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February 14, 2025 42 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the Birds and the Bees, a podcast where
James Stout makes animal noises and also we talk about
what's going on in the White House this week.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
That's right, This is that could happen here Executive Disorder,
our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
the crumbling of our world, and what this means for you.
That is Robert talking Previously, James Stout is also here.
I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by Mia Wong. This episode,
we're covering the week of February sixth to February twelfth. Currently,
me and Mia are inside New Orleans, Louisiana, and I

(00:43):
am proud to report that fascism has been defeated. The
Philadelphia Eagles have beat the kk Kansas City Chiefs in
Super Bowl. Drake has been executed live on stage. It's
a great week.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
That would have been kinder than what actually happened to Drake.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Look as someone, as someone in My Blueskin mentioned, says capitalism.
Currently the rule of capitalism seems inescapable, but the divine,
the divine rule of the Chiefs once seemed undefeatable too,
And they were fucking humiliated.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh my god, they lost so bad.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
I can't even I can't even say that they were
beaten up and down the field, because I'd even fucking
get down the field, obliterally generational beat down.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
And yeah, when I arrived here in New Orleans on Monday,
this is the Monday after the Super Bowl, so a
complete nightmare. But there was just an ocean of an
ocean of out and proud Eagles fans. And the funniest
thing I saw is that when I was waiting for
me to fly in, there was this like half a
full clothing rack of leftover Chiefs merche and all of

(01:51):
the Eagles merch were gone.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
I will see that Chiefs Merch again somewhere in like
a resource pause edging from now.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, yes, that's going to be the uniform of a
future civil war.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Literally literally Taylor Swift themed Kansas City Chiefs merch.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Ah.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
Yeah, huge Alpha capital.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
It is so funny. Oh man, well, I guess. Yeah.
The big losers this week, Drake and unfortunately the nation
of Ukraine and most of the rest of Western Europe. Yeah,
I guess We'll start with the big news today, which
is that Trump just had a really great call with
Vladimir Putin went super well. They're going to be meeting,

(02:34):
maybe in Saudi Arabia. There's been some floating of the
fact that they might meet at the White House, which
I don't think it ends well for Putin if he
visits the Uniteds. I don't think it ends well for
anybody if he visits the United States. This country is
too heavily armed and crazy right now. But they're doing
this because Putin and Trump have evidently reached some sort

(02:54):
of agreement about the end of the war in Ukraine.
Zelenski was not really on this. He's made a couple
of statements like yep, we're we're hoping that this is
what pushes everything towards peace. But it's very clear that
what's happening is Ukraine is going to be made to
give up a decent chunk of their territory. Now they
do have Russian territory still to bargain with somewhat, so

(03:17):
it hopefully will not be a situation where Putin gets
is entirely his own way. But that is kind of
the what's happening, and the sea change that will accompany
this is that new Secretary of Defense and alcoholic Pete
Hegseth made a statement and a meeting in Brussels that
the United States will no longer be the guarante of
peace in Europe. Specifically, he stated that we're not going

(03:39):
to tolerate of an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. But
this was an announcement that the post war sort of
status quo is no longer something that we can rely
on going forward, and that is a really significant admission
from the sec deaff.

Speaker 5 (03:55):
Yeah, it's sick, it's pretty cool, and it's going to
be great. It's going to be great. If you're in
the German arms industry, it's going to be a banger
year for you. You making similis, I.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Think we could all agree the future is bright for
German weaponry.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
Yeah, once again Germany will rise to its former glory. Hussah.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
Yeah, you say that as kind of a joke, but
like genuinely the fact that we are doing a bunch
of stuff that is leading to the full re armament
of the German army at the moment when the German
fascist parties are like about to take power.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
When off Day is getting into power, Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
And the Luftwaffe hasn't even bought to change his slogo
since the last time, so that's cool.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, and what you bring up there me is probably
worth discussing in concert with all of this, which is
that AfD off Day, the Alternative for Deutschland, which is
the new Nazi Party in Germany, is not the majoritarian party,
but is taking enough seats that it is going to
be included in the next governing coalition, which is something

(04:53):
that has not happened in the post World War Two era.
In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, every Western
European nation basically came to a tacit agreement referred to
as the cordon sanitaire, which is when a right wing
party starts to gain power, you do not coalition with
them under any circumstances. Germany is actually like the last

