Podcasts about so trump

So Trump and Iran's president have at last come to terms, jointly signing a Memorandum of Understanding that 'solidifies', if that's not too strong a word, the de facto ceasefire between the US and Iran that stretches back some 16 weeks. It's the shakiest of peace deals, not least because key issues like charging shipping tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz have been 'kicked down the road' for two months, but most are surprised to see the US accept the first of the document's 14...

So Trump is going to the NBA Finals tonight, tickets are ridiculous, people pissed they gotta get there early. Also, is our boss our boss still? What's his title? Do we wanna ask to find out? If you're the high school football coach who invented the long pvc pipe with holes for drinking, please let us know, we wanna give you credit hahaha Headlines with Paige stroking out not once but twice lol

So Trump went to China and achieved...nothing! May 15th is Nakba day and the third year in a row that we commemorate this day during a genocide that Palestinians say is worse than the 1948 catastrophe.  Meanwhile, here at home, ICE finds itself in a legal morass as its kidnappings are deemed illegal. But that isn't stopping them from trying to get in on the good ole fashioned 'Murican tradition of slavery.  Also...It's our 300th episode! The world has arguably gotten worse since we first started doing this show. But as we like to say, the world may be fucked but all the people we love are doing beautiful things. Thanks for being here - onwards and upwards to rattle thrones and topple empires.    leecamp.net artfromgaza.com  

Americans are not crying out for some cinematic march to military glory in Iran. They want this thing brought to an end, and they want it ended before it turns into another endless Middle East war with no clear objective, no clean finish, and no honest accounting of the cost. Polling has consistently shown more opposition than support for the war, broad disapproval of Trump's handling of it, and very little appetite for deeper escalation like sending ground troops. What is making that frustration worse is all the confusion that's coming from Trump himself.“The city of confusion is broken down: every house is shut up, that no man may come in.” Isaiah 24:10 (KJB)On this episode of the Prophecy News Podcast, one day Trump talks like total victory is the only acceptable outcome, the next day he is touting talks, ceasefires, delegations, deadlines, and “deals,” only to pivot back again to threats, seizures, ultimatums, and fresh warnings. Even recent coverage has described his own statements on Iran as conflicting, with diplomacy announced alongside coercive moves that seem to undercut the very negotiations he says he wants. That kind of back-and-forth does not project strength to a weary public; it projects drift, improvisation, and a White House making it up one hour at a time. That is the real political problem. The country as a whole wants the war over, but Trump keeps making contradictory moves that leave everyone guessing what “over” is supposed to mean. Is it regime collapse, a nuclear surrender, a temporary ceasefire, a face-saving treaty, or just another social media post declaring victory before the dust has settled? The broader public may tolerate a negotiated exit if it actually ends the danger, but many of Trump's own supporters are far less likely to accept an outcome that looks like retreat wrapped in dramatic soundbytes. So Trump is now trapped by his own mixed messaging: he has talked too hard to sell a soft landing easily, but he has moved far too erratically to make decisive victory look believable. Today we give you all the updates on the end times events coming out of the Middle East, and the ecumenical revival coming out of the White House.

PLUS: Scott Soracco is a "fighting fifty" Democrat filling an empty ballot slot - but he's aiming to win, JD Vance's poll numbers are on (not in) the couch and GA gubernatorial talk.I've said for years now, the spike in oil and gas prices, and subsequently everything we bought & paid for while Joe Biden wa sin office, was due in large part to one key decision then-President Donald Trump made in 2020. See, then, in April of 2020, while we were all sheltering-in-place and not filling gas tanks, the oil industry was cratering. Many industries were, as you recall, but precious oil had to survive, right? So Trump needled OPEC nations to agree to throttle back production - for two years! (Gift NYT link; enjoy!) That deal lasted through April of 2022, long after his J6 tantrum and exit. Wouldn't you know, inflation only began cooling a month after that deal expired? I revisit this because it's time for Democrats to start reminding people of that deal and to pour cold water on the gaslighting the GOP has gotten away with (and still trots out!) that Trump somehow inherited an affordability crisis when in fact, he sparked it!Once I got that off my chest, I decided to play "pretend," as in "pretend I was on 'NewsNight with Abby Phillip' Monday night as 'cosplay Trump' investment firm CEO Hal Lambert - dressed in Trump suit & tie - played the role of 'Scott Jennings' that night, and needed correcting. Make no mistake: Bakari Sellers, Leigh McGowan and Margaret Donovan, along with Phillip, did a commendable job, but left out a few key barbs I happily supplied in "post-edit." ---Scott Soracco is one of the "Fighting 50" Democratic Georgia candidates who's stepped up to bring voters to the polls for the entire ticket, but hey, it's 2026 - he can actually win State House district 29, so let's hear him out!---Back pretending I'm on the 'NewsNight' set, "we" weigh in on Trump's sacrilegious AI-generated depiction of him as "Doctor Jesus," and MAGA suddenly having issues with faith leaders weighing in on political discussions when it's A) a Catholic (the Pope) and B) contrarian to their worldview. ---Speaking of 'overt political activity,' JD Vance - spending time in Athens, Georgia, this week, also traveling the globe to shill for Viktor Orban likely doesn't help with his poll numbers - per Harry Enten at CNN. ---In the run-up to the Wednesday night WXIA-TV/NextStar Georgia Democratic gubernatorial debate, I instead hovered over Patricia Murphy's latest AJC op/ed, focusing on Rick Jackson v Burt Jones food fight on the right.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: this war in Iran has been a total balls-up from Trump. He's cried wolf three times on his ultimatums. He's said one thing and then in the next breath said exactly the opposite. Now he's talking about ending an entire civilisation. White House officials have described him as being in a 'defiant' mood. Wars aren't generally won on moods, they're won on strategy and execution. The gameplan for Iran has been sorely lacking. Even Nigel Farage says Trump's gone too far with his rhetoric. Tucker Carlson is calling on the military to disobey Trump's orders, refuse to carry out his bombing. The reason this is all for nothing is because Trump could blast Iran's military infrastructure 'till the cows come home and still not get every drone, every speed boat, every regime-loving terrorist out there. And all it takes are a few of them to hold the world to ransom via the Strait. So Trump ups the ante. He talks tough. He threatens to end civilisation. And what have the Iranians done? They've cut off diplomatic talks with the US. Which means we're now in very dangerous territory. Remember for them to win, or claim they've won, all they have to do is survive to live another day. Which leaves Trump either ending an entire civilisation, which he won't do because it could end the world, or backing down. Again. Either way, not a great outcome for a strongman like him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WW3 Update April 2026 The Russia-Ukraine was was a project of the Jews/Neocons. The Jew Zelensky and Jews in the State Department ran the con. Zelensky entices Russia to attack Ukraine in order to protect ethnic Russians. Zelensky ran on a pro-peace platform (like Trump) and immediately shifted to war (like Trump) against Russia. The Iran war, per Trump and Rubio, was initiated by the Jews/Israel because they said “we are going, you better join us.” So Trump did. A war of choice initiated and supported by the Jews and their allies Trump, Rubio, Hegseth and the heretical Judeo-Christian movement in the United States. Russia and China support Iran. The United States supports Israel and the Ukraine. Every country in the Middle-East is getting bombed. Pakistan offers Nukes to Iran. Russia and China provide intelligence to Iran North Koreas sends troops to fight for the Russians. The UK sends troops, intel, and equipment to fight Russians in Ukraine. Iran provides drones to Russia. NATO has collapsed — that was a long time coming. The War with IRAN revealed its bankruptcy, it was not the cause. Calling Trump “deranged” is not too strong of a characterization at this point. Declaring “Allah is Great!” on Easter Sunday? WTF? He campaigned on peace and started a major war. He campaigned against the Pedo-Files, and now is protects the Pedos. He campaigned on mass deportations, but that hasn't gone anywhere. He campaigned against the “deep state,” but has declined to execute. Was Trump a better choice that Harris-Walz? Yes. Do the anti-Christ Jews still rule? Yes. Does America look a lot like Babylon the Great? Yes. Will it have the same ending as Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon? Yes Was the original Babel (The Tower of Babel) an anti-Christ movement? Yes. WW3 is already here. CW2 is coming — America has no sharted identity any more. It is only going to get worse. There is no MAGA. There is no AF. There is Christ is King, everyone else is an imposter. Three Babylons of the Bible: There are three Babylons in the Bible 1) Babel of the Tower of Babel, which God destroyed. 2) Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, which God destroyed. 3) Babylon the Great — which God destroys. The United States bears the aura of these Babylons: • It is multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious • It is exceedingly powerful in the military realm. • It is extraordinarily prosperous — rich. • It erects false idols and says “we are all Americans.” • Exceeding these attributes is America's arrogance. Jesus Christ hates arrogance. Read Jeremiah 50 and 51 to see the destruction of all Babylons. Then read the Revelation 17 and 18 and note the parallels. “Repay her according to her work; according to all that she has done, so do to her. For she has become arrogant against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel.” Jeremiah 50:29 “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit.” Rev 18:2   Fritz Berggren www.bloodandfaith.com  

00:00 So we had a problem with TSA. This should, again, I keep saying this, I know it sounds like a broken record, but this should tell you everything you need to know about the Democrats. 00:12 They do not want a solution to the TSA problem. They don't want ICE there. Because ICE is, I mean, you know what ICE is doing? They're helping with bags. They're helping people get through the line quicker. Lines have been cut down. And what that does is it undermines your pain. And the Democrats need your pain. 00:42 Please understand this. In order for Democrats to get what they want, you have to suffer. 00:52 Can we just understand that for a minute? In order for Democrats to get what they desire, you have to suffer. And this goes with everything. This goes with everything. 01:08 Democrats want illegal aliens taken care of. So therefore you have to suffer. You have to suffer with your taxes. You have to suffer with the high cost of housing. You have to suffer with the high cost of insurance. You have to suffer with the... uh 01:27 with jobs you have to suffer in every aspect of your life what they want makes you suffer 01:38 They don't want their chosen people to suffer. Now they want them subservient. They want them bending the knee to the Democrats, but they don't want them to suffer. You, they want to suffer. Look at what Mondani is doing in New York. mean, just the, oh, look at Virginia. Oh, the suffering has just started in Virginia. Over 50 new taxes, meanwhile they triple. 02:07 The state legislature triples its pay. 02:13 They want you to suffer. Democrats should just put up a billboard. Democrats, we want you to suffer. 02:22 So when solutions are put forward, they don't want them. They don't want these solutions. So Trump comes along and he says, hey, listen, we got a problem with TSA, people waiting four and a half hours in Atlanta, Hartsfield Airport. Let's send some ICE agents there and help these people out. Well, of course, the Democrats started screaming because that alleviates your suffering. 02:49 Now listen to this. This is the district attorney of Philadelphia. I want you to listen to what this guy said. This is how it works. You commit crimes within the jurisdiction that is the city and county of Philadelphia. I prosecute you. That is how it works. No, I don't take a phone call from the president saying let him go. No, the president cannot pardon you. I'll say it again. The president cannot pardon you. And yes. 03:20 I will put you in handcuffs and I will put you in a courtroom and if necessary I will put you in a jail cell. If you decide to make the terrazzo floor of this airport anything like what you did in the streets of Minneapolis, which involved the criminal homicide of unarmed, innocent people, we are not having that here. But let me go back to all ICE agents. 03:48 who are going to keep their oath, who are going to follow the law. And I'll the Constitution of the United States. Thank you for keeping your oath to any agent who might think about doing it in illegal way. I'll be seeing you in court. And you're not going to like it. My gosh. The idiocy of these people. The idiocy of these people. 04:18 There's been zero examples. This is complaining about a problem that hasn't even happened yet. Everybody that I've seen, with very few exception, everybody that I've seen that was interviewed at these airports about ICE agents, they're like, yeah, man, yeah, I like it, I like it. But if you notice a lot fewer people are flying now, have you noticed that? 04:49 Could it be that a lot of illegal aliens were flying? Probably. Probably so. So I like it. I like the fact that ICE agents are there. I wish they'd be there all the time. Maybe all the time. 05:02 So again. 05:07 In order to get what they want, you have to suffer. And they're going to make sure that you suffer. Charlie, during any shutdown, not only should both House and Senate members not get paid, but their ...

