Overwhelmingly, the voters were Musk employees.

All three candidates elected to Starbase's new city commission ran unopposed and won without putting up a single campaign sign or hosting a single candidate forum.

All three were employees of Musk and SpaceX.

As the Texas Tribune has reported, the new city government increased control over the nearby public beach, revered by local indigenous people.

Some local residents feel the creation of the company town gives them even less power to protect what's seen as a local treasure.

Starbase is only about one and a half square miles.

It's, of course, the home of SpaceX, and the main goal is sending humans to Mars.

According to the FAA, Starbase is aiming for 25 rocket launches a year, but this is all coming with a bit of controversy, especially over access to the popular Boca Chica beach.

Any SpaceX rocket launch or engine test requires closing a local highway to the beach, and some say Starbase is giving Musk too much control.

People gathered at the beach Saturday night to protest.

They're just tearing it up and doing whatever they want because they want to gentrify, they want to be a city by themselves.

When you gentrify the land, you're gentrifying the soul of the people.

Juan Macias, the protester you just heard, is the chair of the Carrizo Comacrudo tribe of Texas.

He told the Texas Tribune, quote, these hills are sacred to us.

They don't know the history of the land, and they're trying to erase that.

Of course, Musk has a history as well, and it is one characterized by labor abuses.

Like the robber barons who ruled as emperors over their Gilded Age company towns, Musk has been accused of firing union organizers.

At his Austin Giga Factory, workers claim Musk either didn't pay them for overtime or shortchanged them.

Those same workers charged that records were faked to document their safety training.

And according to the Texas Observer, a publication I'm glad to contribute to, one worker said he was forced to work in a flooded part of the factory and had to work on a metal roof at night without lights.

These are clear OSHA violations.

It is highly unlikely the state of Texas will require Musk to provide any transparency about his business practices.

Governor Abbott recently refused the request of a media outlet, the Texas Newsroom, to release emails between him and Musk, claiming the extensive communication between the pair was, quote, intimate and potentially, quote, embarrassing and therefore not of public interest.

With so much of Musk Enterprise in the state operating in company towns he politically controls or on county land with little oversight, Musk has become the Lone Star State's modern unchecked robber baron extraordinaire.

And with the aid of his on-again, off-again ally, Donald Trump, he has blazed the trail for other tech billionaires.

When Trump ran for president last year, he floated a proposal to build what he called, quote, freedom cities across the country.

Pushed by oligarchs like Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen, and Sam Altman, who ironically now has a bit of a fit and a fight with Elon Musk, they hate each other, and it's really funny.

These proposed fiefdoms would function as libertarian oases.

Coal miners were once paid in script, and the federal government government banned scrip in 1938.

But nevertheless, Jeff Bezos already uses something he calls, quote, swag bucks that are redeemable at Amazon to reward those in the company he deems his most productive workers.

Workers in the freedom cities under discussion would not earn U.S.

legal tender, but would get cryptocurrency instead, the historically stable store of value that has never ripped off thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

In the municipal monstrosities imagined in this scheme, workers would be paid not in U.S.

currency, but as I just said, this insane, highly volatile cryptocurrency.

These corporate havens would operate with the barest nods to workplace safety, environmental protections, and job security.

And, God forbid, might even scam their workers by trading in that same highly volatile cryptocurrency that they're paying them in.

Back in Bash Top, Chap Ambrose thinks we can still embrace the future without surrendering a more old-fashioned concept of community.

He hopes that Musk one day sees the light.

I truly hope the Boring Company succeeds in its efforts.

I think tunneling makes sense, and if they can improve traffic into Austin and around it, that'd be great.

But you have to be better neighbors.

Texas has strong landowner rights.

And you can do pretty much what you want on your land.

However, Texas law also says that we share the air and you share the groundwater with me and my one-year-old son.

So if you're going to come to my neighborhood and build the fastest and most efficient tunneling operation, then I expect the most innovative and transparent safety systems to go alongside it.

The struggle against the absolute power wielded by the rulers of the Gilded Age's company towns led to actual battles with literal casualties on American soil.

Dr.

Pearson reminded us that the hard life in in the Gilded Era, the era of company towns, represented an American norm rather than an exception.

And because of Musk, Thiel, and other modern robber barons, the battles fought in Pullman, Illinois and Ludlow, Colorado might have to be fought once again.

Some of you folks may be aware of Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore's book, which he calls the great exception.

And they argue that you know most of American history is like the Gilded Age.

Yeah, we had a 40, 50 year period from, I don't know the 30s to the 70s when things were kind of better, right?

You know, what blue MAGAs and red MAGAs alike like to celebrate.

But the fact is, you know, things were pretty exploitative then as well.

And so what kind of lessons can we learn from resistance to capitalism in its various forms?

And I think the key one is to trust one another.

There's no substitute for working class solidarity.

Stop having illusions in the Democratic Party.

They're not going to save you.

And so to see, you know, where there are victories when workers are united.

And we see a little bit of that, you know, kicking ICE agents out of towns, right?

I mean, that's politicians aren't helping us there.

That's collective action of working class people.

It's not formal unions, but it's something.

I see hope.

I see hope in the mass mobilization of working class people, irrespective of race, gender, class, and any other identity.

I'm Michael Phillips.

You can find me on Substack at Dr.

M.

Phillips 2001 on Blue Sky and Facebook.

Google my name and quote white metropolis.

And I'm Stephen Wanicharli.

You can find me on Blue Sky, and I've got a Patreon and all those other things.

Thank you for listening, and we hope that you found this delightful topic about Elon Musk's desire to bring back company towns informative.

Thanks for listening.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here.

I'm Andrew Sage, otherwise known as Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm here with James.

Just James.

Don't have a YouTube.

More than just James.

I mean, I love talking to you.

So you're more than just James to me.

Oh, thank you, Andrew.

That's very sweet.

I enjoy these two.

These are fun for me.

Yeah, so really, I'd like to get into one of the hotter topics as of late.

Not the heat, though, that is a hot topic, but

AI, artificial intelligence.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

My favorite thing.

Yeah.

And more specifically, the ways in which AI has contributed to and accentuated alienation and the capitalism and the state in the 21st century.

So that's a mouthful, but it's obviously very important.

Okay.

Yeah.

I like this a lot.

In my opinion, alienation, with all its meanings really, is one of those words that you can really use to describe the current side, guys.

The experience of separation from yourself, from your work, from the products of your work, from your community, all these things, both philosophical and material, get wrapped up into this concept of alienation.

Because it's both an experience, it's something that people like feel internally, that it describes the way that they see their lives.

And it's also just a fact of how people work in society.

You're dispossessed of the products of your labor and you're disconnected from the process of your labor and the outcomes of your labor.

And this is, of course, all thanks to development of capitalism and industrialization and this development of a mass society, quote unquote,

with all the apathy and loss of agency and weakened social fabric that generates.

Yeah, it's, I think alienation is like something we don't talk about enough it's like the the thing that ties together the despair the loneliness

like loneliness is a it's maybe like

it's a way that capitalism has come to talk about alienation without acknowledging that capitalism is creating alienation every sort of developed states in the colonial core have acknowledged that loneliness is a problem, right?

I saw Gavin Newsom was launching a loneliness campaign.

But like the system is a problem.

The alienation is created by the way that things are.

And, like, we can't fix it without changing the way those things are.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It comes down to the conditions.

I mean, in particular, I think we see alienation manifesting most in our relationships, of course, and in our work.

And it's been an issue for some decades now.

And what I'm really

intrigued by is, you know, this has been an issue for a while, but how is AI interacting with these issues?

How is AI impacting the alienation that we already experience under the system?

Yeah, that's fascinating.

I'm currently teaching a class at the community college.

It's a class about pre-1600 history.

And like, I teach a little bit every year, right?

But every year I've seen more AI use.

But this year,

it's just fully blackpilled me.

Like, I don't quite know how to

describe the feelings I'm experiencing, I guess.

But for this class, I assign like David Graeber, I assign Jim Scott, I assigned Charles Tilley on state making and warming, right?

Like very basic left-libertarian kind of texts, right?

Which for many people will be the first time they encounter the concept of like what if no state, what if state bad.

And I think they're all writing in a way that's very approachable to people who don't, you know, like dense academic writing isn't as annoying and pretentious.

And I don't like it.

Every time I do this course, it used to be the case that like 30 to 40% of the students would be like, holy fuck, whether they like it or not, it is a new concept and it's cool and they engage with it in like a passionate way, a human way.

Every year, it's got worse.

And now like.

I can think of two students out of 100 who are like engaging with it in any human way.

And I'm sure most of them, I would imagine they've either AI summarized the text, or in many cases, they certainly have used AI to just respond.

I let my students respond in ways that they feel are appropriate, right?

So, like, they could do videos or different things and they wanted to like a they wanted to make a video about it instead of doing an essay.

That's fine with me.

I don't care.

I just want them to read the shit and think about it.

But, like,

there's been no human reaction.

And that's so sad to me.

Like, the reason I teach is to get young people to see the world differently.

It certainly isn't for the fucking money and uh

that's just i'm incapable of doing that now or like i can't get through that alienation that like

i can't like get people to engage and and and like think about it obviously i got to work that shit out right like this generation of people who who went through high school when ai with a thing and detecting ai use in long form writing was not very well developed.

So they were able to use it instead of doing long form writing and maybe even reading long form.

uh and like i have to work out how to get those people to engage not to to be so sort of alienated from the concept of of reading and absorbing big ideas but i haven't worked it out yet yeah it's a it's a really big issue and it's only growing you know as ai expands yeah um i mean it's not so much the focus of this episode but it is something that i wanted to touch on yeah you know people used to be doing fine without it used to be able to function without it three years ago.