(05:14):
of the European countries to give up this idea. But
the fact that the Cordon sanitaire has fallen in Germany
is real bad news.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, And the ADF, like it's worth mentioning, right, Like
the ADF is so right wing and so nazi that,
like the the Italian fascists to our empower right now
will not work with them, Like, Yeah, yeah, a bunch
of stuff leaked a little while ago about these people
at beatings openly talking about deporting every single Jew and
every single immigrant from the country. Like these people are

(05:46):
you know, I mean, they're just Nazis And yeah, so
now we're fucking handing them the fucking justification to fucking
rebuild their entire arms industry. So yep, great stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
It is dark, I mean. And again when we say
the Italian fascists, this is literally Mussolini's party, as in
his granddaughter it's a member.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, so yeah, that's bad. I think that's probably most
of what we can say about what's going on in
Europe and with Ukraine right now. But it's not good.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's not good. It doesn't point to a
great future. And this is the multi polar world that
like Russia has wanted for some time, like coming to fruition, right,
and I didn't want to talk about. So there was
a time when Vladimir Putin some as you remember, was
sanctioned by the International Criminal Court for his war crimes

(06:37):
in Ukraine. The United States, however, the United States has
not been a signatory to the Rome Statute, so it
wouldn't necessarily have enforced that arrest warrant anyway. But this
week Trump signed a little executive order titled in block capitals,
as we've come to expect, imposing sanctions on the International
Criminal Court, and in doing so, he followed the example

(07:00):
of Putin, who in twenty twenty three put out arrest
warrants for ICC prosecutors after they put out a warrant
for his arrest. Trump didn't cite the Putin example. He
called the ICC's actions against Israel illegitimate and baseless. That's
a quote. He specifically called the warrants against UF Gallant
and Benjamin Etting Yahoo baseless. He then went on to claim, quote,

(07:25):
both nations are thriving democracies with militaries strictly adhered to
the laws of war. This is a thing that is
not true. His order then goes on to outline what
it calls protected persons, people who aren't familiar at United
States person is distinguished from the United States citizen. It
also includes any permanent residents. It also includes US Armed
Forces government officials and contractors working on behalf of US

(07:48):
Armed Forces contractors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who can
do no wrong. It then goes on to include US allies,
including all of NATO and sometimes contractors working on their behalf.
It says that if the International Criminal Court investigates any
of these people, Trump called the Clara National Emergency. It
also imposes material sanctions and travel bands on both ICC

(08:10):
prosecutors and people acting on their warrants, as well of
the families of those people. Interesting, Yeah, this is an
unprecedented American politics, and sometimes it gets reported like it is.
I want to like throw back to what they called
the Hague Invasion Act. That wasn't its real name, but
that was George Bush's. Like it authorized the President to

(08:31):
use any means necessary to release United States people held
by the ICC or at its request. So people started
calling it the Hague Invasion Act.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
Right.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
Trump did also sanction ICC prosecutors and their families in
twenty twenty for looking into US war crimes in Afghanistan.
I think that happened in June of twenty twenty, So
you can be forgiven for having missed up because some
stuff was happening at that time.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Oh was it?

Speaker 5 (08:57):
Yeah, things were going down. I'm sure Philadelphia Eagles were,
you know, beginning their rise to glory again. That was
a big thing. Kansas City chiefs were doing some racist shit, shockingly, shockingly.
I'm sure Taylor Swift was doing something too, But yeah,
this is like Israel has for nearly a decade been
trying to hack samea surveil and threaten the Court. In
the show notes, I'll include a link to a Guardian

(09:18):
article that came out last year about Israel's attacks and
attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court. And just if
I've been talking about something and you're like, what is
the International Criminal Court? Very briefly, it's based at the Hague.
So if you've heard, you know you will stand trial
at the Hague. That's what they're talking about. It has
its most immediate routes in the tribunals investigated perpetrations of
genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The US and Israel are

(09:42):
lot members of the court. They never signed the Roman Statute.
Russia withdrew in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
Curious time to withdraw?

