It Could Happen Here Weekly 252

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0:29 You're listening to It Could Happen Here. My name's Carlos Berrios Polanco. I'm a journalist and writer, and I'll be your host for today's episode, which is about the ongoing campaign of boat strikes by the U.S. military that have turned the oceans around the Americas into killing fields. To give a high-level overview of what I'll be talking about today, since September 2nd, 2025, up until the time of recording, I've been doing a lot of research on the The U.S.

0:53 military has carried out at least 70 strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean Basin and the Eastern Pacific Ocean. At least 234 people have been killed by these strikes, according to reporting from the New York Times. Per Air Wars, there have been survivors almost every month of the campaign, but only three out of the 28 total have ever been rescued. These strikes originally started in the Caribbean following the mobilization of military assets into the region, which includes the reactivation of the once-dormant Roosevelt Roads military base in Puerto Rico, where I live and am currently recording from.

1:35 I'm sure that I've seen some of the aircraft used in these strikes and other military operations in the region from the hill that overlooks the base's airstrip. And I've probably watched every single one of the videos the Trump administration or the U.S. military has posted announcing that these strikes took place. You've likely at least seen one yourself.

1:56 It's almost always a social media post, sometimes a press release, typically showing a black and white video of a go-fast vessel, colloquially known as a panga or a yola, depending on where you're located. They're typically sipping across the waves only for a missile to rain down from the sky shortly after the video starts, turning the boat and all the people aboard it into a giant ball of fire. Per Air Wars, these posts almost always follow the same formula, naming who ordered the strike, the amount of people killed, calling them drug traffickers or narco-terrorists, saying they're part of a, quote, designated terrorist organization, end quote, in stating the location where the strike took place. To be honest with you, even

2:44 if the victims are blurred out and you rarely get an up-close look at how these people are torn to shreds, these are essentially snuff films that the Trump administration has used to hype up itself and its war on so-called narco-terrorism. The Trump administration has been laying the fin legal justification as well as the moral and philosophical foundation for this quote-unquote war since essentially their first day in office. More than two months after the first strike, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth officially announced Operation Southern Spear as the, quote, overarching D.O.W.

3:20 operation to disrupt the flow of narcotics in the Western Hemisphere from drug cartels that the president has named as a designated terrorist organization, parentheses, D.T.O.s, per a D.O.D. Inspector General report. Southern Spear's mission statement, as well as several documents that created the legal justification for these strikes and other related operations, are classified and secret from the public. However, as this Inspector General report states, the aim of Southern Spear is to, quote, defend the homeland, protect regional partners, and ensure stability and security across the Western Hemisphere. Operation Southern Spear has since evolved into Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere.

4:06 which essentially means that several partner countries in the hemisphere are working under Trump's banner of anti-narco-terrorism, whatever that means. The Trump administration has repeatedly said that the people killed in these strikes are quote-unquote narco-traffickers, and therefore enemy combatants, according to a January 20, 2025 executive order that labels the group's that the dead allegedly belonged to either quote-unquote foreign terrorist organizations or quote-unquote specially designated global terrorists, two terms that sound like they're the same thing but essentially delineate groups marked by the State Department and the Treasury Department respectively as terrorists. There is substantial doubt as to

4:52 whether the Trump administration is even able to identify these people before massacring them. However, As has been evidently clear to anyone with eyes, these people are not terrorists, and there are serious doubts as to whether they're even actually connected to drug trafficking organizations in a meaningful way. Because these strikes occur in the open ocean, sometimes in international waters, any evidence that could help in identifying the victims sinks beneath the waves relatively quickly, making positive identification nearly impossible.

5:29 by their full names. A lot of these names come from media outlets hitting the ground and interviewing people in the communities where the men who've been killed by these strikes used to live. Per the list, a lot of these names come from the Los Angeles Times, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, the Associated Press, and some were identified by Costa Rican authorities as reported by La Nación, as well as a collaborative investigation project titled Los Bombardeados Sin Derecho a la Defensa, or the bombed No Right to Defense between Air Wars, El Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística, otherwise known as El Clip, and several other Latin American or Caribbean media outlets. The Air Wars list includes names

6:14 from the first strike up until strikes in May earlier this year. This doesn't mean that they've stopped working on it, just that they haven't been able to identify anyone by their full name after that. In other cases, these outlets and others across the Western Hemisphere have been able to find nicknames and general descriptions of these men. Air Wars keeps a list of these in their individual trackers per strike as well. I have all these sources linked in the episode description. I've tried to include English as well as some Spanish-language news sources. The list by Air Wars, the Los Bombardeados investigation, and the killing spree report by the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, were huge

6:55 sources for this piece, so if you're at all interested in learning more about this topic, please go read those. The evidence found by these outlets points to the killed victims being a mix of fishermen, motorcycle or bus drivers, and boat captains. The men are mostly from some of the poorest areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, and when they are connected to drug trafficking organizations, they appear to be, quote, among the lowest-ranked members, end quote, per Air Wars. Among the identified, there's a quote-unquote local crime boss, a fisherman pressured to get on drug trafficking boats because they'd had no other options to make money to feed their children, an indoor soccer player, people who'd left home

7:37 in search of work, and fishermen who appear to have been stalled at sea fixing their ship's motor. The majority of the men hail from Venezuela and Mexico, while a few are from Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and St.

7:52 Lucia.

7:53 The Los Bombardeados investigation has been able to geolocate seven of the boat strikes, three in the Pacific and four in the Caribbean. Of the two in the Pacific, two took place broadly near the Mexico border and one strike occurred about halfway between Mexico and Ecuador. Of the four in the Caribbean, one took place in the open ocean between Venezuela and the island of La Española. Another appears to have taken place broadly near the Gulf of Venezuela.

8:21 One took place in the Gulf of Paria between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. And another took place along the spine of the Lesser Antilles, close to Martinique and St.

8:30 Lucia.

8:30 El Clips reporting identifies other strikes, including one off the coast of Costa Rica, one off Ecuador's Santa Cruz Islands, and another about halfway between Santa Cruz and Ecuador's coastline, and one near Mexico's coasts. Although the strikes... originally started in the Caribbean, only about a third of these strikes have taken place here. Meanwhile, the other two thirds have taken place in the Pacific. I'm going to talk more about the identities of these men later on as I talk about the individual strikes. But before I keep going, I want to take this moment to say that it does not and should not matter whether these men were simply fishermen or if they actually were drug traffickers. Any

9:12 level of criminality, whether real or perceived, does not in any sense of the word justify the murder of defenseless people on a boat who had no way of fighting back against the missile coming from the sky. As many experts on U.S. maritime, international, and humanitarian law have noted, these strikes on civilians, because they absolutely are not combatants and the U.S. is not at war against the groups that they pretend that these people are a part of, are basically murder. As Ben Saul, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, wrote in a briefing note, the attacks are, quote, in violation. of the right to life,

10:01 being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotic suppression conventions, or international counterterrorism law. Later on in that same document, he wrote that there is, quote, reasonable ground to believe, end quote, that the United States strikes, quote, constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law. Before I can talk about any boat strikes, I need to explain how, according to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has been pushing for these strikes on drug traffickers, on alleged drug traffickers, I should say, since they took office and how they repeatedly sidestepped, purged, fired, or steamrolled any lawyers who questioned

11:00 their plans. First, I want to broadly talk about why the U.S. is doing this. The Trump administration essentially believes, or purports to believe, At least, that since these alleged drug traffickers, which they have not published any evidence that these people are who they say they are, aka alleged drug traffickers, are poisoning the U.S. with drugs, then it's fair game for the U.S. to kill them.

11:27 To the U.S.

11:27 Government, this is quote-unquote self-defense. However, as UN Special Rapporteur Saul highlights in his note, even if, and there's a big if there, if they're actually drug traffickers. This is in no way comparable to a direct military action. Drug trafficking and military actions could never amount to be the same thing. They are simply incompatible. To quote from Saul's note, drug trafficking is not force at all. The Trump administration also alleges that these non-state actors are being sent by states, namely Venezuela. After putting Tren Daragua on the FTO list, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to declare that Tren Daragua was engaged in a quote-unquote invasion of the U.S. on behalf of the Venezuelan government. It used

12:18 this as pretext to send 147 Venezuelan men with seemingly no connection at all to the gang to El Salvador's Secat prison in March, where they suffered from torture. Along similar lines, in November 2025, the U.S. listed the Cartel de los Soles as an FTO. The Trump government had for a long time contended that Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan president, was the leader of the Cartel de los Soles, even though experts, like those of Inside Crime, claim it was more like a loose network of cells inside the Venezuelan armed forces. Also, going out of timeline here, But the U.S.

12:56 government dropped the accusation against Maduro that he led the cartel earlier this year during his court case in New York. Shortly after Trump declared several of these criminal groups FTOs, Hegseth began purging the DOD of any lawyers or commanders who would serve as quote-unquote roadblocks to Trump's orders, according to The Hill. A similar thing was occurring at the Justice Department, per the New York Times. And, This is like absolutely the type of thing you do when you're planning to break the law or do something evil. The top echelon of the Trump admin has done stuff like this across all avenues available to it. Imagine someone breaking a key in a door lock so that no matter how much you want to lock the door, it's impossible

13:42 unless you change the whole mechanism. This is what they were doing essentially. Staying on this door analogy, the Trump administration essentially just made it so that the door to doing something wildly illegal and immoral could never be fully closed to them by the people who would actually stop them from opening it. These strikes were originally supposed to be carried out by the CIA, but lawyers at the spy agency questioned whether killing civilian drug traffickers was legal under domestic law. One person familiar with the debate told the Washington Post that, quote, There is no actual threat justifying self-defense, end quote. This is perhaps the first time the CIA has said it didn't want to get involved

14:25 in Latin America directly. That's a joke, of course. The CIA is definitely here. Just look at the two agents that died in Mexico earlier this year. The CIA is also providing the targeting assistance and intelligence necessary to conduct these strikes, according to The Guardian. Per WAPO, the Trump admin quickly moved on with an alternative plan. to use the U.S. military for these strikes. During the summer of 2025, the Justice Department signed a secret opinion justifying the boat strikes by saying that the U.S. was in armed conflict with quote-unquote narco-terrorists and that using lethal force against them was okay because it protected national interests and because they were a quote, threat to the U.S. akin to a

15:11 foreign nation attempting to invade, Senator Mark Kelly told WAPO. However, this was in a capital W war, so they didn't need congressional authorization. Instead, it's a, quote, non-international armed conflict, end quote. Per a separate WAPO article, the Trump admin's legal justification, quote, does not stand up to the facts, end quote, to lawyers inside and outside the government. While this memo was produced during the summer, it was not signed until September 5th of 2025. after the first boat strike occurred. According to The Guardian, the memo states that these groups are using the proceeds from drug trafficking to wage war, which is something that the Taliban did, but that experts have said these cartels designated as FTOs or

16:01 DTOs are simply not doing. Also, you have to remember that these people, if they're connected to the cartels, are at most low-level members, and their deaths, while extremely gruesome, have little impact on drug trafficking in the region. Per WAPO, the strikes have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the U.S., according to a Drug Enforcement Administration assessment. Also, did I mention that Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, who'd been sentenced to 45 years in prison? in June 2024 after being convicted of importing more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. between 2004 and 2022. I'm again stepping out of timeline here, but I wanted to jump ahead to illustrate how this anti-drug policy is pure farce.

16:52 It's fake, and violence seems to be the point of these boat strikes for the Trump administration. Sorry to digress. Anyway, In mid-2025, Trump signed a classified directive that authorized the military to use force against a secret list of 24 DTOs. Not to be left behind, Hegs have followed this up with an execute order in August 2025 that contained targeting instructions that didn't require positive identification of a target. Instead, quote-unquote reasonable certainty that a person is a member of or affiliated with a DTO, per the Washington Post. I want to stop right here and say that under Obama, the standard for drone strikes in the Middle East was quote unquote near certainty, and they still struck a marriage

17:40 possession in Yemen. There is serious reason to doubt the U.S. 's ability to know the certainty of any target they're planning to hit. Earlier this year, a joint U.S. and Ecuadorian operation on an alleged narco-terrorist compound actually raided a dairy farm in with no arrests, but the Ecuadorian military did allegedly torture some folks, per the New York Times. Meanwhile, according to reporting in Bloomberg, serious issues with the AI-assisted quote-unquote kill chain used by the U.S. military led to the strike that killed at least 120 free children at a girls' school in Manab, Iran. United Nations investigators recently concluded that this was likely a war crime. Funnily enough, the boat strikes do not constitute a war crime because

18:30 we're simply not at war with the cartels in a strictly international legal sense. The criteria established by the execute order to attack these ships is really unclear. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia revealed that the boat strikes are being carried out using free criteria that he was not allowed to disclose. However, he was allowed to disclose that quote-unquote, evidence of narcotics, was not one of them. Republican Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky said during the same hearing that having weapons on the vessel is not one of the criteria either. This was during a full committee hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee for the fiscal year 27 State Department budget, by the way. Anyway, in August 2025, the U.S.

19:17 military mobilized to the Caribbean, and on September 2nd, 2025, the first strike event occurred. And I say strike event because there were at least four missiles fired on that day. Per the Washington Post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order was to, quote, kill everybody, end quote. Video published after the attack shows a boat racing across the waves, lighting up with a tower of fire after being hit. Nine people died because of that first missile. However, after the smoke and fire cleared, surveillance video being watched by U.S. military officials, but not released to the public, showed two people clinging to the remains of the vessel. They stayed in those freezing waters for roughly 45 minutes until Admiral Frank Bradley, then head

20:06 of the Joint Special Operations Command, also known as JSOC, ordered SEAL Team 6 to hit it again, killing the two remaining survivors. Per The Intercept, Admiral Bradley sought legal counsel from JSOC's legal advisor in between the first and second strike. Although the response isn't known, a lawmaker told The Intercept that the follow-up strike was deemed legal. Two more missiles finally sank the vessel. Bradley, who's now Chief of Special Operations Command, said that he ordered the extra strikes because the shipwrecked men and the fragment of the boat still posed a threat, sources told The Intercept. Per the New York Times, the survivors had managed to get back on the boat's remains and were waving to the

20:50 planes before the second missile killed them. The aircraft used to carry out this strike was reportedly painted to look like a civilian plane. However, this practice has stopped since that first strike, according to the New York Times. That same article states that the men had spotted the plane and turned the boat around back to Venezuela. Per sources who spoke with The Intercept, JSOC did not know the names or supposed affiliations of all the persons aboard this vessel.