And now you talk to them, and it's like they can't live without it.

They have to run everything through AI.

You know, people have offloaded most of their cognitive processes to AI.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and obviously, you know, we talk about the environmental impact of that, the way the data centers are damaging the environment, taking fresh water and taking vast amounts of energy from the systems that we all rely upon to live.

And, you know, we could, as you touched on, talk about

how schools and the education systems pretty much falling apart.

Yeah.

I mean, I know you're one of those, you know, genuinely passionate professors,

but

what I've noticed is there's this whole fast now in many sections of the education system where you have students AI summarizing material, if they're even doing that.

you know, submitting AI generated essays or AI generated material, and the professors just AI create it.

Yeah, I've heard of this.

So it's just one big puppet shoe,

one big farce.

God.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

One big charade, which, you know, to an extent, education has always just been that, right?

One big farce.

But there are things that are redeemable about it.

And I'm just talking about teaching now.

And I'll stop in a minute.

There's very little demand for in-person classes compared to online classes anymore.

So like

that makes it harder for us to break through that alienation, right?

Like, there's something special about sitting in a room and talking just fine.

It's just like being like, we're going to be here for 90 minutes, none of us leaving.

There's a dynamic.

Yeah.

And it's an important dynamic.

Like, the function of the university isn't to fucking turn out people with STEM degrees who can go on and make shitty apps we don't need.

It's to prepare us to be citizens in the community.

Exactly.

And we are failing at that.

And

yeah, instead, I'm just grading chat GPT all day now.

Yeah.

And that's that's a big piece of the puzzle that we end up missing because

the

way in which the sort of dynamics and the connections that you would get from the university classroom and beyond, just social connections in general, is lacking in the alienated world.

And it's worsened by, you know, the introduction of AI.

I managed to complete most of my education, most of my bachelor's degree, that is prior to the pandemic, right?

I was nearing the end of my third year when lockdown, you know, came into force.

And then I just, I did my entire fourth year online.

Wow.

And honestly, I'm so glad that I was able to do my classes in person.

You know, and I'm so glad that I did my classes, you know, entirely on my own in a time where, you know, AI was not.

a thing.

You know, there were times where, you know, it probably feels like, oh my God, this is so stressful.

Like, but you just had to buckle down.

Yeah.

You had to buckle down and figure out a way to get it done.

And of course, we could talk about the perverse incentives of breeding systems in schools and how that sort of pushes some students who may have learning difficulties or time management difficulties or whatever to actually do their stuff.

They end up going down the AI route.

But

I mean, even just looking back at my experience, because lockdown hit during the semester, I had a writing class that I was was a part of.

And every time we went into class, it was so dynamic.

It was so lively.

It was so engaging.

All the ideas were just bouncing off of each other.

Yeah.

After the lockdown, that class completely fizzled out.

Everything that we were getting from it was just absent because we were entirely online.

And

it's really a struggle.

And I think...

Social life, that's coming out of the education conversation, social life, community and connection all ends up lacking because of the eliminated nature of the system, the way that things have been set up.

But also, AI is playing a major role too.

AI, in a sense, as a category, is, you know, you could have a whole discussion about that, quibble over definitions.

But in a sense, AI has already been playing a major role into how people socialize even before these large language models came to be in because you have a sort of artificial intelligence in the algorithms that people interact with on social media.

You know, people have the content content they consume being curated by algorithms.

They end up in these sort of echo chambers, these reinforcement loops and outrage dates and then dopamine loops.

And all those things have lended to people spending more and more time online

because, you know, it's hitting that part of the brain.

And everybody's hyper-connected and always online.

And more and more of life takes place on the internet.

and that has left people feeling isolated.

I think loneliness is obviously not entirely the result of social media and now AI,

but the sort of irony is that loneliness has been a side effect of this digital hyperconnection.

I mean when you look at some of the factors that are contributing to this, this already isolated nature of our world, right?

You know, people don't have as much free time.

You know, there'sn't as much public space as there used to be.

Some people have no public space available to them.

Public spaces that do exist are not open in the times when people are available to go to them.

Libraries are a famous example.

A lot of them are, you know, not open for working people, pretty much.

And then people who do want to go out and socialize and stuff, you know, you're dealing with a higher cost of living.

So there's little resources that you can use to, you know, go and put yourself out there because you have to spend money to go to places.

And then you also just burns out energy-wise because of

the long work week, the long work hours, just trying to make ends meet, psychological to all of that.

Yeah.

And so part of what AI has been doing is pushing these AI companions on people.

And, you know, I don't mean to fear monger or anything because I know there are a lot of people who reject AI and who stand against AI.

And

of course, that could just be the bubble that I'm in.

But

I also know somebody in person, or rather, I knew somebody in person who spoke to chat GPT

like their partner and therapist.

Yeah.

They list like

that.

It's, I mean, it's sad.

Yeah.

It's, as you said, almost kind of black pillage,

you know, because these chat bots, they listen.

in a simulated sense.

They respond in a simulated sense and they affirm what the person

is dealing with, is going through, is venting about.

They're almost like a hugbox because you don't really see chatbots disagreeing with the people they're speaking to.

Chatbots are very much like,

you know, phoning.

They try their best to affirm everything that a person is telling them.

So you have this kind of cuddle box for people's egos, which in turn makes it even more difficult for them to connect to real people because, you know, real people are going to court you out.

You know, they're going to disagree with you.

You're going to have friction and conflict.

Yeah.

But there's also a lot of joy that comes from interacting with real people.

And unfortunately, a lot of people, because they're not getting that, they're turning to this on-demand affection, this on-demand flirtation, this pseudo-therapy.

And it's brutal.

You know, loneliness is a brutal experience.

Relationships are very hard.

And therapy is extremely expensive for a lot of people yeah so i understand that

you know you could only put so much blame on individuals because the world is not really set up to support those kind of lasting connections yeah people live very spread out they have fewer and fewer uh opportunities to interact with each other.

In fact, a lot of times, the last time a person had extended exposure with other people was in school or in college.

And outside of that, you're just kind of on your own.

Yeah.

And places are increasingly not walkable.

They're more car-centric.

There's so spontaneity and

friction and interaction that would have made relationships blossom naturally and made relationships possible.

As messy and inconvenient as they can be sometimes, those things are lacking now.

And unfortunately, some fraction of people, and I don't know what the actual number would be, because I could imagine a lot of people will not admit that they turn to a chatbot for companionship, but it is a frightening omen of what direction we're going in.

And I also worry about the potential outcomes of, you know, egoic behavior.

that might result from that sort of continuous interaction with something that is affirming your every belief and thought and conclusion.

What kind of Google are we going to be left with?

You know?

Yeah.

I mean,

it's the world that super rich people already live in.

One of the reasons that the gulf between the rest of us and the super rich, like the really, you know, incredibly wealthy people, part of that is that no one says no to a lot of those people.

And that's why they exclusively end up socializing with each other, right?

Like

they're surrounded by nothing but affirmation.

Right.

One of the things we see with Trump, right, is that like if there is a reality that he doesn't like, he manifests his own reality.

He just speaks things and expects them to be accepted as truths, right?

Growing up, my dad worked for a lot of extremely wealthy people.

And so I've interacted with them.

And like, there's a lot of people who just aren't used to hearing no or why.

but not a lot but there is a there's a number of them and like i think when you see i was just thinking about the behavior that, you know, didn't Trump now asserting that the Epstein thing is like it is made up, right?

And it's a hoax.

And it just when we were talking about AI, it sort of reminds me of that, right?

That like constant affirmation.

Because what AI wants to do is to please you so that you spend more time on it, I assume.

And there's some way that it attempts to monetize that, I'm sure.

And it just wants you to keep interacting with it so it can get more information to take into its model, I guess.

Yeah, the data gold rush.

Yeah, right.

And like people are doing the same with wealthy people, right?

They just want to interact with them such that they can siphon off some of the resources that those people have accumulated.

Like it's not, maybe it's not the same.

I think that still humans interacting with wealthy people is distinct from an AI interacting with humans, but it sort of gives us a window into what the impact of that being most of your human interaction over time.

Indeed.

Indeed.

And as we speak of wealthy people, I suppose we should look at the other way in which AI is intersecting with alienation, right?

Because, you know, for the current narrative has been about, you know, AI is taking jobs.

And before then, it was about how automation was taking jobs.

AI is, you know, a form of automation.

Yeah.

And before that, it was just innovations in general, just steps in some technological direction would be eliminating jobs.

What I always marvel at, stepping back and looking at the whole conversation about this is taking jobs, that is taking jobs, is at the root of it is this dependence on employment, on jobs, for people to have, you know, life, to be able to live, to have a quality of life.

We have gotten more and more productive.

And I mean, that productivity has helped people in some ways and it's harmed the environment in a lot of ways.

But we have a certain level of productivity now.

And we've produced so much now that in some sectors we have more than enough for several decades to come.

I think fashion is one of them where we have like

quite the excess of clothing for everybody.

And of course, you could talk about how that level of productivity has done damage to our creativity or craftsmanship.

But it's all the worst when you think about how, even with all that productivity, the workers have hardly benefited.

You know, more productivity doesn't necessarily mean more pay.

And so even before AI came around, we were having issues with labor and alienation, right?

People disconnected from their work, from whether it be a service job, a factory job, a delivery job, whatever.

Any of these jobs that you look at, it's structured at the end of the day, not around providing a product or providing a service, but around profit, around the power dynamic between the owner, the capitalist, and the worker.

The worker who is not in control is alienated from their labor and from the products of their labor.