Speaker 5 (09:49):
Interesting, fascinating. Yeah, they just decided that it wasn't for them,
and off they went to do some war crimes. The
ICC has been criticized, probably recent for the vast majority
of the people who have actually been prosecuted for the
ICC being outside of the core neoliberal states, right, It's
prosecuted a lot of people in Africa. That doesn't mean

(10:11):
that like African people can't do war crimes in Africa,
of course they can, but it means that they're held
accountable more often than when countries in the global North
do war crimes, which they can do too. Okay, So Trump,
that's like everything else he does, was condemned internationally for this, right,
including by several NATO allies, in so much as they
really are NATO allies anymore given everything we've just talked about. However,

(10:34):
it's also worth noting that some of the countries like France,
who condemned Trump's sanctioning of ICC prosecutors, also allowed someone
with an ICC warrant I Benjamin that's in Yahoo to
transit their airspace. So like, therefore, commitment to the ICC
perhaps can be questioned. This is a problem with the ICC, right,
it doesn't have an integral enforcement mechanism.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean like Canada previously promised quote unquote
promised yeah to arrest net Yahoo if they were ever
like able to, and like, yeah, I'm very curious to
see how this is going to shake down with the
US taking like an extremely firmer stance at least than
we previously had. We already like you know, quote unquote
like condemnic Canada. But like I'm interested to see Trump

(11:16):
like be more interested in actually pushing this further than
it has been.

Speaker 5 (11:20):
Yeah, I guess we'll see how it goes for people
who are unfamiliar. I do want to like really quickly
mention that like Palestine is a signatory and therefore war
crimes to happen within Palestine and covered by the CORE.
Even if states such as Israel are not signatories, right,
therefore they're still under the court to jurisdiction. So that's
how in this case this is happening.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (11:42):
It could also make the ICC's life very difficult in
terms of using technology, right that the tech back end
of everything that ICC does. Try to remove that from
any United States involvement would be very hard.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Well, let's go on a quick out of break in
return to talk about I don't know what the treasury or.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, let's talk about the treasury.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
All right, all right, we are back. But before we
talk about the Treasury, I first wanted to do some
do some breaking news while kind of breaking. So when

(12:23):
I was flying to New Orleans, I was able to
fly past the brand new Gulf of America. It was
a life changing experience. It really warmed my heart. And then, luckily,
a few days ago, Georgia Representative Buddy Carter announced legislation
to empower Trump to enter into negotiations to quote unquote
purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland and importantly to rename it red,

(12:49):
white and blue. Lind God, let's get some quick reactions
from the panel.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
Sorry, As a person born in Europe, the idea of
Buddy Carter authorizing the formation of Red, White, Blue Land,
it's simply just like the fact that this is not
a parody, it's just fucking too much for me.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, what it is is purposefully ridiculous.
It's a it's a flex, it's a statement of the
power that they have over their own party and the country.
It is purposefully absurd, and everyone is going to go
along with it because the Chief, the King supports it, right,
Like that's the point in my opinion.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
Yeah, see empress new clothes of invading places.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Like it doesn't matter. We can be as silly as
we want.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
Genuinely interested in hearing from people in Greenland.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yes, honestly, I'm kind of surprised, because I would I
would assume it. Maybe maybe this is still in the works.
If Elon Musk can find a way to call this
thing excellent, is really my concern.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm really interested in
hearing from Greenland. Is genuinely You can contact us at
cool Zone, tips at proton dot me, which is an
encrypted email address that you can send emails to.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yeah, all right, let's let's let's talk about Trump potentially
crashing the entire world economy. He's taking more shots to
just literally blow this all up. Yeah, okay, So let's
talk about the treasuries thing and him potentially talking about
not paying out our fucking treasury bonds. Okay, so many
reason quotes from Reuters. So this is Trump. We're even

(14:17):
looking at treasuries. Trump said there could be a problem.
You've been reading about that with treasuries, and that could
be an interesting problem. Now treasuries again, our course, US
treasury bonds. We will get to what those are in
a second, but I need to read the rest of
this quote. It could be that a lot of those
things don't count. In other words, that some of the
stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent. Therefore, maybe we

(14:39):
have less debt than we thought. Now, that's a very
scary thing to say here.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah. Treasury bills are the primary underpinning of like economic
stability in this country. T bells are what large corporate
institutions when they have a lot of cash with like
very wealthy people. It's where you park your money, and
it's where foreign governments park a lot of their money,
like yeah, and it's how our government gets a lot

(15:05):
of its money because it's a good, reliable investment. So
saying maybe we're going to declare some of these T
bill investments bullshit is very dangerous.