21:19 Of the victims who've been identified by Air Wars, eight were from San Juan Dunare in Venezuela, while three others were from local towns close to San Juan Dunare called Los Estigos and Guiria. The one victim there's the most information about online is Luis Chemaria Martinez, who was identified by the Associated Press as a quote-unquote long-time local crime boss that made his money mostly from smuggling people and drugs across borders. He had previously been jailed after a boat he was operating capsized in 2020, killing, quote, about two dozen people, end quote, including several of his relatives.

21:59 He was jailed in Venezuela, to be clear. Some family members believe that Che Maria was one of two bodies that have washed up on the shores of Trinidad and Tobago, per an anonymous source who spoke with N Plus Univision from Martinez's native Guiria. The anonymous source compared Che Maria to an errand boy for drug traffickers, not the owner.

22:21 Per the Killing Spree report by the Washington Office on Latin America, there's a significant possibility that many of the victims who died in that first strike were passengers traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago. The report cites El Clip, and I will here as well. Quote, some people who are familiar with boat movements, end quote, along the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela, told El Clip that, quote, it is common for the same boats that carry drugs on the outward journey to bring passengers back. The capitanes, as the boat operators are known, take whatever work they can get, end quote. The second boat strike we know of occurred on September 15, 2025. Alejandro Carranza Medina, a

23:06 Colombian man, was one of three men killed by that boat strike. Family members told RTVC, a Colombian news outlet, that he had been on board the boat and that it was an artisanal fishing vessel. Citing the video posted by the Trump administration online, family members posited that the ship had been having engine trouble at the time that it was fired upon. When the New York Times spoke with Carranza Medina's family, the mother of his free children said that he had never been involved in drug smuggling. Quote, if he was some kind of narco-terrorist, then why are we living in misery instead of a mansion? She asked a reporter. Gustavo Petro, who was still president of Colombia at the time he made these remarks, said that Carranza

23:52 Medina might have been involved with drugs intermittently as many fishermen are forced to because poverty leaves him little else in terms of work. Per reporting from El Heraldo and the New York Times, he had previously pled guilty in a scheme to steal weapons confiscated during legal proceedings, but it appears that he never served jail time for this.

24:13 I add this context because the truth of who these people were is extremely nuanced, and regardless of whether they were quote-unquote criminals in the eyes of the state or not, they did not deserve to be killed. In fact, as Petro said, For these poor communities, because of the economic desperation these fishermen face, it's common for them to be extremely vulnerable to being exploited by drug trafficking organizations. Per the team behind Los Bombardeos, the four men killed during the October 3rd, 2025 strike were also from Guiria. Luis Ramon Amundarang had traveled from his home to Trinidad and Tobago in search of work. He was a motorcycle taxi driver and a boat captain. who accepted his first drug-running

24:58 job because he had no other way to pay for his youngest daughter's dermatology treatment or to feed his four other children. According to El Clip, Ramon's cousin, Robert Sanchez, was also on the boat and was killed. For the AP, Robert had been pushed by economic pressure to join a drug-smuggling job in hopes of getting enough money to buy an engine for his fishing boat. Ramon's wife told El Clip that, quote, if Ramon had really been a narco-terrorist, if he'd had money, if he'd been living large, believe me, I wouldn't be living where I live now. And if you go to the homes of the other free men they killed, you'll see that they don't have much either because none of it belonged to them, end quote. I

25:44 should say that El Clip notes that all signs point to them about to go on a run for illicit cargo. But a friend of Ramon's told El Clip that he was sure no drugs were on board at the time the boat was hit. Because a boat traveling from Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela is going to pick up merchandise, not deliver it. Quote, boats carry drugs from South America northwards, not the reverse. End quote. Said Maria Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of El Clip to The Guardian. On October 14th, 2025, a strike killed six people. Chad, Charpo Joseph, and Richie Samaru were among the victims. They were both from Trinidad and Tobago, and they were fishermen, per CNC Free TV.

26:40 Joseph's grandfather characterized the strike as a, quote, act of evil, end quote. They seemingly had no connection with drug trafficking other than Joseph's uncle being a, quote, unquote, drug lord for the TNT Guardians. Per a lawsuit filed by the families of Joseph and Samaru against the U.S. government in the district of Massachusetts, Samaru was working on a farm in Venezuela and had called his sister days before he was killed to let her know that he had found a ride to Trinidad. Similarly, Joseph had told his wife he had found a boat ride from Venezuela back home and would see her in a couple of days. They never arrived. Per Air Wars, Dusak Milovic from Guiria was also one of the men killed during that strike. He

27:28 had once been a cadet at the Venezuelan National Guard Academy, but dropped out to run drugs, per the AP. The lawsuit against the U.S. by the families of Joseph and Samaru is currently pending. stalled pending the completion of judicial proceedings in Trinidad and Tobago that would declare the two men legally deceased and allow their families to take control of their estates, per the Trinidad Daily Express. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the time to name all of the victims that we know of or the circumstances which led to them being killed in the ocean, forced into an unmarked grave. However, you can see the picture that's building through the strikes that I've mentioned. These people, appeared to be either common fishermen or forced into smuggling

28:15 drugs because that's the only type of work that they could find in a poverty that they had lived through most of their lives. Even the ones who were nominally part of a drug trafficking organization, perhaps one of the 24 on the secret list, were low-level members at most or only quote-unquote affiliated, perhaps because they were traveling on the same boat as someone who was a member or hitched a ride on a boat carrying drugs. The truth is we will likely never know the full details of who all these people were and what made the U.S.

28:48 target them specifically. After the first strike, an official admitted that only one victim was considered a member of a designated terrorist organization per The Intercept. The rest were affiliates. Pentagon officials have claimed that they knew the identities of everyone on that first boat, but per Senator Mark Warner, ranking Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with ABC, quote, they don't know all of the individuals on many of the other boats, end quote. I should also mention here that maritime interdictions have not stopped while these boat strikes have gone on. Per El Clip, on the same day as that very first strike, the Colombian Aerospace Force, its Dominican counterpart, and the U.S. Joint Interagency

29:36 Task Force South, carried out Operation Seuss, which led to the seizure of nearly 450 kilos of cocaine and the arrest of two people. Seuss and other operations like it have occurred in parallel to the violent extrajudicial killings of the boat strikes. This shows that contrary to what the Trump administration has said, blowing up random people on boats isn't the only way to curb drug trafficking. There is certainly another way to stop it that doesn't involve murder and guarantees a person's day in court. This is in line with a new tactic utilized in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, where SAFCOM forces have been interdicting alleged floating refueling stations that support illicit drug trafficking. Many of

30:25 the publicly listed press releases related to these interdictions specify that they operate for los choneros. These vessels are also sunk via an explosion, and per the press releases I've read, the crew on these ships are disembarked and then handed over to their respective countries' authorities. However, speaking of a day in court, three people have been rescued as survivors in two incidents— On October 16th, 2025, two men were pulled from a sinking semi-submersible vessel. Andres Fernando Tufino Chila of Ecuador had previously been convicted of cocaine distribution, but his sister told El Pais that he'd been working as a fisherman before the U.S. struck the vessel he was on.

31:11 Jonathan Obando, the second survivor who's from Colombia, had no criminal history and no cartel links, according to El Pais. Even though Trump promised to prosecute them, they were eventually let go without being formally charged by either the U.S. or their home countries. Obviously, this begs the question, if these people are really quote-unquote narco-terrorists, why have they been able to go free? As El Pais notes, Trump's strategy is paradoxical. The Trump admin has enough justification to kill them extrajudicially, but not to charge these men in a court of law, question mark? All possible evidence that could link these men to alleged drug trafficking, if there ever was any in the first place, goes up in literal

31:57 smoke the moment that these boats are hit, El Pais noted. It's likely that a court case would expose much of the legal scaffolding that upholds the fin legal justification that the Trump administration is using for these strikes, as well as put on display that many of these people might really just be fishermen forced into participating in the drug trade as a lookout or a guide or something like that because they had no other opportunities. A note on survivors.

32:25 There haven't been more of them because the U.S. is apparently intent on not looking for them. Per The Intercept, after a December 30 strike sank three vessels, SAFCOM said that it, quote-unquote, immediately notified the Coast Guard. but it took the Coast Guard almost 45 hours to begin searching the attack zone for survivors. It is believed that the 11 people on these vessels drowned at sea. To end this section, on March 24, 2026, the Ecuadorian ship La Negra Francisca Duarte II, which was coming back from weeks of fishing at sea, was hit by an apparent U.S.

33:03 military drone strike, according to NPLOS Univision.

33:06 The crew.

33:08 had been forced off of the boat by apparent U.S. military personnel, although it's unclear from which agency they could have been. Photos from another ship that was detained in the region show that it might have been Coast Guard personnel, per NPLOS's reporting. Crew of La Negra Francisca Duarte II, as well as the Don Maca, which was intercepted on April 30th, alleged to drop site news in Mongabay, Latam, that they were arbitrarily detained and tortured. The crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte was moved roughly 900 miles north from their position and turned over to the Salvadoran Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the crew of the Don Maca told Dropsite they had been, quote, held hostage and hooded for eight days. La Fiorella, another

33:55 Ecuadorian ship, and its crew went missing in January, per the New Yorker. The wife of the captain who commanded the ship told Dropsite that her husband had called her on an emergency line saying that, quote, American aircraft, two drones, and a blue patrol ship, end quote, had been circling the boat. The next day, the Fiorella and its crew disappeared.

34:18 The prosecutor who had led the investigation into the Fiorella's disappearance was shot dead alongside her sister in Manta, per the New Yorker. There do not appear to be any links between these three boats and drug trafficking, per the report cited earlier. Unlike the boat strikes, the U.S. has not taken boastful credit for the disappearance and detention of these ships and actively denies having done anything to harm them.

34:45 For their part, the Salvadoran military says that the men of the Francisca Duarte had been shipwrecked and then rescued as part of a quote-unquote humanitarian operation. It's unclear if these are related to Operation Southern Spear or Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, its evolution. There was a brief two-month pause on these boat strikes from July 21st to August 23rd.

35:08 But at time of recording, the strikes have continued unabated. There appears to be no end in sight for this terror. These strikes are part of the Trump administration's focus on exerting control over the Western Hemisphere, the so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. As part of this renewed focus on the region, Trump attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolas Maduro. He is currently sitting in jail in New York. Meanwhile, the U.S. has started partnering with other countries in the region to attack so-called narco-terrorists. These countries, such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Honduras, have agreed to join operations on their soil with U.S. personnel. These include airstrikes, which I previously mentioned,

35:55 as the attack on that dairy farm. It's clear that that this rising tide of anti-narco-terrorism actions will become more prominent across Latin America. I should also say, quote-unquote, anti-narco-terrorism actions. Alleged narco-terrorism. On September 22nd, the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago published a joint statement declaring that they were announcing the, quote, first joint action under our newly announced pillars, individual and collective action to confront the scourge of narco-terrorism. As such, we declare our intention to impose, as applicable and in accordance with our respective international and

36:46 domestic legal obligations, as it freezes immigration and visa restrictions for members, associates, and supporters of the organizations and criminal liability, for individuals knowingly providing material support, including logistical support, to the organizations, among other measures. This announcement has seemingly been a long time coming. At a conference of the America's Counter-Cartel Coalition in March 2026, Stephen Miller told Latin American military leaders that, quote, these organizations can only be defeated with military power. And I see some heads nodding up front because they understand you're dealing with a lot of lawyers in your country, I'm sure. You have my permission not to listen to them. End quote. This is frightful,

37:33 to be honest with you. There's not enough space in this episode today, but I assure you I will talk about this more later at some point. If you want a brief intro into what the U.S. has done in Latin America before you can listen to my episodes on the Dominican Republic and my episode on the U.S. 's colonies.

37:55 To be honest with you, things are not looking good in terms of democratic rights in the Americas. I want to end this episode by highlighting this quote from the Washington Office on Latin America Killing Spree Report. Quote, If normalization of the boat strikes... takes hold and the U.S. president can assert an unlimited license to kill, the protections of the rule of law will be gravely weakened for all of us, not just those who are the most immediate targets of state violence. Thank you for listening. You can find me on all social media as at Vaquero2XL and you can follow Cool Zone Media at Cool Zone Media pretty much everywhere.

38:48 Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al-Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking with Harsha Walia, who is an activist and writer based in Canada. Her book, Border and Rule, Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, I think is essential reading for all of us who are concerned with the rise of fascism and its connection to anti-immigrant sentiment and narratives that are taking root in a lot of our societies.

39:14 I spoke with Harsha about the for lack of a better term, incident that happened in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the tip of Morocco exactly a month ago. So we recorded this podcast on September 10th, a month ago exactly. I think something like 70,000 migrants attempted to cross over into the Spanish enclave to seek refuge in the European continent. Some of these migrants were from Morocco, but many were not. And there was a huge outrage and backlash against migrants and against what happened there. From the left and the right, as we'll discuss in the interview.

39:48 So I spoke with Harsha about what the implications of these arguments have been and how do we understand this anti-immigrant sentiment that, again, sometimes comes both from the right and the left.

40:01 So I hope that this is a.

40:03 Useful interview and useful for some of us who are trying to center migration and freedom of movement in our struggle against fascism. Without further ado, here's Harsha Walia. So I'd like to start with maybe just a brief summary for our listeners, since the world is on fire and things move quickly, about what happened last month in Ceuta.

40:30 I think I'm pronouncing that correctly.

40:32 Yeah, and it's almost exactly to the day. It's been 30 days. And so what happened a month ago is approximately 70,000 migrants were.

40:43 From Morocco.

40:44 And here it's important to say, you know, migrants came from Morocco, but not all the migrants were Moroccan because of course, Morocco is one of many transit routes for migrants looking to come through the Mediterranean into Europe. And so the 70,000 migrants who came from Morocco were not only Moroccan migrants, but included migrants from Sudan, Mali, Yemen, Gaza, Palestine, 48 and others. And so what happened is 70,000 migrants transited into Ceuta. And Ceuta is also a transit point into the EU. Ceuta is one of the Spanish-held enclaves in Moroccan territory and has long been held by Spain and is claimed by Spain despite being on the continent of Africa. And because it is under formal Spanish jurisdiction,

41:37 a lot of migrants looking to come into the EU have transited through the enclaves, as they're called. So Ceuta and Melilla. Another one is the Canary Islands. You know, since the 1990s, this has been one of the major routes of migration. And so while it may seem incredibly significant and spectacular, which it was because of the scale, the fact that Ceuta and Melilla are transit points into the EU for migrants is part of a very long and ongoing trajectory. And so what we saw, particularly because of the scale of 70,000 people crossing into Ceuta was, you know, this global kind of uproar that frankly came from many parts, you know, came, of course, from the right, where the right and, you know, nationalists across the spectrum.