And it's what Marx famously spoke about, but he wasn't the only one to speak about it.

Yeah.

This sort of alienated labor that is compelled rather than creative, that has no control over work, and where workers are treated as commodities on a labor market.

Thankfully, I haven't had to look for a job in a while, but I've had to see my friends seeking jobs and it's not a nice experience.

And you have to spend weeks, months, sometimes looking for a job that you will most likely hate, but you need to survive.

Yeah.

You know, and a lot of these jobs you end up looking for, end up getting into are not even necessary jobs.

They're a lot of bullshit jobs.

And they don't contribute to a person's development, fulfillment, or the good of humanity in any way.

Yeah.

And then a lot of the benefits that people have fought for, even for these jobs, have either been eroded, rolled back over time, or they've been loopholed out.

So, you know, for example, you don't even get enough hours to qualify for benefits when you work at certain certain places.

Yeah.

Or you are an independent contractor instead of an employee so they can get away from, you know, giving you a due.

Yeah.

And so then in this environment, you have AI coming in now and taking certain roles,

varying levels of quality and writing and in art and coding and administrative work.

And I don't know, I think for one, AI does a lot of these jobs very poorly.

But then there's there's also cases where I don't like copywriting, which is something I used to do.

The AI copywriting and the sort of copywriting that I had to write is

back in the days almost indistinguishable in terms of it feels, you know, generic, pointless, you know, slop-like.

It's just you're pumping this out to pollute the airwaves in a sense.

Yeah, it's very like it has a very formulaic nature when a human does it.

It's funny.

when i think about copywriting right like um you can see that people have identified the completely generic nature of it because occasionally you'll have like brands who do it in a non-formulaic way and briefly see success from it like just by by having some element of humanity in it yeah like wendy's when they did that for a while and yeah Then every brand copied that method and then it became steel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Someone will sometimes like puncture it for a minute.

And then, like you say, everyone will run after it.

Like, uh, and then Pit Viper sunglasses is one.

I guess they're very popular with like right-wing bigots.

Every time, like, bigots are pictured in their sunglasses, they'll like donate money to LGBTQ affirming causes or like gender-affirming care stuff, or whatever, depends what the people are being bigoted about.

And like, briefly, I saw them have success with that just because, like, people are so accustomed to brands being apolitical rather than just being like, no, fuck you.

So, like, by doing the kind of basics of being a good person, it appears human and therefore not so generic, and people are, you know, briefly fall in love with it or whatever.

Yeah.

But I mean, at the end of the day, although corporations are not persons, they are people behind corporations.

Yeah.

And I guess I sort of wonder with these kind of jobs that are now being filled in, at least in part, by AI,

what is the impact on a person's self-worth

for their

skill to be just sort of

swapped out for a machine.

A lot of people have already felt that their work is non-essential, and then you have a sense of being replaceable and unneeded.

And in some cases, the difference is negligible because, like I said, the work that was already being put out was the sort of generic stuff that sort of fills people

and fills screens.

But then you also have more necessary, the more creative work that is also just being sort of funneled out.

You know, I'm seeing billboards all over the place that just have like just nasty, smooth-looking, like AI-generated pictures.

Yeah.

Just a lot of slop, you know, slop content, slop ads, slop emails.

You know, even on YouTube now, like, I like to listen to.

these sort of music mixers while I work sometimes.

And

most of the channels being recommended for music mixes on YouTube nowadays, at least in the genres that I would listen to, it's just like AI-generated jazz chill.

The thing is, they won't title it that way.

Yeah, you know, they title it some word, and they probably have a somewhat AI-generated thumbnail and whatever.

And then you just, you know, if you're unaware of the pattern of how those channels operate, you might click on it thinking, oh, it's just like a music mix, like every other music mix.

And then you listen to it for a while and listen to a few of them, and you realize, oh, this is just like a machine-made this.

It has no flavor.

Yeah, like no soul.

There's also a lot of articles that just fill in the internet.

It's just like slopped.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, just AI-generated articles that feed into the AI pool of references.

And so the AI almost eats itself.

Yeah.

And it's sad.

But I think it was like we were always going in this direction.

in a sense.

Not to say that it was entirely inevitable, but this was the trajectory that we were pointing at.

This trajectory could have been changed, but to know it hasn't been so that's how we kind of got here

i don't know if it's just me but i feel like there was a time when boy it may still be true that a still plus is not always a good thing there's something to be said about

the value that we imbue to things when they are a bit rarer.

You know, when it's, you have to be more attentive in engaging with it.

You know, I was actually thinking about it earlier today.

When I was a child and I was watching TV, you know, if they didn't have anything on the TV that I wanted to watch, I'd have to go and do something else, right?

Yeah.

And nowadays, TV is pretty much unlimited because at any point in time, you couldn't have access to anything that an algorithm could see if you updated as perfectly curated to your interests.

Yeah.

And it's autoplay and everything.

It's just one hit after the next.

In that excess, I just feel like we've lost the sort of attentive curation of your taste, curation of, and valuation of things, of the effort and energy and craft goes into making things.

We just end up sort of taking things for granted.

And like, I think we kind of lower the standard that we will accept because it's just so much of it.

There's so much volume of it.

Yeah.

Like, and you're not so attentive to it because it's always there that like slop becomes okay.

It just kind of fills the gaps in this non-stop stream of content.

Yeah, it's just filling the noise.

I have to catch myself sometimes.

Yeah, because I mean just like, sometimes I just put something on because it was there, you know, and I just feel the noise.

I sometimes have to remind myself, yo, pause.

Just be with your thoughts for a bit, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

And I try not to put too much blame on myself, even as I try to

work on it, because all of this, once again, is by design.

Yeah.

You know, these platforms and these algorithms have been set up to perfectly,

they've perfectly honed their ability to exploit the little shortcuts and weaknesses in the human mind to engage us for as long as possible.

Yeah.

Like, so, so even if you feel like, oh my gosh, I want to get off social media, I want to quit this, that, the other.

It's hard.

Yeah.

You know, even when you

know in your mind that it's detrimental, that it's affecting you negatively,

you still end up going back because, again, it's it's hacked into your brain in a sense.

So I'm just really frustrated by the way that AI has contributed to this sort of disconnect because I also think it makes the whole breadth of human creativity a lot less valued, practiced and supported.

You know, instead of people actually respecting and,

you know, supporting the craft and the effort that goes into things,

it's just like, oh, scroll to the next thing, scroll to the next thing.

Or for some people who seem to love AI art, it's just, oh, yeah,

you're obsolete now.

You can be replaced by this, you know, junk.

I was just thinking about like art.

Like, I see it so often in like.

Like even in revolutionary spaces, I'll see it, right?

Like there, I guess sometimes it's what it is actually is AI accounts that have no idea what a revolution is they're incapable of doing so because they're not human but like i just designed to monetize clicks you know you'll you'll see

there's a bunch of fucking israel stands with kurdistan ads which will just uh like ai generate pictures of yepuje women like the women who who fight for the aes right and like it's just I don't think that these are not, again, people are actually part of the revolution, right?

There are people who just, who want to, in a sense, objectify the revolution and the the women who fought in it and continue to fight in it for financial benefit.

But, like, it is the antithesis of the beautiful life that people are trying to build there, right?

Like, it is the opposite of everything that that revolution stands for.

So, you're seeing people are like AI-generated

female fighters, yeah, yes, exactly, and then using that for some

either just straight because you get paid per click on X now, right, or for some nefarious propaganda bullshit.

But like, it's, and then by contrast, right, my friends in Myanmar, there's a group called Art Strike Collective who do these cool drawings of various individuals who have fought in the revolution.

And like, one is a beautiful thing that shows your respect for these people, many of whom have given their lives for this revolution.

And another is just complete fucking slop that is actively harming the thing it's supposed to be supporting.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, and it's a cliche at this point, but many such cases.

Yeah, yeah.

I saw this short lecture on YouTube by a professor.

I think professor's name is Chiang.

It's just a short clip from, I'm assuming, a longer lecture.

He said, the title of the video is really what captured me.

It was something along the lines of consumerism is the perfection of slavery.

And it was really speaking about how we are able to be so perfectly locked into our role as workers, as cogs in this machine, that to become so docile because

of just how good the consumeristic system has gotten at keeping us chasing that next

dopamine hit, that next purchase, that next thing to consume.

So we're still being exploited.

We are still wage slaves in a sense.

But we are either unaware of it or we accept that rule just to chase after you know the next high of consumption.

Yeah, like when you think about like brave new world in 1984, right?

These two dystopian novels, roughly, I mean, a brave new world came out before 1984, right?

The difference is one is like a boot stamping on the human face forever, which is 1984, and Huxley's dystopia is based on people being essentially bought off through pleasure, right?

Yeah, it's like unlimited cocaine for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They call it, what do you call soma, I think.

Right.

We're in the unlimited cocaine for everyone world, right?

Like it's, it, it's.

I mean, I think we're in both.

You know, it's simultaneously a Huxley and an Owellian

dystopia, you know.

Worst of both worlds.

Yeah, you're right.

I'm starting to read Jack London's dystopia, The Iron Heel now.

I've decided I want to work out who was best calling the dystopia.

But yeah,

we have a little bit of of both now.

We have the,

they'll get you at both ends, right?

Like they'll try and give you things to keep you placid and then also things to keep you afraid.

Indeed.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's, there's a lot of reasons to despair.

You know, people just blindly embracing AI and they don't see the problem with using AI and all these different things.

There's also, as I'd like to end things on, reason to hope, right?

There are people who are willing to boycott it, who are, you know, maintaining a stigma around it.

