Elon’s Email Power Grab, What to Do & Why to Have Joy: Calm News with Jessica Yellin

this show, we talk a lot about resilience and what it really means to support one another.

For healthcare and wellness professionals, that's the job.

Day in, day out.

Doctors, nurses, dentists, chiropractors, therapists, they're the ones who show up for us.

So it's just as important that they feel supported too.

That's why we partnered with FIGS.

For too long, scrubs were just an afterthought, not anymore.

Figs scrubs are thoughtfully designed in innovative fabrics, made to meet the demands of the job and look good doing it.

There's a full range of styles and go-to colors, plus limited edition drops that bring a little joy into the everyday.

With back-to-school season upon us, it's the perfect time to stock up with some fresh outfits for the year.

And Figs just dropped a brand new collection of limited edition styles and accessories.

If you're in healthcare or shopping for someone who is, you can get 15% off your first order at wherefigs.com with the code figsrx.

That's wherefigs.com code figs rx.

Hello friends.

As you know, back to school season, meaning back to crazy bananas life season, is officially here.

And speaking of bananas and overscheduling, I've been leaning hard on my Whole Foods market runs right about now to keep everything on track between packing lunches, planning quick dinners in the 13 minutes we have together, and just trying to stay sane during busy weeks, they've seriously come through.

One thing that's been a total game changer is the 365 by Whole Foods Market brand.

I started picking up their frozen waffles and breakfast sausage and all kinds of things like that for the hectic mornings.

And this is like magic because the kids get a good breakfast.

We all get out the door on time.

It's a win-win-win.

And for lunches, they have organic granola bar multi-packs and they have reduced sugar juice boxes, bagged apples, all the things that are fast, easy, and you feel good for them to be eating.

Explore so many ways to save on Back to School Finds at Whole Foods Market.

Oh,

goodness.

gracious me welcome to we can do hard things today this is Amanda, and I am here with our beloved national treasurer, Jessica Yellen.

This is calm news.

We are

deciding with calm news not to put our head in the sand and also not to ride the chaos roller coaster.

Instead, we are going to care enough to stay calm, clear-eyed, and action.

oriented.

This is our goal.

We are here with Jessica Yellen.

You know her, you love her.

She is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand.

Over 1 million subscribers and followers across Instagram and other digital media rely on Jessica and NewsNot Noise to understand what matters, which experts to trust, and to manage their information overload.

She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy and Gracie award-winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC, and CNN.

Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Facebook at Jessica Y E L L I N.

You can find the News Not Noise newsletter on Substack.

Jessica, how the hell are you?

Hi.

What a nice intro.

I am well.

I'm going to tell you something I didn't warn you of in advance, which is great.

It's my birthday today.

Shut.

I know.

Oh, Jessica, happy birthday to you.

I didn't know

that.

But I just have a commitment today to be happy and chill, no matter how wild the news is.

And that's my gift to everyone listening too.

Is that cool?

And my gift to you is I will join you in that.

All evidence to the contrary, I will commit in honor of your birth to not losing my mind.

Amazing.

If we can do it, everyone can do it, right?

This is correct.

This is correct.

How are you?

How is your week so far?

Well, I am in D.C., right outside of DC, and so over here in terms of all of the Doge reverberations everywhere.

I feel like for the past, all weekend and then through Monday, I

was talking to all of my friends who were deciding, do we send the email back that has, you know, they got this crazy email from Musk and asking them to list the five things they did in the last week,

ostensibly to decide whether they should still have a job.

And then they were all getting this conflicting stuff from their supervisors either not saying anything or saying, yes, you need to respond.

No, wait, don't respond.

Then yes, do respond, but don't put anything in it that anyone could find out.

But then they couldn't say what they did if they couldn't put anything in it that was confidential or a potential security risk.

So it's just chaos and people don't know what the hell is going on.

I mean, that's totally normal at work, right?

And it sounds very efficient.

Right.

Super high efficiency here, the very least.

Exactly.

Everyone's spending all the time deciding whether or not to respond to an email.

It's the height of inefficiency from the person who's supposed to lead us to efficiency.

So it's chaos over here.

And DC is so, it's so interesting.

I used to live there.

I don't anymore.

And I just remember you have this, as a reporter, you have like this one level of understanding of what's happening at a systems level, doing the work all day.

And then you go home and you run into people who are actually living the thing you are covering.

And you're like, oh my gosh, the human piece of this is just so painful, or it can be beautiful or whatever.

But in this case, it's painful and confusing.

And you see people struggling.

The point of this, right, is to make life so miserable for these federal servants that they leave.

And I see that

everybody's struggling with that.