42:27 So the far right, but also conservatives and at a global scale, right? So not just in Europe, but also in the United States and elsewhere. This fed into, of course, the perfect anti-migrant storm that far-right and fascist and conservative forces are always fueling. But also we saw a lot of, I would argue, misinformation from many leftist commentators who arguably actually used a lot of right-wing rhetoric to claim that this was an attack on Spain because of Spain's very vocal position in support of Palestine. And so this created really a perfect storm for a lot of misinformation across the spectrum, particularly for people who had frankly never even heard of Ceuta before. And so this is kind of

43:15 what happened both in terms of the really significant scale of migration that took place, but also what we saw after in terms of how people responded to this moment.

43:25 Thank you for setting it up that way. What does that get into for me of interest is the leftist misinformation that we saw all over the Internet. But before I get into kind of some of the details of the aftermath, I also just want to kind of break down. Why did migrants think this was a good time to try to make it to Europe? Like why in this scale?

43:43 Yeah, it's a it's a good question. And, you know, I think a lot of what's happening is frankly still being pieced together. Because, you know, one of the things that we did see in the aftermath was a lot of, you.

43:53 Know, clipping and hypotheses.

43:56 And there are still people on the ground who are talking to migrants to find out, you know, why did you make this journey at this moment? What is the circulation of information that was happening? So a lot of that is still coming out, which I think I want to emphasize because I think in like a hot take economy, we don't we aren't sitting with accurate information always. And there isn't a simple answer because again, I would emphasize that migrants who migrated in that moment, again, were coming from very different backgrounds. And by backgrounds, I don't just mean the kind of national origins that I pointed out, but many of the migrants have left, but many of the migrants are still there. And so people were in

44:35 very different situations as to why they chose to make the move in that moment. There isn't a single answer. Some of the factors that we can point to and we can see is there was a Supreme Court decision in Spain just a few weeks prior to this mass migration in July.

44:53 And so that decision was in June.

44:56 And that decision was a very specific Supreme Court decision in Spain about regularization because Spain has been regularizing migrants, which has been really significant, actually, in the context of this rightward drift in the EU that has been escalating. Spain's regularization program was significant. And there was a Supreme Court decision associated with that about travel and travel routes.

45:19 To kind of put it simply, what we saw is several misinterpretations of that Supreme Court decision that started to circulate. And, you know, for anyone who is familiar or who has family who has been looking to migrate, you know, from all of the many situations and horrors around.

45:38 The world, we know that you know, information travels fast.

45:41 So one of the kind of conspiracy theories is like, there's no way 70,000 people would have all gotten access to the same information. And frankly, that is a complete misunderstanding of how diasporic communities and communities who are immobilized, who are looking to migrate, how information travels.

46:00 Travels much wider. Travels much wider.

46:03 Many of the WhatsApp groups, for example, that in this situation people were referencing, there was at least two groups that had almost 200,000 people on the WhatsApp groups.

46:13 Yeah, yeah.

46:13 And this is not a conspiracy theory because actually coincidentally yesterday, a number of declassified documents were released by Spain. And so these Spanish documents revealed that there were some of these WhatsApp groups had almost 200,000 people on each of them. And so if you think about it, that's just a fraction of the people, you know? So the issue is not how information travels. It's just whether people choose to act on that information, how verified they think that information is.

46:39 And so that was significant. The misinterpretation of the Supreme Court decision bolstered a lot of these WhatsApp groups to think like actually now is the moment.

46:47 Right.

46:47 Actually, just yesterday, the information that I was referencing actually suggested that the Spanish government was told by Spanish intelligence that there was going to be some significant movement in July, in mid-July.

46:59 Okay.

47:00 Because of access to these WhatsApp groups.

47:03 Mm-hmm.

47:03 And we know that many of the migrants, particularly non-Moroccan migrants in Morocco, were waiting to move in the summer because that is actually typically when people move. Not at the scale of 70,000, but it is not unheard of for thousands and thousands of people to be on the move through the summer trying to get into Europe, particularly crossing through the Mediterranean. So that is actually just, frankly, a baseline when it comes to a lot of migration.

47:26 And then, of course, we did have the element of You know, to what degree did the Moroccan government and Moroccan authorities not necessarily, you know, foster this in an active way, but definitely suggestions that, you know, Moroccan authorities were not as heavy handed as they have been in the past when collaborating on border securitization and perhaps using this moment to leverage with Spain with respect to Western Sahara. So, you know, multiple factors were at play. But it is the main things that stand out, particularly from migrants who both returned or are still in Soweto, is really the Supreme Court decision. And then just this kind of surge that happened in the moment where more and more people

48:09 felt in the moment that they could make the crossing because of the seemingly lax border securitization in that moment.

48:28 I want to get to Morocco and Western Sahara in just a moment. Listeners will remember or hopefully will remember a episode I recently did with Western Sahara activist Mohammed Saddam. So I'll link that in the show notes. But before we get to that, just to kind of break down the aftermath, the kind of immediate aftermath we saw in Morocco. Spain, and as you said, like, not just Spain, not just Europe, but also the United States. But let's maybe start with Spain. Like, has there been kind of an anti-immigrant backlash as a result of this?

48:57 And what has that looked like?

48:59 And then how has that kind of fed into these narratives, like, especially in the United States, like the Great Replacement Theory, like people really hooked on to these things.

49:07 So maybe you could break that down for us.

49:09 Yeah, you know, the things that have been happening on the ground, you know, I'm also obviously not there, but being in touch with comrades there and following what's happening has been incredible.

49:20 Alarming.

49:21 You know, so it is undeniable, of course, that we are overall in a crisis of neoliberalism and austerity. And we know all of the ways in which that means people feel intense economic pressures in their lives. Ceuta is not a huge place in terms of geography and population. And so just the ability for the infrastructure, the local infrastructure to actually support people in a good way has been significantly strained. However, you know, while that is true, that is often layered, as we see in many places with anti-migrant xenophobia, right, where migrants become the scapegoat for capitalist austerity, become the scapegoat around scarce resources. And almost every day in Ceuta, there has been anti-migrant protests since.

50:09 the last 30 days, almost every single day. It initially started by far-right forces coming into Ceuta from other cities, particularly from Spain and elsewhere, really to foster this phenomenon. And unfortunately now it has extended into Ceuta locals as well. And so Ceuta has historically been known for being a very multicultural space.

50:34 You know, it is a borderland.

50:36 And so I use multiculturalism, not in the liberal way, but in a very sincere way of what it means for people to have lived together for a very long time. And I don't say that to romanticize all the anti-migrant violence that has been ongoing and the securitization of the enclaves since the 1990s, but I mean within the local communities.

50:56 And that has been fracturing, you know, many of the organizations that have been operating in Ceuta to support migrants are now facing attacks. You know, they are being called traitors. They are facing a lot of hatred just for supporting migrants, just for doing accompaniment, just for doing documentation. And they've been doing incredibly important documentation work, documenting how migrants have been stranded alone on the beach. Many migrants have been corralled and told that they cannot leave certain areas because So they are basically enclosed into certain areas of Ceuta.

51:29 Many of them have been denied registration. So registration is the process through which you become registered into the state registry in order to access supports. Hmm. So they have documented that then when they accompany people, they are being arbitrarily denied. And when they're denied, that means they can't access any of the supports. There have been beatings by local police authorities. There have also been local attacks on migrants by right forces. So it has been incredibly hard and horrific to witness this. And what I find particularly hard about this moment, just to return to this earlier moment, you know, when migrants were first landing on Ceuta in July, the way that so many left-wing comrades were quick to

52:13 dismiss it. I'm not saying the left is responsible for the violence, but it has meant a very quick turn away and abandonment of migrants because people were quick to just call it an invasion and say, well, so many of the migrants have come back. It was not an issue. But that ignores the fact that there are, in fact, many migrants who are still there And again, particularly migrants from Palestine, from Yemen, from Mali, from Sudan, who have been, again, you know, just kind of stranded on the beaches. And for organizations in Ceuta who are supporting migrants and migrant justice organizations, you know, they've said that they haven't seen anything like this in decades in terms of the work and the impact on the ground.

52:52 And just desperate conditions for these people that I think, like you said, the left likes, not all the left.

52:59 Let's just be, you know, everybody get upset with me.

53:03 But some large parts of the left and the global north that like really loves a neat narrative.

53:10 Yeah.

53:10 So let's maybe get into that. Like, why did we see, for me.

53:15 Especially English speaking influencers and pundits who speak on the left, like why did they connect this to an Israeli plot?

53:22 Yeah.

53:22 I mean, I think what we've seen in the past few years since the ongoing genocide is various kinds of lefts have emerged. One of those lefts has been very quick on the takes, on the upticks. We see content farming. And in particular, we see very simplistic narratives where people may not actually know the extent of place-based geographies and movements and have only seen clickbait about what countries have done to stand up to the Zionist enemy. And that is important. Spain, for example, is one of those countries that has stood up to the Zionist entity. We saw this with, you know, tremendous support, for example, for South Africa during the ICJ hearing. And at the same time, we had organizers from Sudan saying, hey, can we talk

54:08 about what's happening between the South African state and the UAE and the closer relationships? You know, none of which is to simplify in the opposite direction, but it is to actually sit with internationalism in a meaningful way and to look at all the contours of what is happening. And so what we saw in the aftermath of July, and really from commentators who, frankly, in my humble opinion, have any connection to migrant movements, right? So did not know the history of Ceuta, do not understand Ceuta as a transit point for many decades, really harping on this idea that because it was migrants entering into Ceuta, it was an attack on Spanish sovereignty. you know, there was all these clips of these migrants are military aged men.

54:53 Just look at them. They're like 18 to 45. And it's like, who do you think most migrants are in general? Like that is actually the demographic of many migrants, not exclusively, of course, but that is the reality of migration, particularly on dangerous routes, right? That has been one of the impacts of securitizing the borders is that it does make it harder for elderly or kids to migrate because those routes are becoming more dangerous. The narrative became, look, this is a U.S.-Israeli-Moroccan-backed plot to destabilize Spain and Spanish sovereignty at a time when Spain is standing up to Palestine.

55:30 That was the through line. And all of the evidence was clipped and farmed to justify that. And so, you know, that was why we saw what we did. I think in this moment, we're seeing many other similar narratives in that trajectory that are not about Ceuta, but that are in that same vein, where people want to suggest that everything is a U.S.-Israeli-backed conspiracy.

55:56 Frankly, you know, people straight up saying, like.

55:58 you know, if anyone is against Spain, they must be backed by Zionists. Like, you know, and it is clear cut and nuance is terrible and nuancing is two-sided, you know? And so I think there was an uptick because that has become part of some segments of leftist discourse.

56:18 Yeah, people in the Palestine space, I'll speak for myself in particular, like this struggle to have a truly internationalist perspective. has been a growing struggle in the movement to kind of push against the easy narratives that people want to latch on to. And your argument is that treating it as a foreign military maneuver, you're just conceding the far-right's premise entirely. So let's maybe also talk about the Moroccan role here. You mentioned already that there is an interest of the Moroccan state to use migration as a leverage, and Western Sahara plays a role in this.

57:10 So could you maybe break that down for us?

57:14 Yeah, I think, as I mentioned, some of this is still being parsed out. And so we don't know for sure. But what we do know is that Moroccan state authorities are likely relaxed their kind of border controls in that moment. And I think it is important here again to emphasize that, you know, both Morocco and Spain have for a long time collaborated on border controls.

57:35 Right.

57:35 And so. You know, one of the arguments that I generally make is that we have to understand borders as a linchpin in state violence. That, you know, while there are many things often at play in terms of global geopolitics, whether it's imperialism, of course, or bilateral kind of relationships between various states, one of the things they have always collaborated on and continue to collaborate on is borders. It's completely global. And Spain and Morocco have long collaborated. Spain has often funded Moroccan border securitization. And so while there are many significant differences between Spain and Morocco, for example, on their positions and alignments on Palestine and You know, Morocco's normalization, Spain's significant stance against Zionism and Israel, although imperfect,

58:25 is significantly more than Morocco.

58:27 That is undeniable.

58:29 Despite Spain and Morocco's significant differences on Western Sahara, they have collaborated on border securitization.

58:35 So that is important to hold as the overall context. And then in this moment.

58:40 You know, it's hard to say precisely because, again, we don't have all of that kind of information. But what we do know is that at different times, Spain has leveraged the border and Morocco has leveraged the border for their own personal interests, particularly around Western Sahara. And with respect to Spain, Spain has actually fluctuated on its position on Western Sahara over the past several years. In 2021, as we know, Spain reversed its position on supporting an independent referendum on Western Sahara. This moment in 2026 has been really important because Algeria and Spain have reestablished relationships.

59:19 While we don't know the extent of that relationship, we know that those relationships being reestablished did cause some discontent for the Moroccan state. And so, you know, we can speculate that that is one of the reasons, particularly in this moment, that Morocco may have decided to really leverage the border in a particular way to have Spain rethink any possibility of rethinking its position on Western Sahara. And to emphasize, Spain has not yet reversed its decision from 2021.

59:51 But people understood that maybe this gesture towards Algeria might suggest that Spain was going to change its position on Western Sahara.

59:59 Interesting.

1:00:00 Yeah.

1:00:00 No, I think it's a very important point to underscore that there is, as you've mentioned in your previous work, this kind of externalization. of enforcement, and that there are all these states around the world that play that role. You know, Fortress Europe, I don't know, catchphrase is the right term here. But like, we talked a lot about Fortress Europe, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, and the role that a lot of these Middle Eastern states, despite a lot of differences, like you said, like.

1:00:26 Play in the maintenance of border imperialism.

1:00:30 I kind of want to maybe end on this idea from some of your commentary on this on this particular incident a month ago about how, you know, we need to understand like people will keep crossing. That's going to be the significance. So for those of us who aren't taking an anti-immigrant position, either from the left or the right, like what should someone who takes that seriously actually be organizing towards right now?

1:00:54 Yeah, I love that question.

1:00:55 Because for me, when I think about the externalization of borders, as you just were talking about, to me, it means that if we see bordering as happening, not just as, you know, a line on a map that's, you know, about people crossing in particular moments, or, you know, especially right now, what's happening, for example, in the US, or what we see with AFD's victory in a region of Germany, all of this to me really points to like, it is impossible to separate out the rise of fascism from anti-migrant racism. And so when I think about, you know, what can we do to support migrants, it really is a much broader struggle to dismantle fascism because despite all their differences and all polls for the past decade have

1:01:40 shown this, that in different parts of the world, people vote for fascist parties for different reasons, right? Because obviously not every geography is the same. But the two most significant similarities is anti-Muslim racism and anti-migrant racism. That is the most consistent similarity in very disparate parts of the world. Because, you know, for example, white supremacy is not necessarily at play in India, right? Like that is not the governing framework for fascism, but it is Hindutva, which is motivated by anti-Muslim racism, caste supremacy, and also anti-migrant racism, right?