You know, people are not taking it lying down.

Artists are not taking it lying down.

Writers are not taking it lying down.

Designers

are not taking it lying down.

People are still craving the authenticity, connection, craft that comes from human labor.

And although there is little any individual can do to resist the alienation of this society, whether it be at work or with relationships by themselves, you know, it's very hard.

There are things we can do together in tandem to make things a little bit easier as we sort of try and strive toward social revolution.

You know, there's the classic, you know, touch grass, you know, log off and try and find where people are.

There's also the individualist solution of reclaiming your agency by...

finding some version of digital minimalism that works for you.

You know, taking a break, zooning out, limiting your screen time here and there.

But really, it's going to take system change.

It's going to take collective action.

It's going to take us boycotting, both, you know, of course, the AI products.

There's a boycott already taking place with those, but then also just

striking at the pressure point of the system and prefiguring a better world for everyone.

Yeah.

And,

you know, I hope that everybody is able to do what they can to take steps in that direction.

And yeah, so please don't use AI.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I think

I always like that Super Comandante Marcos quote where he says, like, it's not necessary to conquer the world.

It's sufficient to build a new one.

I like that approach to this AI stuff.

The way we make it so people in our community don't.

turn to AI to talk about things they want to talk about is to be there for them to talk to, right?

To build community, to build real human interactions with each other.

So so people don't have real human conversations with the computer.

Absolutely.

Agreed.

Yeah.

And that's all I have for today.

So, all power to all the people.

This has been It Could happen here.

I've been Andrew.

This has been James and that's it.

Yeah.

Thanks.

We had a very funny introduction.

It was really good.

Yeah.

It referenced our company's sexual harassment protocols.

It was hilarious.

You're never going to hear it.

We weren't recording.

I was recording, so you can hear my section.

Okay, yeah.

If you can just accept what Garrison said without context and we'll open with that, that would be great.

Yeah.

That is a classic Robert Evans intro.

You just did it.

I feel like it always comes from inside.

Welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about journalistic objectivity.

That's right.

A thing that we've just demonstrated perfectly.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the professional media class.

So let's have a little talk about media objectivity, right?

It's been a major tenet of traditional legacy media that they must remain unbiased.

This hasn't always been the case in the United States, right?

You used to have explicitly partisan news sources, which we have now with Fox News, I guess, but that's why you have newspapers.

Like, I think St.

Louis has a St.

Louis Democrat or the so-and-so Republican, like that they would be very explicitly a partisan newspaper.

It's only really when journalism sort of took on this strong professional, and I mean professional here in terms of like the professions, right?

Like law, accounting, jobs that are associated with university education and a class identity, that it started to assert this kind of

it's an attempt to appear rational and scientific in its methodologies, right?

And one of the ways that journalism did this was to talk about objectivity.

I should indicate here that objectivity is supposed to be a means of verifying information, i.e., like that we should objectively check that what we have written is correct.

The example I always give is that if I'm in a protest scene where there's a clash between proud boys and a group of leftists, and someone on the left pulls out a can of mace and sprays it first, that's objectively what happened.

Now, that doesn't mean that that's the only thing I report.

For example, if the person they maced is somebody who has been like harassing those individuals online for weeks or has been doxing them or assaulted them at previous like all of that is like relevant context, but it doesn't change what objectively happened in that instant.

Right.

Like, I, it's not on me to pretend that I think these sides are equal, but it is on me to accurately report like what happens.

Yes.

And I think one of the one of the areas in which a lot of people, especially when we were talking about like, you know, situations like this, a lot of folks and kind of legacy media get stuff wrong is they think that all that matters is what happens in that moment.

Right.

Yeah.

And what happened previously, what's happened in other engagements, what's happened like over, you know, the last two or three years of however long the conflict's been going on that city is immaterial.

All that matters is what happened in that second when that reporter was on scene.

And if you're, if you're thinking that way, you're going to miss more than someone who comes in with just an outright bias, you know?

Yeah.

And like, I think very often it's seen as kind of, instead of being like a value of the outlet and the way it verifies information, it's seen as being a personal kind of like quality that journalists should have in every aspect of their lives.

Yeah.

Like, I'm aware that at some of the big legacy broadsheets in the U.S., like you can't attend a protest unless you are covering the protest.

Right.

And there's even that famous case of that journalist being like, I don't vote because I think that that would be a violation of like my objectivity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I kind of forgot about that one.

Like you're allowed to have opinions.

That's just not supposed to be the entire basis of your reporting, you know?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like, and I think sometimes, because people always do have opinions, right?

But the opinions that are conceived of as neutral and the ones that are conceived of as being subjective are very telling right like the the media for a long time has been the like domain of educated older white men uh like like people like me i guess i'm not old but getting that way and it also has been the domain of like capital and the state right like jeffrey bezos owned several newspapers pro-market biases pro-capitalism biases pro-state biases those are not really investigated much in the media in the way that other biases might be, right?

It's also created this idea that the media always needs to shoot for the middle in any given discussion, which I kind of want to investigate a bit.

When Donald Trump says something which is overt, like Donald Trump has said things which are nativist, right?

Nativism is a form of racism.

Donald Trump, therefore, has said racist shit.

The way that this is far too often treated in the legacy media is, is the racist shit that Donald Trump said correct?

Or like, maybe we should consider this racist thing that so-and-so has said, right?

Rather than this shit is racist.

Donald Trump has said some shit that is racist or other members of the Republican Party.

All this serves to do is when we have a topic and the people in Congress anchor themselves on the very far right, what is acceptable discourse, the media then moves discourse to the right such that that position is in the center, right?

It serves to ratchet the Overton window to the right.

I'm demonstrating this for my colleagues with hand signals, which of course only two of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to me will be able to see.

That's the right way to podcast.

It was a very compelling mime of a ratchet.

It looked like you basically were doing it.

I could not tell.

I couldn't tell the difference.

No.

That's why we call you Ratchet Strap Stout.

Call me Ratchet Jimmy.

Yeah.

This podcast is sponsored by Invisible Ratchet.

Now it's time to pivot to ads.

It's not time to pivot to ads yet.

I think we should talk about the way other professions concerned with the truth deal with this topic, right?

Because journalism is pretty much unique in considering objectivity something that we as individuals have to embody in every action that we take.

And I guess the most relevant one will be academia, which is something else I am unfortunate enough to have participated in for far too much of my adult life.

So academia, it's still not great, but like we have accepted that everyone is biased in academia, right?

Yeah.

We rely on, among many other things, something called standpoint theory, right?

Which is a cornerstone of modern feminist thought.

Most of you will be aware of it, even if you're not aware of it.

Basically, it holds that we see the world differently based on where we see it from.

Our gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, experience, age, and a million other things impact the truths we know in the world we experience.

And standpoint theory posits that perhaps people not from a certain setting may have valuable insights into it, right?

So sometimes the outsider perspective is a valuable one, but also people from that setting may see things outsiders may not see.

And we have to acknowledge those biases, right?

And then continue to tell the truth.

How do we tell the truth?

In academia, we do something called peer review.

Peer review is bad.

Peer review strongly reinforces the status quo, right?

I will give one example.

I once had a journal article, right, for a history journal, killed in peer review.

The piece was about the 1909 tour of Catalonia.

That was a bicycle competition, for those of you who aren't familiar.

It was killed because my media analysis didn't mention television coverage.

The television was kind of crudely invented in the 1920s and didn't become widely available until the 1940s, right?

Like this is not a reasonable objection.

Nonetheless, someone was able to kill my piece because of it, because that's how peer review works, right?

The people who are established, people who who are in positions of power can kill your shit if they want to, and they can give the most ludicrous region.

That is how peer review, among other things, reinforces status quo, right?

The other thing that we do in academia is we declare our conflicts of interest.

And this is something we don't do in journalism, right?

Like outlets may have a conflict of interest policy, but again, like...

conflicts of interest aren't explicitly declared in a piece.

Like you wouldn't see sometimes NPR does this actually.

Yeah, I I mean,

a number of outlets do declare, like, for example,

this outlet is owned by someone who has a financial interest in the company we're reporting on or something like that.

Yeah.

If the Washington Post is doing a story about Jeff Bezos or Amazon,

usually they will say in the bottom or the top that the paper is owned by said figure.

Yeah.

Where it becomes more murky is like sometimes people have a financial interest or like if something is your beat, right, you may have other financial interests within that beat well and there's there's the very common case of people especially now within kind of the sub-stack journalism being like friends and social with people that they are reporting on and not disclosing to their wider audience yeah like access journalism more generally right yeah like the way i got this piece was by being invited to the drinks party and if i say anything unkind about this person i won't be invited to the drinks party yeah

Or simply the conflict of interest that is presented by the more ludicrous my headline, the more people will click on this website and the more time they will spend on the page and the more ad revenue they might generate.

Yeah.

And that's really the largest issue with modern journalism is that that kind of determines almost everything for an outlet is like what's what's going to get clicks, what's going to rile people up as much as possible.

And that is that that doesn't count as financial interest, right?

Like the fact that the outlet has a vested financial interest in keeping you on the page as often and as long as possible doesn't count as like a conflict of interest in any way.

And that's kind of one of the fundamental issues.

Whereas, like a lot of times, a lot of outlets won't let, for example, a black journalist report on a black man being murdered by the police, right?

Because they see that as like an inherent conflict of interest.

And the gap between those two things is where a lot of the real problems, a lot of the worst problems in modern journalism arise.

Yeah.

Talking of problems, we need to pivot to ads.

Sure.

All right, we are back.

Part of this also manifests in like journalists being supposed to not have any individual opinions about anything, even if it's irrelevant to their beat.