I mean, there's people on my street who have, you know, they've been working in divisions of protecting rights for 20 years since college, since law law school.

And they just left because it's just too untenable.

And then there's people who are trying to stick it out because they know the work that they're doing is important.

So you really see like the effects happening.

It's icky.

Yeah.

It's so wild because I put my contact information on Signal.

out to the public.

Signal is a secure messaging app where it's encrypted.

And it's the way journalists are doing a lot of reporting now, where, you know, you can feel that you're doing the most you can to protect your sources.

So I put that out on my newsletter and I say, if you have information or you're a federal worker, tell me what's going on.

And people are sending me, you know, partly they're giving me tips and it's super interesting.

We can talk about them.

And then sometimes people are just sharing like, I'm having a mental health crisis.

I've been in this job.

I think my work is vital.

I'm protecting a lot of people's lives in various ways.

And I'm scared for what happens if I lose the job, what happens to the people who are my responsibility right now.

But also, I can't take this personally, they're saying.

It's just, it's brutal.

There's so many dimensions.

So what exactly happened with that?

What is this?

I know, right?

Okay, so here's the news.

Over the weekend on Saturday, Elon Musk, in a very familiar fashion, anybody who has worked for him, especially at Twitter most recently says, oh yeah, we went through this exact thing.

He sent an email or Doge sent an email from some rando email address they created with government address

to all 2 million federal workers minus those they recently fired saying, please respond by X and such time Monday in an email listing five bullet points detailing what you accomplished in the last week.

Please be sure to CC your manager.

That went out to everybody on a Saturday evening.

And then

he followed it up with a post on X saying failure to respond to the email we sent will be taken as a resignation.

So that wasn't even in the email?

Correct.

So now X is the source of information for federal workers?

Apparently government assignments come through X.

I mean,

obviously that's not legal, but it's also one of these things where I keep thinking we're a little bit like in those Roadrunner versus Bugs Bunny cartoons where the Roadrunner runs off the cliff and keeps running until he looks down and sees there's no ground under him.

That's a lot of what Elon Musk is doing.

And they're just like going so fast, they keep going.

But at some point, they're going to be like, no, there's gravity.

So we're a little bit in that, like gravity is maybe starting to hit, but not yet.

So right now, government workers are like, okay, do I have to, like, what does this mean?

And so as you lived through, I was hearing this as a reporter, people were reaching out to their managers all weekend.

What do we do?

And getting conflicting messages.

All of the agencies that deal explicitly with national security matters, classified material, and intelligence told their staff by email, do not respond to this message.

In other words, if you worked for the FBI run by Cash Patel now, if you worked for ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence run by Tulsi Gabbard, you got an email saying, do not respond to this.

Those agencies understood understood quickly that this was a deep national security threat and it would be dangerous for their employees to respond.

And even though these people are Trump loyalists, they broke with Musk and said, don't.

Other agencies like Social Security Administration said do comply and then changed their guidance Monday.

So some people were told over the weekend to comply, did so, learned Monday it could be a national security threat that they did so.

One person wrote me and said, I feel sick to my stomach that I replied.

And then a lot of people got conflicting guidance.

In many cases, it ended up with employees directed to reply if they want to.

It's voluntary.

And directed to be very generic if they do reply and not describe in any specific detail what they really did, but more broadly, the kinds of things they did.

Why is it a national security risk or why did those agencies determine that this was too much of a risk for their people to respond?

Great question.

It's because think about it.

Like if every single person in the government sends in a description of the work they do and

copies in who their manager is, these emails create a map of our entire federal government and show what work is done within which agencies, who's working on Africa classified information, who's working on Russia matters, who's working on cybersecurity in the U.S.,

where cybersecurity loopholes lie inside the Social Security Administration.

Not only does it map all this information, it then clarifies these employees working on these things report up to this manager who reports up to that manager who reports on and on.

So you've created now a map of all the workings of the government.

And you're taking that map and directing it to a single email address, which means any one individual who can hack that email now has a map of our government.

One person who works in intelligence said to me, this is doing the bidding of China and Russia for them.

This is the information our adversaries and threat actors have wanted for all of time.

And in fact, HHS, run by RFK Jr., put out an email on Monday telling staff, if you reply to this, use coded language and assume anything you write will be obtained by threat actors.

Wow.

It's like.

So when you put it like that, so Musk writes to everyone in the CIA and says, tell me everything you worked on, including your manager.

Like that, when you think about that, that's insanity.

It's also, I think, instructive because it gives the lie to his claim that what he's really interested in is efficiency and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Because if you think about it, this is a guy who's brought in, as we discussed, these kid hackers to obtain the data from every agency, right?