Ralph welcomes international human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber to discuss the U.S. and Israel's illegal war on Iran. Then, Ralph speaks to investigative reporter David Cay Johnston about the finances of Donald Trump.Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist, and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York. In October of 2023, he left the United Nations, penning a widely read letter criticizing the UN's human rights failures in the Middle East, warning of unfolding genocide in Gaza, and calling for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on international law, human rights, and equality.Anyone who pays attention knows that Iran wasn't attacked because it has nuclear weapons. It was attacked because it doesn't have nuclear weapons, and was therefore viewed by Israel and the U.S. as being a state that could be overcome militarily. But what really is, I think, most telling about this is the hypocrisy of the claims, because the only party in the region that has stockpiles of nuclear weapons (which are entirely undeclared and unsupervised) is the Israeli regime, not the Iranian. And the Israeli regime was joined in attacking Iran by another nuclear power—the United States.Craig MokhiberIsrael (which has attacked the United Nations throughout its entire life and declared that the United Nations is an anti-Semitic terror organization) fights like hell to stay in the United Nations, pays its dues every year to make sure that it stays in…and renews its treaty obligations as a member of the United Nations (that, of course, it violates with impunity). So it's very funny that Israel calls the UN an anti-Semitic terror organization, yet it insists on being a member and paying its dues to fund that so-called anti-Semitic terror organization.Craig MokhiberI don't think that putting Iran in an existential crisis is the best way to tell them you don't need nuclear weapons. I think stopping attacking them, their economy, their currency, their scientists, their political leaders, their military personnel, their civilians, their girls' schools—if you want a country to believe that it doesn't need to arm itself, this is not the way to go about it.Craig MokhiberDavid Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, specialist in economics and tax issues, and a professor of practice teaching law, public policy, and journalism at Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including The Making of Donald Trump and It's Even Worse Than You Think: What The Trump Administration Is Doing To America. He is also the co-founder of DCReport, a nonprofit news service that reports what the President and Congress DO, not what they SAY.Convicting Donald Trump of tax fraud would be very easy. You establish these corporations [reporting major losses] don't exist. You establish that he took tax losses from these multiple corporations (in all, about 60 entries over the six years of tax returns). And there's no defense for that. It's flat-out fraud. It's blatant fraud. So Trump has gotten away with this because we don't seriously treat high-level tax fraud in this country.David Cay JohnstonNews 3/20/26* Our top story this week concerns a new study titled “Inequality, not regulation, drives America's housing affordability crisis.” As summarized in Hell Gate, this study demonstrates that the precipitous rise in rent prices are not primarily the result of insufficient housing supply or of vacancy rates. Moreover, contrary to the claims of the so-called Abundance movement, reducing regulations to spur new construction is unlikely to create significantly more housing. Even if it did, that would probably fail to bring down rents, because the real cause of the rental spike is “Steep national inequality.” So, what can be done to bring down rents? Maximilian Buchholz, the lead author of the study, puts it bluntly in this interview: “rent control, tenant protection policies like just cause eviction, and income supports for people toward the bottom.” Simply put, the best policies to lower rents are policies that lower rents. This has been demonstrated time and time again in different policy areas, yet on the whole, Democrats still seem to prefer byzantine policy formulae instead of straightforward policy solutions to the glaring issues facing the American people. * Speaking of rising costs, Washingtonian magazine is out with a new story on the Washington Post hiking prices for subscribers. Yet apparently not all subscribers are created equal. According to this story, these increases are accompanied by a simple yet insidious message: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.” This is the latest deployment of what has become known as algorithmic – or “surveillance” – pricing. This piece notes other examples of surveillance pricing, ranging from the Princeton Review charging more for the same SAT tutoring package in areas with higher Asian populations (they called it the “tiger mom tax”) to Amazon charging local school districts vastly different prices for the same supplies. However, this new policy from the Post is especially brazen given the straits the paper has recently found itself in, declining by a million subscribers between 2021 and 2026 and hemorrhaging key reporters to a new rival paper sponsored by Robert Albritton, including Dana Milbank, Jeff Stein, Paul Kane and Paige Cunningham, among others, per the Hill.* In more media news, Variety reports that ratings for CBS Evening News are cratering, falling back to where executives at the news division behind the show “hoped never to return.” The nightly news program, anchored by Tony Dokoupil, has fallen below 4 million viewers; when the previous iteration of the program anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson fell to this nadir, Paramount Skydance pulled the plug. While this is perhaps just a symptom of the collapse of cable news, Variety notes that ABC's “World News Tonight,” averaged nearly 8 and a half million viewers and “NBC Nightly News” scored just over 6 and half million. Dokoupil did score a slight uptick in viewership when he took over the Evening News, but that seems to have been nothing more than a flash in the pan. This pathetic showing seems to confirm what seemed obvious all along: there is simply little audience for the editorial viewpoint espoused by CBS's new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.* The bad news for Bari doesn't end there, either. According to the Wrap, the new chief is locked in contentious negotiations with the unionized staff of CBS, specifically the 60-person unit behind the network's streaming service, “CBS News 24/7.” These workers staged a 24 hour walkout earlier this week. Their grievances include everything from new grueling 12-hour weekend shifts – despite no weekend-specific live programming – as well as CBS News' reported plans to lay off 15% of staff. CBS News already laid off roughly 100 people in October after Paramount merged with Skydance and many believe more layoffs will come if the merger with CNN, which is not unionized, goes through as part of the Paramount Warner Bros. deal.* In other news, a recent study reveals a fascinating disconnect between the self-description of Democrats and their policy preferences. The study, conducted on behalf of the New Republic by Embold Research, gave respondents five choices to describe their ideology: conservative, moderate, moderate-to-liberal, liberal, and progressive. Only 12% identified as moderate, but another 21% called themselves moderate-to-liberal. Yet, among this combined group, approximately 70% said Democrats are “too timid” on taxing the rich and corporations, and cracking down on corporate criminals. Fewer than 5% of moderates said Democrats are “too aggressive” on these issues. In a word, even the moderates among the Democratic base think the party should take a more strident economic populist line. This tracks with polling conducted during the Texas Democratic Senate primary which found that 47% of voters who identified as socialists also identified as moderates.* Our next several stories this week have to do with the intersection of foreign policy and energy. The AP reports that on Tuesday, Cuba reconnected its energy grid following a 29-hour long nationwide blackout. This story notes that this reconnection will only provide scant and temporary relief, because not enough power is being generated. The energy crisis in Cuba has gotten progressively worse since the beginning of the year, as the new government in Venezuela and the newly reinforced sanctions regime have both served to cut off the island from energy imports. That said, cracks in this blockade are beginning to form. Bloomberg reports that a “tanker carrying more than 700,000 barrels of Russian crude is expected to arrive in Cuba by the end of the month,” and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced that her administration is “looking into different possibilities” to resume fuel shipments to Cuba as well. Sheinbaum stressed that Mexico is “sovereign” and able to “have trade agreements with any country in the world,” per the Latin Times. The U.S. government has already eased sanctions on Russian oil sales to India, but has now announced that they will not allow the Russians to send oil to Cuba, per Bloomberg. As the ship is already on its way, it is an open question of how far the U.S. will go to prevent Russia from sending lifesaving resources to the country that has held out against American pressure for so long.* Next, a stunning story in the Wall Street Journal documents how the Trump administration settled on their final course of action in Venezuela. According to this piece, the Central Intelligence Agency consulted former Chevron executive Ali Moshiri, described as the oil company's man in “Man in Venezuela—and a CIA Informant.” Apparently, Moshiri warned that if the U.S. government tried to oust the Chavista government of Nicolás Maduro and install María Corina Machado and her exile comrades in its place, the country would turn into “another quagmire like Iraq.” Moshiri specifically warned that Machado did not have the support of the country's security services or control of its oil infrastructure. For their part, Chevron issued a statement claiming that “between spring of 2025 and the removal of Maduro, Chevron did not authorize anyone working for, or on behalf of, the company to engage with the CIA related to Venezuela's leadership, including assessments of government officials or opposition leaders.” Moshiri, formally left Chevron in 2017 and ended his consulting relationship with the company in 2024. Unlike many other oil companies, Chevron maintained a presence in Venezuela over the years, positioning the company to benefit most from the new extraction political environment under the leadership of upjumped Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.* Meanwhile, a story from NOTUS highlights why this kind of outside advice is likely more heeded than ever in the halls of power: the publication reports that six months ago, the State Department under the leadership of Secretary Marco Rubio, fired its in-house oil and gas experts, including laying off staff who “would have been responsible for gaming out possible scenarios if the Strait of Hormuz was closed” and “staffers with close professional relationships at oil and gas companies in the Middle East and experts tasked with maintaining diplomatic contacts at foreign energy bureaus.” This is a final nail in the coffin for the misguided logic of Elon Musk's DOGE initiative and serves as a crystal clear example of why it is so dangerous to purge experts with significant institutional knowledge from the federal bureaucracy.* Another consequence of this lack of diplomatic expertise is the ultimate cost to the taxpayer – $200 billion in additional Pentagon funding, to be exact, per CNBC. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, defending the request in typically childish terms, said “It takes money to kill bad guys.” In similarly childish terms, President Trump, asked why the Pentagon is seeking so much money, said, “We're asking for a lot of reasons,” and while he told a reporter he would not send U.S. troops to the region, he added, “If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you.” Beyond the flippant attitude towards the immense sums of taxpayer money they are requesting from Congress, to say nothing of the cost in American and Iranian lives, the American people would do well to remember how casually the political class treats $200 billion when it is to be spent on war instead of social programs. All this as gas prices spike, with price increases rippling out to all other consumer goods.* Finally, the BBC reports a Belgian court has ruled that a former diplomat, Etienne Davignon, can stand trial in connection with the 1961 killing of Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Davignon, 93, is the “only surviving member of the 10 Belgians accused in a criminal case brought by Lumumba's family in 2011.” At the time, Davignon was a diplomat in training. He would go on to become a vice-president of the European Commission. Lumumba meanwhile was ousted in a Belgian and U.S.-backed coup led by Mobutu Sese Seko, who would rule Congo (renamed Zaire) until 1997. In 1961, Lumumba was executed by a Belgian-backed Congolese firing squad and his body was dissolved in acid. Lumumba's grandson, Mehdi Lumumba, is quoted saying “We are all relieved…Belgium is finally confronting its history.” Many have remarked that while this has taken over 50 years, it sets a powerful precedent that justice can be found even after so many decades. Many of the war criminals that walk the Earth today are far younger than Mr. Davignon.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, an in-depth investigatory show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (3/6/26). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");   Rumble("play", {"video":"v74k5oa","div":"rumble_v74k5oa"}); Video Source Links (In Chronological Order): (20) Karin Sochor Mag. on X: "@realtrumpstein https://t.co/7RRdWxv47T" / X Sinister Donald Trump Plot to Steal Thomas Massie's Staff Revealed Zorro Ranch & Jeffrey Epstein Investigation - New Mexico Department of Justice (20) New Mexico Department of Justice on X: "We are taking a broad and comprehensive look at Zorro Ranch–related matters and working alongside the truth commission and law enforcement partners. We will follow the facts and keep the public informed. https://t.co/FXoCKBZGeG" / X Feds asked New Mexico to halt Jeffrey Epstein Zorro Ranch sex trafficking probe, records show (20) Polymarket on X: "JUST IN: US House votes 357-65 to block release of congressional sexual misconduct reports." / X (20) The Last American Vagabond on X: "The archive (since it is now changed): https://t.co/pnt16bwRSW" / X (20) The Last American Vagabond on X: "@RepThomasMassie Here is the archive: https://t.co/pnt16bwRSW" / X (100) Truth Details | Truth Social Truth Details | Truth Social (20) DL Cummings (LibertyDad) on X: "@CassandraRules This was known before he was elected. Watch through the end. https://t.co/wMXZMCLdVT" / X (20) Matt Walsh on X: "“No trans surgery for children without parental consent” is meaningless. The kids who are mutilated almost always have parental consent. The consent of the parents is not the issue. The issue is that the procedure is barbaric and insane, no matter if parents agree to it or not. https://t.co/ks6MUTWw1c" / X (20) VernAcular on X: "@Villgecrazylady @march4progress So Trump can fund the Ukraine war that he isn't ‘technically' funding." / X (20) The Last American Vagabond on X: "What a day MAGA is having." / X DOJ quietly shelves Biden autopen investigation that Trump demanded (21) Five Times August on X: "“Gitmo!” “We have everything!” “All will be revealed!” “We caught ‘em!” “FAFO!” “4D chess!” “5D chess!” “Trust the plan!” “He plays the long game!” “Patience!”