This has been the case for a lot of people regarding the genocide of Palestinian people, right?

Like, you could be the weekend editor, you could write about brunch, and if you work at certain outlets, you are like under pain of losing your job, not allowed to post that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide

to take a stance on these issues, right?

And that is bad.

Like journalists are human beings too, and it's ridiculous to suggest that

we shouldn't or can't have opinions on these things and still do good reporting, right?

We can, we just have to make sure that the reporting itself is accurate.

Sometimes

what this leads to is like, like what I guess another, like Robert, you spoke about

the inherent conflict of interest that like traffic on a website presents for journalism.

Another like inherent issue is that like every source is seen as biased, right?

Like you said, like black folks might not be allowed to report on black men being shot by the cops, except state sources, which are far too often seen as speaking the verbatim truth, right?

Well, this is what the police said.

Yes, yeah.

Like that is how we get, I guess a pretty good example of this, I'll link to it in the show notes, is a piece I wrote five years ago, I think, about police officers overdosing on fentanyl.

Some of you will be familiar with this, some of you will not, but it is not possible to overdose on fentanyl just from being in its presence, like in an outdoor area next to a thing that has fentanyl in it.

The piece I wrote dealt with the San Diego Union Tribune, who, I mean, this was a spectacular instance, I guess, of journalists like serving as police sonographers.

What happened here is that the police had produced an edited video with like music and shit of this supposed overdose, right?

Of a young cop who was like, I don't know what they call it.

He's like apprentice with an older cop, like the

more experienced cop.

And they were going around doing cop stuff.

They found some stuff.

They tested it for fentanyl and this guy collapses.

The younger cop, the older cop gives him several Narcans.

He's not just

some.

Yeah, no, just like, I think there was one instance where someone received seven Narcans, which, like,

oh man,

like, that's a threat to your fucking nasal integrity, if nothing else.

Yeah.

If Narcan doesn't work the first time, it like it.

I mean, people do sometimes often, it's not, especially like with serious ODs, they'll often put people like in the hospital on drips, but you would have to take a massive dose, not just be near fucking fentanyl.

Yeah, yeah, like, be like, I think this instance, like, they were outside outside testing it in like the boot of a car.

Like, it's, it's ludicrous to think that you, and, like, it would be good if they familiarized themselves with some of the uh what an overdose looks like, right?

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm mixed.

If they weren't cops, I'd respect the desire to like time theft from work because I think that's what a lot of this is.

It's like, oh shit, if I have an overdose, like

I get to stay out of work a couple of days with Faye.

That's a that's a that's a framing I'm amenable to.

Unfortunately, they are gods for yeah if you're a reporter though like it is absolutely on you to oh this person having an overdose what are the symptoms of an overdose what does an overdose look like should i talk to a medical professional or you could just ask the police information officer who shared this with you how did you verify this was an overdose with whom did you discuss the toxicology report in this case that information wasn't available right the way i was able to obtain that just to do i guess clarity is first of all i saw the publication where they didn't mention any fact checking that they'd done uh you can also pra the emails to the police as well as from the police right so you can see if other reporters have done fact checking that way or have asked any follow-up questions that way had they done that they would have found out like you say that you can't overdose from fentanyl this way They didn't even try and like both sides this, I guess.

Like sometimes you'll see outlets doing that now, like this cop overdose from fentanyl, but doctors say they can't like like it's uh

which i still think is an absolutely ludicrous practice right that's like saying this person tried to fly but uh you know the people say gravity will make them fall to the ground like what are these things we know to be true so i guess what i would propose we do instead of this ludicrous practice of like pretending to be objective about everything all the time is that we are honest about our biases, we're honest about our conflicts of interest, we're honest about like our standpoint, and then we do reporting, which is obviously verifiable, right?

And that means like you'll see that at the end of these episodes, right, we share our sources that we used.

Often we'll try and communicate where we got information from and how we got it.

And I think we should strive for moral clarity in the way we say things instead of striving for this middle ground.

So like what do I mean by moral clarity?

I mean saying the cops killed someone, not officer involved shooting, right?

Like if you work with fucking words and you find yourself writing something as convoluted as officer involved shooting, then you have strayed from the foundational reason for journalism existing.

Yeah, you have gone beyond God's light.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You live in the darkness.

There is, I think, a place for fact checkers.

I think people got a bit carried away with fact checking.

I don't quite know how to phrase this correctly.

Well, I had an experience once where I had written a piece.

The fact checking of that piece centered on the fact that I had used the noun beach chair to refer to this chair.

Yes.

The fact checker believed that it was a lawn chair.

This, to me, did not impact the overall thrust of the piece, right?

Like the nature of the chair.

Unfortunately, that ended up killing the story.

We ran out of time to go over the court documents because of the nature of the chair discussion.

And I'm not sure that's what we need to do.

No, I mean, and I think the other and probably the larger problem with fact checking is fact checking is an end in and of itself.

It's ha ha, I showed that they were wrong.

I checked the fact where it's like, yeah, but what they wrote got out to 30 million people and your fact check got out to like 60.

So what you did didn't really matter.

And what we should probably be doing is looking at an intervention higher up on the line to stop the bullshit from getting out rather than being obsessed with, well, I fact-checked it.

Like, well, but that didn't really help, you know?

Yeah, right.

At what point do we give that up as pointless?

Yeah, like it's

you are like not even a footnote to this other thing that this person.

No, we need to, the intervention needs to be happening earlier because the bullshit is still getting out.

Yeah, absolutely.

And this happens like,

we're in this bizarre situation where like right-wing outlets can say what the fuck they want, right?

Like, like we have whole massive media empires going in on this idea that the 2020 election was stolen but then we have like centrist outlets instead of being like no the election wasn't stolen that that's bullshit constantly trying to like investigate those claims as if they were credible and useful rather than illustrating why they should be dismissed and then and then moving on right like instead of investigating why this conspiracy is so important we see that a lot with uh with immigration right now but we saw it a ton in the uh in the presidential debates, right?

Like it's a good example of what you were saying.

J.D.

Vance can just lie.

And even Donald Trump actually can lie about people eating dogs and cats.

And it doesn't hugely matter if an hour later a news outlet tweets, oh, we fact-check him and it's not okay, right?

You still broadcast to millions of people that Haitian migrants eat dogs and cats and that's not true.

And I think we need to strive for something that is closer to the truth and it's closer to fairness and it gives us moral clarity because what we're all doing right now, what the legacy media doing is doing right now is like woefully inadequate to meet the moment.

Yeah, I mean, I agree.

Like, I think where I don't actually know how to solve things is the incentive structure is so broken.

And to an extent, all of this talk about objectivity, and when I say that, I mean like the talk that outlets and editors have about objectivity, is there more than anything to obscure the fact that the economics of journalism make it almost impossible for it to be anything but a willing agent of disinformation?

That's the real issue is you can have the Washington Post and you can have the New York Times host good reporting, but a huge amount of their income will always come from having columnists whose entire job is to piss people off

or to stoke the egos of people in power.

And I don't know that the good work those outlets do outweighs the crap that they spill into the public discourse because

that's what's incentivized.

And so I think to an extent, there's almost no point in actually engaging with the objectivity debate with the people who are pushing it because they're not pushing it honestly.

They're pushing it as a way to obscure the fact that they make their money the same way Mark Zuckerberg makes his money, which is by spreading fear, anger, and doubt.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the bad op-ed industrial complex.

Like I've been guilty of that, right?

You see a fucking headline on social media and you're like, that's bullshit.

And then you click and read, right?

I used to, like when I was a little baby journalist, engage with this and be like, that's bullshit because, and either try and write about it somewhere or post on social media.

But I have come to realize that in doing that, I'm doing exactly what they want me to do, which is continue sending people to their website to click on adverts and to make them money.

So I think it is better that we do not do that.

But yeah, that is the fundamental conceit of journalism right now.

How it pays the bills is keeping you on that page.

And the way it keeps you on that page is making you angry.

There is like a model, I think.

And you see this like in community.

small community newspapers right now and like i guess outlets like left coast right watch in in california and oregon where like people genuinely by building trust and telling the truth gain the support of their communities and are financed by them but i mean the orders of magnitude and income difference are uh remote like they're not making washington post money over at left coast right watch i know this should be true so yeah pretty fucked and it will only get worse i think like as we uh

As we continue to slide into like the post-truth fascism world, I can't really see our legacy outlets doing much about it if all they're ever going to do is strive for the middle ground on this.

Well, all right,

okay, everybody.

All right, you go have a good day in that world.

This is it could happen here in Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening.

The White House, the crumbling world, what it means for you.

I'm Garrison Davis.

This episode, I'm joined by Robert Evans, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman.

Maybe.

Maybe Sophie will decide to comment on some of this important, important news we have today.

It's bless us.

And maybe Robert will decide to forgive you for jumping into giving the title of this show and not letting me say electile dysfunction or something like that, which I have not gotten over.

Live it.

Let's talk about a pedophile.

Yes, sir.

It's time for your Friday pedophile update.

We call it the Free to File Minute.

I don't like that.

It is Friti Carlos.

So on August 15th, 2025, at 8.36 Anno Meridian, that means in the morning, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Office of Public Information put up a press release with the title, Eight Child Sex Predators Arrested During Undercover Operation.

Now, this was a report on a multi-agency operation going after child sex predators that was headed by the Nevada Internet Crimes Against Children, or ICAC, organization, which is a joint operation that involves a mix of, there's some detectives from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.

There's some folks from the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force.

And then I guess the ICAC has its own task force.