Presumably, because they're using that data, because they're so smart, they can use AI to assess where the waste, fraud, abuse is and which workers are doing a good job and which aren't.

If their access to the data isn't telling them which workers are showing up to work and which aren't and who's lazy and who isn't and who's good and who's not, why do they need all that data?

And if he's acting in the best interests of our government, why would he send out a mass email without coordinating it with our agency heads who are also loyal to Trump and doing it in a way that protects the security of the nation?

He's not doing any of the above.

It raises a question, why is he accessing that data?

And why is he shooting from the hip so recklessly when it comes to such sensitive material about the security of our government

i have some theories you know and also not to lose sight of he is not the government he is a private for-profit

billionaire tech dude who is unvetted and unrestrained in terms of any kind of actual

oversight.

Yeah.

And

he personally has this information?

Yeah.

I mean, this is why I think it's going to come crashing down, because at some point, this is just offensive to even the most conservative Republicans loyal to Trump.

This just flies in the face of what our standards and values and rule of law is.

We can talk about what regular people have to do to help get leaders to do that.

But to answer your question first, I think that we could postulate, is he doing this so that he, Elon Musk, has all this information so that he can get government contracts and advantage?

Well,

to answer that question, already today, there's news that Starlink, well, that Doge decided that certain contracts the FAA had were not being well executed.

And now Starlink has those contracts, a company run by Musk.

Yes.

Wait.

Doge said that these contracts with these other companies weren't working and gave them to himself?

I have to just be careful.

I can't necessarily say it was Doge that made the assignments, but Doge decided that there's all this waste and inefficiency inside the FAA and fired a lot of people.

We don't have transparency to understand the inner workings of exactly how the decisions are being made.

There's lawsuits to get that transparency.

The result of a lot of decisions led to these contracts being awarded to Starlink.

Did Doge make those decisions?

Did someone else?

Wow.

We do know Doge entered, said there's problems.

Elon Musk ends up with contracts.

That's just one example.

Wow.

Then, you know, Doge, when it started,

to give it like legitimacy, it merged with this thing.

I'm going to bungle the name, but it's like Office of Digital Strategy inside the government.

It's basically like the IT efficiency entity in the government.

And it merged with that.

Okay.

And a bunch of the staffers who had been there before just resigned in protest for some of the things Doge is doing

and some of the ways they're getting info and stuff.

So,

should I pause?

I think we should all pause.

I think we should collectively pause.

Maybe should we do it in our breath?

Great idea.

Should we do an inhale and then a slow exhale?

Inhale.

Maybe we should.

Hold.

Exhale for seven or eight.

I do find that helpful.

I do too.

Like reminding yourself that we're all spinning into what could be, which is important because it gives you the context to understand why these actions matter.

But it's also good to remember that all of the worst hasn't happened.

We're sharing this knowledge now so that everybody can take action.

So, if my dogs had a credit card, I'm 100%

sure that they would use it to order Ollie.

After switching to Ollie, I've never seen them this excited for mealtime.

They drool, they're jumping up and down.

In fact, Hattie is now like getting onto the counter.

She's put her paws onto the counter looking for Ollie.

That's the Ollie effect.

Ollie's fresh turkey with blueberries.

this has been our dog's instant favorite.

And the fact that it's made with human-grade ingredients and zero fillers or preservatives, that matters to me.

They're family.

Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food.

Head to ollie.com slash hardthings.

Tell them all about your dog and use code hardthings to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today.

Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box.

So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back.

That's ollie.com slash hardthings and enter code hardthings to get 60% off your first box.

It's the beginning of a new school year and also the classroom sniffles and sneezes that go along with it.

From home to school and back, stock up with Kleenex Ultra Soft Tissues.

Start the school year off the right way by preparing for the messes that come with it.

You don't want to be caught without a tissue on hand to help.

Kleenex ultra-soft tissues are soft and absorbent to stand up against runny noses, to keep you and your family clean and comforted as the school year starts.

This back to school season, make sure to get the classroom essential that teachers and students can rely on.

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.

As summer winds down, now is the perfect time to ease back into learning.

Whether kids are gearing up for school or enjoying the last days of break, IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps students build true understanding across subjects.

IXL adapts to each learner's level, pace, and needs, making it a powerful tool for catching up, staying sharp, or getting ahead.

It's also a time saver.

One subscription provides access for the whole household across all grade levels.

And when extra support is needed, IXL is a smart, affordable alternative to expensive tutoring sessions.

IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S.

Make an impact impact on your child's learning.

Get IXL Now.