Speaker 5 (15:17):
Yeah, for the global economy.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
Yeah, I want to read this next line because one
of the things that's happening here, right is that people
just simply and this has been a real problem for
this entire administrations, people simply do not believe that he
means to do the thing he says he's going to do. Right.
Quote this is from Broiders. Again, it could be treasury payments,
which is not linked the treasury bonds. Said for shop Bihani,

(15:42):
investment chief for Asia at BNP Power Boss Wealth Management.
I would be very surprised if they ever stopped a
payment of treasury bonds to a holder. It would be
like shooting yourself in the foot, he said. Now, this
is something where these these institutional investors, like they still
have not quite wrapped their head around the fact that no,
he really will do this shit because he doesn't understand

(16:05):
at all. He thinks that American debt works the same
way as like his own personal debt, and no it doesn't.
I mean, it's worth saying some bits. So, I mean,
just a very very basic shit about how national debt works. Right,
Like all of our money, literally every single dollar that
is in circulation, every dollar that is in a bank account,
that is literally government debt, right like that that's what

(16:27):
money is, right, And these treasury bonds are as we
were talking about earlier, right, this is like the investment
asset for literally the entire world, and there's trillions of
dollars of these. Actually, Japan is the largest holder of
treasury bonds. China's sort of been selling some of theirs,
but they have a lot of them.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, probably good to be doing that, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
And it's also you know, like the fact that he's
saying he's not gonna pay these yet, like this can
start a massive crisis in which I've been talking for
a bit about, you know, every day we sort of
get closer to credit rating agencies like downgrading the quality
of US debt, which is a real problem for US
trying to like get money from people. And and you know,
even if you listen to what that what the sort

(17:11):
of bond analyst is saying, right, he's like, well, it's fine,
they'll just stop paying like US debt to other things,
which is like unbelievably unhinged. Would also in and of itself,
like destroying the full faith and credit of the United
States would absolutely just fucking annihilate the world economy. And
it's also another example of Trump not understanding how the
empire he's inherited works, because like the one of the

(17:33):
ways the US funds is government is by getting its
client states to buy like trillions of dollars of assets.
Like that's partially why feelief. Look at who's who buys
US assets, like it's China and US tributary states like Japan,
for example, which is just purely in American military Protectorate. Right,
it's a sort of incredible system for the US. Right,
you get a bunch of people and you, you know,

(17:53):
you just you just sort of perpetually keep borrowing money
from them. And it's this thing where they don't understand
who actually holds the power in the relationship, which is
that the US having all this is the one with
the power and is the one that's getting everyone else's
money for this sort of secure asset. So, you know,
who knows what's going to happen with this If this
actually starts happening, like, yeah, this is the world rending

(18:14):
economic crisis levels of stuff. Well, we'll see if he
moves on it, he may simply forget about it, or
we're going to wake up one day and like the
US's credit's going to be downgraded to like junk bond
status and everything's going to be chaos. So, speaking of
Trump trying to sort of like take shots at pillars

(18:34):
of the global economy, starting in March, he's trying to
implement a twenty five percent tariff on all imported steel
and aluminum. Most of that's actually from Canada and Mexico.
I think in their minds is the thing about Chinese steel,
but it's mostly from Canada and Mexico. This is also
a fucking shit show because the US manufacturing capacity that

(18:55):
we still have and we still actually do have a
decent amount of like a very high tech manufacturing right
relies on this stuff, and this is going to make
it more expensive, gets bad. It will do nothing to
deal with the fact that US doesn't produce steel anymore,
which is the product of that. One day I'll do
my structural Chinese steel over capacity episode. But you know,

(19:16):
it's it's the product of like half a century of
the global manufacturing economy, you know, becoming zero sum, and
they're simply not being a large enough consumer market for
all of industrial goods, which means the production becomes increasingly
you know, it becomes impossible to expand production to one
place without you know, getting ready production another place. In
Trump things you can solve those with tariffs.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
You can't.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Mostly it's just another like throw things at the economy shit. Now,
you know, Trump is sort of throwing bombs at the
economic system. One of the largest ones that he's thrown
is he just straight up stole eighty million dollars in
FEMA funding that they had already paid out, like just
straight up stole it from like a New York City

(19:58):
bank account. They like, so I've been paid to the
government in New York.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Right, this happened earlier today.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
Right. This is yeah, literally literally this this is breaking news,
breaking news on Wednesday. This is coming out Friday. This
episode is being recorded on Wednesday. Everything that you hear
if shit has happened in the US a few days,
that's from the future. We didn't know. But yeah, yeah,
he literally, like they have taken eighty million dollars just
from this bank account. They just stole it. The hostitial
government is just straight up robbing banks.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
It's okay. That came out today and said that don't
worry your bank accounts are still safe everybody.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, and this is like appropriated funds like for FEMA
being sayly secured in banks that have like literally been
funds are approved.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
By Congress for a specific purpose, right, Yeah, And what's
actually going to happen with this, right, because you would
expect a even like a normal shitty mayor of New
York to like go sicker mode. However, well man, however, Comma,
here's from Yahoo News quote Eric Adams said, he will
not publicly criticize Trump or his administration. Instead, they'll take