I've never heard of this group before, but there's a number of other law enforcement agents involved, including North Las Vegas Police, Henderson Police, who actually posted declaration of arrest for the person that we'll be talking about.

That's the Henderson, Nevada Police, Homeland Security Investigations, and then the Nevada Attorney General's Office.

This was your standard sting to try and catch people who are attempting to have sex with kids, where you have undercover agents who are online.

In this case, they were using an app called Pure.

And on WhatsApp, it looks like, as a general rule, these guys met the person that they thought was a minor on Pure and then took the conversation to WhatsApp to plan for an in-person meeting where they then, they, you know, the whole, what's that guy who used to do the TV show where he would, he would bust pedophiles and there were some ethical problems with Chris Hansen.

They'd have their Chris Hansen moment.

I'm not familiar with this.

Oh man, it didn't go well.

So the story that people have been hearing and that kind of went viral out of this is that one of these eight people arrested was Tom Ardiam Alexandrovich, who was a high-ranking cybersecurity official.

He was the director of one of the divisions of Israel's top cybersecurity agency.

So, you know, an Israeli government official working in cybersecurity is one of the guys arrested.

He was in town in Las Vegas for the Black Hat Convention, which is like a hacking convention.

And like a lot of hacking conventions, over time, it has turned from a bunch of guys who do not like the feds to just feds, right?

Like, I think that's why the guy from Israel's cybersecurity agency is at this thing hitting on

allegedly 15-year-olds.

So this guy is arrested and then he posts bail at 10 grand and he flies back to Israel, which gets a lot of people in an uproar.

Obviously, anything involving officials of the Israeli government is receiving heightened scrutiny right now.

What with the genocide?

And also, for a long time, there's a lot of evidence of special treatment being given to agents of the government of Israel by the united states government and so people were like is that what's going on here because this seems pretty fucked up and i guess the first thing i should say is that it doesn't seem like he's being treated differently from anyone else in this sting uh this is per statements made by the the local government uh and by the attorney general's office this is the standard bail amount for this crime and when people post bail for this crime which is the standard amount is 10 grand there aren't conditions usually on the bail which means it would not be standard to stop him from traveling or returning home.

He's due to return to the United States in several weeks for the court proceedings to go on.

So the short answer to this seems to be that, like, no, this is just kind of how the system works.

And that might not be great, but he doesn't seem to have been given special treatment because he was an official of the Israeli government.

Now, does that mean that that's going to prove to be what happens in the long run?

No, because among other things, he might just not come back to the U.S.

And if the Israeli government is a party to that and like there isn't any kind of like

action taken to like force him to return to go through the legal process, then I'd say, yeah, there's something to be particularly upset about here.

But I think the broader thing to maybe be upset about here is that guys can get caught for this and then have a no condition bail that allows them to flee the country, which might be a flaw in the system, right?

I'm a big innocent until proven guilty guy.

I'm a big reasonable bail guy, but I'm also a big, I don't know, man, maybe if the agent of a foreign government gets caught trying to fuck a child, they shouldn't be able to fly back home immediately after they bail out.

I don't know.

To seem that it's a reasonable objection.

Yeah.

So, you know, this is a classic case of you've got the story, what actually happened here, then you've got how it's being interpreted online.

And then you've got how it's being interpreted online by the stupidest person on the world, on the planet, in the planet.

And in that

planet.

That didn't work.

Oh, it'd be good if he was, wouldn't it?

In the molten cool.

Yeah.

that would be nice.

You've got how this story is being interpreted by particularly bad journalists.

Let's say that.

That's the nice way to put it.

And I'm talking about Michael Tracy.

If you're not familiar with Michael Tracy, he is ostensibly a leftist, an anti-authoritarian.

He's the kind of guy who just sort of reflectsly, if the U.S.

is involved, whatever is the worst case scenario for the U.S.

doing something is what's happening.

During the invasion of Ukraine, he alleged that the U.S.

was sending troops into Ukraine, I think, because he saw some guys outside of an embassy in Poland, some American soldiers.

Some of the Marine detail.

Some of the Marine detail.

It was like, we're getting ready to invade.

That did not happen.

Now, Michael Tracy has a sub stack, of course.

Many such cases.

And he published an article titled, Was an Israeli Pedophile Really Allowed to Flee the United States?

And I can't tell.

He starts with like a whole paragraph about Jeffrey Epstein.

And I can't actually tell what his stance is on this.

And I don't really want to.

He's talking about how people are eager to prove him wrong about Jeffrey Epstein.

I have no desire to know what this guy thinks about Jeffrey Epstein.

This is probably a Jeffrey Epstein with a secret massage agent type thing.

Well, except for his whole argument here is that there's people are being incredibly unreasonable to think that this guy is guilty or to think that he probably did anything wrong.

And the reason Michael Tracy suggests that Tom Alexandrovich probably didn't do anything wrong is that the terms of the App Pure, which is where the authorities say he first got in contact with the officer pretending to be a child, requires you to be 18 years or older.

And in this substack,

he posts the terms of service to be like, see, there is even what appears to be a rigorous age verification process to ensure that no minor gains access to the app.

Government-issued documents must be submitted to ensure that only persons at least 18 years of old are allowed on the app.

And he's like, does this mean the government was faking documents, was pretending to be a child to this app?

Yet that's what they were doing.

Well, they were pretending to be a child, Jeremy.

Yeah, that's probably what they were doing.

And the other thing, what's really funny about this is like, that's his whole point, is that the app requires him to be 18.

So it's, you know,

the authorities must have been doing something fucked up and lying to the app for this to have happened at all.

And this is just an example of Michael Tracy not reading the Declaration of Arrest, which he links in his article.

Because the Declaration of Arrest does say that, yes, this person got in contact with the undercover agent during the peer app.

And then the same sentence says, and later, WhatsApp with phone number, dot, dot, dot, and says that on WhatsApp, this is where they talked about the person in this case being a minor.

And this is where they set up, like, to arrange a meeting.

This Israeli cybersecurity official was going to take them to Cirque d'Saleh and had them bring a condom.

Like, that's all in the declaration of arrest.

Now, obviously, Alexandrovich maintains his innocence, maintains he thought this person was 18 the entire time.

All I've got here is the declaration of arrest.

I don't have hard evidence, but per the source that Michael Tracy cites, like this is not just happening on pure.

This is, as is often the case, by the way, when pedophiles go after kids, they meet them on whatever app and then take them to a second digital location, right?

Like that's just the way these things work.

And that's really all I have to say about this.

You know, this is the kind, I mean, maybe keep an eye on this in case this guy doesn't go back and the Israeli government does hide him.

But it's entirely possible that this will go the way court cases and this sort of thing are supposed to go.

There is one other funny thing, considering this guy is a high-ranking Israeli cybersecurity official.

There's just like a list of statements about like what Alexandrovich said to detectives when he was being interrogated.

You know, the stuff like Alexander Alexandrovich stated he did not know the numbers for the Israeli government.

Alexandrovich stated his family was in Israel.

Alexandrovich stated it was important he get numbers for his flight.

And then Alexandrovich stated his phone does not have a password but uses his right thumbprint.

Oh no.

A biometric user.

Cybersecurity expert for the Israeli government.

They're not sending their best people.

Oh my God.

Your fucking thumbprint, dude?

Your fucking thumbprint?

Okay.

Yeah, the famous most secure possible access code.

Anyway, that's all I've got for Peta Friday.

Tune in next week.

We'll have another pedophile for you.

I'm sure of it.

Oh, yeah.

Here's ads.

All right, we're back and it is a pedophile free world.

We can't guarantee that, I suppose, but we're hoping Peter Free Zone from here on in.

Talking of things which are incontrovertibly crimes, Israel has deliberately murdered four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza.

Among them was Anas al-Sharif, a prominent correspondent for a network in Gaza.

The IDF also killed correspondent Mohammed Karika, cameraman Ibrahim Muzaya, and driver and cameraman Mohammed Nafal.

Al Jazeera has named all of these people.

The strike also killed two freelancers.

One of them was Mohammed Aliwa and Al Sharif's nephew, who was a student studying journalism.

For weeks before the deliberate and premeditated war crime, it's a war crime under the Rome statute and also a violation of the Geneva Conventions, because journalists are also civilians.

The IDF engaged in manufacturing consent for the strike.

They did this through a unit that 972 magazine has reported on called the quote legitimization cell.

You're always doing great

when you have a unit called the legitimization cell.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah, it's pretty fucked.

To quote from the piece, which I'll link below.

It has been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel's killing of reporters.

You should read this article.

Like, it goes through instances where they have a very clear confirmation bias, right?

And

the case of al-Sharif is a pretty good example of how ridiculous this can be.

They released this document, they tweeted it actually, claiming he was in Hamas from 2013 to 2017.

The document clearly wasn't an original document.

It was a PDF done up with a navy blue background and stuff.

It's laughable to think that they captured this PDF somehow.

It just doesn't line up.

Even if we take that to be true, right?

That he had been a member of Hamas until 2017.

That was eight years ago.

Like, isn't the whole point of the thing that they're saying that they want people to stop being in Hamas, like killing them because they once did that and I don't believe them?

It still doesn't make sense, right?

They've done this in other cases with other jurists, specifically other Al Jazeera journalists.

In July of this year, the CPJ, that's a committee to protect journalists, if you're not familiar, warned that they were worried about an attack on al-Sharif due to the increasingly detached from reality smear campaign being pursued against him by IDF spokesman Aviche Adray.

For example, on the 20th of July, Adray accused him of being, quote, part of a, quote, false Hamas campaign on starvation.

as he played footage of al-Sharif crying after seeing a woman collapse from hunger on camera.