And We Can Do Hard Things listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixlearning.com/slash we can.

Visit ixllearning.com/slash we can to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

What, with regard to this specifically, what are the reactions from

anyone who theoretically is supposed to be stopping this kind of thing?

And also, what can we do

if we are horrified by this overreach and this national security threat?

So,

a couple things.

I mean, we're starting to see there's judges who are starting to say, we need to know what Doge is doing and how.

We need, as the court, to have transparency into these activities.

And I'm sure there'll be a legal battle on that, but that'll be important.

And also to see if they comply once the courts rule.

There's also, it is meaningful to see that even the most die-hard Trump loyalists stood up to Musk and said no.

Cash Patel, you can't get a bigger like Trump loyalist.

He said no, right?

I mean, true, but I'm wondering, is that because it's sort of an ego contest where it's like, this is my little fiefdom and you can't do this?

Or is it that?

Sure.

I mean, even if it's for bad motives or not the most noble motives, one thing that happens in these environments is you get these clash of egos.

Like when you're not governed by rules and law, but by personality and dominance, the clash of egos is part of what just makes them fall apart because it's not a functional system, right?

Right.

So it isn't necessarily an integrity thing, but regardless, the outcome is the same.

They were willing to go against Musk in this case.

And say, no.

And so it proves that his power is limited or has limits for now.

Right.

Also, after he did that weird scene last week where he held up a chainsaw at a conference and went, I think that a lot of even conservatives have started to say around the country,

I don't like that.

Who is that guy?

Why is he in our government?

Why is he wearing his black hat and his black sunglasses and his gold chains and holding a chainsaw on the stage.

WTAF.

And then there's this random video showing as he left the stage, he just hurried off like he just had the best performance of his life and was jacked on something and left his toddler son wandering around alone on the stairs.

So

yeah, and that crosses party lines.

Right.

So there's a couple things we could say.

One is, first we should note that the other piece of this is what is he doing with the data?

Where is that data going?

He's in all these agencies.

You know, I think Tim Snyder, who's written about authoritarianism, said,

if in another country you saw tanks roll up to the government agencies and people run out with guns to steal their files, you would call that an attack on the government.

In this case, it's hackers.

getting the key to our files, which is digital.

We don't know what they're doing with them.

and

it is also an attack on our institutions quite reasonable to argue that and musk is creating an ai right now called grok and has said on the record that ais are running out of new information new data to train on you know ai runs on this collection of data that you can then ask questions and it spits back the information it got from that data.

They need new data to grow and be big.

And government data is the most trusted, valuable data that there is.

Is there a possibility he's using this to train his AI?

We don't have transparency, so we don't know.

There's not, Congresspeople aren't talking about this.

People, there's no vocal pushback other than the court cases.

So there is something going on in Congress.

Democrats are pushing back.

to varying degrees, some quite heatedly, like Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, I even saw Gillibrand, many are, you know, ringing the alarm.

Others are being quite quiet,

and so are a lot of Republicans, especially Republican senators who are traditionalists, true institutionalists.

It causes me to wonder why they're all being, those people are being quiet.

And it's my belief that they are kind of holding their powder, powder, keeping their powder dry while this all goes on to see what the impacts are and saving it for a moment when they actually get to the work of legislating and they have some leverage.

And it would be my expectation that at some point those people will say, you want our votes, you need to put boundaries around Doge.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Well, there we go.

There's that.

Happy birthday, Jessica.

Wait, I'll say one happy thing, which is I do remember we all flipped out about Steve Bannon in the first administration.

Yes.

And granted, he did not have the power to exfiltrate our data and save it.

And to me, that's a different kind of risk and, you know, a unique one.

But he also caused hair on fire

anxiety as well.

And he was out of the White House within nine months because of ego clashes.

Right.

So,

okay.

All right.

One can hope.

All right.

We just have to hold on till Jessica's half birthday and we can say goodbye to Elon.

What is happening elsewhere in the world?

Okay.

Should we talk about foreign policy for a minute and then we can go to Congress?

Let's do it.

I'm trying to think of a happy thing that's happening first to talk about, but we can just go to the news.

Is there a happy thing we could talk about?

I don't know.

Okay.

So the happy news that I saw that was very exciting in your newsletter was that a brilliant woman named Eva Ramon Gallegos

came up with a treatment for HPV, which is the virus that causes cervical cancer.

And

it doesn't have these terrible side effects like chemotherapy, et cetera.

So good job, Ava.

Way to keep our faith alive in humanity.

That's a good news.

I love that.

Yeah, she said that it has been proven to totally cure the illness in 29 women.

That's real news that doesn't suck.