This week we talk about Trump's tariffs, the Supreme Court, and negotiating leverage.We also discuss trade wars, Greenland, and the IEEPA.Recommended Book: Smoke and Ashes by Amitav GhoshTranscriptI've spoken on this show before about tariffs and about US President Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs as an underpinning of his trade policy. Last October, back in 2025 I did an episode on tariff leverage and why the concept of an ongoing trade war is so appealing to Trump—it basically gives him a large whammy on anyone he enters negotiations with, because the US market is massive and everyone wants access to it, and tariffs allow him to bring the hammer down on anyone he doesn't like, or who doesn't kowtow in what he deems to be an appropriate manner.So he can slap a large tariff on steel or pharmaceuticals or cars from whichever country he likes just before he enters negotiations with that country, and then those negotiations open with him in an advantageous spot: they have to give him things just to get those tariffs to go away—they have to negotiate just to get things back to square one.That's how it's supposed to work, anyway. What we talked about a bit back in October is TACO theory, TACO standing for Trump Always Chickens Out—the idea is that other world leaders had gotten wise to Trump's strategy, which hasn't changed since his first administration, and he has mostly been a doubling-down on that one, primary approach, to the point that they can step into these negotiations, come up with something to give him that allows him to claim that he's won, to make it look like he negotiated well, and then they get things back down to a more reasonable level; maybe not square one, but not anything world-ending, and not anything they weren't prepared and happy to give up.In some cases, though, instead of kowtowing in this way so that Trump can claim a victory, whether or not a victory was actually tallied, some countries and industries and the businesses that make up those industries have simply packed up their ball and gone home.China has long served as a counterbalance to the US in terms of being a desirable market and a hugely influential player across basically every aspect of geopolitics and the global economy, and this oppositional, antagonistic approach to trade has made the US less appealing as a trade partner, and China more appealing in comparison.So some of these entities have negotiated to a level where they could still ship their stuff to the US and US citizens would still be willing to pay what amounts to an extra tax on all these goods, because that's how tariffs work, that fee is paid by the consumers, not by the businesses or the origin countries, but others have given up and redirected their goods to other places. And while that's a big lift sometimes, the persistence of this aggression and antagonism has made it a worthwhile investment for many of these entities, because the US has become so unpredictable and unreliable that it's just not worth the headache anymore.What I'd like to talk about today is a recent Supreme Court decision related to Trump's tariffs, and what looks likely to happen next, in the wake of that ruling.—Ever since Trump stepped back into office for his second term, in January of 2025, he has aggressively instilled new and ever-growing tariffs on basically everyone, but on some of the US's most important trade partners, like Mexico and Canada, in particular.These tariffs have varied and compounded, and they've applied to strategic goods that many US presidents have tried to hobble in various ways, favoring US-made versions of steel and microchips, for instance, so that local makers of these things have an advantage over their foreign-made alternatives, or have a more balanced shot against alternatives made in parts of the world where labor is cheaper and standards are different.But this new wave of tariffs were broad based, hitting everyone to some degree, and that pain was often taken away, at least a little, after leaders kowtowed, at times even giving him literal gold-plated gifts in order to curry favor, and/or funneling money into his family's private companies and other interests, allowing him to use these tariffs as leverage for personal gain, not just national advantage, in other cases giving him what at least looked outwardly to be a negotiating win.Things spiraled pretty quickly by mid-2025, when China pushed back against these tariffs, adding their own reciprocal tariffs on US goods, and at one point extra duties on Chinese imports coming into the US hit 145%.Shortly thereafter, though, and here we see that TACO acronym proving true, once again, Trump agreed to slash these tariffs for 90 days, and around the same time, in May of 2025, a federal appeals court temporarily reinstated some of Trump's largest-scale tariffs after a lower court ruled that they couldn't persist.The remainder of 2025 was a story of Trump trying to strike individual deals with a bunch of trade partners, like South Korea, Indonesia, and India, in some cases via direct negotiation, in others with a bunch of threats that eventually led to a sort of mutual standoff that no one was particularly happy about.2026 was greeted with a threat by Trump to impose a huge wave of new tariffs on eight major European allies, those tariffs sticking around until these nations agreed to allow the US to buy Greenland, which was an obsession of Trump's at that point, but a lot of Trump's tariff posturing was derailed by a Supreme Court decision that landed in mid-February, in which the justices decided, 6 to 3, that Trump's reciprocal tariffs are unconstitutional, as setting and changing tariffs is a Congressional power, not a Presidential one.This was a serious blow to Trump and his stated policies, as pretty much all of his economic plans oriented around the idea—which most economists have said is bunk and based on fantasy, not reality, but still—that putting a bunch of tariffs on everything will allow the US to earn so much additional revenue that the deficit can be paid down.It's worth noting here that, just as those economists predicted, the deficit has only gotten larger under both Trump administrations, and in fact the growth of the US debt has sped up, not declined, despite the additional billions being pulled into government coffers by these tariffs, because the Trump administration's spending is massive, and because the losses related to tariffs are also significant. But tariffs remain center to his policy nonetheless, so this was a major blow.This ruling also seemed likely to defang a lot of Trump's threats and drain his leverage at the negotiating table, as he could no longer threaten everyone with more tariffs, practically booting them from or weakening them on the US market.So Trump was pissed, and as he tends to do, he publicly raged about the decision, which was made by a Supreme Court that is heavily stacked in his favor; which gives an indication of just how unpopular and unconstitutional all of this has been.But immediately after that decision landed, he announced that, using alternative authorities—different powers—he would be imposing a blanket 10% tariff on everything coming into the US, and the following day announced that it would be a 15% tariff on everything, instead.This does seem to be something Trump has the power to do, but he can only do it under the auspices of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and these tariffs will only last for 150 days, max, and might also be challenged in court.Also notably, some entities, like Britain and Australia, will face higher rates than they faced under the previous tariff setup, because of how they are applied and compound with other trade barriers, or the nature of what they export to the US market, while others, including China, will see their tariffs substantially drop.Which could make things tricky, as that implies some of the previously negotiated deals have changed post-deal, or in some cases mid-negotiation; which means a lot more work to get things where everyone wants them, but also a loss of legitimacy and credibility for this administration, as they seem to be negotiating using powers they don't actually have and making promises they can't keep.All of which, rather than simplifying and clarifying things for the US market and our international trade partners, actually further complicates them, at least for now, until the dust settles.It does seem likely Trump's administration will continue to try to leverage whatever power they can in this matter, grabbing at levers that haven't been previously used, or used in this way, and those attempts will almost certainly be legally challenged, which could lead to more court cases, and a lot more uncertainty in the meantime, until those cases are figured it.It's also created new rifts within the Republican party, as Trump seems to be going after those who voted against his tariffs, or in any other way supported their removal, and he's raged against the Supreme Court justices, even those he put into place and who are ideologically aligned with the Republican party almost always, which could also lead to more fracturing within his base, leading up to the November 2026 Congressional elections.One more thing that's worth noting here is that Trump's usual tactic of trying to distract from things he doesn't want people to pay attention to is in full operation following this court case: as all this has been happening, and against the backdrop of increasingly serious allegations related to his abundant presence in the Epstein files, he's been talking more about potentially attacking Iran and releasing files on aliens, on extraterrestrials on Earth and in the US.So we're likely to see a lot more of that sort of thing in the coming months, especially if things continue to not go his way in regards to these tariffs and the hubbub surrounding them, but this story will shape global and US economics for years to come, not to mention on-the-ground realities for many people today, which should substantially impact Trump's popularity and voter behavior come November.Show Noteshttps://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/supreme-court-trump-energy-tariffshttps://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/trump-tariff-plan-section-122-trade-acthttps://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/trump-scotus-tariff-refund-battlehttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/business/economy/trump-tariffs-trade-war.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/business/trump-tariffs-japan-indonesia.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-tariffs-takeaways.htmlhttps://apnews.com/live/supreme-court-tariff-ruling-updateshttps://www.bbc.com/news/live/c0l9r67drg7thttps://heatmap.news/economy/clean-energy-tariff-rulinghttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/20/us/trump-tariffs-supreme-courthttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/supreme-court-blocks-trumps-emergency-tariffs-billions-in-refunds-may-be-owed/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/20/what-will-happen-to-trump-tariffs-after-supreme-court-verdicthttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/business/economy/tariffs-supreme-court-global-busines-reaction.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/business/trump-deminimis-loophole-closed.htmlhttps://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-5b34aa80-2020-453a-bef1-8cf648e9b3c3.htmlhttps://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/trump-tariff-plan-section-122-trade-acthttps://www.scotusblog.com/2026/02/supreme-court-strikes-down-tariffs/https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-supreme-court-tariffs-ieepa-john-roberts-brett-kavanaugh-90daf559https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdfhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/us/politics/supreme-court-tariffs-conservatives.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/economy/u-s-manufacturing-is-in-retreat-and-trumps-tariffs-arent-helping-d2af4316https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-scotus-ruling-updatehttps://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications/fis-import/92fb3f30-07b8-4dcf-b2bc-fbefb831f1a1-KPB201_EN.pdfhttps://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-imposes-a-temporary-import-duty-to-address-fundamental-international-payment-problems/https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tariff-refunds-supreme-court-trump-rcna259968https://www.wsj.com/opinion/its-the-end-of-the-beginning-of-the-tariff-war-88a08d37https://www.axios.com/2026/02/21/trump-tariff-supreme-court-increasehttps://www.axios.com/2026/02/21/alien-files-conspiracy-theories-usa This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

SEASON 4 EPISODE 9: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Of course Trump’s not dead. On the other hand, how could you really TELL? But this much is clear: He’s never voluntarily STFU for five days before in his effing life. And how could his own White House have possibly made it look MORE like he was dead! Or is desperately ill. Or had surgery. Or is having surgery. Or… what? They maximized the ways that conspiracy theories could build – including that 3-1/2 hour Cabinet Meeting/Comedy Roast/Dear Leader Circle Jerk last week. If that didn’t look like a farewell event I don’t know what could. I don't know what's really going on and YOU don't know what's really going on and America doesn't know what's really going on (except that the media has completely dropped the ball, not even covering the rumors let alone providing solid information). But there are lots of provable facts in the last five days of Trump MIA that might explain what's going on at a White House that couldn't manage radio silence. PLUS: Trump's desire to boast about the Covid vaccine, the hallucinations of Kristi Noem and Bobby "What Kind of Mitochondria Are You Wearing" Kennedy, the solution to baseball's Tommy John Surgery crisis that isn't a crisis, and a farewell to the beloved Mrs. Weiner. B-Block (32:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: As soon as the staff of Vanity Fair threatened to walk off if they put Melania Trump on the cover, she leaked a story to the NY Post that she didn't have time to be on their stupid cover anyway (she was on it in 2017). Candace Owens is back and now blaming the Minnesota school shooting on the government bid to take away your guns. So Trump is trying to take away your guns? And expanding kinda late into 9/11 trutherism, nitwit fascist Tucker Carlson gets the YEAR that 9/11 happened, wrong. C-Block (43:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTSBALL CENTER: So another all-star baseball pitcher, Randy Rodriguez, needs Tommy John Surgery. So baseball is back with preposterous solutions to the "crisis" of too many such surgeries. I'll offer two rules changes that would really do the job, but more importantly I would suggest that Tommy John Surgery is one of the most positive improvements in baseball in the last 60 years. The same percentage of pitchers get injured as they did in 1965, only in 1965 there was nothing to do when they tore up their elbow, shoulder, or anything else.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After working through this week’s Pray for China cities (4:28), we jump into the topic of the day: Are Chinese students all spies? (19:05). Lastly, some stories about teaching in China (50:00). Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. Follow me (@chinaadventures) on Twitter/X where I post new/unique Chinese city prayer profiles every single day. Also, you can email me any questions or comments (bfwesten at gmail dot com) and find everything else, including my books, at PrayGiveGo.us! NEW! RSS Feed to add show on iTunes: https://app.dropwave.io/feed/show/china-compass Pray for China Interceding for all the Cities of China PrayforChina.us Pray for China places of the week (Or, follow @chinaadventures daily…) https://chinacall.substack.com/p/pray-for-china-sep-1-7-2025 So Trump promised to welcome 600k Chinese students into United States universities and Christian political commentator, Steve Deace, is not amused. Here's his show from last week… No, It's Not 'America First' to Import 600,000 SPIES | 8/26/25 (7:09-7:56, 14:14-29:50) https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-8bbvi-2732e521 First, I love the Steve Deace Show for many reasons, but the ignorant takes (in the literal, not name-calling, sense) on China is not one of them: “Half a million Chinese spies getting into top universities.” “Importing 600,000 Chinese Communists. . . to preserve (financially) [our already communist and subsidized] universities?” “Less than 1,000 (US students in China)*, because apparently they care more about their institutions and culture than we do.” “How ‘bout: we don't take any Chicoms, and we make [American universities] take and train [our] students instead, and tell them they are going to lose all taxpayer funding and subsidies if they don't.” “[Make American universities great again], instead of depots for Chinese Communists.” *False: http://en.moe.gov.cn/news/press_releases/201904/t20190418_378586.html Now, before I explain more, it's worth noting in agreement that opening the door to so many foreign students is probably bad for America, just not for some of the more common reasons given (ie, Chinese students are all spies). So, are Chinese students spies? Listen to the podcast for my answers... One final quote from Steve Deace: “I cannot imagine there is a single listener or viewer to this program anywhere in America who thinks if we follow through on this, that it would be a net positive for the country. . . 0.0.” In response, here was my (unsuccessful) submission via Twitter/X to the show's Buy, Sell, or Hold segment the following day: “In the long run, the lesser number of Chinese Christian students who study in the US (some in places like NSA in Moscow, ID), will have a greater impact than the larger number of "normie" Chinese students who are blackmailed into being pro-CCP hacks.” What say you? Feel free to opine on X, or shoot me an email: bfwesten at gmail dot com Subscribe to China Compass and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Follow us on Twitter/X (@chinaadventures), and find much more @ PrayGiveGo.us. Luke 10, verse 2, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Talk again soon!