Speaking about the campaign, al-Sharif said, It is not only a media threat or an image destruction, it is a real-life threat.

He said this in his interview with CPJ.

He also said, I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment.

My family is also in danger.

And his nephew was killed with him, right, in the airstrike.

When I think about it, like, I have colleagues who I've worked with who are Palestinian who work in Gaza, right?

I remember

2023, October 10th, 2023, I was in Syria and in Rojava specifically.

And

I was sitting in a tea shop because the Wi-Fi at my hotel was non-existent.

And I wanted to check in on my friends, right, who worked there.

And

I remember this guy helping me translate one of these videos in which like you see a dead person in the blue press vest, right?

And I was concerned that it might be someone I've worked with before.

So I was trying to.

work out it was them.

And he was saying in this video at the funeral, people were saying that another journalist would take up the dead journalist's camera and the flag jacket and keep reporting, which is very touching for me.

But journalists in Gaza have been targeted by the IDF for a very long time.

And this is one of many examples.

And it's disgusting and reprehensible.

That's about all I have to say on it.

Should we turn to immigration for something equally despondent and sad?

Yeah.

All right.

USCIS, U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, has issued a new guidance material to instruct officers in cases where they can use their discretion to look at whether the person has, quote, endorsed, promoted, or supported, or otherwise espoused the views of a terrorist organization or group, including those who support or promote anti-American ideologies and activities, anti-Semitic terrorism, I'm skipping a bit here, and anti-Semitic ideologies.

This discretion can be used in extension of stay cases, change of status cases, reinstatement of F or M non-immigrant status, and certain employment authorization requests, they say in the memo.

The USCIS policy manual also lists lists other instances where discretion could be used.

These include TPS, temporary protected status, humanitarian parole, petition to classify an alien as a fiancée of a US citizen, asylum, and refugee status.

So I looked up what the, quote, anti-American activities were.

There's a footnote, right?

The footnote links to INA 313A, Immigration Naturalization Act.

Most of the anti-American activities are things which already had a bar to naturalization, and most of those pertain directly to being a member of the Communist Party, like a literal card-carrying member of the literal Communist Party, right?

Capital C, capital P.

The US had had a bar on naturalization for people who are members of the Communist Party for some time.

I believe they still have a bar on naturalization for people who were members of the Nazi Party.

Pre-visa waiver, I should say, not actually a visa.

When people from Europe were coming to the United States, you'd have to answer a short questionnaire.

One of the questions was about whether you or anyone related to you had been a member of the Nazi Party.

I remember like once meeting some German people in Europe and they were telling me they'd had to answer this question entering the United States.

So the anti-American activities is the one that's been getting the most attention, but it does specifically footnote to the communist stuff, which is again something that has been U.S.

policy for a while.

What I'm more worried about is stuff about anti-Semitic terrorism.

Yeah, because that means, one you've shared a pro-palestine post on social media yeah you said genocide badge yeah that that can mean so many things that we've as we've already seen like we've seen some of this stuff already be enforced this is new guidance material but yeah we've seen reports coming from people trying to enter the country or trying to get visas that show that this is happening for like months ever since like you know like march i started to see a lot of stuff regarding either pro-Palestinian statements or like posts or campus protests, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, the F visa I mentioned there is a non-immigrant student visa, right, for full-time students.

So like that is the one where we've seen students having to turn over their social media handles, or social media can't be locked.

It's very easy to see how these two things line up.

Yeah, and as Gev said, like people, they have always been able to use their discretion.

This is just guidance on how they should use it, but they have been using it for some time.

The administration has also moved the goalpost for naturalization.

So naturalization is becoming a citizen of the United States, right?

There is a requirement that people who naturalize as citizens have a quote good moral character.

Previously, the way they did this was there were bars for certain crimes, right?

Murder, genocide, something called aggravated felony, which is something that only exists in immigration law.

Going forward, they're changing to, I guess, a more holistic idea of what a good moral character might be.

I'm going to quote again.

Going forward, USCIS officers must account for an alien's positive attributes and not simply the absence of misconduct in evaluating whether or not an alien has met the requirement for establishing GMC.

That's good moral character.

The officer must take a holistic approach in evaluating whether or not an alien seeking naturalization has affirmatively established that he or she has met their burden of establishing that they are worthy of assuming the rights and responsibilities of United States citizenship.

The worthy.

What does that mean?

You have to prove to an officer that you're a good person?

Yeah.

How so?

Yes, by the officer's definition, I'm assuming.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this is this is guys for like discretionary enforcement.

So I don't like the word holistic here.

I don't.

Yeah.

I mean, it's literally asking them to take into account everything they know about this person and then just make a call.

Is this someone you want to have as your neighbor?

You know, like, I don't know what the

how I mean, I can guess how this might be manifested.

It's worth noting that as DHS goes, USCIS officers tend to be the least right-wing, right?

CBP and ICE has a much higher proportion of people who, like, for instance, they had some issues with getting people vaccinated and CBP, that kind of stuff, right?

Indicators that people might be sort of down this conspiracy pipeline.

We also learned this week that Todd Blanche directed federal cops to arrest Mayor Ras Baraka outside of a detention center in New Jersey in May.

We know this because of body camp footage.

We don't have the footage, but the footage is reported on in court documents.

In the footage, a DHS official says, quote, we are arresting the mayor right now, per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

Anyone that gets in our way, I need you guys to give me a perimeter so I can cuff him.

So the agent talked on the phone and then gave this statement, right?

So it seems that the deputy AG there was the one who gave the order to arrest Rasparaka, right?

ICE has also arrested a cop.

This is our little moment of like cop on cop violence.

Cop on cop violence, yeah.

John Luke Evans was a reserve officer for the old Orchard Beach Police Department in Maine.

The police chief of Orchard Beach, who's called Elise Chard,

said that the department had used e-Verify to check if he could work legally, right?

Which is the thing that you are supposed to do.

E-Verify is a database run by the Department of Homeland Security.

I think it's also in combination with another department that allows you to verify if somebody can work legally in the United States, right?

Tricia McLaughlin characterized this as reckless, which is weird because DHS, who she's speaking on behalf of, are the ones who put that information into the database.

It's possible that someone entered something in wrong at some point, right?

Someone put in a wrong number, they switched an O for a zero, something like that.

This came to light because Evans attempted to make a firearm purchase and he filled out his 4473.

and the ATF then notified ICE that a non-citizen who wasn't eligible for firearms ownership had attempted to purchase a firearm.

And that was how ICE came to detain him.

He is being allowed to leave the USA voluntarily.

He's not being deported.

He's not being charged with attempting to make the firearm purchase, which he could be charged with.

And the city of Orchard Beach is going pretty hard in his defense.

They've released some elements of his personnel file, but none of them that pertain to his immigration status.

They're sticking by their claim that they believe he was eligible to work in the USA.

ICE are claiming, or I guess DHS now are claiming, that his visa expired in 2023, which was years before he began working at the police department.

He was a seasonal reserve officer, and he had been working since earlier this year.

Before we go on break, I want to do a quick update on the Texas Democrats who fled the state to delay or prevent the gerrymandering.

And after their two-week walkout, the Texas House has now reached quorum once again, and a vote on the new redistricting map, which would add five Republican congressional seats, is slated for Wednesday, August 20th, which is the day that we are recording.

After Democrats returned to the Capitol from their walkout, they were subject to 24-7 surveillance by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

And in order to leave the House chamber, they had to sign what the Democrats are calling, quote-unquote, permission slips, agreeing to surveillance in their just everyday life.

Is that why I think it was Collier slept at her desk?

One person, I think a state senator, refused to sign the slip and stayed in the Capitol overnight.

Fair enough.

The Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu made a statement saying, quote, we killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation, reshaping the entire 2026 landscape.

Unquote.

There's a very celebratory tone here, which is slightly odd to me because this vote is still probably going through.

Yeah, they're going to lose.

This is going to get voted in.

Now, Wu has said that the Democrats are going to challenge the redistricting maps in court, even if they are able to pass through this House vote.

And as we know, the courts are the last bastion for democracy and will save us all.

We suspected that this whole walkout is more performative than anything else and would not actually lead to them killing this map.

And instead of remaining out of the state longer for an undetermined amount of time, possibly until November,

they have returned and quorum is in the chamber.

So.

Yeah,

it's not nothing, but it's like the next, just it's one step up from nothing.

It's the most Democrat thing to do.

Yes.

Yeah.

But why?

Why only do half of what was necessary?

Yeah.

Sophie, you're asking this question because you didn't grow up in Texas.

I went to the Democratic National Convention.

I understand the half effort.

Here's the reality.

Texas Democratic Party exists to disappoint you.

That's why.

That's why all this is happening.

I just feel like the entire Texas Democratic Party is just like a better auroc.

Like the con not not literally, but the concept of bedo aurouric.

Yeah, not wrong.

Yeah.

It's all it's all there.

Never, never put your faith in Texas and any part of Texas and you'll be disappointed less.

I've been telling people this for a long time.

Yeah.

It's like the second thing you told me.

Every year, Democrats in other parts of the country, every couple of years, get like excited.

It's the Charlie Brown syndrome where they're like, oh my God, Texas might be about to flip or something otherwise good.

Ted Cruz is going to get forced out.

We're finally going to have something good happen in Texas politics.

And every time, every time that football gets pulled away.

Yeah, so it feels not great that the minority leader is kind of patting themselves on the back for taking basically a two-week vacation to Illinois and California and then returning and having this go through.

So I don't know.

We'll see how this develops.

California is promising to do their own redistricting to equal out the amount of map changes,

both adding five more seats for the respective parties.

It's annoying.

It's just annoying.