That is real news that doesn't suck.

Okay, so moving right along to things that suck, what's going on in the world?

That was a nice palate cleanser.

It was.

I feel good about that 30 seconds we had.

Nice.

Thank you, Ava.

Very good.

Okay, so let's go to the UN.

So this week, it was the three-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And the UN held two different votes that amounted to a call to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine.

And in a shocking move, the U.S.

refused to sign on to that and instead sided with Russia in an effort inside the UN, calling for peace, but without casting blame for the war at all.

That's weird.

It's really weird.

That's really weird.

This This is as clear-cut a case as it is.

You have a sovereign nation with established internationally respected borders, and you have another nation

crossing those borders to claim that land as their own and killing people and instigating a war.

There is not a more clear-cut case for like, this isn't allowed under international law and just general morality.

Right.

It's the definition of an invasion.

Exactly.

What was the reaction to that around the world?

What was the explanation from the White House as to why we would embrace an imperialist

way of being?

It follows on Trump last week calling Zelensky a dictator.

He was this week asked if he also thinks Putin is a dictator and wouldn't answer the question, wouldn't use the word again.

He also last week said that Russia did not invade Ukraine.

Republican senators disagreed with Trump and said Russia did invade Ukraine.

And at one point, Trump sort of walked it back.

But the fact that the U.S.

as a policy wouldn't vote to

agree that Russia invaded Ukraine is enormously meaningful, striking.

I can't remember another time the U.S.

sided with Russia over a war that they've started.

It's just a total breach of U.S.

foreign policy and tradition.

You know, some people have sort of darkly joked, is Russia now our ally?

Are we now in the axis of powers with Russia and China against Europe?

Europe's, you said, what's been the reaction?

Macron, the French president, came to the White House and did the most elaborate courting of Trump and, you know, sort of flattering him and we're your friend and we adore you.

You know, all the personal stuff you need to woo Trump in order to get him to the position they want.

But Europe is holding an emergency summit on March, I think it's March 6th to decide how to proceed with European security now that they feel the U.S.

may not be their ally or may not be in their corner if Russia chooses to invade a European nation.

Okay.

So I find it curious that they're saying that like it's a joke of could it be as outrageous as we're allies with Russia?

I don't think that's what it is.

Okay.

I think that what Trump's doing is, I think there's two pieces to it.

One is he does have this historic affection for Putin.

Obsession with desire to emulate

strong rules with an iron fist.

That's how I would like to view myself.

Yes.

And has a specific history of getting financing from Russian interests and a history of doing business.

with Russian interests.

And a history of election interference in his favor from Russia.

He loves strong men and has a specific affection and affinity for Russia and Putin, it seems, right?

Remember Helsinki in his first term where he took this private meeting with Putin and said he believes Putin over America's own intelligence community.

Yeah.

It was a sort of signal moment in that administration.

So we're sort of seeing echoes of that.

I will remind everybody that even though we saw that happen

during the same term, the Trump administration also sanctioned a lot of oligarchs and Russian diplomats.

So they did take action against Russia.

It wasn't a sudden allyship.

There were just these inconsistent messages.

And we don't know what else, right?

So is it possible that what Trump's doing is, in his own mind, at least negotiating with Putin, flattering him, playing to his ego in order to get the deal that he wants to bring a peace to Ukraine?

That's possible.

What's remarkable is the way he's going about trying to reach that peace is by sort of demanding of Ukraine that it make the concessions Russia wants at the outset before negotiations begin without demanding any similar concessions from Russia.

Also making an extreme demand of Ukraine that's bizarre, which is that they give us, the U.S., 50% of their rare earth minerals, which is a vital natural natural resource for them that Zelensky says would take 250 years for his descendants to repay.

And I'll just circle back and close the loop here.

Rare earth minerals are essential to building AI.

So if we were to plunder Ukraine for these things, it would be presumably to make the U.S.

the AI capital of the world, which is what Trump announced he wants, along with Musk and Sam Altman and Larry Ellison, the tech broligarchs around him.

Holy shit.

So it all circles back to that.

Yeah.

Okay.

One way to think about this that may or may not help is there's this term cacistocracy, which is a form of government that's all about plundering to enrich oligarchs.

What he could be doing is trying to create American oligarchs, basically.

Right.

Well, I mean, that's why they were all standing behind him at the inauguration, right?

They They know something we don't, which is why they all got on board very quickly and enthusiastically.

So also just from like a world order standpoint, didn't he also say that any resolution of the Ukraine-Russia

war

would not result in Ukraine having its original borders?

Yeah.

So country A invades country B that has country B has its established borders.