After working through this week’s Pray for China cities (4:28), we jump into the topic of the day: Are Chinese students all spies? (19:05). Lastly, some stories about teaching in China (50:00). Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. Follow me (@chinaadventures) on Twitter/X where I post new/unique Chinese city prayer profiles every single day. Also, you can email me any questions or comments (bfwesten at gmail dot com) and find everything else, including my books, at PrayGiveGo.us! NEW! RSS Feed to add show on iTunes: https://app.dropwave.io/feed/show/china-compass Pray for China Interceding for all the Cities of China PrayforChina.us Pray for China places of the week (Or, follow @chinaadventures daily…) https://chinacall.substack.com/p/pray-for-china-sep-1-7-2025 So Trump promised to welcome 600k Chinese students into United States universities and Christian political commentator, Steve Deace, is not amused. Here's his show from last week… No, It's Not 'America First' to Import 600,000 SPIES | 8/26/25 (7:09-7:56, 14:14-29:50) https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-8bbvi-2732e521 First, I love the Steve Deace Show for many reasons, but the ignorant takes (in the literal, not name-calling, sense) on China is not one of them: “Half a million Chinese spies getting into top universities.” “Importing 600,000 Chinese Communists. . . to preserve (financially) [our already communist and subsidized] universities?” “Less than 1,000 (US students in China)*, because apparently they care more about their institutions and culture than we do.” “How ‘bout: we don't take any Chicoms, and we make [American universities] take and train [our] students instead, and tell them they are going to lose all taxpayer funding and subsidies if they don't.” “[Make American universities great again], instead of depots for Chinese Communists.” *False: http://en.moe.gov.cn/news/press_releases/201904/t20190418_378586.html Now, before I explain more, it's worth noting in agreement that opening the door to so many foreign students is probably bad for America, just not for some of the more common reasons given (ie, Chinese students are all spies). So, are Chinese students spies? Listen to the podcast for my answers... One final quote from Steve Deace: “I cannot imagine there is a single listener or viewer to this program anywhere in America who thinks if we follow through on this, that it would be a net positive for the country. . . 0.0.” In response, here was my (unsuccessful) submission via Twitter/X to the show's Buy, Sell, or Hold segment the following day: “In the long run, the lesser number of Chinese Christian students who study in the US (some in places like NSA in Moscow, ID), will have a greater impact than the larger number of "normie" Chinese students who are blackmailed into being pro-CCP hacks.” What say you? Feel free to opine on X, or shoot me an email: bfwesten at gmail dot com Subscribe to China Compass and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Follow us on Twitter/X (@chinaadventures), and find much more @ PrayGiveGo.us. Luke 10, verse 2, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Talk again soon!

SEASON 4 EPISODE 7: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: So WTF with Trump's health? Is he dying? Or is he fine? Clearly, there is a Donald Trump health crisis. What is its exact nature? Is he sick? Is he fine? Is there some acceptable explanation for his swollen face and narrowed eyes last shown publicly on Friday? And what does the enlarged left hand mean? And what does the bruised right one covered in make up MEAN? And are those ballooned engorged ankles as benign as claimed by the latest doctor, Captain Barbabella? Is the president of the United States – whoever he is, whatever we think of him - gravely ill? Would they tell us if he were? Would they tell… HIM? No, no, it’s all just “chronic venous insufficiency." Not serious. When we saw him Friday he looked like he'd just changed out of a hospital gown. And behind these questions – why is the national news media still giving the clear decline in Trump’s appearance and clarity and likely in his physical health less attention than the irrelevancy that is Biden’s cognition level from LAST YEAR? Lost in the Trumpstein cover-up, the Ghislaine Maxwell hostage video, Trump’s planned terrorism in Chicago, the John Bolton raid – Trump's face was so puffy – even for HIM - that his eyes looked like slits, barely open. Right hand with a contusion, clear tape, what could have been traces of blood near the fingers, running from the thumb through the middle finger and up, under the shirtsleeve, badly covered in make-up. Left hand so swollen it looked like something they’d draw for a cartoon character: the BASE of those fingers 40 or 50 percent larger than the ends and his ability to use the hand clearly impaired enough to make him hesitate. And we didn’t see the ankles this time. We saw them when he was in Alaska with Putin and they were wider than his feet. Last time he only lied about his health on every topic from getting a colonoscopy to nearly getting intubated for Covid. Before that his personal doctor said everything except 'he's immortal' then confessed Trump dictated the statement. What's going on? PLUS: Trump’s latest terrorist invasion will be of Chicago is about Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, just like LA was about Gavin Newsom, just like DC was about a Democratic local government, just like New York will be about Zohran Mamdani. And it’s all unconstitutional and more of the Trump dictatorship – unchallenged. And what, the Epstein Files were in John Bolton’s house? So Trump’s cult is going to believe ONE of Ghislaine Maxwell's 750 lies but not the other 749? B-Block (29:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Live in Washington, Pam Bondi reveals she thinks she's in Miami. A confidante of NYC Mayor Eric Adams gives a reporter cash wrapped up in a potato chip bag. And the Cracker Barrel protestors prove they'll eat anything as long as you call them Crackers. C-Block (45:30) SPORTSBALLCENTER/THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It is the greatest document ever written in the English language. Well, at least the greatest sports document. It is so amazing that for a long time, historians doubted it was real. It's called "Special Instructions To Players" and they had to read it, sign it, and hand it back because it was about banning them for life for excessive profanity. And there sure is excessive profanity! And I am going to read it to you.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So Trump and Putin are meeting in Alaska on Friday. Are we on the brink of peace in Ukraine or another mess? I wish I could be more optimistic.The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. Support the show

Donald Trump's base is fleeing from him and turning against him as a result of his pathetic flip-flop on releasing the Epstein files.So Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have come up with an absurd scheme to try to mitigate the damage: release the Epstein grand jury transcripts.Here's the problem: the transcripts have been in the possession of the Department of Justice for years and Bondi undoubtedly knows every word contained in those transcripts. Does anyone really think that Trump would tell Bondi to seek the release of those transcripts if there was anything incriminating about him in those transcripts?Glenn does a deep dive into how federal prosecutors investigate and indict criminal cases using the grand jury, and exposes why this latest Trump/Bondi "big reveal" is all for show.For nightly live Law Talks, please join Glenn on Substack: glennkirschner.substack.comIf you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Donald Trump's base is fleeing from him and turning against him as a result of his pathetic flip-flop on releasing the Epstein files.So Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have come up with an absurd scheme to try to mitigate the damage: release the Epstein grand jury transcripts.Here's the problem: the transcripts have been in the possession of the Department of Justice for years and Bondi undoubtedly knows every word contained in those transcripts. Does anyone really think that Trump would tell Bondi to seek the release of those transcripts if there was anything incriminating about him in those transcripts?Glenn does a deep dive into how federal prosecutors investigate and indict criminal cases using the grand jury, and exposes why this latest Trump/Bondi "big reveal" is all for show.For nightly live Law Talks, please join Glenn on Substack: glennkirschner.substack.comIf you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Big news! The Trump4Sale shop next door to the Office of the President, has just issued an exciting new product: “Trump Fragrance.” Yes, it's officially-certified Trump perfume, allowing you and your loved ones to reek of the essence of The Donald—only $249 for a 3-ounce bottle.I wondered, with so much going on, why is he busy hawking perfume? But then I saw nearly every congressional Republican cravenly cave in to White House demands that they approve Trump's truly stinky budget plan. Ah-ha! They are the perfume's target market! Voting to slash food and health care funding for poor families, just so those dollars can be lavished on tax giveaways for millionaires and billionaires, is extremely unpopular. So Trump was offering them an odoriferous spritz.Some will need gallons of it. Not only did they vote to harm to millions of people, but they rushed back to their districts, loudly demanding that the humanitarian disaster they created be fixed by state and local officials.Then, there is Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a rich Pennsylvania Republican. He owned corporate stock in a big Medicaid provider named Centene, but as a legislative insider Rep. Bresnahan knew that Trump's bill would gut Medicaid and crash Centene's stock value. So, he dumped that stock just one week before the House approved the budget. And, yes, after protecting himself, Rob voted for the Medicaid gut job that caused the stock price to plummet.This is Jim Hightower saying… Even one of Bresnahan's Republican colleagues, Brian Fitzpatrick, was appalled: “We need American leaders who are accountable, transparent, and wholly committed to serving the public—not their stock portfolio,” he said, rightly adding that members of Congress “should be banned from trading individual stocks—period.”Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Some say Trump won a second term one year ago today when his head was almost blown off on live television. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. Luck was most certainly on his side that bright, beautiful day in Butler, Pennsylvania. I'd been looking forward to the rally because he was returning to a place made almost famous in MAGA lore by Tucker Carlson, who explained Trump's appeal better than anyone else ever had.So when Trump was almost assassinated, the first question I had was Why Butler? Even one year later, it seems odd that it happened there, especially since US intelligence already knew Trump's life was threatened, and outside in Butler, there were many rooftops, and many ways to climb on top of them. It wasn't secure, but then again, MAGA rallies seemed like the last place anyone would get away with shooting Trump. In September, another assassin would give it a shot, a burned-out Gen-X surfer dude who wanted to “save democracy.” But one year after Butler, it's as though the tragedy never happened at all. The Left never fully absorbed it and is awash in assassination porn every day, and the Right, well, let's just say there are many forces at work to break up the grassroots movement otherwise known as MAGA.Here is a look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly of this past year. The GoodOne year after Butler, Trump's presidency has been a smashing success when you look at everything he's accomplished, from the historic bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities to the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, to passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, and several key Supreme Court decisions in his favor. The tariffs seem to have worked out, and the economy is humming. One year after Butler, the Secret Service has been overhauled. They will continue to reform the agency, they say, to prevent something that catastrophic from happening again. One year after Butler, Corey Comperatore is remembered as a hero. He protected his family from gunfire. But to those he left behind, they don't feel like there has been enough closure on the case - how could they have left them unprotected? But on Saturday, the community came together to honor Corey with a motorcycle ride called Corey's Cruise:Corey's Cruise, that's the MAGA spirit. Paying tribute to one of their own.One year after Butler, journalist Selena Zito published the definitive account of that day. A Pennsylvania native, Zito captures Butler and cares enough about the place and its people to tell the story of its history and why it mattered that Trump came to Butler at all. He's the only sitting president ever to do so, she says. Zito has seen Trump in a way no other mainstream journalist ever has, and even tops Tucker Carlson, I think, in explaining Trump and his appeal. Maybe because she knows the time and place of which she writes, or maybe it's something else, an ability to see what other people can't. One year after Butler, it has been promises made and promises kept for people like me. I voted for Trump for two reasons. To protest the unprecedented, authoritarian lawfare by Joe Biden and the Democrats and to put an end to the gender madness that was destroying the minds and bodies of children. It is still hard for me to believe this is going on in America with no guardians on the Left to protect kids. When I see videos like this, I am reminded of why I voted for Trump and why I would vote for him a thousand times over:One year after Butler, the Trump administration is going after John Brennan and James Comey for Russiagate:Matt Taibbi has been on the story for years and goes into it at length on America This Week.The BadOne year after Butler, Elon Musk, who said he became a Trump supporter that day, is now a Trump hater, someone so filled with rage and resentment that he started his own political party just to hurt Trump. And said on Twitter that Trump is in the Epstein Files, which put the whole ugly scandal into motion.The truth? Musk was likely burned after Trump shut him out of the inner circle. The richest man in the world might be among the most fragile, and hell hath no fury like an Elon scorned.Tucker Carlson is parting ways with the Trump administration because of Iran and Israel, now proclaiming Israel is the one behind the Epstein cover-up. He's also saying, in his recent speech for Turning Point, that it's no big deal to kick biological men out of women's sports. Who cares? One year after Butler, fair weather MAGA like Andrew Schultz, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan aren't ride or die Trump supporters anymore. They chose him at the time as the better option, but if Trump doesn't give them exactly what they want — not fund Ukraine, wash their hands of Israel, or reduce the government deficit, whatever it is, they're free agents now ripe for the picking.One year after Butler, a war has broken out between the head of the FBI, Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi over the promised release of the Epstein Files. MAGA wants Bondi to be fired or to step down because of it. She made it seem like there was a client list and they would be naming names. But then abruptly announced that no, there isn't one and case closed.So Trump has had to take to Truth Social to defend her and try to steady the ship, but more and more people are reading this like a cover-up. In other words, MAGA is leading a Watergate-like situation to take down its own leader. into its own leader, doing the Democrats' dirty work without even trying:Both the Left and the Never Trumpers are using the Epstein case in hopes of dividing and conquering MAGA. And from the looks of it, they're winning. It reminds me of that song from U2, So Cruel, “I gave you everything you ever wanted, it wasn't what you wanted.”Even though the Democrats had the files all through Biden's presidency, they are counting on people being stupid enough to believe them when they pretend to care:The UglyOne year after Butler, almost no one cares about the shooter, Thomas Crooks. He is a ghost. If Thomas Crooks had succeeded, would he have been made a hero like Luigi Mangione? Is that what he was seeking, that kind of adulation and respect? He was not only a nobody, a loner, but like so many others, spent his formative years on lockdown, online. Who knows who got to him?One year later, the lesson was not learned because the tragedy was never fully absorbed. All they knew was that they were angry the shooter missed. We have to assume that, yes, Crooks would have been remembered well if he hadn't. Instead, he was shot and killed in the blazing sun on a rooftop at just 20 years old. One year after Butler, comments like this are not just accepted but encouraged. Nothing has changed for the Democrats and the Left; their propaganda press and the so-called “resistance” have not done a single thing differently after their defeat. They didn't absorb what happened on their side, the debate, the cognitive decline, the George Clooney op-ed, and Kamala Harris' terrible campaign. If anything, they've become even more emboldened to amplify their hate against Trump, as if they never saw him shot at all, as if they didn't just suffer the greatest political humiliation in modern American history. But they did. We were there. We saw. All it's meant to them, one year after Butler, is that they have to wish harder for Trump's demise. They have to get louder and meaner. One year after Butler and the Left still have no power except for one Democratic Socialist on the rise, who is leading them even further into fanaticism. The day I called Trump “My President”If I'd never left the Doomsday Bunker and found my way to watching a MAGA rally, I'd have never humanized Trump either. I, too, might have said about both of these attempted assassinations, “Too bad he missed.” But I did escape. I had to leave when the hatred I was engaging in made me feel sick. I knew I had to do something to understand better why we were on one side and they were on the other, and why we felt it was okay to treat half the country like human garbage.At first, the MAGA rallies were like homework. I was looking for the smoking gun. Was Trump really Hitler? Was he a bigot and a racist? No. He was just someone who didn't follow our strict rules of language, which had become so rigid that we didn't even know what basic words meant anymore, like man and woman. Over time, the rallies became, for me, the one bright spot amid a long, miserable, dark winter. They were celebrations with happy people. None of them judged each other. All of them were part of an America that people like me had abandoned long ago. Finding my humanity in 2020 would change the course of my life, something I could never have predicted would hit me in middle age. All I knew was that I had to do what I thought was the right thing, and humanizing my enemies was it. So, of course, I was watching Trump's rally in Butler. I wouldn't miss it. When I saw Trump was shot, I said, “Please, God, not my president.” My president. I didn't vote for him in 2020, so how could he be my president? And besides, he hadn't even won yet.I can't really explain it except to say that by then, I knew the forces that had been marshaled to remove Trump from power by any means necessary, and there were only a few months left before it was too late for them. Would they really go this far? Could they? Would it have been like shooting fish in a barrel to find vulnerable people who might want to make something of their miserable lives by becoming famous for taking out Public Enemy Number One?I guess it's as Rupert Pupkin says in The King of Comedy, “better King for a day than schmuck for a lifetime.”One year after Butler, we'll never know the answer to that. If there ever was any evidence, it's long gone by now. It could just be that lockdowns caused real harm to the minds of the young, especially young men, and no one has bothered to look into it.One year after Butler, I know I made the right choice when I voted for Trump. I'll be forever grateful to him for rescuing this country and its children from the clutches of fanaticism. And you can't watch as many rallies as I have and come away not liking the guy. Those still awash in rage and delusion might find, decades from now, that they missed out on one of the most spectacular moments in American history when this country elected one of its brightest lights. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