(21:00):
his concerns to Trump in private. On Monday, Adams convened
a meeting with his own top officials to urge them
not to speak badly about the president in public, saying
if they were to do so, it could risk federal
funding later that day. That same day, Trump's Justice Department
ordered the prosecutors in Adam's criminal case to drop the
charges against him, in part, arguing Adams must be free
of the burden of his corruption indictment to help carry

(21:21):
out Trump's immigration agenda in the city.

Speaker 5 (21:23):
Great.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Cool, This is the most like quid pro quote thing
I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
It is the single most corrupt thing I've seen out
of US politics. Yeah, like blatantly, it's staggering.

Speaker 5 (21:34):
I mean it would come from Trump plus Adams, right like, Yeah,
we're going to see it. That's what we're gonna say.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
We've hit a singularity of corruption.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yes, yeah, it's stumbled as always the first stop. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
The only way they can go further than this is
that Eric Adams is going to point Rob Lagoyevitch's head
of like bank robbery or something.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
One can dream Mia one can dream.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
There are a few other ways they can go further
with yo. I'm afraid to inform you, miya, but we'll
be hoping those don't happen.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
Well on the eruption index, on the corruption index.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Okay, speaking of corruption, let's pivot to ads. All Right,
we are back, and I'm going to close by talking
about the war on Woke, my new favorite news beat

(22:24):
that I'm forced to attention to every week. There was
a transports band that that that Trump did an executive
order about using a whole bunch of children as a
prop very clearly trying to steal steal the charisma from
whatever that governor who lost the election did with his
free school lunch there anyway, Instead now it's you just

(22:47):
you know, hurt other children in the school by not
making them be allowed to play sports. So that happened,
and then a few other things have happened the past
few weeks, and I'm kind of just like catching up
on because I've been really focused on like reporting on
like Muscus specifically, and there's been a lot of other
stuff the past few weeks. So I'm going to kind
of get to that now. The State Department's travel website

(23:08):
change the acronym LGBT to LGB on a web page
like warning about like how dangerous it might be to
like travel to like other countries with like worse legal protections,
say LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad. Laws and
attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel.

(23:30):
Many countries do not recognize the same sex marriage. Many
countries don't recognize the ex gender marker in passports and
do not have it systems at ports of entry that
can accept sex markers other than female and male.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
So they've only changed the title pot. Yeah, they haven't
even bothered to edit the text.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
No, because because they also have another info page where
they have just like control ft LGBT two LGB as well.
So this is this is like one of like many
changes we're seeing across a whole bunch of federal websites
in relation to Trump's order to like remove wokeness and
gender ideology. Previously, the CDC removed like HIV and trans

(24:10):
related like health info pages from their website, and as
of yesterday, February eleventh, the web pages for the FDA,
Health and Human Services and the CDC were allegedly brought
back online, restoring their January thirtieth status. They did this
like right before a court mandated deadline to restore these pages,

(24:30):
like I can I can now go back on to
the CDC's HIV page. Verge was first reported on this,
and they said that, you know, they've been unable to
verify that all of the pages have been restored exactly
to how they were before. This is something that we're
still working on because it's literally happened, like you know, yesterday.
This is this is like a small, a small part
of their of their current war on wokeness. Another aspect

(24:54):
of this is there's been a whole bunch of orders
from federal agencies to ban specific woke keyword words across
like their databases, their websites, training information, including from agencies
like noah SO just like the Weather and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They released a memo of banning

(25:15):
specific words across the agency, including words like ability, acceptance, access, affirmation, aggression, allyeship,
androgyne a, sexual belonging, bias, binary, bisexual, black culture, DEI, discrimination, diversity, empathy, empowerment, equity, ethnicity, fairness, gay,

(25:35):
gender genitus, foria, handicap, homosexual, LGBTQ, intersex, pan sexual, queer, transgender, transvestite,
as well as words like impartial inclusion, indigenous, intersectionality, justice,
the word white has been banned, They space, social justice,
underserved communities, race privilege, powerdynamics, Native American, multiculturalism, all of

(26:00):
these Like again, this is like the Party of Free
Speech has banned all of these words, and it's not
it's it's it's it's not just Noah. Also, the National
Science Foundation has has released my most saying that they
cannot have these words included in their documents because it
could cause them to lose grant funding.