And the result of that is that country A gets part of country B.

The invader is rewarded with part of country B.

That is a crazy dangerous way to reward invaders.

It is.

And the idea is that Russia would hold the area it already occupies.

I will say that

the Obama administration set Ukraine up for this by failing to engage when Russia first invaded Crimea.

And by sort of allowing the invasion, you have a Russian occupation.

In order to push Russia out, it would require sort of ongoing war force, a lot more leverage than Europe and the U.S.

seem, even prior to now, were willing to bring, right?

At the time when the Biden administration was flowing all those weapons to Ukraine, Russia was still occupying that land and they couldn't get them out of that part of the country.

So Russia's been there, I guess it's since 2014, they've been occupying part of that land.

Oh, so that's the border that he's talking about.

They've expanded beyond that during this war, but it is around the port and the water around Crimea, yeah, and Donetsk and that region.

So it's the part of the territory that Russian troops already hold and have been holding for some time.

I'm sure there'll be border disputes,

but what they're basically saying is, no, we're not backing you to have some like intensified period of combat to push Russia out.

Got it.

Okay.

And the main complaint from Ukraine, really, like if we're being practical and strategic, is

I'm going past what the actual reporting is, but stick with me.

It's basically Ukraine's position is a little bit like, sure, sure, we might have to give up this land, but don't say that going in.

Let us hold that as a negotiating position to give it up to get something.

Yes, that is the art of the deal, isn't it?

Correct.

I mean, he wrote the book.

He's not being very artful.

So that's what's happening there.

And then we also said that Ukraine should not be part of NATO, which would be the body that would help protect it from future invasions, because isn't the idea that, okay, this is

this time with Russia, but then they get this and what prevents them from coming back and completing the job and just taking the whole thing if they don't have NATO.

And this has been, you know, the U.S.

has been conflicted on whether Ukraine should be admitted to NATO or not for years because Ukraine wasn't admitted previously because the West was concerned Russia would take that as a provocation and then invade.

Now that they've invaded, it's a little like, do they get protection or not?

The big sticking point at this stage, I mean, J.D.

Vance already, or was it Heg Seth said the U.S.

will oppose NATO membership for Ukraine?

But one of the big questions is: will Russia accept either EU or NATO peacekeepers inside Ukraine as part of a peace?

So somebody's got to hold the peace.

If you're not stationed there to rebuff Russian troops, what's going to keep Russia from invading further after everybody withdraws?

So what they're negotiating now is like, will EU or NATO peacekeepers be allowed in?

And Trump, after saying no, has now said yes.

And it's all all very uncertain at this stage.

Okay.

I think that I know more than anyone on this entire planet that having the right therapist to talk to can make a life-changing.

difference.

That's why I think Alma is so cool.

Alma connects you with real therapists who understand your unique experience.

You can use their directory to search for someone who specializes in the areas that matter most to you, whether that's anxiety, relationships, or anything else.

And what stands out to me about ALMA is that 97% of people seeing a therapist through ALMA say their therapist made them feel seen and heard.

You know, I love that.

That level of connection isn't something you can get from scrolling through online advice or following social media.

It's about finding someone who who truly understands your journey and is dedicated to helping you make progress.

Better with people, better with alma.

Visit helloalma.com slash hardthings to get started and schedule a free consultation today.

That's hello A L M A dot com slash hard things.

Did you know the average bottle of water contains 240,000 tiny particles of plastic?

Yeah, it's shocking, especially with recent research showing microplastics in our bodies and even our blood.

That's when I knew it was time to ditch plastic and get a water filter that actually works.

I switched to the Life Straw Home Water Filter Dispenser and haven't looked back.

It's the only water dispenser that filters over 30 contaminants, including bacteria, PFAS, and yes, microplastics.

And it actually makes your water taste good.

I've noticed a big difference.

No more weird taste, no more guessing what's in our water, and we're skipping plastic bottles now, which is great for the universe.

Plus, for every product sold, a child in need receives a year of safe water.

That's more than 11 million to date.

Skip the plastic, go with LifeStraw.

Your body and the planet will thank you.

Use code HARDTHINGS for 25% off your first purchase of a LifeStraw home product at lifestraw.com and say goodbye to microplastics forever.

How would you like to feel calmer, think clearer, and sleep better, all in just two minutes?

Meet TrueVega Plus, Plus, a handheld device that uses gentle vagus nerve stimulation to help calm your body's stress response.

In just two minutes a session, TrueVega helps shift you out of fight or flight and into a more relaxed, balanced state.

By naturally supporting your body's nervous system, you can quiet mental chatter, ease anxious feelings, and promote deeper, more restful sleep.