1:02:18 All of the changes that we're seeing under Hindutva that are denationalizing and stripping people of citizenship, particularly from Muslim regions of India. So those are very connected in many different parts of the world. And so I think it is so important to understand the ways in which anti-migrant racism is not only about migrants on the move, but it is part of a much bigger project of fascism.

1:02:40 And so dismantling fascism is actually so central to thinking about no borders and the freedom to move. And also, for me, it really is about the freedom to stay, right? So all of our struggles against imperialism, but an anti-imperialism that's inflected with internationalism, that centers, you know, the way in which borders are a structuring of imperialism, that we cannot continue to see the nation state as an anti-imperialist formation.

1:03:09 The nation state as a form.

1:03:10 I'm not talking about particular governments, you know, whether they're anti-imperialist or not, but as a form. And so thinking about anti-imperialism from an internationalist perspective is so central.

1:03:20 To migrant struggles.

1:03:21 You know, like what is, how do we make sure that people are not being displaced and immobilized by bordering regimes and the dismantling of capitalism? So for me, really thinking about bordering as a through line through our struggles for abolition, through our struggles against imperialism, through our struggles against displacement and genocide and gentrification, all of these are very similar forces, right? Very different, of course, in how people are impacted, but similar in their logics. So to me, thinking about bordering as central is how we actually fight for people on the move. It is to refuse to silo migrants into this other struggle because that is actually what the right relies on, right? Like if we actually

1:04:00 think about it, migrant is one of the most state constructed categories. Like we know everything is constructed. Race is constructed. Gender is constructed. But migrant truly is so constructed. You know, it's literally just about a paper. And so, you know, to refuse to feed into the idea of that construction is to understand migration as inherently connected to all of these struggles.

1:04:23 Right.

1:04:23 It is actually a symptom. and cannot be siloed as a kind of separate side issue that people who stand for migrant justice are just, you know, this little pro-immigrant silo alongside all these struggles. It is to see bordering as the linchpin that sustains so many other forms of violence.

1:04:40 No, that's so well put.

1:04:42 I think we all could do in all of our respective communities to do a little bit more work understanding what fascism actually is. Like, What are the building blocks? What are the mechanisms of fascism? And if there's consistency in being anti-fascist, then you see this very clearly that the immigration issue is essential. But unfortunately, there is not always consistency. But yeah, thank you so much, Harsha. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And I know that a lot of people will get a lot out of it.

1:05:12 So thank you for your time.

1:05:13 Thank you so much. And thank you for your work. Your work is just so deeply appreciated.

1:05:17 Please know that.

1:05:18 Oh, thank you so much.

1:05:19 I appreciate it. All right.

1:05:20 Take care, everybody.

1:05:33 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, I'm Kevin Foster, and today we're separating the art from the artist, specifically taking Macklemore's solid political takes and isolating them from his, let's just say, iconic bars like What Up, I Got a Big Cock. For those who aren't caught up, Macklemore was touring with Ed Sheeran not long ago before he was removed from the tour for espousing pro-Palestine statements on stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Specifically, he said Free Palestine a few times and thanked students at Columbia University for kicking off the encampments movement in spring of 2024.

1:06:11 Those students inspired his song Hins Hall, the title student protesters gave Columbia's Hamilton Hall, named after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old who was brutally murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza in January of 2024. In a beautiful case of leopards eating faces, Ed Sheeran's entire lineup of opening acts and his backing band withdrew from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore. In his next performance, Sheeran gave a sort of apology speech to the crowd, reading off a teleprompter in which he did not use the words genocide or Palestinian. Rather than focusing on that, due to the outstanding negative response to McLemore's statements from Zionist billionaires, I think it's worth listening to some of what he actually

1:06:56 said on stage. Here's a clip from his Instagram.

1:07:00 To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love, for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.

1:07:25 So I say free Palestine. I say free Lebanon.

1:07:29 I say free Cuba.

1:07:30 I say free Congo, free Sudan, free all.

1:07:34 People in America living in fear over this terrorist organization ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free.

1:07:48 This song is called Hen's Hall.

1:07:51 Some deeply frightening stuff in there, at least for Robert Kraft, the pro-Israel billionaire owner of the New England Patriots football team, and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts near Boston, where McLemore was set to appear on tour with Sheeran. Kraft was not happy with McLemore's support of Palestinian equal rights on stage, and he confirmed to Rolling Stone that he barred McLemore from appearing at the Boston shows over, quote, recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, unquote. Despite McLemore's clear calls for

1:08:34 equality and peace, Kraft felt his presence at Gillette Stadium would stymie the supposed goal of providing a, quote, welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that all events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech, unquote. Funnily enough, those shows ended up getting cancelled anyway due to severe weather warnings. But Kraft allegedly did not stop there.

1:08:58 According to a post by Macklemore Followers, his removal from the tour, Sheeran apparently said that Kraft had rallied other stadium owners with an ultimatum, quoting from that post, if McLemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues, unquote. Messina Touring Group, the promoter of the US portion of Sheeran's tour, said, said in a statement that they were notified by venues from the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they would not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore in the lineup. Obviously, this represents a serious affront to freedom of speech, something that is far from new on the matter of Palestine.

1:09:34 As of yet, Kraft has not discussed or denied the allegations of mounting this pressure campaign against the rapper. In response to the controversy, basically everyone and their mother chimed in, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who pretty well lays out the real focus of this episode.

1:09:53 This is about how just a handful of stadium owners and the elite can prevent an entire massive issue, in this case the genocide in Gaza, but it doesn't stop there. It could be speaking out about AI. It could be speaking out about any issue.

1:10:13 Here's where things get interesting. Rolling Stone lists seven stadium venues that allegedly objected to McLemore's inclusion in the tour. And of those seven, five are publicly owned by either the city, county, or state in which they reside. I could spend quite a lot of time talking about how I think Ed Sheeran is a coward, how it is a political statement to fold in favor of genocide deniers.

1:10:37 But what I'm far more interested in is the First Amendment implications of Kraft's alleged actions and the ways in which billionaires are able to wield authority over our rights, even through public institutions and capital. To discuss this in depth, I've interviewed friend of the pod, Mo Meltzer Cohen, a law professor at CUNY School of Law, experienced in defense of people targeted on the basis of First Amendment protected beliefs, identities, and association. Let's dive right into that. I'm kind of wondering if you can just tell me from what you know about this case, what do you make of a billionaire kind of organizing a censorship campaign like this? Have you seen similar things in different contexts around free speech?

1:11:25 Well, certainly.

1:11:25 And there are all manner of ways in which coercive social or economic pressure is brought to bear on different people or different events or forums. in order to constrain the expressive conduct of different people or different groups. There's certainly nothing at all that is unique or unusual about that.

1:11:51 I think what's important to recognize before we really get too deep into this is when we're talking about free speech principles, We can talk about free speech or free expression as a shared cultural value, but the First Amendment only applies to the government, right? So when we're talking about censorship, we need to be clear about whether we're talking about a private individual or company refusing to platform particular speech. Which is certainly censorship, but it isn't government censorship of the kind that the First Amendment is concerned.

1:12:38 With, right?

1:12:40 Yeah.

1:12:40 The First Amendment, as a legal principle, a set of legal principles, is a constraint on the power of the government to censor political speech or to censor free expression, right? It's a constraint on the power of the state to restrict people's ability to speak, to associate with each other, to believe freely. And so I think what's interesting about this particular situation that you've raised is that, you know, an event planning company or a private theater or Robert Kraft himself as an individual, are certainly at liberty to decline to give a platform to any speech that they find offensive. Robert Kraft takes umbrage at somebody's music. He is under no obligation to subsidize it, to support it,

1:13:47 to give it a platform. But you've pointed out that some of these stadiums at which these performances were scheduled to occur are owned by cities, are municipally owned or are owned by the state. I think one of them you said is owned by the state of Florida. Yeah.

1:14:07 So I can like dive into a little bit of the details on that. There's specifically this, the stadiums that are in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Tampa, Indianapolis, and Arlington, Texas are They're not all operated by public entities, but they are all owned by public entities that between, you know, city, county and state. But in the examples where they are privately operated, it's like the Atlanta Falcons or the Philadelphia Eagles, but I reached out to these different groups, and in some cases, they tried to push it on to the operators.

1:14:40 Like in Philadelphia, they told me to reach out to the Eagles for Lincoln Financial Stadium. They did not respond to my emails. And then I had this, I think it was Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. They did actually respond, but that was from the Capital Improvement Board for Marion County, Indiana.

1:14:57 And they said, quote, we can confirm Messina Touring's announcement that Macklemore will not be performing at the upcoming show. And then they said Lucas Oil Stadium is a public facility and as such is content neutral, which, you know, I had to follow up and ask about that. And they didn't respond to that. But it's a bit silly when they're sort of barring a performer. But like you said, where I feel like this was especially sort of troubling was in Tampa. They're both owned publicly and it's operated by the Tampa Sports Authority, who did not respond to my request for comment. And that seems to create this sort of complex situation. I don't know exactly what all the contracts are behind the scenes and who gets to

1:15:42 control these things. But if it's a publicly owned and operated facility, I mean, does that raise some concerns?

1:15:48 It sure does. And so It's interesting that they reached back out to you that Lucas Oil Stadium said, we are content neutral. So that's a legal term of art. So let's keep them out a little bit.

1:16:01 Yeah.

1:16:02 So as I said, the First Amendment is a constraint on the power of the government to dictate speech, right? It says the government cannot be the arbiter of expression. And so- if you have a stadium that is owned by the government, presumably that forum is a public forum in the same way that a public park would be considered a public forum. And that's legally significant. Why is that legally significant? Because in what's called a traditional public forum, land, an area that is owned by the government. Well, the government is permitted to impose constraints on the time, place, and manner of expression. Those constraints, first of all, they have to be reasonable constraints. And those constraints may not

1:17:09 be imposed on the basis of content or viewpoint discrimination.

1:17:15 Right?

1:17:15 So that's what they're saying when Lucas Oil Stadium says, Lucas Oil Stadium is content neutral. It's a very inelegant way of saying we aren't discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. So constraints may be imposed, but they have to be content neutral. They can't be based on viewpoint discrimination. They have to be narrowly tailored to to serve a significant government purpose or a significant government interest. And there are a range of things that are understood to be legitimate or valid significant government interests, right? They are things like public safety, making sure that school children's educational activities are not disrupted, right? Making sure that people have access to and from public buildings, right? These would be considered valid

1:18:16 government interests. Now that issue sort of points up the fact that with respect to stadiums in particular, there are frequently events held at stadiums where in the wake of those events, typically sporting events, There are threats to public safety. There are very often extremely foreseeable incidences of boisterousness.

1:18:46 Yeah.

1:18:50 We say, after, you know, the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup. You know, publicly owned stadiums are not exercising their right to impose reasonable constraints on the time, place and manner of expression by shutting down the Super Bowl.

1:19:09 Right?

1:19:10 In anticipation of what they could reasonably expect to be rowdiness.

1:19:17 I think Mom Donnie would be recalled if he tried to stop the Knicks games over public safety concerns.

1:19:23 I don't think Mom Donnie would ever do such a thing.

1:19:27 No, I know.

1:19:28 They won. Yeah. In any event, it is really important to understand that it is permissible for the government to impose constraints on expression. They have to be reasonable constraints. They have to be content neutral, right? Not discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. They have to be narrowly tailored, meaning they can't just be, okay, we're going to shut down everything because we have some concern, some speculative concern that like maybe there's going to be some rowdy behavior.

1:20:12 And finally, and critically, those constraints have to leave open what are called ample alternative channels of communication, right? So absolutely canceling a performance would not leave open ample alternative channels of communication, right?

1:20:31 Yeah.

1:20:32 And it's not clear what the public interest is in this case because... you know, there are exceptions. There are things that fall outside the zone of First Amendment protections. And there are things like fighting words, you know, hate speech, true threats. But it's very clear that criticism of Israel, support for Palestine, solidarity with Palestine, those things are not hate speech, right? Criticism of the political ideology of Zionism.

1:21:05 These are not instances of anti-Semitic hate speech, right? Yeah. And so it's, you know, however offensive Robert Kraft or anyone else might find solidarity with Palestine to be, it is not speech of a kind that is exempted from the protections of the First Amendment. So, you know, if Again, if there's a private event company or a privately owned stadium that says, we don't want to have Macklemore play, they're at liberty to do that, right? They can make that decision.

1:21:44 Yeah.

1:21:45 What we can't have, or at least what deserves interrogation, what deserves a serious inquiry, is a publicly owned, government-run entity shutting down speech at the behest of a wealthy individual powerful individual, not on the basis of needing to impose a reasonable constraint or a reasonable restriction on the time, place, or manner of expression based on a content-neutral analysis that is narrowly tailored to serve some significant government interest while also leaving open ample alternative channels of communication, right? I am concerned about a public stadium bowing to that kind of pressure, particularly in light of the fact that Kanye West can perform freely. And Kanye West is pretty openly anti-Semitic.

1:22:50 This is a sort of a, not even really a side note, but Kanye West performed multiple times at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa at the end of June. And, you know, while the setlist FM doesn't say that he performed his song, Heil Hitler, that I guess came out in 2025. It's hard to believe where we're at sometimes, but it's the the the open hypocrisy of that is just astounding.

1:23:15 But well, it's never been about anti-Semitism. Right. I mean, just as a as a side side note. There are more Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews in the entire world, and they are explicitly motivated by explicitly anti-Semitic goals, right? One of which is to create a mass exodus of Jewish people from the so-called global north.

1:23:42 Oh, God.

1:23:43 And the other of which is to hasten the apocalypse, at which point, according to the Christian Zionist eschatology, some Jews will become Christian and remaining Jews will go to hell. So this is not and has never been about anti-Semitism. It is about criticism of Israel. It is about solidarity with Palestine. Now, you know, we're looking at this very sort of niche and narrow issue of what are the implications for the First Amendment in when we have a municipally owned or a government owned event space and a performer is prevented from or forbidden from performing in that space, clearly on the basis of what would typically be understood to be protected speech. Why does it matter? I mean, just to clarify, I am not an expert certainly in

1:24:51 whatever kinds of leases or contract arrangements there are between these cities or states and, you know, third-party event planning.

1:25:03 Yeah.