I have one piece of advice for President Donald Trump.  Whether it's dealing with the fallout from executive orders, mass deportations, or bombing foreign countries without explicit congressional approval, President Trump just simply needs to remind his critics that nothing he's doing is “ahistorical or unprecedented,” advises Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:” “So, they're saying he is deporting, deporting, deporting people. Well, Barack Obama deported more people in his tenure than any other prior president—2.5 million. And he focused on criminal aliens. He said so. Just like Donald Trump did. And as far as cages and detention centers, Obama created them. So Trump just said, ‘I'm just following the precedent of Obama.'"

So Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, included the elimination of the $200 tax on suppressors, short-barrel rifles and shotguns and AOWs, has passed the Senate and is back in the House. The podcast is recorded Tuesday afternoon, so we'll see what happens this week! MichaelBane.TV - On the Radio episode # 277. Scroll down for reference links on topics discussed in this episode. Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed here are our own and may not represent those of the companies we represent or any entities affiliated to it. Host: Michael Bane Producer: Flying Dragon Ltd. More information and reference links: UPDATE from Cam Edwards! Please read this one! Senate Language Zeroing Out Taxes on Suppressors, Short-Barrels Passes Byrd Bath/Cam Edwards, Bearing Arms GOA Statement on Our Options What Will Guns Look Like Without Barrel Length Laws/Open Source Defense #331 Cam & Co with Knox Williams Colorado Woman, 82, Dies from Injuries…/Benjamin Rothove, National Review Luth-AR MTM Case-Gard HCC — Handgun Conceal Carry Case The Music of the Bottlesnakes The Music of Amos Ever Hadani