Speaker 5 (26:18):
Well, it's the end for race science. Then they can't
do race science anymore.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
There's a lot of similar words flagged in the National
Science Foundation list of banned words, like activism and activists, advocacy,
a barrier, a bias black LATINX community, uh diversity, equity,
cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, diverse, you know, diverse, community, divice, groups, diversified, diversifying,

(26:45):
all this kind of stuff, ethnicity, equality, inclusion, inequality, LGBT
institutional marginalize, trauma, underappreciated, stereotypes, systemic under presentation, undervalued victim.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
I love that you can no longer do scientific papers
about systemic infections.

Speaker 6 (27:09):
Yeah, organs, Like yeah, no, there's anything that has a barrier.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
There's so many words that are just like used in
like how like studies function that they cannot use because
the word is too woke, and then they're gonna lose
their funding. Like yeah, you can't, like you can't like
look at like things being equal. You can't look at
any kind of like scientific bias, Like you can't like
this very basic stuff. It may just result in like

(27:35):
the tiktokification of us, like trying to spell these words
with like a different letter.

Speaker 5 (27:40):
Talking about cute little boots what it is.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
And like I'm laughing because it's all like absurd and
it's kind of like kind of like a coping mechanism.
But like this is all like very bad.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
Well, but like this something else, just something else we
need to talk about you, which is like like you
are required by law as part of your grand proposal
like have things that talk about like how this is
going to different communities, et cetera, et cetera. Is a
legal requirement for you to put that in your thing.
So like if you were to like strictly enforce this,
this kills every fucking grant. And this is this is
one of these things where it's like you're literally just

(28:12):
running straight into the federal law tells you must do
this thing, and the Trow administration says these words are banned,
so like, yeah, who knows.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
It's a really weird situation.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
Yeah, you can't do IRB right now. Like most guards
will go through an institutional review board that will determine
like if there are human subjects, they're like there ethical boundaries,
and like what you're doing is okay. I can't see
it being possible to do an IRB and not say
these words.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yeah no, And like we have to do scientific studies
on like how how various disabilities affect people's lives, like
very basic stuff like this, all of these types of things.
It's really bad and these things like are going into effect.
I know, like this is this stuff is still happening.
Columnists to doctor Lucky Tran reported quote the CDC has

(28:59):
instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of
any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific
journal the move aims to ensure that quote unquote, no
forbidden terms appear in the work band. Terms must be scrubbed. Great,
it's all really bad, yep. And we're seeing this this
sort of like lists being formed increasingly, including this DEI

(29:22):
watch list put together by a conservative oppositional research group
called the American Accountability Foundation PRICE, who released a DEI
watch list which publishes the names, photos, occupation, and personal
information of mostly black employees who work under the Department
of Health and Human Services. When the website was first discovered,
the employee profiles were labeled under targets. This has since

(29:45):
been changed to dossier's like very very frightening, like very
bad stuff, like very obvious intimidation for each target. The
website lists a collection of alleged DEI offenses, which includes
donations to Democrats and social media posts having pronouns in
their bio or previous work on since deleted diversity, equity

(30:06):
and inclusion initiatives. Columnist Jamal Bowie says, quote, they are
mostly targeting black employees, so this is quite literally just
a repeat of Rigrow Wilson's segregationist purge of the federal government.
And like yes, like all of this, all of this
like push against quote unquote DEEI is like very clearly
just like white supremacists segregation in action. Like this is

(30:27):
the whole point is that if any employee is a
person of color, that means that they that they must
be unqualified because they were hired only due to DEI.
And to avoid doing that, you could only hire white people.
And Trump's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent out a memo
directing staff on where to direct like grant funds, and
he said, quote give preference to communities with marriage and

(30:49):
birth rates higher than the national average unquote, which is
a very clear dog whistle to just like only hire
like white Christians, hire Christians with big families, you know,
parenthesis like white people. This is like very very obviously
what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, and they're I mean, this is extending to the
military now under Hegseth, west Point has just announced effectively
the banning of a number of clubs, including the Society
of Black Engineers, which is like three quarters of a
century old something like that, also ending programs that are
focused on like recruiting into the military black soldiers but
have like pivoted to recruiting from NRA gatherings, even though

(31:29):
there's internal agreement that that brings in a lower quality.