1:25:04 Which, you know, if there's enough space in between, you know, the stadium and the decision being made potentially by a private third party, That might vitiate some of those First Amendment protections.

1:25:21 Yeah.

1:25:21 Right.

1:25:22 I don't know because I don't know enough of the facts on the ground there. And nevertheless, I think it is really important for us to address ourselves to this question. Am I a Macklemore fan? I, you know, not particularly. I mean, he's fine. But my concern is not with a wealthy and powerful man. recording artist. My concern is that we look at this situation with Macklemore, and I think it is obscuring a whole range of threats to free expression for the rest of us, right? Because, you know, is anyone going to be real worried about Macklemore's welfare? No, he's fine. to his credit, by his own admission, he's not suffering. My concern is not with Macklemore not being allowed to play a show. My concern is with the

1:26:26 implications for the rest of us when we're allowing these kinds of incursions into First Amendment protections. And I think this is such an interesting case because The fact that it's Macklemore is actually functioning, I think, to camouflage what those threats are, right? Because we're also focused on the fact that it's this wealthy, powerful guy that we're missing the fact that the First Amendment can't be mobilized to protect his free expression. How else might we see these end runs around constitutional protections? for the rest of us.

1:27:13 I think there are a lot of things that are protected by the First Amendment that aren't necessarily legible to us as First Amendment protected beliefs, associations, or activities, right? Because we often will think about things that are First Amendment protected as being like the right to go to a particular kind of religious institution or the right to go to a protest.

1:27:41 Right.

1:27:43 But a lot of the most important First Amendment case law deals with things like are multiple adolescents allowed to hang out on the public sidewalk together without getting arrested?

1:27:58 Right.

1:27:59 Does it constitute probable cause of unlawful conduct for there to be more than two black children hanging out together on the stoop?

1:28:10 Yeah.

1:28:11 Right.

1:28:11 That's not the kind of First Amendment protected activity that most people think about. It's not the top of mind when you say First Amendment.

1:28:21 Right.

1:28:21 I think people are thinking about, you know, people like marching against the war in Vietnam.

1:28:26 Yeah.

1:28:27 But we do many things every day that are protected by the First Amendment, not just, you know, posting on the Internet. Not just, you know, having privacy protected. with respect to who we're calling, right? Being permitted to make phone calls to anyone we want. Like a birthday party is a First Amendment protected gathering, right? Our right to assemble, our right to free association, right? And so having an incursion into those protections, any incursion into those protections has implications for all of those other things. And if we stop paying attention and we say, oh, this is sort of a punchline, right? Oh, Macklemore's being canceled by the rich right-wing stadium owners. And we don't look at the

1:29:27 fact that There is a public performance that is being canceled by potentially the government. We're missing a whole range of risks because what's at stake is not Macklemore's career. What's at stake is the ability of all of the rest of us to freely associate to petition the government, to believe the things that we believe without being censored, without being punished for doing so. One of the other things that deserves to be said here is One of the reasons that this is a little bit confusing and that the waters are so muddied is this issue that I referred to a minute ago with respect to these publicly owned stadiums leasing out digital authority to these third party companies.

1:30:47 Right.

1:30:48 Yeah.

1:30:49 Are private and which are as non-government entities are not subject to the constraints of the First Amendment. That's not a problem with the First Amendment. That's a problem with the privatization of public life. And I think we're seeing that in a lot of other realms as well. So, for example, as we see traditional government functions being more and more assumed by private utilities, we have a situation where what, you know, 40 years ago might have been people petitioning the government not to build a pipeline, right?

1:31:33 That would have been a First Amendment protected gathering, right? We might have a protest at a government building. That would be protected by the First Amendment. Now, if you have a group of people who want to protest, for example, a pipeline, that whole process beginning to end may be so problematic controlled by a private corporation that there's no government building to protest at.

1:32:04 Anymore, right?

1:32:04 And so what would have otherwise been a First Amendment protected protest is now a bunch of trespassing charges, right? Because the place that people are going to do that protest, to carry out that protest, may be private property, right? Yeah. You know, we're no longer petitioning the government. Now we're petitioning you know, energy transfer partners.

1:32:28 This sort of, you know, raises this question. On the one hand, I'm like, oh, I'm not as worried about, you know, Robert Kraft getting to say, oh, Macklemore's not welcome at Gillette Stadium. I'm thinking about the ways in which he's able to use his wealth and capital to sort of manipulate the situation with government entities or call on his NFL buddies to kick them out in other places.

1:32:52 But there is also a consideration around the concentration of wealth and the ways in which privatization is rapidly happening in various different instances across the country. And at what point do you see the shrinking of the public square just generally across the board and the ways in which billionaires are then able to control the narrative through that ownership?

1:33:17 Yeah. I think one of the other things that is worth pointing out is A lot of times when we're talking about First Amendment retaliation or, you know, what we're seeing here, right, where you see an organization, public or private, engage in this kind of really obvious censorship on the basis of viewpoint. We usually do not see the kind of smoking gun violence But, you know, the putting it in an email and saying, I don't want to see this individual being allowed to perform for the following reason, which is that he expressed solidarity with Palestine.

1:34:01 Right.

1:34:01 We usually see at least a little bit more. Well, usually we don't have a smoking gun email.

1:34:08 Yeah. Or talking to the press about it.

1:34:12 And I think that one of the things that's actually unusual about this situation is that that maybe just due to wealth and power, Robert Kraft didn't have any compunction or concern about very publicly saying, I don't want this to happen because I am offended personally by the political content of his speech.

1:34:35 Yeah.

1:34:35 And I would say, you know, typically people who are at least in government who have the kind of power know better than to say it. The quiet part out loud.

1:34:46 Yeah.

1:34:46 And I think it's sort of interesting, I guess, just that the billionaire class has become so comfortable with their own strength, I guess, that they're not concerned about being publicly very honest about their desire to censor certain people. And so, you know, In this instance, it may actually be an interesting opportunity just because some of these stadiums are publicly owned. And so to the extent that those stadiums can be shown to have canceled the show under pressure from this private actor and on the basis of that private actor's sort of personal convictions, it does create an interesting opportunity. You had said something about not being clear on what the leases were and the arrangements and contracts.

1:35:49 And I am also not clear on what those contracts are, how they might implicate First Amendment concerns or undermine First Amendment rights. But if there were to be, for example, a lawsuit filed about it, some of that stuff would come out in discovery in the process of turning over evidence. And so if nothing else, I kind of hope that one of the impact litigation outfits does file a suit, not because I am concerned about vindicating Macklemore's First Amendment rights, but because I think we need to really be vigilant and alert to the actual legal mechanisms by which the government is performing an end run around constraints on state power.

1:36:46 To wrap this episode up, I just wanted to highlight again, although it may feel a bit silly to talk about all this in the context of McLemore, a multimillionaire, I think the point is that this sets a bad precedent. Notably, we've witnessed crackdowns on university students over Palestine solidarity protests.

1:37:04 There was a new ruling against a student from the University of Texas Austin just last week. There may still be open questions about these stadiums and their complicated contract arrangements, but either way, the wealthy are wielding influence over the public square. With all that said, here is Mo with one final note.

1:37:23 I would just like your listeners to be alert to all of the ways in which our daily lives are frankly made possible. by First Amendment protections that we don't think about very often. And I would like to plug the concept and the practice of not talking to law enforcement until you have had an opportunity to consult with counsel.

1:37:52 Yeah, always good.

1:38:05 Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name's Kim Kelly and I'll be your host for today's episode. To introduce myself, I'm a labor journalist, I'm the author of a book called Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor, and I'm a third generation union member based in Philly. Obviously, go birds. And I'm just over the moon to be back here in the cool zone.

1:38:28 Shout out to Sophie, Robert, James, and everyone else for letting me Kool-Aid man my way onto their network now and again to catch you up on what's been happening in the labor movement in the U.S. and otherwise. If you've been paying attention, you'll already know September was a very busy month. But if you haven't, well, that's what I'm here for. So let's start off with some good news.

1:38:52 And look, I'll throw you a bone. Here's a quick one for the gamers. In a big dub for tech organizing, 1,900 video game workers at Activision Blizzard have just won their first union contract. Hell yeah. Workers at the company have been organizing in various ways since 2021, but they formally unionized with the Communication Workers of America in 2024.

1:39:15 So it's been a long time coming. This shiny new contract includes a lot of good stuff. They got protections for remote workers, huge for the tech world, and against outsourcing. They got some language around AI development. They got a three-day in-office hybrid work week, which, damn, I feel like the four-day work week is still a huge pipe dream.

1:39:38 These guys are out here doing three. Unions are good, you know? And they even got May Day off as a paid holiday.

1:39:47 It's really great work all around.

1:39:48 You love to see it. May a thousand more tech worker unions bloom. Speaking of contracts, this is a big one. 800 Walmart workers at a distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, have just won that company's first ever union contract in North America. Now, Walmart has long been the labor movement's white whale. It's one of the largest employers in the world.

1:40:16 It's run by evil Arkansas billionaires who hate unions. Its workers regularly make the news for the despicably low wages that those rich people pay them. But organizers in the U.S. have yet to crack the retail giant. And look, it's not for lack of trying. In the past, Walmart has simply shut down stores who have tried to unionize. For example, back in the year 2000, which is so much further away than it really feels like it should be. Back in the year 2000, after meat cutters at a Texas location voted to unionize, the company eliminated its entire meat department in Texas and in five other states for good measure.

1:40:59 I'm thinking about it. I don't think we have a meat department in South Philly. Like imagine cutting out an entire section of your store, of your enormous store, nationwide retail chain because a handful of workers in one place were like, hey, what if you treated us a little better? It's petty and it's cruel and it's very on brand for Walmart. So folks are understandably very excited to see workers in Canada sticking it to them. And when the Ontario Union Drive went public two years ago, of course Walmart rushed to punish those workers and did its damnedest to bust their union drive. But Importantly, this time, those union busting efforts failed. So we can only assume that the Walton clan is hopping mad about the whole situation. Again,

1:41:51 love to see it. And honestly, now that our Canadian counterparts have notched this major win, I'm really curious to see what kind of organizing efforts we might see here in the US. I mean, when Amazon workers in Staten Island unionized, they set off a little chain reaction. When Starbucks workers in Buffalo unionized, they sent off a big chain reaction. You know, these guys are over the border, but it's only a few hundred miles from New York.

1:42:20 It's not that far. Could this contract in Ontario be the beginning of a domino effect? Are we finally going to unionize Walmart? Look, it would take a lot of doing, but you know, Someone's got to be the first, and now that someone's proved it can be done, look, I'm just saying, a girl can dream. Speaking of New York, a couple hundred miles south in New York State, caregivers with the state's Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program have filed for a union election with 1199-SCIU. CDPAP is a Medicaid program that allows folks who are eligible for home care services to to train and choose and hire their own in-home caregivers, which can include family members and friends. So it's always exciting when we see overworked, underpaid workers organizing

1:43:17 and fighting for better. But the sheer scale of this particular union drive is honestly incredible. And it's legit historic. Nearly 70,000 caregivers have already signed union cards signifying that they're down to join the union. And if they're successful, if the union drive is successful, the union would include almost 190,000 workers across the state. This would be the largest union election in U.S. history, like all of U.S.

1:43:48 History.

1:43:49 And it's being led by workers whose labor is deeply undervalued and rendered almost invisible to those outside the walls of their unique workplaces, which is They're not working in a factory. They're not working in a store. They're not in a retail setting. These are workers who are completely atomized, isolated, working in people's homes. The fact that they've been able to organize an effort this scale is just, it's so impressive.

1:44:17 And it's long overdue. You know, prior to this, the record for the largest election in modern U.S. history happened in 1999. when about 74,000 LA County home care workers voted to form a union with SEIU. Sound familiar? Nearly 30 years later, these caregivers in New York are following in those footsteps. As the union noted, the filing comes at a fraught moment for care in America. Medicaid-funded services face devastating federal cuts enacted under the Trump administration. which has villainized this workforce with its waste fraud abuse campaign.

1:44:59 At the same time, the nation's rapidly aging population is driving growing demand for care, as they wrote in a press release. For many people, this specific program can be a lifeline. The difference between seeing your loved one left to loneliness and neglect or to having them be cared for in their own homes by people they trust who love and advocate for them. The difference is really stark, but don't take it from me. The union shared a few worker and client testimonies with me, and I want to share them with you now. So the first quote comes from a worker, Angela Jimenez, who was a full-time healthcare worker and 1199 SEIU member before she left to join the CDPAP program to care for her mom. So

1:45:48 Angela says, I love taking care of my mother, but love doesn't pay the bills. Rent, groceries, and healthcare keep going up while our wages aren't keeping pace. Care is essential work, but the way we're paid doesn't treat it that way. Caregivers like me shouldn't have to struggle to survive. I'm joining with caregivers across New York because together, we have the power to demand what this work is worth and make sure we can afford to keep doing it.

1:46:16 Soleil Byung, who works as a caregiver for her 79-year-old mother, an Alzheimer's patient, says... I need a community. I need a pay rise. A labor of love is still labor. And 68-year-old Dominique LaRouche is a former caregiver herself who was a proud union delegate for 1199 when she was younger. Now her daughters care for her through the CDPAP program.

1:46:43 She says, My daughters help me get out of bed in the morning, help me get dressed and brush my hair, and help me cook meals from our culture that I enjoy eating. but what they really give me is the chance to live my life. Because of my daughters, I can see the people I love, be part of my community, and experience the world around me. CDPAP has given our family safety, dignity, and peace of mind. That's why I'm proud to stand with my daughters and thousands of other CDPAP caregivers as they come together to join 1199 SEIU. So, an election date has not yet been set, Under Trump, the NLRB remains a clusterfuck. But here's hoping we get some more good news on this soon. Because, I don't know about you, but I feel like the working class

1:47:30 could really use a win. And an historic union win. That would feel pretty good right about now. And speaking of caregiving, once again, I've got to shout out National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S., for continuing to just be incredibly based. This time, they're leading a week of action against Peter Thiel's data-gobbling surveillance demons at Palantir. The tech company has happily and profitably provided technology to ICE to surveil and target immigrants in the U.S. and to Israel's Ministry of Defense to use in its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. As Truthout reported, the unit is pushing public institutions, including hospitals and other healthcare providers, to end contracts and partnerships with Palantir and

1:48:20 to divest from the company. Unlike many people in power in and outside the labor movement, NNU has not been shy about speaking out against these atrocities. In August, they called out Israel's bombing of hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure. And their executive director, Kunit Maharaj, said plainly that, quote, the intentional bombing of hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure necessary for basic living are war crimes against humanity. The Israeli government must be held accountable for these atrocities and the genocide must stop. Nurses and caregivers truly are the best of us, man. Now, hold that thought while we take a quick little ad break. Hello again. You're still listening

1:49:16 to It Could Happen Here, and I'm still Kim Kelly. Now that we've started off with a little treat, let's get into some of the bad news that came crawling out of the labor world this past month. So you know how oil has gotten really expensive because of the US-Israel's fun new forever war in Iran? Well, when oil is available, someone's got to get it from point A to point B. And I don't know about you, but I think it's probably for the best that those someones' working conditions are safe and stable and decently paid, so they don't have to go drive for DoorDash when they're not navigating huge tankers full of toxic and economically invaluable fossil fuels. You know, seems like common sense. Given all that,

1:49:59 and the inherent volatility of the job, we also probably want them to be protected by a good union contract, right? That's what deck officers at Alaska Tanker Company and Overseas Shipholding Group thought too, which is why an overwhelming percentage of them chose to unionize with the International Organization of Masters, Mates, and Pilots back in 2024. As a quick aside, I've been to a lot of union halls, but the MMP union hall is definitely one of the coolest. They have so many model ships, like more than you can ever imagine.