It's just annoying.

Yeah, yeah.

Nice piece of performance, I guess.

You know what else is annoying?

These ads.

I don't think they're annoying at all.

I value each and every advertiser.

Garrison actually personally vets all of our advertisers, so you can reach out to them on social media.

That was uncalled for.

No, no, no.

I agree.

This is Canon now.

Yep.

If you're ever unhappy with an advertiser, find Garrison's personal phone number and hit him up.

No, no, no.

No.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Time to go in a blocking streak.

All right, we are back.

Putin, I guess.

Putin's a guy.

That's actually how I would describe the meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska.

Putin, I guess.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it went.

They had a little meeting.

There are some insane conspiracy theories that he sent a body double.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah.

It's one of my favorite things.

There's always insane conspiracy theories.

Reported from BBC News, actually, which I find funny.

Yeah.

I'm glad that BBC

is on the pulse of theories spreading online.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, and people are just now figuring out, again, that whenever world leaders travel to foreign countries for summits at this level, they take their poop back with them.

And yeah, I saw an article being like, is it true?

Did Putin really take his poop back?

And yes, they all do because they don't want it to get analyzed to find evidence of health issues.

Like the president has his poop taken home every time he goes overseas.

This is just the way things are.

Frankly, I think if we're able to get the Putin poop, you can make a clone of Putin and then that could be the body tool that we use.

Call it Putin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vladimir.

If like the 50s, the CIA still existed as daddy.

If they still had that juice, it'd be a lot more fun.

Yeah.

That's what we would be doing.

We would have done that.

You need to get Hoover back up in there.

Really unethical human cloning project where you have this like shambling, like undead corpse of Putin that we can profit.

Jesus Christ.

But that's basically how the meeting went.

Sorry for derailing my bad.

No, because the meeting is kind of a nothing burger at this point.

There was reports that Putin basically ranted to Trump about how Ukraine's always has been a part of Russia.

And the meeting didn't really go anywhere.

Putin ignored a question on if he would, quote, stop killing civilians.

So yeah, that's basically how the whole, how the whole debacle went.

And I think it's really indicative that, like, a day or two after this happened, Trump had the Zelensky meeting 2.0 in the White House, which went much better than the previous Zelensky meeting.

And Trump was a lot more friendly with Zelensky this time around.

Apparently, Zelensky has been going around other European leaders getting advice on how to talk with Trump.

Yeah, he

gave him a letter, which Trump really appreciates and likes.

He

started by

thanking the first lady for a letter as well.

So there's all these little polite gestures that Trump really enjoys.

Yeah, he likes to be honored and venerated.

So Zelensky indulged in that, wore

a fairly spiffy all-black suit.

I liked it.

It was a good suit.

But it is very indicative.

If you look at how the last Zelensky meeting went, and then after Trump was around Putin for a few hours,

how Trump's mood was noticeably different around Zelensky this time around.

So we'll see.

I don't think we're going to have any conclusion to the conflict in Ukraine anytime soon based on how these two meetings went.

There was reporting that they were trying to set up a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, though that has since been denied.

It sits this constant like back and forth, like it has been the past two, three, four years.

But Trump is going to bring an end to the war.

He's the peace president, going to get a a Nobel Prize yeah yeah did you know that Trump's ended six wars six or seven six or seven wow wow six or seven it's I love it I love it when you can't keep track of how many wars you ended

I got one other story I would like to discuss I'm sure James will have some comments on this as well on a series of unfortunate ICE actions

including the first incident that I'm aware of where federal agents have shot their firearms during an enforcement operation, at least as of like the Trump administration 2.0.

On Saturday morning, August 16th, in San Bernardino, a family was pulled over by massed federal agents in what DHS has since claimed was a quote-unquote targeted enforcement operation.

As customs and board of protection approached the vehicle, the family inside started recording on their cell phones and asked for identification.

When the family refused to roll down the windows of the car, federal agents smashed windows on both sides of the vehicle and reached inside.

At this point, the driver pulled the car forward, and federal agents shot at the vehicle three times before the car sped away.

I'll play the video here for posterity.

Yeah.

What do you want?

Identification!

What down the window?

What down the window?

You're all over here.

So those three pops at the end were the three gunshots.

Yeah, this is a wild one.

The driver told NBC Los Angeles, quote, I had to protect my life and my family, unquote.

Yeah.

It's worth noting against these agents, like

they're more uniform than some.

Yeah.

They have badges visible on plate carriers yeah they did not establish much communication between themselves and the family as they approach the vehicle there's a lot of like yelling back and forth yeah you can hear the man telling his son that don't open it yeah the father is telling his kids in the car not to roll down the windows not to open the doors as the federal agents ask for the car to be opened and then they initiate force yeah The man here has lived in the U.S.

for 23 years and does not have legal status.

His two adult sons who are in the vehicle are both U.S.

citizens, according to Javier Hernandez, the executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, who has spoken about this incident on behalf of the family to local press.

Yeah.

DHS gave a statement to NBC Los Angeles: quote, In the course of the incident, the suspect drove his car at the officers and struck two customs and border protection officers with his vehicle, unquote,

saying that because the driver tried to quote unquote run down the agents, a CPB officer was forced to quote discharge his firearm in self-defense, unquote.

So that is the justification that they are using, is that this vehicle was moving in the direction of officers and officers acted in self-defense by shooting at the car.

That doesn't seem to line up with the video that we just saw.

No.

The cell phone footage from inside does not show officers being hit by the vehicle.

It could be the case that you can see that one of the officers reaching into the car.

You can see if the car was pulling away,

his arm may have hit the door.

Like the officers are standing next to the car.

In the video, it's not clear that there's any officers placed in front of the vehicle.

So, yeah, his foot could have got run over maybe if he's like leaning, standing there close to the car.

The car may have bumped officers.

It does not appear like this man was trying to, quote unquote, run over the police.

In fact, he was driving away from them.

Yes.

The family says that federal agents refused to identify themselves and did not provide a judicial warrant.

DHS has refused to answer whether agents had warrants.

And after the shooting, the driver called the San Bernardino Police Department to report that masked men pulled his car over, broke windows, and shot at him and his family.

Police came to his house and spoke with the driver, but did not arrest the man because California police cannot legally assist federal agents with immigration enforcement, according to a statement from the police department.

DHS made a statement criticizing the police for not taking the driver into custody.

Quote, this reckless decision came despite the subject's outright refusal to comply and his wounding of two federal officers.

Okay.

This is yet another tragic example of California's pro-sanctuary policies that shield criminals instead of protecting communities, unquote.

This is what we're calling wounding, huh?

Yeah.

The severity of the two officers' alleged woundings has not been specified.

Police later returned to the home along with ICE and Homeland Security investigations, but the family did not let them enter as they did not have a warrant, though police made one non-immigration related arrest outside of the home as community members rallied together in support of the family.

As of two days ago, the DHS has said that, quote, the suspect remains at large.

Jesus Christ.

This is a needless escalation that put people in danger.

Like, yeah.

What else is there to say, though?

Like, it's bullshit.

This is not an excuse to discharge a weapon.

This isn't count as wounding.

These people should never have been pulled over in the first place.

But, you know,

we are where we are.

This is the way ICE works.

Yeah, then this will probably happen again.

I guess, like, I'm mildly surprised that San Bernardino police did not detain the man on suspicion of assaulting a federal agent, which is something that they could detain him for, right?

It's not an immigration crime.

Yeah.

And that is an extremely broad offense.

One does not have to know that the person is a federal agent, for example.

So I guess like rare.

We'll see how this develops.

Yeah.

It's still unclear what's going to happen to this man.

Yeah.

I'll check for an update next week.

A few days before, on Thursday, August 14th, a man fleeing an ice raid at a home depot in Monrovia, California was hit and killed while attempting to cross the 210 freeway on foot.

Local activists say that during the same raid, ICE hit someone in the leg with one of their vehicles, and that person was taken into custody.

This is tragic, right?

Yeah.

The reckless use of vehicles in LA was remarkable.

And I've covered a good deal of protests in a good deal of places.

The use of vehicles in an extremely dangerous way by police

was notable when I was up there covering the protests.

I think it was in June.

It was something that instantly was very concerning to me.

So it would not shock me if people have been hit by a nice vehicle.

But yeah, this is a tragedy.

And again,

because the stakes are taking everything in someone's life away from them, we're going to see this happen more often, right?

No, it can cause people to do rash or unsafe things, like attempt to cross a busy freeway.

Yeah, the 210 is a very busy freeway always no it's extremely tragic yeah this is yeah really sad so ed source are reporting that a student out of california benjamin guerrero cruz who had just turned 18 just began a senior year of high school was detained by immigration authorities from walking his dog one of his former teachers visited him and mentioned that he had overheard he had told her that he had overheard ice agents talking about receiving a fifteen hundred dollar bounty for making his arrest.

Yeah, well, like in some promotional videos from DHS and ICE, they've been boasting about bonuses not only for signing on for this big recruitment drive that they're doing, but also like cash bonuses for immigrants getting arrested and deported.

And there's been multiple clips of

agents like talking about this or like, you know, talking about, I wonder how much of a bonus we're going to get for these batch of arrests.

So this has been something noticed in multiple states.

I've heard of this in Florida.

And this sounds like it's in California, you said?

Yeah, California, yeah.

Yeah, so this is this is a pattern, and it's not even very glorified bounty hunting because it's not really glorified, but it's essentially essentially bounty hunting.

Yeah, that might be why we're seeing some of these like insane arrests, right?

Of people who you would never normally expect to see.

We reported the news, Gary.

We reported the news.

We reported the news.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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