This week we talk about the NOAA, FEMA, and the SSMIS.We also discuss Arctic ice, satellite resolution, and automated weather observation stations.Recommended Book: Superbloom by Nicholas CarrTranscriptThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is a US scientific and regulatory agency that tackles an array of environmental, climatic, and weather-related issues, alongside its responsibilities managing oceanic ecosystems.So it's in charge of managing fishing protections and making sure endangered species within US waters are taken care of, but it also does scientific exploration—mapping the ocean, for instance—it monitors atmospheric conditions and keeps tabs on the various cycles that influence global and US water, air, and temperature happenings, and it tracks macro- and micro-scale weather events.That latter responsibility means NOAA (which is the modern iteration of several other agencies, including the US Environmental Science Services Administration and the US Weather Bureau) also manages the US National Weather Service, which is the sub-agency that sends out hazardous weather statements when there are severe storms or tornadoes or other weather-related events of note in a given area, and which also provides weather forecast information that local experts on the ground use to make their own predictions.Most of what the National Weather Service puts out is in the public domain, which means anyone can access and use it, free of charge. That's a pretty big deal, because the data they collect and informational products they distribute, including all those hazardous weather statements, are at times life and death, but they're also a big part of what makes standard local weather services possible in the US—they help the FAA and other agencies do their jobs, and they help everyday people understand how hot or cold it's going to be, whether to pack and umbrella for the day, and so on.To accomplish all this, the NOAA and its sub-agencies make use of a bunch of facilities and other tracking resources to collect, aggregate, and interpret all those data points, crunching them and spitting them back out as something intelligible and useful to their many end-users.They've got weather observation stations across the US, many of them automated surface observing stations, which are exactly what they sound like: automated stations that collect data about sky conditions, wind direction and speed, visibility, present weather conditions, temperature, dew point, and so on—most of these are close to airports, as this information is also vital for figuring out if it's safe to fly, and if so, what accommodations pilots should be making for the weather and visibility and such—but they also collect data from smaller weather stations scattered across the country, around 11,000 of them, many operated by volunteers under the auspices of an effort called the Cooperative Observer Program that was established in 1890, and that's paired with another volunteer data-collection effort called the Citizen Weather Observer Program.There are also weather buoys and weather ships lingering across the surface of the ocean and other bodies of water, tracking additional data like sea surface temperature and wave height at various points. And there are weather balloons which collect additional information about happenings further up in the atmosphere, alongside the many satellites in orbit that capture various sorts of data and beam that data down to those who can make use of it.Again, all of this data is collected and crunched and then turned into intelligible outputs for your local weather forecasters, but also the people who run airlines and fly planes, the folks out on boats and ships, people who are managing government agencies, scientists who are doing long-term research on all sorts of things, and everyday people who just want to know if it'll be sunny, how hot it will be, and so on.There's one more major client of the NOAA that's worth noting here, too: the Department of Defense. And that relationship is a big part of what I want to talk about today, because it seems to be at the root of a major curtailing of weather-related data-sharing that was recently announced by the US government, much to the chagrin of the scientific community.—US President Trump has long voiced his skepticism about the NOAA.There have been claims that this disdain is the result of the agency having called him out on some bald-faced lies he told about hurricane projections during his first administration, when he reportedly altered an NOAA hurricane impact projection map with a Sharpie to support a misstatement he had previously made about a hurricane impacting Alabama; the hurricane in question was not anticipated to hit Alabama, Trump said it would, and he later altered a map in order to make it look like he was right, when all the data, and all the experts, say otherwise.Whether that's true or not, the NOAA later released an unsigned statement seeming to support his false assertion, and it's generally understood that the agency was forced to make that statement against the will of its staff and leadership by the then-president.It's also been posited that Trump doesn't care for the NOAA because of their connection with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.FEMA became the target of several conspiracy theories on the US political right, which allege that liberal lawmakers, including former President Biden, used it as a sort of piggy bank for their personal projects and priorities; the agency provides funding and on-the-ground support for areas that have been impacted by hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and other such weather-related disasters, but as immigration became more of a focal point of right-leaning and far-right politics in the US, accusations that the Biden administration was using FEMA funds to help immigrants enter and stay in the US grew; there's no evidence this is the case, but that's the nature of conspiracy theories—evidence isn't necessary when something feels true to a big enough group of people.In any event, FEMA is now on the chopping block, the second Trump administration has said it could be dissolved as soon as December of 2025, the biggest changes to the agency coming just after the end of this year's hurricane season, which traditionally ends of November. Trump himself said FEMA would be giving out less money to states recovering from weather disasters, and that a panel he's appointed will figure out exactly how to restructure or replace the agency.To be clear, the president cannot kill off FEMA, only Congress can do that, and they have said they intend to reform the agency by making it easier for disaster survivors to access resources and by moving FEMA from its current position under the Department of Homeland Security into its own thing; a big contrast to Trump's ambitions for the agency, which basically seems to be that FEMA shouldn't do what it currently does, and the states should mostly or exclusively cover disaster costs and provide post-disaster resources, instead of the federal government helping out.So Trump seemingly has a thing against these sorts of agencies, has semi-regularly called climate change a hoax, doesn't seem to have any particular fondness for the idea of the US federal government helping out with local problems, or the local consequences of larger-scale problems like weather disasters, and has acted in a variety of ways to cut funding for science and public service related agencies and efforts across the board.All of that has been pretty fundamental to his platform since his first administration. And while the scientific community has sounded the alarm about these stances, saying what he's planning will put a lot of people and infrastructure at risk, and while this data and these resources are fundamental to reducing the damage, both human and otherwise, caused by such disasters, in the US and globally, to some degree, that doesn't seem to bother this administration, which usually cites cost-cutting as their rationale, but also regularly points at the concept of immigration to justify many of the decisions they make, including some of these ones.So that's the context shaping the perception of an announcement made by the NOAA in the latter-half of June 2025 that the agency would no longer be importing, processing, or distributing data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder, or SSMIS system, as of June 30—which was yesterday, if you're listening to this episode on the day it's released.The agency cited recent service changes as their rationale for this cessation, and weather forecasters have been in a tizzy about this, because the SSMIS system is pretty fundamental to what they do, especially when it comes to hurricane forecasting.The SSMIS is a satellite-based system that passively maps the whole world twice a day from space in very, very high resolution, and in addition to hurricane-tracking and other weather-related tasks, it also allows scientists to monitor sea ice in the Arctic and other such long-term projects.The NOAA said that this cessation of service would not impact the quality of hurricane forecasting as we step into the beginning weeks of the traditional Atlantic hurricane season, but non-NOAA scientists and other experts, folks who aren't on the US federal governments' payroll, basically, have said this would blind them in this regard, and that while they can approximate some of the same forecasting powers using other data, it won't be the same, and it won't be nearly as good.This system is the only one that allows scientists to see inside the clouds as hurricanes develop, and before such data was available, hurricane projections were a lot less accurate, and powerful storm systems would often sneak up on unsuspecting areas, because we lacked the heightened resolution and power necessary to make more up-to-the-minute and fine-grained projections.Also, and this is perhaps less of an immediate concern, but might be an even bigger long-term issue than deadly hurricanes, is that there's a more than 40-year-old study that's been tracking changes to polar sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic that will no longer be feasible lacking this data, so everything that's influenced by global water cycles and sea levels, which is basically everything weather- and climate-related, and that means, well, everything on earth could also be impacted by this new, US government-imposed reduced visibility, all of that research is upended, made less useful, and all of us in turn could suffer some pretty significant consequences because we lack that high-resolution understanding of what's going on.What's worse is that this announcement was made just days before this source of data was scheduled to disappear, leaving them without time to cobble together less-good, but serviceable replacements for everything they'll be losing as a consequence of these changes; and again, all of this is happening right at the beginning of hurricane season, so the stakes are very high.Allegations of revenge as a motivation, or speculation that this is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to systematically dismantle science and the public's ability to get objective information about the world aside, there have also been rumblings that this might have been a Department of Defense decision, since these satellites are operated by the NOAA for the DoD on behalf of the US Space Force, which has ultimate authority over all satellites owned by the government.In practice, that might mean that this is the consequence of the US military, or some facet of the US military, deciding that this information is too precious or dangerous to share broadly—as again, most of this information has been flagged public domain, so anyone can see and use it however they like—or it may be that this has been a miscommunication or the result of someone in the Navy making a decision without realizing the full implications of that decision.As of the day I'm recording this, on the day this data is scheduled to disappear from the public domain, and some reports have indicated it has, indeed, disappeared as scheduled, journalists have been trying to get in touch with the relevant people at the Navy for comment, thus far unsuccessfully, but that outreach and their hopefully eventual contact with those in charge could result in a change in these plans, if it is indeed just a miscommunication or misunderstanding situation.Either way, we'll hopefully know more what happened here, as that could help us understand how safe or vulnerable other major sources of vital data might be under this administration, and/or under the current leadership of the DoD and similar military entities.Show Noteshttps://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-season-meteorologists-losing-vital-tool-forecasting/story?id=123305760https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5446120/defense-department-cuts-hurricane-ice-weather-satellitehttps://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/29/italy-and-spain-bake-in-heatwave-as-cities-issue-red-alerts-and-regions-mull-work-banshttps://www.upi.com/Science_News/2025/06/28/Defense-Department-ends-satellite-data-hurricane-experts/7881751141308/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/noaa-cuts-hurricane-forecasting-climatehttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weather-forecasters-lose-crucial-hurricane-detection-microwave-satellite/https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/noaa-discontinues-data-website-trump-executive-order/507-f40d60d7-fb52-4cb4-a64b-f22bd1100562https://hackaday.com/2025/06/12/end-of-an-era-noaas-polar-sats-wind-down-operations/https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/5357564-trump-cuts-noaa-nasa-farmers-climate-change-food-supply/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/05/14/national-weather-service-vacancies-hurricane-season/https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/us-hurricane-forecasting-cuts-1.7573024https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-season-disaster-weather-doge-fema-noaa-cd215947480de9099a53fe20669bb923https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/05/florida-weatherman-john-morales-funding-cuts-forecastshttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/remote-sensing/articles/10.3389/frsen.2022.1021781/fullhttps://www.propublica.org/article/fema-grants-trump-emergencieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/us/politics/as-fema-shrinks-a-grassroots-disaster-response-is-taking-shape.htmlhttps://www.propublica.org/article/fema-grants-trump-emergencieshttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/27/is-alligator-alcatraz-detention-centre-funded-by-florida-hurricane-moneyhttps://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5430469/faq-fema-eliminationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Atlantic_hurricane_warningshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversyhttps://www.wusa9.com/video/weather/dod-stops-providing-noaa-with-satellite-data/65-a35e6409-20ad-4db1-83a1-0b281fcfb38bhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Servicehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmospheric_Administrationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hurricane_Center This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight Producer Swati Rayasam showcases a community panel of how discriminatory exclusion policies during times of heightened fears of national security and safety have threatened our communities in the past, and how the activities of the current administration threaten our core constitutional rights, raising the specter of politicization and polarization of citizenship, immigration visas, naturalization rights, and the right to free speech.   Deport. Exclude. Revoke. Imprison – “Wong Kim Ark is for All of Us” SHOW TRANSCRIPT Swati Rayasam: You are tuned in to APEX Express on KPFA. My name is Swati Rayasam and I'm back as your special producer for this episode. Tonight we have an incredible community panel titled Deport. Exclude. Revoke. Imprison. This panel explores the history of how discriminatory exclusion policies during times of heightened fears of national security and [00:01:00] safety have threatened our communities in the past, and how the activities of the current administration threaten our core constitutional rights, raising the specter of politicization and polarization of citizenship, immigration visas, naturalization rights, and the right to free speech. I'll pass it on to UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Professor Mike Chang to kick us off. Mike and Harvey: We're starting on Berkeley time, right on time at three 10, and I want to introduce Harvey Dong. Harvey Dong: Okay. The sponsors for today's event include, AADS- Asian American and Diaspora studies program, uc, Berkeley, Asian American Research Center, the Center for Race and Gender Department of Ethnic Studies- all part of uc, Berkeley. Off campus, we have the following community groups. Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Law Caucus, [00:02:00] Asian Prisoners Support Committee, and East Wind Books. Okay, so that's, quite a few in terms of coalition people coming together. My name is Harvey Dong and I'm also a lecturer in the AADS program and part of the ethnic studies department. I can say that I exist here as the result of birthright citizenship won by Ancestor Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Otherwise, I would not be here. We want to welcome everyone here today, for this important panel discussion titled: Deport, Exclude, Revoke, Imprison – Immigration and citizenship rights during crisis. Yes, we are in a deep crisis today. The Chinese characters for crisis is way G in Mandarin or way gay in [00:03:00] Cantonese, which means danger and opportunity. We are in a moment of danger and at the same time in a moment of opportunity. Our communities are under attack from undocumented, documented, and those with citizenship. We see urgency in coming together. In 1898, the US Supreme Court case, US versus Wong Kim Ark held that under the 14th Amendment birthright, citizenship applies to all people born in the United States. Regardless of their race or their parents' national origin or immigration status. On May 15th this year, the Supreme Court will hear a President Donald Trump's request to implement an executive order that will end birthright citizenship already before May 15th, [00:04:00] deportations of US citizen children are taking place. Recently, three US citizen children, one 2-year-old with cancer have been deported with their undocumented parents. The numbers of US citizen children are much higher being deported because it's less covered in the press. Unconstitutional. Yes, definitely. And it's taking place now. Also today, more than 2.7 million southeast Asian Americans live in the US but at least 16,000 community members have received final orders of deportation, placing their lives and families in limbo. This presents a mental health challenge and extreme economic hardship for individuals and families who do not know whether their next day in the US will be their last. Wong Kim Ark's [00:05:00] struggle and the lessons of Wong Kim Ark, continue today. His resistance provides us with a grounding for our resistance. So they say deport, exclude, revoke, imprison. We say cease and desist. You can say that every day it just seems like the system's gone amuk. There's constant attacks on people of color, on immigrants and so forth. And our only solution, or the most important solution is to resist, legally resist, but also to protest, to demand cease and desist. Today brings together campus and community people. We want you all to be informed because if you're uninformed , you can't do anything. Okay? You have to know where things are at. It's nothing new. What they're trying to do, in 1882, [00:06:00] during times of economic crisis, they scapegoated Asian Americans. Today there's economic, political crisis. And the scapegoating continues. They're not doing anything new. You know, it's old stuff, but we have to realize that, and we have to look at the past in terms of what was done to fight it and also build new solidarities today. Wong Kim Ark did not take his situation sitting down. He went through, lots of obstacles. He spent three months in Angel Island he was arrested after he won his case because he was constantly being harassed wherever he went. His kids when they came over were also, spotted as being Wong Kim Ark's, children, and they too had to spend months at Angel Island. So Wong Kim Ark did not take his situation sitting down. We need to learn from him today. Our [00:07:00] next, special guest is Mr. Norman Wong, a good friend of mine. He was active here in the third world Liberation Front strike that led to ethnic studies. He did a lots of work for the development of Asian American studies and we've been out in touch for about, what, 40 years? So I'm really happy that he's able to come back to Berkeley and to talk about yourself, if you wish, maybe during the Q and a, but to talk about , the significance of your great-grandfather's case. Okay, so Norman Wong, let's give him a hand. Norman Wong: Hello, my name's Norman Wong. I'm the great grandson, Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was [00:08:00] born in the USA, like my great-grandfather. I, too was born American in the same city, San Francisco, more than 75 years after him. We are both Americans, but unlike him, my citizenship has never been challenged. His willingness to stand up and fight made the difference for his struggles, my humble thanks. Wong Kim Ark however, was challenged more than once. In late 1889 as an American, he traveled to China in July, 1890. He returned to his birth city. He had his papers and had no problems with reentry. In 1895, after a similar trip, he was stopped from disembarking and was placed into custody for five months aboard ship in port. [00:09:00] Citizenship denied, the reason the Chinese exclusion Act 1882. He had to win this case in district court, provide $250 bail and then win again in the United States Supreme Court, March 28th, 1898. Only from these efforts, he was able to claim his citizenship granted by birthright from the 14th Amendment and gain his freedom. That would not be the last challenge to his being American. My mother suffered similar treatment. She like my great-grandfather, was born in America. In 1942, she was forced with her family and thousands of other Japanese Americans to relocation camps an experience unspoken by her family. [00:10:00] I first learned about Japanese American internment from history books. Executive order 9066 was the command. No due process, citizenship's rights stripped. She was not American enough. Now we have executive order 14160. It is an attack on birthright citizenship. We cannot let this happen. We must stand together. We are a nation of immigrants. What kind of nation are we to be with stateless children? Born to no country. To this, I say no. We as Americans need to embrace each other and [00:11:00] cherish each new life. Born in the USA. Thank you. Harvey Dong: Thank you, Norman. And Annie Lee, will moderate, the following panel, involving campus and community representatives who will be sharing their knowledge and experience. Annie Lee, Esquire is an attorney. She's also the, managing director of policy for Chinese Affirmative Action, and she's also, heavily involved in the birthright citizenship issue. Annie Lee: Thank you so much Harvey for that very warm welcome and thank you again to Norman for your remarks. I think it's incredible that you're speaking up at this moment, to preserve your ancestors' legacy because it impacts not just you and him, but all of us [00:12:00] here. So thank you. As Harvey said, my name is Annie Lee and I have this honor of working with this amazing panel of esteemed guest we have today. So I will ask each of them to introduce themselves. And I will start, because I would love to hear your name, pronouns. Title and organization as well as your personal or professional relationship with the US Immigration System. So my name's Annie. I use she her pronouns. I'm the managing Director of policy at Chinese for Affirmative Action, which is a non-profit based in San Francisco Chinatown. We provide direct services to the monolingual working class Chinese community, and also advocate for policies to benefit all Asian Americans. My relationship with the immigration system is I am the child of two Chinese immigrants who did not speak English. And so I just remember lots of time spent on the phone when I was a kid with INS, and then it became U-S-C-I-S just trying to ask them what happened to [00:13:00] a family member's application for naturalization, for visas so I was the interpreter for them growing up and even today. I will pass it to Letty. Leti Volpp: Hi everybody. Thank you so much, Annie. Thank you Harvey. Thank you, Norman. That was profoundly moving to hear your remarks and I love the way that you framed our conversation, Harvey. I'm Leti Volpp. I am the Robert d and Leslie k Raven, professor of Law and Access to Justice at the Berkeley Law, school. I'm also the director of the campus wide , center for Race and Gender, which is a legacy of the Third World Liberation Front, and the 1999, student movement, that led to the creation of the center. I work on immigration law and citizenship theory, and I am the daughter, second of four, children of my mother who was an immigrant from China, and my father who was an immigrant [00:14:00] from Germany. So I'll pass it. Thank you. Ke Lam: Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Norman. So my name's Key. I go by he, him pronouns or Nghiep “Ke” Lam, is my full name. I work for an organization called Asian Prison Support Committee. It's been around for like over two decades now, and it started behind three guys advocating for ethics study, Asian and Pacific Islander history. And then it was starting in San Quent State Prison. All three of them pushed for ethics study, hard and the result is they all was put into solitary confinement. And many years later, after all three got out, was Eddie Zang, Mike Romero and Mike no. And when they got out, Eddie came back and we pushed for ethics study again, and we actually got it started in 2013. And it's been going on to today. Then the programs is called Roots, restoring our Original True Self. So reconnecting with who we are. And one of Eddie's main, mottos that really stuck with me. He said, we need to all connect to our chi, right? And I'm like, okay, I understand what chi is, and he said no. He [00:15:00] said, you need to connect to your culture, your history, which result to equal your identity, who you are as a person. So, the more we study about our history and our culture, like, birthright citizen, it empower us to know, who we are today. Right? And also part of that is to how do we take down the veil of shame in our community, the veil of trauma that's impacting our community as well. We don't talk about issue that impact us like immigration. So I'm a 1.5 generation. So I was born in Vietnam from Chinese family that migrant from China to Vietnam started business after the fall of Vietnam War. We all got kicked out but more than that, I am directly impacted because I am a stranded deportee, somebody that got their, legal status taken away because of criminal conviction. And as of any moment now, I could actually be taken away. So I live in that, right at that threshold of like uncertainty right now. And the people I work with, which are hundreds of people, are fixing that same uncertainty.[00:16:00] Annie Lee: Thank you, Ke. I'm gonna pass it to our panelists who are joining us virtually, including Bun. Can you start and then we'll pass it to Chris after. Bun: Hey everybody, thank you for having me. My name is Bun. I'm the co-director of Asian Prison Support Committee. I'm also, 1.5 generation former incarcerated and under, direct impact of immigration. Christopher Lapinig: Hi everyone. My name is Christopher Lapinig, my pronouns are he, him and Sha. I am a senior staff attorney on the Democracy and National Initiatives Team at Asian Law Caucus, which you may know is the country's first and oldest legal aid in civil rights organization, dedicated to serving, low income immigrant and underserved AAPI communities. In terms of my connection to the immigration system, I am, I also am a beneficiary of a birthright citizenship, and my parents are both immigrants from the Philippines. I was born in New York City. My [00:17:00] extended family spans both in the US and the Philippines. After graduating law school and clerking, my fellowship project was focused on providing litigation and immigration services to, survivors of labor trafficking in the Filipino community. While working at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles, I also was engaged in, class action litigation, challenging the first Trump administration's practices, detaining immigrants in the Vietnamese and Cambodian communities. Annie Lee: Thank you, Chris. Thank you Bun. Let's start off by talking about birthright citizenship since it's a big topic these days. On the very, very first day of Trump's administration, he issued a flurry of executive orders, including one that would alter birthright citizenship. But I wanna take us back to the beginning because why do we have this right? It is a very broad right? If you were born in the United States, you are an American citizen. Where does that come from? So I wanna pose the first question to Letty to talk about the [00:18:00] origins of birthright citizenship., Leti Volpp: Very happy to. So what's being fought about is a particular clause in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, which says, all persons born are naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Okay, so that's the text. There's been a very long understanding of what this text means, which says that regardless of the immigration status of one's parents, all children born here are entitled to birthright citizenship with three narrow exceptions, which I will explain. So the Trump administration executive order, wants to exclude from birthright citizenship, the children of undocumented immigrants, and the children of people who are here on lawful temporary visas. So for example, somebody here on an [00:19:00] F1 student visa, somebody on a H one B worker visa, somebody here is a tourist, right? And basically they're saying we've been getting this clause wrong for over a hundred years. And I will explain to you why I think they're making this very dubious argument. Essentially when you think about where the 14th amendment came from, in the United States, in the Antebellum era, about 20% of people were enslaved and there were lots of debates about citizenship. Who should be a citizen? Who could be a citizen? And in 1857, the Supreme Court issued a decision in a case called Dread Scott, where they said that no person who was black, whether free or enslaved, could ever be a citizen. The Civil War gets fought, they end slavery. And then the question arose, well, what does this mean for citizenship? Who's a citizen of the United States? And in 1866, Congress [00:20:00] enacts a law called the Civil Rights Act, which basically gave rights to people that were previously denied and said that everybody born in the United States is a birthright citizen. This gets repeated in the 14th Amendment with the very important interpretation of this clause in Norman's great-grandfather's case, the case of Wong Kim Ark. So this came before the Supreme Court in 1898. If you think about the timing of this, the federal government had basically abandoned the reconstruction project, which was the project of trying to newly enfranchised, African Americans in the United States. The Supreme Court had just issued the decision, Plessy versus Ferguson, which basically legitimated the idea that, we can have separate, but equal, as a doctrine of rights. So it was a nation that was newly hostile to the goals of the Reconstruction Congress, and so they had this case come before them, whereas we heard [00:21:00] from Norman, we have his great-grandfather born in San Francisco, Chinatown, traveling back and forth to China. His parents having actually left the United States. And this was basically presented as a test case to the Supreme Court. Where the government tried to argue, similar to what the Trump administration is arguing today, that birthright citizenship, that clause does not guarantee universal birthright citizenship saying that children of immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because their parents are also not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The Supreme Court took over a year to decide the case. They knew that it would be controversial, and the majority of the court said, this provision is clear. It uses universal language. It's intended to apply to children of all immigrants. One of the things that's interesting about [00:22:00] what the, well I'll let Chris actually talk about what the Trump administration, is trying to do, but let me just say that in the Wong Kim Ark decision, the Supreme Court makes very clear there only three narrow exceptions to who is covered by the 14th Amendment. They're children of diplomats. So for example, if the Ambassador of Germany is in the United States, and, she has a daughter, like her daughter should not become a birthright citizen, right? This is why there's diplomatic immunity. Why, for example, in New York City, there are millions of dollars apparently owed to the city, in parking tickets by ambassadors who don't bother to pay them because they're not actually subject to the jurisdiction in the United States. Okay? Second category, children of Native Americans who are seen as having a sovereign relationship of their own, where it's like a nation within a nation, kind of dynamic, a country within a country. And there were detailed conversations in the congressional debate about the [00:23:00] 14th Amendment, about both of these categories of people. The third category, were children born to a hostile invading army. Okay? So one argument you may have heard people talk about is oh, I think of undocumented immigrants as an invading army. Okay? If you look at the Wong Kim Ark decision, it is very clear that what was intended, by this category of people were a context where the hostile invading army is actually in control of that jurisdiction, right? So that the United States government is not actually governing that space so that the people living in it don't have to be obedient, to the United States. They're obedient to this foreign power. Okay? So the thread between all three of these exceptions is about are you having to be obedient to the laws of the United States? So for example, if you're an undocumented immigrant, you are subject to being criminally prosecuted if you commit a crime, right? Or [00:24:00] you are potentially subjected to deportation, right? You have to obey the law of the United States, right? You are still subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Okay? But the Trump administration, as we're about to hear, is making different arguments. Annie Lee: Thank you so much, Leti for that historical context, which I think is so important because, so many different communities of color have contributed to the rights that we have today. And so what Leti is saying here is that birthright citizenship is a direct result of black liberation and fighting for freedom in the Civil War and making sure that they were then recognized as full citizens. And then reinforced, expanded, by Wong Kim Ark. And now we are all beneficiaries and the vast majority of Americans get our citizenship through birth. Okay? That is true for white people, black people. If you're born here, you get your ci. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to go to court. You don't have to say anything. You are a US citizen. And now as Leti referenced, there's this fringe legal theory that, thankfully we've got lawyers like [00:25:00] Chris who are fighting this. So Chris, you're on the ALC team, one of many lawsuits against the Trump administration regarding this unlawful executive order. Can you tell us a little bit about the litigation and the arguments, but I actually really want you to focus on what are the harms of this executive order? Sometimes I think particularly if you are a citizen, and I am one, sometimes we take what we have for granted and you don't even realize what citizenship means or confers. So Chris, can you talk about the harms if this executive order were to go through? Christopher Lapinig: Yeah. As Professor Volpp sort of explained this executive order really is an assault on a fundamental constitutional right that has existed for more than a hundred years at this point, or, well, about 125 years. And if it is allowed to be implemented, the harms would really be devastating and far reach. So first, you know, children born in the us, the [00:26:00] parents without permanent status, as permissible said, would be rendered effectively stateless, in many cases. And these are of course, children, babies who have never known any other home, yet they would be denied the basic rights of citizen. And so the order targets a vast range of families, and not just undocument immigrants, but also those with work visas, student visas, humanitarian productions like TPS, asylum seekers, fleeing persecution, DACA recipients as well. And a lot of these communities have deep ties to Asian American community. To our history, and of course are, essential part, of our social fabric. In practical terms, children born without birthright citizenship would be denied access to healthcare through Medicaid, through denied access to snap nutritional assistance, even basic IDs like social security numbers, passports. And then as they grow older, they'd be barred from voting, serving on juries and even [00:27:00] working. And then later on in life, they might be, if they, are convicted of a crime and make them deportable, they could face deportation to countries that they never stepped, foot off basically. And so this basically is this executive order threatened at risk, creating exactly what the drafters of the 14th Amendment wanted to prevent the creation of a permanent underclass of people in the United States. It'll just get amplified over time. If you can imagine if there's one generation of people born without citizenship, there will be a second generation born and a third and fourth, and it'll just get amplified over time. And so it truly is just, hard to get your mind around exactly what the impact of this EO would be. Annie Lee: Thanks, Chris. And where are we in the litigation right now? Harvey referenced, a hearing at the Supreme Court on May 15th, but, tell us a little bit about the injunction and the arguments on the merits and when that can, when we can expect [00:28:00] that. Christopher Lapinig: Yeah, so there were a number of lawsuits filed immediately after, the administration issued its exec order on January 20th. Asian Law Caucus we filed with the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. Literally we were the first lawsuit, literally hours after the executive order was issued. By early February, federal judges across the country had issued nationwide preliminary injunctions blocking implementation of the order. Our case is actually not a nationwide injunction. And so there're basically, I believe three cases that are going up to the Supreme Court. And, the Trump administration appealed to various circuit courts to try to undo these injunctions. But all circuit courts upheld the injunctive relief and and so now the Supreme Court is going to be hearing arguments on May 15th. And so it has not actually ruled on whether or not the executive order is constitutional, but it's going to. I mean, it remains to be seen exactly what they're going to decide but may [00:29:00] 15th is the next date is the big date on our calendar. Annie Lee: Yeah. So the Trump administration is arguing that these judges in a particular district, it's not fair if they get to say that the entire country, is barred from receiving this executive order. Is that procedurally correct. Judges, in order to consider whether to grants an injunction, they have a whole battery of factors that they look at, including one, which is like likelihood of winning on the merits. Because if something is unconstitutional, it's not really great to say, yeah, you can let this executive order go through. And then like later when the court cases finally worked their way, like a year later, pull back from that. And so that's, it's very frustrating to see this argument. And it's also unfair and would be very messy if the states that had republican Attorneys General who did not litigate, why would you allow the executive order to go forward in those red states and not in these blue state? It really, I would say federalism run terribly amuck. Swati Rayasam: [00:30:00] You are tuned in to APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley,. 