1:50:33 But anyway, so the Mates voted to unionize. The NLRB ordered their employees to recognize the union and start bargaining. And then, radio silence. It's been two years, and these workers are still without a first contract. As the union noted, their fight now reflects the same first contract crisis seen at Amazon, Starbucks, and other major employers. Corporations drag in their feet, knowing they're supposed to be bargaining, knowing that they should be treating their workers with respect. It's like the same old story, it just keeps repeating and repeating, repeating in different industries and in different areas. And it's like, we can see you. We can see you doing this.

1:51:15 Being a bad boss, being a union buster, dragging out these union contracts is not a good look. And the employees are not going to just sit there and take it. In the case of these deck officers in the Masters Mason Pilots Union, they pointed out that the company's subsidiaries... also received millions of dollars in federal subsidies and said pretty plainly that, quote, companies benefiting from taxpayer support should not be permitted to violate federal labor laws while denying basic bargaining rights to the American mariners risking their lives at sea. Now, that latter point is important because, like, again, this bizarre war that we've become trapped within, that impacts them pretty significantly. Word recently broke that an Iranian military

1:52:04 official identified one of these companies, Overseas Shipholding Group, as a candidate for potential retaliatory measures. Which is not what you want to hear when you're a person who works on an oil tanker. That's not, like, good.

1:52:22 It's, frankly, terrifying.

1:52:23 Especially given how hard the U.S. military is fucking up this entire thing. So, look, while we're still... a little ways away from transitioning to renewable energy while we're still dependent on oil. We have the world we have right now. The folks who are working on these oil tankers and risking their lives so people can drive five minutes down the street to go to fucking Target. Like, let's take care of them. Let's help them out. The mates are asking folks to sign their petition that they have calling on the companies to stop stalling and start bargaining. So please sign their petition. We'll drop it in the show notes for you. So unfortunately, there really is never any shortage of stories about rich people being evil to workers.

1:53:09 But the big bad villain of this past week or so comes from a rather unlikely source. On September 23rd, journalist Amir Kafagi published a blockbuster story for Documented New York titled Cesar Alarzon Dismantles Unions. Why is he now creating them? that you truly need to go read because it is just wild. And before we get into it, I want to make sure we're all on the same page.

1:53:36 So we're going to take a minute to talk about union raids. So generally speaking, unions are supposed to play nice together, what with their shared history and stated goals and the whole solidarity thing. And a part of that is agreeing not to try and steal another union's members. Doing so is called raiding, and it's a very unchill move.

1:54:00 Back in the battle days, unions went to war over stuff like that, and things got real bloody. Now it's tactically legal, but it's still very much frowned upon. There's a little less dynamite involved, but still not a good look. So given all the risks... Why would a union bother trying to go raiding? Why would they try and go to a unionized workplace and try to displace the union that was there before them and swoop in and take their members? Seems like a weird thing to do, no? Well, it usually comes down to math. More members means more dues money, and more money plus bigger membership means more power, politically and otherwise. Sometimes, though, the math falls apart And things seem to turn upside down. In the case of

1:54:50 César Alarçon, it seems like he's purely in it for the love of the game. And that game, for him, is union busting. As Kefagi uncovered, Alarçon has had a long career in quote-unquote union avoidance, a sanitized term that consultants and their clients like to trot out to make their slimy actions seem a little less contemptible. It's a union avoidance consultant's job to persuade workers not to unionize.

1:55:17 When you hear about captive audience meetings and things like that, these are the people that are parachuting into workplaces to try and convince workers that unions are actually a bad thing. That's their whole job. It's a very lucrative business that rakes in about $ 1. 5 billion a year from anxious anti-union employers who somehow have not realized that they could simply pay the workers the wage increases that they're probably going to be looking for in their first union contract and save a bunch of dough. But, you know, captives of industry are not necessarily renowned for their adherence to logic and empathy. So that's where the union avoidance consultant comes in.

1:56:00 With that kind of background, why then did Alisson walk into a Golden Crust manufacturing plant in the Bronx and identify himself as a representative for Progressive Workers of the World Local 311, and start trying to convince the workers there, who are already unionized with IBEW Local Union 1430, to join his group instead. And how many times has he apparently done this before? Like, you'll need to read the whole article to find out, but it includes a whole lot of twists and turns. There's corruption, there's family drama, There's union buster on union buster infighting. There are mafia ties.

1:56:42 Donald Trump's hatred of unions and workers comes into play. The phrase, that's just paperwork, that has nothing to do with me, does a lot of heavy lifting. The whole sordid tale shows just how low employers and their anti-union goons will stoop to assure that workers are kept underpaid, overworked, and unrepresented. I'm telling you, you gotta read this thing.

1:57:04 Shout out to Amir, he rules. Now let's take a minute to collect ourselves before we head into our next tale of work, wins, and woe. All right, so we got some good news. We got some bad news. And now I'm going to leave you with some news that's neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but definitely something to keep an eye on. But first, a rumor. I love gossip, and I'm always down to investigate a nice, juicy transportation strike rumor. This one's been flying around for the past little while, but I'm pretty sure it's a non-starter. In a classic case of social media not actually being real life, I know, I'm shocked too, news began to spread a few weeks ago on Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit that truckers...

1:58:02 were planning a strike for October 1st to protest skyrocketing diesel prices. There's even a goofy AI flyer out there. calling on drivers to quote park it stand together make our voices heard if a large-scale trucking strike or even a partial disruption were to actually happen it could have a massive impact and grind the entire economy to a standstill transportation logistics workers hold an incredible amount of power which is of course why so many of them are forbidden from striking under the Railway Labor Act. Truckers, many of whom are independent contractors or members of established unions like the Teamsters, don't fall under the act and theoretically could engage in labor action if they wanted to. They

1:58:45 just haven't done it yet. I've got to say though, if a potentially paradigm-shifting nationwide strike was actually in the works, chances are that Facebook wouldn't be the first place you'd hear about it. Remember when Joe Biden killed off the railroad worker strike before it even had a chance to start?

1:59:04 The corporate media was flooded for weeks with stories and statements justifying that debacle and inadvertently showed how powerful that kind of action could be. This might not be legit. I would be really surprised if we saw any kind of strike activity or stoppage activity on October 1st, but you know, That's not to say we'll never see it.

1:59:30 Much to consider. And speaking of transportation and union busting, for our last story of the episode, it's time to get into the zone.

1:59:41 AutoZone.

1:59:43 Where workers at a location in White Plains, New York, just won their union.

1:59:48 Hell yeah.

1:59:49 Eleven workers at this small but mighty shop will join UAW Local 259, making them the first stores at the country's largest auto parts retailer to successfully organize. Now, AutoZone execs are not thrilled about the development, and they actually wasted over $ 200, 000 trying to keep it from happening. That's right, tried to bust the union. They hauled out all the classic tactics, captive audience meetings, remember the whole union avoidance thing we just talked about?

2:00:20 That's them.

2:00:21 In addition to surveillance, threats of discipline and retaliation for supporting the union, And they also got a little funky with it by flying in 17 different managers from Memphis, from Indiana, California, and Florida to lurk around the stores, push anti-union propaganda on the workers, and keep an eye on their conversations. Honestly, this brings to mind the scenes at the first union drive back in Buffalo at Starbucks when there was just a flood of managers and execs.

2:00:56 wandering around the stores, like trying to mop and getting underfoot because they were terrified of the thought of having to bargain with their workers. A side note, it's still fuck Starbucks. We are boycotting Starbucks until Starbucks Workers United gets their first contract. Make your coffee at home or buy it from a union shop, just not Starbucks. But back to the zone. This isn't the first time AutoZone execs have locked in to crush a union drive either.

2:01:25 Back in the early 90s, the Teamsters tried to organize one of their distribution centers, but were unsuccessful. Even though the union drive failed, the NLRB still dinged the company for its unlawful conduct during their union busting spree. I guess old habits die hard, because this time around, according to Nathan DeKong, a parts equipment manager, AutoZone was trying to do everything possible to destroy us, to destroy our union.

2:01:53 It was a show of force to intimidate us to make sure we don't even think about talking about the union. That's what you told the chief, a really great labor publication that you should also read, who did a great story on the whole situation. The workers voted to unionize anyway, a historic win that AutoZone celebrated by promptly firing Ducon, who was the primary leader of the union drive. The company insisted that he was a supervisor and therefore ineligible for the unit. which Dukong disputes. He says that he did not have firing, hiring, or disciplining power, but did try to remedy before the vote by refiling the union petition.

2:02:32 Didn't work.

2:02:33 The day that it went public, the manager who fired Dukong told him very bluntly that his support for the union was why he was being axed. Quote, despite repeated instruction not to advocate for the union, you continue to participate and or facilitate union activity at the store.

2:02:52 The horror.

2:02:53 The chief also reports that days after AutoZone fired DeKong, management fired a supervisor at the store for, quote, failing to stop the union. It's just ridiculous, you know? Like, the whole situation.

2:03:09 Like, fuck it, relax.

2:03:11 Like, God forbid you gotta give some workers a raise. Eleven workers you gotta deal with.

2:03:15 Like, grow up.

2:03:17 But since then, labor has rallied around DeKong. I'm so sorry if I'm saying your name incorrectly to you, Nathan. Let me know if I fucked it up and I owe you a drink. But a GoFundMe has been created to support him and other fired workers. It's raised about 13 grand so far. Phenomenal. Gonna need more because this is gonna be a long fight. So we'll pop that in the show notes so you can add to that number.

2:03:43 Let's get it up as high as we can. This is a developing story, but it's really been heartening to see how much love Dukong and his co-workers have been getting. And it makes sense. His union organizing story is very modern and very relatable and very New York. He's gotten support from artist and director Boots Riley, whose latest film, I Love Boosters, Dukong cited as a direct influence on his decision to try to organize, which is so cute and so timely. Like, damn, that John just came out.

2:04:15 It's a great movie. You should go see it. And, you know, maybe you'll get some ideas. On the organizing side, he also got an early boost from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. Great project that you should look up if you are union curious. He connected with them through his work as a volunteer field lead for now Mayor Zoran Mamdani's successful campaign. It just goes to show there are a million ways to get started in organizing. And a Boots Riley movie marathon might not be a bad way to start. As for DeKong and the UAW, they're not backing down. As he told the chief, anybody who's interested in forming union at their AutoZone, we want anybody interested in that to reach out to us. Their union busting

2:04:59 certainly works, but not well enough.

2:05:02 Boom.

2:05:04 How could you not want to support that dude? That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if any of this has caught your interest, you want to do some more reading, you want to dig into it, you want to talk to your coworkers a little bit, then my job here is done. Until next time.

2:05:33 This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Robert Evans and special correspondent Bridget Todd. Welcome.

2:05:48 Thanks so much for having me. Excited to talk through some of the worst stuff imaginable with you fine folks.

2:05:54 Yeah, it is a hard week. This week that we are covering is September 23rd to September 30th. I'll start with a few shorter news stories that I think our little panel here might find interesting. On Tuesday, Donald Trump, the president, launched America.gov, a website to host an AI chatbot that pulls information from across the multitude of federal government websites. America.gov and this little chatbot probably deserves its own focus in a future episode. But also on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order to rename artificial intelligence to superintelligence, after running polls on social media for the past week.

2:06:37 And he also met with the heads of six tech companies to sign the, quote, White House Accord on Superintelligence, which essentially promotes self-regulation in the AI industry. Speaking of superintelligence, under Trump's signature on this document, the United States is written as the Unites States. Excellent work there. This document was also signed by Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Kijensen Huang of NVIDIA, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, and Anthropix Dario Amadei. Does anyone have any notes on this little chatbot or super intelligence they'd like to add?

2:07:23 Not really. I mean, what is there to say?

2:07:26 We can just move on.

2:07:27 Yeah.

2:07:28 Yeah.

2:07:29 Now, Dario's inclusion in the White House Accords is a little funny because earlier this week, a memo circulating the White House named Dario as a leading figure in the cultish effective altruism movement, which, according to the memo, is responsible for the AI doom panic threatening technological innovation and national security. Robert, if you've not seen this memo, that document CloudLink has it there. You should take a look.

2:07:57 It's pretty funny.

2:07:59 Oh yes, no, yes. I, I have seen this. Yes.

2:08:01 The memo covers anthropics ties to effective altruism and identified effective altruism as a, quote, heavily male, white, non-religious, politically left or center left, and usually vegan or vegetarian.

2:08:14 I love that they throw in their diet, like a little detail.

2:08:16 And I don't even fully agree with that statement, but okay.

2:08:21 This memo tracks the, quote, AI doom pipeline back to effective altruism, consequentialism, and long-termism based on effective altruism's, quote, impartial maximization. Do the most good wherever and whenever it occurs. Extend the calculation into the far future through long-termism. enter human extinction as the loss of potentially enormous future value, unquote.

2:08:46 The memo also talks about, you know, shrimp consciousness, bestiality, and killing babies, pulling from a variety of effective altruism, like thought experiments and writing.

2:08:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is why I don't really agree with calling them even a left or a center left, or at least there's elements of that, but there's elements of like classic far right, like eugenic thought, right? And this document even notes that, you know, it's talking about some of the stuff Singer said about disabled kids and the like, but they're leaving out, like it's interesting to me that this seems to, I haven't done like a deep dive, but at least from What I remember and from what I'm looking over now, it does not seem to be mentioning Nick Bostrom. He's like the guy who is generally considered the father of long-termism within the EA subculture and is also like the biggest eugenicist within like

2:09:30 the prominent chunk of that movement.