Speaker 5 (31:32):
Type of saying I've seen CEMENTRA members.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, yeah, I've seen a few NRA members, right, and
I yeah. And it's just one of these things, Like
there's a very good book that I think people need
to read if you want to know kind of the
operational impact this is going to have, both on the
US military and probably to an extent, law enforcement. We
look at agencies like the FBI. There's a book called
The Dictator's Army that heavily focuses on how changes like

(31:58):
this impact operational if efficiency, And the gist of it
is that the goal, and clearly what Hegseth's job is,
is to make the military into something that can't pose
opposition to the new regime. Right, that's the goal here,
because there's a very realistic understanding that the military was
one of things that stopped him from maintaining power in
twenty twenty, right, both because the military was not willing

(32:22):
to be used to crack down directly on protests and
because General Milly acted as a barrier to Trump's attempt
to do a coup. The last time, right, So you
have an understanding which is very common when regimes like
this takeover in democratic societies. In the early days of
the Third Reich, the military was the primary concern Hitler

(32:42):
had because they were not Nazis, right, they were conservative,
but they were not in the tank for the Nazi Party,
and there was a lot that he wanted to do
that the military establishment at the time the Third Rich
came to power wouldn't let him do. And that was
one of the first things and this took several years,
but that was one of the first goals of the
Nazi regime and power was reforming the military as much

(33:04):
as possible in their own image.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
And like so much of like what Heggs is doing
here specifically with like the West Point like club banning.
It's like like these things are not like DEI. These
things are like very old. These are like pretty like
standard standard things that have been like roped into like
what it means to like be in America. And we're
now just seeing this like crusade against DEI being used
to just reverse affirmative action and specifically select for white

(33:29):
Christian applicants. Yeah, and like that's the entirety of this
point here, like they're they're using dei as like a
like as this like magical wand to frame things that
are like pretty standard and like accepted parts of like
how you do like hiring practices, how you don't do
discrimination to just specifically only only like uplift white Christians.

(33:50):
And that's part of this like very basic like Christian
nationalist project that people like Heritage have been trying to
do for a long time.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
I think it's also worth noting too that like the
other thing that this mirrors, you know and the like
specifically in the way that this target's queer people is
the Lavender Scare, which is a thing from like the
sort of late forties through the sixties where the US
is part of this like giant anti communist herge. It
was on basically went through and found every gay government
official and fucking ran them out. That's like another aspect

(34:19):
of this whole thing, right, like the way these people
understand the world. In order to sort of like purify
their like white state, right like you have to get
rid of the non white people, and you have to
get rid of the queers and you know, and people
especially people who are fucking both and so this is
this sort of transformational project of changing this this sort
of like just changing the composition of what the US

(34:42):
is into like and how its state functions, and how
they can to what like what level of violence they
can bring about on people.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
And they've wrote these things together so closely now, like
the anti trans like school executive order, only the first
half the executive order was actually about the gender ideology stuff.
The second half was aimed at curbing what they called
discriminatory equity ideology d DEI. Basically it was proposing a

(35:11):
program for quote unquote patriotic education across the country, basically
trying to rewrite history to make like the United States
like this like noble historical project.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
HU.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
It's like stuff that they've tried to do before with that,
like a with that like seventeen seventy six project that
The New York Times reported on. Part of Trump's order
called for quote an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, an ennobling
characterization of America's founding and foundational principles, a clear examination
of how the United States has admirably grown closer to
its noble principles throughout history. The concept of that commitment

(35:45):
to America's aspirations is beneficial and justified the concept that
celebration of America's greatness and history is proper. And then
the order goes on to try to ban the concept
of white guilt, saying that, like, teachers can get in
trouble if any of their students and feel guilty about
things that people of like that same race have done
in the past, and like making sure that teachers do

(36:06):
not teach things in a way that could possibly make
us students feel quote unquote guilt.

Speaker 5 (36:12):
They use the word children actually not students, which like
is fundamentally something we don't do in education.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Right.

Speaker 5 (36:18):
We refer to our students as students because we respect
them as people. We don't think of them as like
lesser than, especially when we're getting to the points where
we're discussing things like race and equity, Like these are
high school students, right, maybe totally we know we certainly
do discuss these things in university, and like, it's fundamentally
shows a complete lack of understanding of how education works
to call them children.