So you wake up feeling refreshed and clear-headed.

There are no pills, no side effects, just safe, clinically backed technology developed from decades of neuromodulation research.

Ready to try it out?

Visit Truevega.com and use code WCDHT25 at checkout to receive $25 off your purchase.

Take action today and upgrade to feeling better every day with TrueVega.

Visit truevega.com and use my code WCDHT25 to receive $25 off your purchase.

Feel calmer and sleep better with TrueVega.

What the hell happened in Germany?

Do we want to talk about that?

Yeah.

Do you remember that?

You said Vance and it reminded me.

J.D.

Vance went to Europe and met with that leader of the AFD, the sort of far, far right extremist party in Germany that's seen as, you know, the farthest right party they've had since the Nazis.

It's not Nazis, but it's sort of like...

Nazi-like.

Worryingly leaning that way.

So J.D.

Vance met with them and sort of extended their support to them.

And Elon Musk gave this actual virtual address to their conference and basically endorsed them.

So the AFD won second place in German elections that just happened, but actually less of a win than they had hoped for.

But more than they've ever had, right?

More than a far-right party has had since the Nazis were in power.

So Germany was deeply concerned about this.

And the biggest winner is the Conservative Party.

So right now, Germany is governed by a center-left party.

This is a change of the guard.

The conservatives will be in charge.

They have a coalition government, so you have to make deals with other parties.

So it will be conservatives and centrists.

One thing that's a huge relief is all the parties agreed that the AFD, that far-right party, will not be allowed in the coalition.

So they will not have a governing voice in that way.

And the conservative leader, when he accepted Mertz, when he accepted the win,

in his acceptance speech, basically said, we can't rely on America to be our ally.

Europe needs to come together for Europe's own defense and announce this summit that's going to be happening on March 6th that we spoke about earlier.

Okay.

So I mean, it is extremely worrying shift to the right, but it's also reassuring that Germany internally decided to ice out the AFD.

Yes.

And I will say that after Vance and Musk endorsed the AFD, their poll numbers fell because Germans were like, yeah, no, we don't like your interference.

Nah.

So it actually hurts.

That's fascinating.

Okay.

Do you want to talk about Congress?

No, I think it's worth acknowledging Congress.

I mean, this might actually be a cause for some levity.

The Republicans, you might note, have done almost no legislating so far.

Most of what Trump has, they passed one bill, I think, small bill, but most of what Trump's done has been by executive order or by Doge just steamrolling in.

So if Congress had to give us five bullet points on what they did last week, they would not be able to do it.

So they are watch the overreach of power and the taking away of congressional power with total passivity.

Check, check, check, check.

That's a good thing.

Feed that to your AI.

You could write it.

Yeah.

So this week, the House is considering and trying to pass a budget, the first step of their budget measure.

And the big bill they want to get done is one big budget bill that the House wants to pass.

Trump has called it a big, beautiful bill that basically crams many of their top priorities into a single bill.

And it would include lowering the corporate tax rate, extending the tax cuts Trump had from last time, new measures on all sorts of Trump priorities.

And they will have to find, I think, like $2 billion in savings.

In part,

they don't say this exactly, but it's very clear that it's going to include cuts to Medicaid.

They've directed one specific committee to find $800 billion of cuts, and the only place they could do that is Medicare or Medicaid.

If they cut Medicaid, it's going to be wildly unpopular.

So wildly.

I mean, think about, that really hurts Trump voters.

Yeah.

And so

they have the smallest majority in Congress in, I think, 100 years.

And so they're struggling to find a majority.

Long story short, their conservative members want steeper cuts.

Their members who live and work in swing districts don't want Medicaid touched.

They can't afford any defections.

It doesn't look like they're going to be able to get this passed with their own votes.

You know, the Senate will try to pass, has a different bill that they've moved with.

They're going to have to figure out a solution.

But one possibility is if they don't get something done in the next week or so, we face a government shutdown.

They're going to be desperate.

The Republicans might have to say to the Democrats, hey, can we make a deal with you?

And if they get to that point, Democrats will say, well, if you do, here are some of our priorities, which presumably would include limits on Doge, transparency around Doge,

and

protecting Medicaid and these other things.

Okay.

That's why I think some members, going back to to the beginning of our conversation, have been keeping their powder dry so that they can come to negotiations with,

you know, some friendliness to cut a deal.

And this is why voting matters at every level, right?

Because if they did not have such a small majority, they would just be able to pass all of these,

ram it through.

Okay.

Kind of like a la Elon and executive order.

Okay.