2:09:33 Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that the Trump allies might not be talking about those aspects of EA.

2:09:38 Yeah.

2:09:39 Yeah.

2:09:44 But a lot of this memo does focus on Anthropic and Amadei.

2:09:48 Yeah.

2:09:49 Because the government's been beefing with Anthropic for months, especially following the Iran war and statements that Anthropic has made about military use of their technology.

2:09:58 Yeah.

2:09:59 Which has led to the War Department publicly attacking Anthropic and, as of last week, effective altruism itself in a series of posts.

2:10:06 What a time to be alive.

2:10:08 Quote, Americanism, not effective altruism.

2:10:11 Yeah.

2:10:12 The United States will continue to be AI dominant.

2:10:15 We're this close to Pete Hegseth talking about Ayala's birthday gangbang as a matter of national security. And I, for one, am ready for this glorious day to come.

2:10:24 LAUGHTER Oh man. Dark timeline.

2:10:30 I want the younger listeners or anyone who's like, you remember like hanging out at parties in your early twenties with some like absolute dipshits. Now imagine the president is like getting really angry at those dipshits and like you hate them, but he's not angry at them for a good reason. This is like for those of us who've been following the EA movement for years.

2:10:48 Such a good analogy.

2:10:49 It's like, well, these guys suck, but not for these reasons.

2:10:55 The post that they put out, it's clearly AI-generated.

2:10:59 Oh, got it, yeah.

2:11:00 People should see it.

2:11:01 One of them, it almost looks like a really bad, over-the-top AI-generated flyer for like a theme night at a nightclub.

2:11:09 Yeah.

2:11:10 Yeah.

2:11:10 Yeah.

2:11:11 It's pulling from a bunch. I mean, the whole War Department feed right now pulls from a whole bunch of like what I'll call downstream from telegram aesthetics.

2:11:18 Yeah.

2:11:19 And I think these follow that also. These are all descended from like the white boy summer aesthetics we were seeing four or five years ago. Which, of course, is pulling from kind of like nightlife aesthetics as well. Yeah.

2:11:31 It's a really horrible mix of things.

2:11:33 It's an Eruberos.

2:11:35 Another post from the Department of War. The United States will never be an effective altruist country.

2:11:42 I agree.

2:11:42 Pretty cool.

2:11:44 Fair.

2:11:45 He's right, he's right.

2:11:49 Pretty cool. Moving on. About a week after Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman sent a little video to the Republican Midterm Convention, The Intercept reported that Fetterman has been fundraising using GOP email lists, with campaign fundraising emails coming from the address, quote, info at gopsquad.com. Now, one of these GOP-linked fundraising emails said it was from friend of the pod, James's favorite senator, Mike Lee, who wrote in this email, quote, friend, I just got an email from John. He's basically a Republican now.

2:12:25 I need your help to draft him. Sign here, unquote. And then there's John Fetterman campaign insignias below this little email chain. So cool stuff there. Two great tastes that go great together, Fetterman and Mike Lee. And while speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival this past Sunday, Fetterman did a little Freudian slip. Let's take a listen.

2:12:46 A Hindi from Dallas and they ask, why not become an independent?

2:12:54 Because I'm a lifelong Republican.

2:12:57 Democrat every time every time it's funny that's.

2:13:03 A moment right there that's clippable ladies and gentlemen circulate go go go internet spin wildly wildly spin internet.

2:13:12 Yeah i i guarantee you that's gonna break through that'll get that'll get clipped yeah i'm a lifelong democrat though.

2:13:19 You're not spinning he just said he was a republican there's no spin to do.

2:13:22 Yeah that'll get clipped uh doing my.

2:13:25 Part i guess Yeah, man, that's that. I just love the like, they're going to take this out of context. No, the context was you called yourself a Republican, man. Like, yeah, it was a slip up, but it's like no one's taking it out of context.

2:13:37 You said it.

2:13:38 You just said that.

2:13:41 Speaking of our totally cool Congress, Palantir was named as a quote, top supporter of the Congressional Black Caucus at their annual charitable gala this month. with Palantir's name plastered on tables at the event and a big thank you banner in the convention center.

2:13:59 Oof.

2:14:00 The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has very publicly returned donations from Palantir.

2:14:05 Yeah, I was at the CBC here where I live in Washington, D.C.

2:14:09 Yeah, that was... I wasn't my fave.

2:14:12 You know, when you went into the building, there was this image that was like a orange image of the late Shirley Chisholm, who is.

2:14:21 One of my idols.

2:14:22 Yeah, Shirley Chisholm's awesome.

2:14:23 She's awesome. She was the first black woman elected to Congress.

2:14:27 It's her picture with Palantir's branding on her image.

2:14:33 That's fucked up.

2:14:34 That was like getting kicked in the nuts right when I went in.

2:14:36 And, you know, I just, I can't imagine that anything about what Palantir is doing Chisholm would have been down for.

2:14:44 No, no.

2:14:45 Yeah, it was not my fave.

2:14:49 That sucks.

2:14:50 For some positive Shirley Chisholm representation, though, if you watch the relatively new History of the World by Mel Brooks TV show that was on, I think, Hulu? I forget which streaming platform. Shirley Chisholm plays a major role in it. It's a loving tribute.

2:15:05 I need a palate cleanser. I might have to watch that tonight.

2:15:07 Yeah, it's not bad, actually.

2:15:09 In a statement to HuffPost, Palantir said there, quote, Proud and honored to support the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's mission of creating pathways for promising young people to enter public service. who may not have the networks or financial means to do so without support, unquote.

2:15:22 Basically, we want to own them.

2:15:24 Yeah.

2:15:24 Surveil them, track them, get them into our databases.

2:15:27 I mean, and you can't fault some of these guys who are in their 80s and 90s who don't really know what Palantir is necessarily. By you can't fault them, I, of course, mean you should be faulting them. They shouldn't be in office.

2:15:40 They should. They're too old.

2:15:41 The former chair and current influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus, 86-year-old Jim Clyburn, recently told Vox that he only learned what chat GPT was earlier this summer.

2:15:51 Like, I think I'm too old to be an elected leader now because when people bring up, like, TikTok or influencers, I just black out and find myself holding a gun these days. So, like, I can't imagine being 80 and trying to keep up with this shit.

2:16:04 You don't think of yourself as an influencer at all, Robert?

2:16:07 Oh, gosh. I make media.

2:16:10 That was a rage bait question and you fell for it, my friend.

2:16:14 I want Robert doing makeup tutorials on Blue Sky.

2:16:18 I could do that, yeah. Paint dazzle camouflage on your face. Anyway, sorry, Gary.

2:16:25 Well, with just a little over a month left until the midterms, the federal government has begun airing pro-Trump television ads paid for by U.S. taxpayers. These are, for all intents and purposes, Republican campaign ads paid for by you. There's at least three different ads in circulation. One of them, a single black and white shot of Trump walking down a hallway with a voiceover talking about, quote, a final battle with you by my side to demolish the deep state globalists and warmongers. And if that little last part sounds a bit outdated, that's because this was literally a Trump 2024 campaign ad.

2:17:03 Yep.

2:17:05 But with one important change, the on-screen text at the end of the ad reads, paid for by the US government, unquote. This ad is played during sports games and on Fox News. Another one of these Trump ads airing on TV is edited in the form of like a hype video with like quick flashing images on screen with text reading, largest tax cuts in history, reigniting American manufacturing and Defend law and order and police. Too many ands. So as images of Trump and these little phrases flash on screen, the song Love Me by JMSM plays in the background. Let's take a listen.

2:17:49 Together.

2:17:50 We will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.

2:17:54 America will never be a communist country.

2:18:03 Oh, God.

2:18:13 Paid for by the U.S. government.

2:18:15 Yeah, that should be illegal. Probably is illegal.

2:18:18 Adding this to the ever-expanding bucket of, um, is that legal? How are they allowed to do that? Now, the White House has defended these federally funded, but clearly partisan ads to influence the midterms by calling them Public service announcements akin to Biden's PSAs about the COVID-19 vaccines.

2:18:39 Are you fucking kidding me?

2:18:40 Sure, man.

2:18:43 Public service announcements about how our great leader is perfect and can do no wrong.

2:18:48 Love me. Love me. To quote the White House, the announcements are very clearly not campaign ads. President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it's worth defending at home, at the border, and abroad, unquote.

2:19:08 Their country? That's not what they were singing Love Me To. They were singing Love Me To images of Donald Trump with his arms wide open. Like the fucking Jesus at Rio. It's wild. It's bad. I don't like this, yeah.

2:19:25 A few other kind of election-related points I want to hit. Last Thursday, the California Supreme Court ruled that Sheriff Chad Bianco violated state election law by seizing 650,000 ballots for the Prop 50 special election on redistricting as a part of his, quote unquote, election fraud investigation. Now, I think it's worth noting that emails leaked in 2021 revealed that Sheriff Chad Bianco was a dues-paying member of the Oath Keepers since at least 2014. And in a debate earlier this year during the sheriff's unsuccessful bid to be the Republican nominee for governor... Bianco said he was proud of his affiliation with the Oath Keepers.

2:20:10 You're an Oath Keeper.

2:20:11 We all know that.

2:20:12 And I'm very proud of it.

2:20:14 I'm very proud of it.

2:20:15 And everybody that wants to, like, again, lie and emotionally get all spun up about the Oath Keeper organization, I just would, before you do that, and I know none of you have, I want you to go read the mission statement of the Oathkeeper mission statement and the ACLU.

2:20:30 I saw them on CNN attacking the Capitol.

2:20:32 And the ACLU. I saw a politician molesting kids. Does that mean you molest kids? What?

2:20:37 Exactly. Really compelling stuff from Sheriff Oathkeeper. But this whole story gives us an interesting look into possible election interference done on like a county level with HUD sheriffs just seizing huge swaths of ballots to try to invalidate as many as they can after an election, based on vague allegations of, quote, discrepancies in the count. But now going forward, at least in California, there will be protections against this tactic.

2:21:10 You know, you said that it was found that he did this and that he violated state election law.

2:21:15 Will he be facing any consequences?

2:21:18 It doesn't look like he'll be facing consequences, no. The ballots will be returned and destroyed. But no, this is not going to result in anything. for him personally. He just can't continue his investigation. Speaking of allegations of election fraud, earlier this summer, Trump and DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen claimed they had uncovered hundreds of thousands of non-citizens who were registered to vote. And we didn't report on these claims in depth because the White House provided no evidence for these extraordinary claims. But in communications to state election officials following this big public announcement, the Trump admin already began to de-emphasize the certainty of these large figures. Nevada

2:22:01 was first told by DHS that they had as many as 15,903 non-citizens on their voter rolls. But in a meeting between state officials and DHS last month, DHS said that that number might not be totally accurate because each voter had not yet been manually reviewed, And the true number may be closer to 185 voters. After this meeting, DHS emailed Nevada officials clarifying, quote, we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185. We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S.

2:22:37 Citizens, unquote.

2:22:38 So still keeping open the possibility that there could be upwards of 16,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls, which have been flagged, but then DHS themselves narrowed that down to at least 185 confirmed cases. So, after this, state officials then checked those 185 alleged non-citizen voters and found that every single one was actually a U.S.

2:23:11 Citizen.

2:23:13 In a letter obtained by the New York Times through an open records request, the Deputy Attorney General in Nevada, Gray Goat, wrote to DHS, As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens. You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise. Nevada's Secretary of State said in a statement, quote, Our records do not support DHS's claims and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that. Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. repeating unsupported claims does not make them true, unquote. All of this relates to our first main story this episode. On September 25th, the Supreme

2:24:01 Court ruled 6-3 on ideological lines to allow the Trump administration to use a janky citizenship database from DHS to purge voter rolls. Though the worst potential effects of this will be delayed until after the midterms. Now, we've talked before about the ongoing legal battles over Trump's attempts to restrict mail-in voting. This new shadow docket ruling centers on the implementation of the other half of Trump's March 2025 executive order to, quote, protect the integrity of American elections.

2:24:32 The creation of a new list of verified U.S. citizen voters. After Trump signed the election integrity order last year, DHS began to expand something called the SAVE database so that it could be used to verify whether large batches of voters. Quickly, voting rights organizations sued and a district court blocked the order, finding that the overhauled SAFE program, quote, trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. But the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to stay the district court's ruling. And last week, without a full briefing or oral argument, the Supreme Court granted that stay. clearing the way for Trump to implement the new SAVE database. The SAVE database was

2:25:19 created decades ago to verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. But the newly modified SAVE system incorporates confidential data from the Social Security Administration and allows authorities to conduct bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. Currently, 27 U.S. states use the SAVE system to verify voters. And last year, some states began testing the newly modified database. More on that later. In the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using this newly overhauled database, the plaintiffs alleged that the integration of Social Security Administration data violates multiple privacy protections, and that the use of the data to purge voter

2:25:59 rolls risks irreparable harm to voters who are mistakenly removed from the rolls due to inaccurate or out-of-date information in the database. And this part is really crucial because Social Security Administration data does not necessarily reflect someone's current immigration or citizenship status. And SSS data is not just your Social Security number, but also names, dates and places of birth, citizenship indicators, death records, and any information obtained while processing requests for Social Security numbers. So there's a bunch of very, very personal, very private data that gets stored here. It's not just your, you know, however many digit number. So if this new database flags someone or a search comes

2:26:45 up inconclusive, voters could be required to take additional affirmative steps to prove their citizenship or naturalization, possibly within a very short time window, or they risk being removed from the voter rolls and unable to exercise their right to vote. In the dissent penned by Justice Jackson... She echoed the concern of the plaintiffs that, quote, the staleness of Social Security Administration's citizenship records risked disenfranchising recently naturalized U.S. citizens, unquote.

2:27:18 And absolutely, if someone's afraid that they might get into trouble or ICE might go after them for registering to vote, even if they are legally allowed to, or if that fear prevents them from taking certain actions, that is real and active harm. And this type of stuff isn't just future speculation. According to a ProPublica report from last February, quote, DHS has had to correct information provided to at least five states after Save misidentified some voters as non-citizens. In particular, in Texas, one woman had her voter registration revoked without her knowledge. And two more people had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status per Jackson's dissent.

2:27:59 So this can also happen to you and you not know about it. So you can be removed from your voter roll, not actually know necessarily. Maybe they tried to contact you and that just didn't work. That just didn't happen. So then you think that you're registered to vote, but you actually aren't, which of course then makes you unable to vote. These are all real, actual harms. But the majority opinion of the Supreme Court didn't actually consider any of these harms posed to lawful voters, but just focused on the harm that the government could suffer if they weren't allowed to use this new SAVE database. And weighing the legality of DHS using what's otherwise protected confidential data from the Social Security Administration, which the majority ruled DHS

2:28:45 was allowed to do based on the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Section 1373. And this is the big kind of legal debate regarding, is this database actually legal? Are they allowed to use this protected data? The district court said no. The dissent says no. The plaintiffs say no.