Speaker 4 (36:39):
Yeah, And I think it gets to what this is
actually about. And this is something that I would argue
both Trump administrations were about right, if you look at
when Trump like comes down the fucking elevator for the
first time. So I think people may remember, like after
Ferguson in twenty fifteen, there was Baltimore where there was
you know, huge riots, massive confrontations with police, like massive educations,

(37:00):
and that's the that's like the thing that really truly
tipped like a bunch of the Republican Party even further
right from where they'd been with the Tea Party into
into this into sort of trump Ism. It was, you know,
it was a reaction to that, and then this entire
campaign right like all of the stuff that he's talking
about here, you know, this is about twenty twenty, right,
this is about reversing the gains that had beened, you know,

(37:20):
and like obviously they were incomplete gains. One of the
things that did happen was that a bunch of teachers
were trying to change the way the US history is
taught to reflect that this country was like again a
settler colonial empire built by slave labor, and you know
that that expanded its territory through genocide, which is just
this is just objectively true about how the US started.
But the thing is, like that's not good for you know,

(37:42):
these people's projects, right, Like saying that out loud is
a fucking issue for them. And so you know, their
their attempt to roll back everything that was gained from
sort of the Black uprisings is culminating all of this
shit with like the purge of black workers for the
federal government, with all of these things ordering you to
and like that's why they're talking about all these weird
all they keep banning all these weird like terms that

(38:03):
don't make any sense, Like we were talking about like empathy, right,
So like okay, so why the fuck are they talking
about banning empathy? Yeah, because specifically these things come from
the purges they've been trying to do in the education system,
where they have a bunch of very specific grievances about
like kinds of education stuff that teachers, the teachers were implementing,
particularly in sort of like middle and high schools.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Well, I'm going to close here with two pieces of
breaking news. One, Like, earlier today we learned that the
NAH has finally has finally acknowledged that the grant funding
freeze is illegal. And this is probably like due to
pressure from like news coverage about all of the temporary
restraining order violations through the continued freezing of funds, and

(38:44):
now the NIH is saying because of these orders, we
will resume funding. The first tro was like two weeks ago,
on February first, So it's not like like they just
learned about this. It's that they have in some ways
like perhaps caved to pressure. Again, like these executive orders
do not enforce themselves, These are enforced by people at agencies.

(39:05):
These things do do not do not become automatically enforced.
So this is this is like one one step. Now
you can go to a popular dot info who has
been breaking the news on this specifically, and then some
some breaking news that I have here on drop site
quote unquote armored Tesla forecast estimated to win four hundred

(39:26):
million dollars of State Department contract funds. What So, this
could go one of two ways. This could either go
a really funny way, Yeah it's gonna shay, or it
could go a really sad way.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah I do. I do like the idea of a
lot of Trump appointees being in Tesla's that are armored.
When the batteries catch and maybe the jaws of life
can't cut through those, You know yep, yep.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
Yeah it was. This is very funny because Trump went
off on a on a contangent about electric tank horrible
idea campaign trail a couple of times.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Horrible idea.

Speaker 5 (40:00):
Yeah, well he's had he's had to come to Jesus
moment and he has changed his mind and he wants
a more sustainable sure beast as they call it.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
What everyone always says, the problem with tanks is is
that they don't explode enough when hit by munitions.

Speaker 6 (40:13):
Or by themselves when not hit by being by themselves,
just because batteries do that sometimes. Yes, yeah, you never
know what you're going to get.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
I'm excited. This is going to make everything a lot
safer for our our our men and women in Greenland.

Speaker 5 (40:27):
I'm guessing. Yeah, batteries.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Batteries thrive in the cold, red, white and blue lip.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
I do love the new m one a whatever seven
abrams that gets four miles on a chart. Yeah, and
then again, detonates wait six months to use a solar
panel to field recharge place where it doesn't get light
for six months. Yea magnificent upwards of ten miles a year.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Yes, yep, all right, Well that is it for us
today on Uh, it could Happen Here? James Things. Do
you want to talk about the tip line again?

Speaker 6 (40:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (40:59):
Yeah, So everybody, we have an email where you can
reach out to us if you have things that you
think we should be reporting on. It is a proton mail.
That doesn't mean that it's super secure. It simply means
it's sent to end encrypted. If you send from a
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(41:22):
that you think we should be reporting on, things that
you've seen that you think you'd like to draw to
our attention to that email address. We will try our
best to get through all of those. We've been getting
a lot of tips. Please don't take a personally. We
don't get back to you, but we do appreciate you
or reaching out.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
We reported the net.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on me,
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