One other thing, also why people who live in blue districts, it's worth contacting your members too to say that you want them to fight for this and you will get their back if they do.

Yes.

Yes.

This is an important takeaway that if you are hearing all of this and you're like, what do we do

as people sitting in our homes?

You need to find out your local regional congressional offices.

Okay.

Find out where your people are in your congressional district and visit that office.

Sign up for their newsletters so that you know when they're doing their town halls.

Show up at the town halls.

Call them and say,

you are my representative.

You need to curb this overreach of executive power.

I put you in this job to do that.

Stand up for us and for the checks and balances of our government.

And when you do, you will have my back.

And if you don't, you will not.

And do that, whether you are a Democrat and you have a Democratic leader, or if you're a Republican and you have a Republican leader, you can say the same thing.

I voted for this Trump.

I did not vote for Elon.

I voted for small government.

I did not vote for chaos and for national security threats.

Do something about this.

And I'll say, as a journalist, I don't have a problem weighing in on this because fighting attacks on our government is not a right-left partisan endeavor.

It's an all-Americans endeavor.

I don't think this is a partisan call.

I don't, and I just want to make it really easy.

Every single representative has a Washington office, but they also have a regional office.

So wherever you live, there's an office near you that is for your member of Congress.

So what you can do is Google your zip code and who is my member, if you you don't know, Google their name and contact local office.

And your senators will have multiple local offices and your representative will too.

You can call those office numbers or get their email and you say, I want to be added to your email list or I want to know when you're holding town halls.

And you want to get on a system that notifies you when they're having town halls.

And then get with your friends and show up at those things.

You don't have to be wildly well informed or anything.

You just want to be present because what's going to happen is there's a congressional recess coming up soon for spring break.

And what they do is go back to listen to their constituents.

And when members start getting earfuls and start saying like, my constituents are going wild, that gives them leverage to push back on the White House and say, hey, this isn't me.

I'm just letting you know what I'm hearing from home.

And I'm going to lose my seat if you don't

help us compromise in some way that makes my constituents happier.

Honestly, that all makes a difference.

It also leads to social media content that goes viral, you know, all of that.

So these are important things everybody can do.

Yes.

And Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats need to not just, they need to figure out and do their job.

They need to just not sit there and be like, well, we're not doing it.

No, you need to be an equal and opposite force and figure out what you need to do to stop this.

Totally.

And there's one thing I thought I'd ask you, Amanda, which is some people have said to me, like, I want to convene.

I want to get together with my friends.

And I've always wondered if there's in this moment a need for people across the country to form their own circles where they can get together and like talk about the news, get informed, plan together to go to these things, solve together how to find those emails.

So you're not in it alone.

Yes, I think that that's right.

I've been thinking a lot about how much easier it is to break things than to make things and how much work isolating and depressing us does.

And how when the whole effort is to overwhelm,

make numb, depress,

and

have us not know which way is up, then resistance to that is

connecting with each other.

feeling relief and joy with each other, building those connections, because all of this is trying to destroy connections.

And when you don't like your life, there's a lot less to fight for in your life.

And so, what I think we should be doing,

whether it's for civic purposes or not, is really

leaning into connections with our neighbors, with our community, with our friends, of like holding on to the things

that give life

and that make us have something to fight for and that

the only solutions to any of these things are going to be in community.

So making sure that we're building strong

that community base.

So I love that idea.

I love that idea.

That's beautiful.

And you know what's so interesting is I interviewed this woman named Anne Applebaum, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning historian.

She's written about Eastern Europe and Russia.

Her expertise is authoritarianism.

And when I asked, what can regular people do to protect democracy?

She said, two things.

Get involved in your local politics and connect with community to do that.

So build community locally, which is exactly what you're talking about.

And the other thing is, make sure you practice joy in your life.

That it's literally what you're saying, that part of the project of authoritarianism is to crush your spirit.

And if you can continually fuel that fire of enjoyment, creativity, pleasure wonder at the world and especially in community with others you're in the mindset of defense and that itself is a form of resistance defensive joy

i love

that

i love that that's so beautiful oh thank you ann apple bomb and thank you jessica

we did it

We did.

Happy birthday calm news.

I feel calm.

Even when it was hard.

And I feel a desire to go get my joy right after I call my senator and my representative.

Good priority.

In fact, I might take a little joy in the calling of my representative and my senators.

Go for it.

We can do hard things, y'all.

We can go get accountability from our government and we can go get our joy.

We can do hard things.

Stay calm and clear

and take your action.

See you soon.

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things.

First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

To do this, just go to the We Can Do Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow.

This is the most important thing for the pod.

While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful.

We appreciate you very much.

We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.