2:29:08 But the federal government and now Supreme Court majority says yes. And I want to get more into kind of the weeds of this legal argument in a future episode. Because to quote Jackson, the argument being made by the majority is implausible. And they are very clearly misreading a federal law. It's a very plain misreading and interpreting a specific law in a way that no one else has interpreted it before and would fundamentally alter privacy protections in this country.

2:29:41 and goes directly against the Clinton administration's interpretation of this law as well. But I'll get more into that kind of in a future episode about the various efforts to undermine elections going into the midterms. So as bad and bullshit as all of this is, this ruling will, quote, likely have a minimal short-term impact, according to Jackson. And that's because the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from, quote, systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from from their rules in the 90 days prior to any primary or general election. So they cannot do these massive bulk searches that this database is designed to do. They can't just like remove tons of people all at once from the rules.

2:30:24 But that doesn't mean that this will have no impact on the midterms because the government is still allowed to use this new safe program to conduct quote, individualized inquiries per the majority. so they can still go after individual people, just not bulk searches. Jackson writes that states will, quote, at most conduct individualized voter roll maintenance using the modified save system. And she concludes her dissent by saying, quote, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take, unquote.

2:31:10 I'm glad she named that in her dissent because I can't get over that bit of, what about the harm to the government?

2:31:18 That's wild to me.

2:31:20 Yeah, no, there's another line I have saved in my full report of this, which is so funny. She writes, it cannot be that the government is injured whenever it is prevented from violating the law.

2:31:33 Exactly.

2:31:36 That's kind of a really good sum up of like most Supreme Court kind of debates during Trump's second administration is that the government is constantly claiming that they're going to suffer harm if they're not allowed to break the law. Considering all of this, I think it's important to reiterate that non-citizen voting is relatively rare and statistically insignificant. It's not something that is altering election results or causing harm.

2:32:03 But what could cause harm or potentially alter results is the mass disenfranchisement of voters, scaring naturalized citizens into not voting, and DHS forcibly deregistering lawful U.S. citizen voters because of their wildly inaccurate voter verification system. Now, regarding the massive numbers thrown around by the Trump admin, like 300,000 non-citizen voters, 16,000 flagged in Nevada, It's not yet clear if the new SAVE system is where DHS is getting those numbers, but considering the fact that the 185 quote manually confirmed cases in Nevada turned out to be all U.S. citizens, you cannot take anything DHS is saying at face value. Basically, this whole illegal voting panic is functionally a psyop to

2:32:58 purge U.S. citizen voters. It's to convince as many states as possible to use this new save system, using threats and intimidation, with the ultimate goal of purging voter rolls, which they're not allowed to do in the three months before the midterms. But going forward after the midterms, DHS now has the ability to do bulk searches and removals ahead of future elections. So this is definitely something we will keep an eye on. going into 2028. Anyway, let's go on an ad break and then return for some bad news. And we are back. Let's turn to Bridget Todd for our next main story.

2:33:57 Yeah, thanks, Gare.

2:33:58 And I have to give a quick heads up in the form of a trigger warning that this segment deals with some pretty rough stuff. Sexual assaults, drugging. So just know that before we talk about it.

2:34:09 Cutting in here just to say, if you would like to skip this section on Cornell and Title IX, you can skip to the next ad break, which should be around the 55-minute mark. I can't know the exact timestamp because that depends on the ads that are loaded into your individual podcast feed. But the next section by Robert Evans should be around the 55-minute mark after the next ad break.

2:34:37 So y'all have probably been hearing about what's happening at Cornell right now. And I want to start by walking through the timeline because this case did not just suddenly emerge this month. The New York Times actually had a really detailed breakdown of the timeline that was super helpful in me kind of just understanding what's going on.

2:34:55 All of this happened.

2:34:56 Almost two years ago, but there is a reason why folks are talking about it right now. So back in October of 2024, according to Jane Doe's lawsuit, earlier that night, she had been out at bars and Greek life events. Around 11 o'clock, she goes to the Chi Phi fraternity house to meet a male Cornell student. She's also a student at Cornell at this point. She said that she thought of this student as a friend to her. Now, according to this lawsuit, she was then pressured into consuming drugs and alcohol, including ketamine, and that seven men sexually assaulted her while she was incapacitated from the drugs and alcohol and weaving in and out of consciousness. I looked at the lawsuit that she filed. The details that are

2:35:40 laid out in this lawsuit are truly horrific, to the point where I don't even necessarily feel comfortable getting into all of them here. Stuff like her being forced to snort ketamine off.

2:35:51 Of an erect penis.

2:35:52 Oh, God.

2:35:53 Yeah, it's pretty bad. And her suit says all of this went on for hours. According to her complaint, one of the men posted a message to the fraternity's Snapchat group during the night that said, quote, free pussy. Obviously, her suit interprets this as an invitation for other fraternity members to join in the room and join in the assault.

2:36:16 This is not even, like, super in dispute. You can find pictures of that Snapchat message and, like, see the replies to it.

2:36:23 And even the do-nothing district.

2:36:25 Attorney, who I'll be talking about more in a moment, has since described those Snapchat messages as, quote, morally disgusting. And he said that his office was examining whether or not those Snapchat messages could have criminal significance. So three weeks later, on November 8th, Jane Doe goes to the Cornell University police. And, you know, I don't think anybody is surprised to hear that in situations like this, there's always some victim-blaming fuckery. So here is some victim-blaming fuckery.

2:36:56 So that do-nothing DA, the Tompkins County District Attorney Matt Van Houten, said that Jane Doe's original statement to the police described at least some of her drug use and sexual activity that night as voluntary and consensual.

2:37:10 That's his words, not mine.

2:37:12 He says that that was a major reason that his office determined at the time that there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. So when I heard that, I kind of did that Scooby-Doo, like.

2:37:25 What the fuck do you mean? That seemed absurd to me. So I looked into this.

2:37:30 And I only learned this from researching the situation, but there is a wrinkle in New York state law that critics have called the voluntary intoxication loophole, which is basically that under New York law, if you voluntarily get even extremely drunk, the fact that you were too intoxicated to meaningfully consent does not by itself legally establish that you were incapable of consenting to sex.

2:37:57 Which to me is.

2:37:59 I mean, I, maybe I'm a Pollyanna, but I did not know that. I was learning that for the first time from researching what happened at Cornell.

2:38:07 I get legally, especially in a situation like a party where multiple people are drinking, how do you adjudicate after the fact without blood tests and stuff, the level of intoxication of everybody? I understand how there's complications there, but it seems like something other than just not addressing it would be the right thing to do legally.

2:38:26 Yeah.

2:38:27 And basically, this law posits that you essentially have to be, if you're talking about consensual drinking, you basically have to be incapacitated to the point where you cannot move or speak on your own in order for that and that alone to establish that you were incapable of consenting to sex. So if you're, you know, drinking but still talking, even if you're like extremely, extremely drunk, that by itself does not legally establish that you were not capable of consenting.

2:38:55 So I really take your point, but it seems to me that.

2:38:58 Like, okay, well, we'll just... codify that into law seems wonky to me. And there are lawmakers.

2:39:03 It just seems like they've abrogated their, like making an actual like decision on any of this and just sort of picked, I don't know, like it doesn't seem like where you should draw the line, right? Like just, okay, when somebody's passed out, like in nothing before, that's just really, it just seems very irresponsible and incomplete.

2:39:24 Totally agree.

2:39:25 And there are lawmakers who are actively working on changing this intoxication loophole. And I'm glad that you said that, Robert, because to me, this is just me editorializing, I think it raises a fundamental question about how consent works, because a person can voluntarily use drugs or drink and be sexually assaulted. A person can consent to one sex act And then not consent to another consent is.

2:39:50 Absolutely.

2:39:51 Yeah.

2:39:51 And I think that we just have.

2:39:53 To I want for us a society where we have more conversations about what consent actually looks like and how it works so that more people kind of fully understand that. I don't feel like we're having those conversations now, unfortunately, like in wider society, particularly with young people.

2:40:07 Yeah.

2:40:09 So that do-nothing.

2:40:10 DA that I told you about, Van Houten, he also has pushed back on this sort of emerging claim that Jane Doe's original statement was fragmentary or incomplete, or this idea that the investigators just did not do a good enough job of getting.

2:40:23 A detailed account from her.

2:40:25 He says that Jane Doe gave police a comprehensive statement and made more than 20 handwritten corrections to that statement before signing it. So that's what he says is, like, why... His office declined to pursue charges. But Jane Doe's attorney disputes all of this, including the idea that her original statement means that her current allegations are inconsistent with what she originally reported. Her attorneys argued that she was traumatized and incapacitated and that authorities failed to adequately investigate what actually happened to her. So I should say that Cornell did take some actions following this report. According to both Cornell and third-party reporting, the university did temporarily suspend the

2:41:04 Chi Phi fraternity and impose some temporary suspensions or restrictions on students accused in connection with this incident while they investigated. Cornell University's police did contact that DA, which like, okay, a lot of good that did. And prosecutors, again, reviewed the allegations and ultimately decided not to you know, pursue criminal charges under New York state law. Then in January of 2025, Jane Doe filed a formal Title IX complaint with Cornell, triggering a totally separate university review process. So in case you don't know, Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding and dictates rules around how colleges are

2:41:46 required to respond when a student reports something like sexual assault or sexual harassment. According to the New York Times, by May, Cornell's Title IX committee had held at least 12 hearings involving these allegations and this situation. So Cornell now says that this investigation eventually resulted in what they describe as serious disciplinary sanctions, what they describe as things like suspensions and expulsions. and that the Chi Phi chapter that was involved in this is still barred from campus. However, we don't actually know exactly what happened to each individual student because Cornell has declined to publicly disclose any of those details, citing federal student privacy laws. Jane Doe's attorney

2:42:30 told CBS News that two of the seven students were expelled, and at least some of the men who were named in the lawsuit have denied allegations through their attorneys. So if you've heard about this situation, you've probably heard about one particularly grim detail, and that is the essays. So Jane Doe's civil complaint alleges that several of the accused students were, quote, afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell, like written papers that you would write in a class.

2:43:02 Cornell has since pushed back on that.

2:43:04 Claim, but in a way that I find interesting, because They did not say that none of the students involved were made to write an essay to mitigate, you know, their conduct. What Cornell said was, quote, none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement. So, like, it kind of does sound like maybe they were made to write essays. Like, I'm not sure what that exactly means. So Cornell says the disciplinary process resulted in a range of sanctions, including suspensions and expulsions. But again, we don't really know what all went down there. So after that, the story kind of fell from public view until very recently this month.

2:43:50 This month, Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the defendants, including Cornell University, Chi Phi, her sorority Delta Delta Delta, university officials, and seven men that she says participated in this assault. And that lawsuit has really pushed this whole situation more into public view, like how did the university handle it? How did the authorities handle it? And I have to really champion the student journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun here, which is Cornell's independent student newspaper. The Daily Sun's journalists have been reporting on these allegations going back to 2024, and they have been aggressively pursuing and covering the lawsuit and the university's response. There is a

2:44:31 really good Q & A with one of the student editors, Cerise Kuzba, in the cut about what it was like to break and cover this story. And one of the things that she said was that weirdness around whether or not these students were asked to write essays to mitigate this like really, really awful behavior. Like it clarified that for me because she basically says that Cornell treats sexual assault on campus as a more of an education issue, not a public safety issue. And she really describes the kind of environment where like it would make sense that the university would think that Having students do workshops or write essays would be an appropriate way to mitigate harm.

2:45:10 She told The Cut, When you search the task force website, you see what they're doing is classes, workshops, and website links. It's pretty easy to assume that those who would often commit the sexual assault will most likely not be the ones attending the voluntary and optional sexual assault workshops. Within the editorial committee, we feel that sexual misconduct cannot be solved in the same way we try to attempt to solve plagiarism.

2:45:32 These are very fundamentally different issues, she told The Cut. So, if you have.

2:45:38 Seen the names of these men circulating publicly, that is because of the Cornell Daily Sun. On September 21st, the Cornell Daily Sun's editorial board published the names of all of the men who were named as defendants in this lawsuit. They said that they believed Cornell had failed in its obligation to protect the students and to adequately account for its handling of the allegations.

2:46:00 So, I do have a couple of updates.

2:46:04 On September 28th, that Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, you know, that do-nothing DA I was describing earlier, well, he announced that his office was actually going to do something, and that is to reopen this criminal investigation. Van Houten says that his office has assigned a senior prosecutor with experience prosecuting sex crimes and is preparing to present the case to a grand jury. Also, New York Governor Kathy Hochul called for an outside council to conduct a transparent, independent review of how the university handled Jane Doe's situation. Specifically, she wants this review to determine whether or not Cornell met its obligations to protect students and pursue justice. So

2:46:43 that's kind of where the Cornell situation sits right now. I have a couple of other sort of pieces there. I'm I don't know if you would call this person a journalist. I'm going to refer to him as a sub stack troll.

2:47:00 Oh, no.

2:47:00 Are you going to talk about who I think you're going to talk about?

2:47:03 It's Michael Tracy.

2:47:05 Oh, yes.

2:47:05 Yes.

2:47:06 It's time for Michael Tracy.

2:47:08 Damn it.

2:47:09 Is this not his first appearance on the pod?

2:47:11 No, we've talked about Michael and him being sure the Americans were about to invade to help Ukraine because he wound up accidentally at a U.S. embassy in Poland. We've talked about Michael a few times because he's always wrong about everything he says.

2:47:25 Well, you might not be surprised then to find out that he is trying to reveal Jane Doe's identity.

2:47:32 This is not the first time he's gone after a survivor. Yeah.

2:47:35 Yes.

2:47:36 He tweeted, if you happen to know who this Cornell Jane Doe is, get in touch and I would be happy to publish her name and identifying information. And yes, this is 100% permitted under the First Amendment. Whatever threats or emotional blackmail people might want to deploy.

2:47:50 So just a real.

2:47:53 Lovely guy, real lovely addition to this whole shit show.

2:47:58 There's been a few other kind of far right content creators who've tried to dox this woman, have put out identifications that who knows if they are real or not. But this is definitely not just Michael. This is not just a Michael problem. This is across the whole kind of Twitter America first, Groyper sphere as well.

2:48:20 Yeah.

2:48:20 Yeah.

2:48:21 And I'm glad that you mentioned that.