88.1. KFCF in Fresno and online@kpfa.org. Annie Lee: But anyway, let's see back off from the actual case because I think what we're really talking about and what Chris has alluded to is, these cases about birthright citizenship, all the immigration policy is essentially determining who belongs here. Who belongs here. That's what immigration policy is at its heart. And we see that the right wing is weaponizing that question, who belongs here? And they are going after very vulnerable populations, undocumented people, people who are formerly incarcerated. So Bun if you can talk about how, is the formerly incarcerated community, like targeted immigrants, targeted for deportation? What is going on with this community that I feel like most people might not know about? Thank [00:31:00] you. Bun: Yes. For our folks that are incarcerated and former incarcerated, we are the easiest target for deportation because we are in custody and in California, CDCR colludes with ICE and on the day that we are to be paroled they're at the door, cuffing us up and taking us to detention. I'm glad to hear Harvey say, this is a time of fear for us and also opportunity. Right now, our whole community, the Southeast Asian community, mainly are very effective with immigration. In the past 25 years, mostly it was the Cambodian community that was being targeted and deported. At this moment, they are targeting, all of the Southeast Asian community, which historically was never deported because of the politics and agreements, of the Vietnamese community. And now the Laos community thats more concerning, that are being targeted for deportation. Trump have opened a new opportunity for us as a community to join [00:32:00] together and understand each other's story, and understand each other's fear. Understand where we're going about immigration. From birthright to crimmagration. A lot of times folks that are under crimmigration are often not spoken about because of our cultural shame, within our own family and also some of our community member felt safe because the political agreements. Now that everybody's in danger, we could stand together and understand each other's issue and support each other because now we could see that history has repeated itself. Again, we are the scapegoat. We are here together fighting the same issue in different circumstances, but the same issue. Annie Lee: But let me follow up. What are these, historical agreements that you're talking about that used to feel like used to at least shield the community that now aren't in place anymore? Bun: Yeah. After the Clinton administration, uh, passed the IRA [immigration reform act] a lot of Southeast Asian nations were asked to [00:33:00] take their nationals back. Even though we as 1.5 generation, which are the one that's mostly impacted by this, had never even stepped into the country. Most of us were born in a refugee camp or we're too young to even remember where they came from. Countries like Cambodian folded right away because they needed the financial aid and whatever, was offering them and immediately a three with a MOU that they will take their citizens since the early two thousands. Vietnam had a stronger agreement, which, they would agree to only take folks that immigrated here after 1995 and anybody before 1995, they would not take, and Laos have just said no until just a few months ago. Laos has said no from when the, uh, the act was passed in 1995, the IRRIRA. Mm-hmm. So the big change we have now is Vietnam had signed a new MOU saying that they will take folks after 1995 [00:34:00] in the first administration and more recently, something that we never thought, happened so fast, was Laos agreeing to take their citizen back. And then the bigger issue about our Laos community is, it's not just Laos folks. It's the Hmong folks, the Myan folks, folks, folks that are still in danger of being returned back 'cause in the Vietnam War, they colluded and supported the Americans in the Vietnam War and were exiled out and kicked out, and were hunted down because of that. So, at this moment, our folks are very in fear, especially our loud folks, not knowing what's gonna happen to 'em. Ke Lam: So for folks that don't know what IRR means it means, illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It actually happened after the Oklahoma bombing, which was caused by a US citizen, a white US citizen. Yeah. But immigration law came out of it. That's what's crazy about it. Annie Lee: Can you tell us, how is APSC advocating to protect the community right now because you [00:35:00] are vulnerable? Ke Lam: So we had to censor a lot of our strategies. At first we used to use social media as a platform to show our work and then to support our community. But the government use that as a target to capture our people. So we stopped using social media. So we've been doing a lot of on the ground movement, such as trying to get local officials to do resolutions to push Governor Newsom to party more of our community members. The other thing is we hold pardon workshops, so try and get folks to get, either get a pardon or vacate their sentence. So commute their sentence to where it become misdemeanor is not deportable anymore. Support letters for our folks writing support letters to send to the governor and also to city official, to say, Hey, please help pardon our community. I think the other thing we are actually doing is solidarity work with other organizations, African American community as well as Latin communities because we've been siloed for so long and we've been banned against each other, where people kept saying like, they've taken all our job when I grew up. That's what they told us, right? [00:36:00] But we, reality that's not even true. It was just a wedge against our community. And then so it became the good versus bad narrative. So our advocacy is trying to change it it's called re-storying you know, so retelling our story from people that are impacted, not from people, not from the one percenters in our own community. Let's say like we're all good, do you, are there's parts of our community that like that's the bad people, right? But in reality, it affects us all. And so advocacy work is a lot of different, it comes in a lot of different shapes and forms, but definitely it comes from the community. Annie Lee: Thanks, Ke. You teed me up perfectly because there is such a good versus bad immigrant narrative that takes root and is really hard to fight against. And that's why this administration is targeting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks and another group that, are being targeted as people who are accused of crimes, including Venezuelan immigrants who are allegedly part of a gang. So, Leti how is the government deporting [00:37:00] people by simply accusing them of being a part of a gang? Like how is that even possible? Leti Volpp: Yeah, so one thing to think about is there is this thing called due process, right? It's guaranteed under the constitution to all persons. It's not just guaranteed to citizens. What does it mean? Procedural due process means there should be notice, there should be a hearing, there should be an impartial judge. You should have the opportunity to present evidence. You should have the opportunity to cross examinee. You should have the opportunity to provide witnesses. Right? And basically Trump and his advisors are in real time actively trying to completely eviscerate due process for everybody, right? So Trump recently said, I'm doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our country. But the courts don't seem to want me to do that. We cannot give everyone a trial because to do so would take without exaggeration, 200 years. And then Stephen Miller said the judicial process is for Americans. [00:38:00] Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens. Okay. Quote unquote. Right. So I think one thing to notice is, as we're hearing from all of our speakers are like the boxes, the categories into which people are put. And what's really disturbing is to witness how once somebody's put in the box of being quote unquote criminal gang banger terrorists, like the American public seems to be like, oh, okay you can do what you want to this person. There's a whole history of due process, which exists in the laws which was created. And all of these early cases actually involved Asian immigrants, right? And so first they were saying there's no due process. And then in a case called Yata versus Fisher, they said actually there is due process in deportation cases, there's regular immigration court proceedings, which accord with all of these measures of due process. There's also a procedure called expedited removal, [00:39:00] which Congress invented in the nineties where they wanted to come up with some kind of very quick way to summarily exclude people. It was motivated by a 60 Minutes episode where they showed people coming to Kennedy Airport, who didn't have any ID or visa or they had what seemed to be fake visas and they were let into the United States. And then they disappeared, right? According to the 60 Minutes episode. So basically Congress invented this procedure of, if you appear in the United States and you have no documents, or you have what an immigration inspector thinks are false documents, they can basically tell you, you can leave without this court hearing. And the only fail safe is what's called a credible fear screening. Where if you say, I want asylum, I fear persecution, I'm worried I might be tortured, then they're supposed to have the screening. And if you pass that screening, you get put in regular removal [00:40:00] proceedings. So before the Trump administration took office, these expedited removal proceedings were happening within a hundred miles of the border against people who could not show that they had been in the United States for more than two weeks. In one of his first executive orders. Trump extended this anywhere in the United States against people who cannot show they've been in the United States for more than two years. So people are recommending that people who potentially are in this situation to carry documentation, showing they've been physically in the United States for over two years. Trump is also using this Alien Enemies Act, which was basically a law Congress passed in 1798. It's only been used three times in US history it's a wartime law, right? So it was used in 1812, World War I, and World War II, and there's supposed to be a declared war between the United States and a foreign nation or government, or [00:41:00] there's an incursion threatened by a foreign nation or government, and the president makes public proclamation that all natives of this hostile nation, 14 and up shall be liable to be restrained and removed as alien enemies. Okay? So we're obviously not at war with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, right? They have not engaged in some kind of invasion or predatory incursion into the United States, but the Trump administration is claiming that they have and saying things like, oh, they're secretly a paramilitary wing of the Venezuelan government, even as the Venezuelan government is like cracking down on them. It's not a quasi sovereign, entity. There's no diplomatic relationships between Tren de Aragua and any other government. So these are legally and factually baseless arguments. Nonetheless, the administration has been basically taking people from Venezuela on the basis of tattoos. A tattoo of a crown of a [00:42:00] rose, right? Even when experts have said there's no relationship between what Tren de Aragua does and tattoos, right? And basically just kidnapping people and shipping them to the torture prison in El Salvador. As I'm sure you know of the case of Kimber Abrego Garcia, I'm sure we'll hear more about this from Christopher. There's a very small fraction of the persons that have been sent to this prison in El Salvador who actually have any criminal history. And I will say, even if they had a criminal history, nobody should be treated in this manner and sent to this prison, right? I mean, it's unbelievable that they've been sent to this prison allegedly indefinitely. They're paying $6 million a year to hold people there. And then the United States government is saying, oh, we don't have any power to facilitate or effectuate their return. And I think there's a struggle as to what to call this. It's not just deportation. This is like kidnapping. It's rendition. And there are people, there's like a particular person like who's completely [00:43:00] disappeared. Nobody knows if they're alive or dead. There are many people in that prison. People don't know if they're alive or dead. And I'm sure you've heard the stories of people who are gay asylum seekers, right? Who are now in this situation. There are also people that have been sent to Guantanamo, people were sent to Panama, right? And so I think there questions for us to think about like, what is this administration doing? How are they trying to do this in a spectacular fashion to instill fear? As we know as well, Trump had said oh, like I think it would be great when he met with Bukele if you build four more or five more facilities. I wanna house homegrown people in El Salvador, right? So this is all the more importance that we stick together, fight together, don't, as key was saying, don't let ourselves be split apart. Like we need a big mass coalition right? Of people working together on this. Annie Lee: So thank you leti and I think you're absolutely right. These Venezuelans were kidnapped [00:44:00] in the middle of the night. I mean, 2:00 AM 3:00 AM pulled out of bed, forced to sign documents they did not understand because these documents were only available in English and they speak Spanish, put on planes sent to El Salvador, a country they've never been to. The government didn't even have to prove anything. They did not have to prove anything, and they just snatch these people and now they're disappeared. We do have, for now the rule of law. And so Chris, there are judges saying that, Kimber Abrego Garcia has to be returned. And despite these court orders, the administration is not complying. So where does that leave us, Chris, in terms of rule of law and law in general? Christopher Lapinig: Yeah. So, I'm gonna make a little personal. So I graduated from Yale Law School in 2013, and you might know some of my classmates. One of my classmates is actually now the Vice President of the United States. Oh man. [00:45:00] Bless you. As well as the second lady, Usha Vance. And a classmate of mine, a good friend Sophia Nelson, who's a trans and queer, was recently on, I believe CNN answering a question about, I believe JD Vice President Vance, was asked about the administration's sort of refusal to comply with usual orders. Yeah. As we're talking about here and JD had said something like, well, courts, judges can't tell the president what he can't do, and sophia, to their credit, said, you know, I took constitutional law with JD, and, we definitely read Marbury Versus Madison together, and that is the semial sort of Supreme Court case that established that the US Supreme Court is the ultimate decider, arbiter, interpreter, of the US Constitution. And so is basically saying, I know JD knows better. He's lying essentially, in all of his [00:46:00] communications about, judicial orders and whether or not a presidential administration has to comply , with these orders. So, to get to your question though, it is of course unprecedented. Really. It is essentially, you know, it's not, if we not already reached. The point of a constitutional crisis. It is a constitutional crisis. I think it's become clear to many of us that, democracy in the US has operated in large part, and has relied on, on, on the good faith in norms, that people are operating good faith and that presidents will comply when, a federal judge issues an injunction or a decision. It kind of leaves us in an interesting, unprecedented situation. And it means that, lawyers, we will continue to litigate and, go to court, but we can't, lawyers will not save the country or, immigrants or communities. We need to think extensively and creatively. [00:47:00] About how to ensure, that the rule of law is preserved because, this administration is not, abiding by the longstanding norms of compliance and so we have to think about, protests, advocacy, legislatively. I don't have the answers necessarily, but we can't rely on the courts to fix these problems really. Annie Lee: Oof. That was very real, Chris. Thank you. But I will say that when there is resistance, and we've seen it from students who are speaking up and advocating for what they believe is right and just including Palestinian Liberation, that there is swift retaliation. And I think that's partly because they are scared of student speech and movement and organizing. But this is a question to all of you. So if not the courts and if the administration is being incredibly retaliatory, and discriminatory in terms of viewpoint discrimination, in people and what people are saying and they're scouring our social [00:48:00] media like, Ke warns, like what can everyday people do to fight back? That's for all of you. So I don't know who, which of you wants to take it first? Ke Lam: Oh man. I say look at history, right? Even while this new president, I wanna say like, this dude is a convicted felon, right? Don't be surprised at why we country is in the way it is, because this dude's a convicted felon, a bad business person, right? And only care about the billionaires, you know? So I'm not surprised how this country's ending up the way it is 'cause it is all about money. One way that we can stand up is definitely band together, marched on the streets. It's been effective. You look at the civil right movement, that's the greatest example. Now you don't have to look too far. We can actually, when we come together, they can't fight us all. Right? It is, and this, it's like you look at even nature in the cell. When things band together, the predators cannot attack everyone. Right? They probably could hit a few of us, but in the [00:49:00] long run, we could change the law. I think another thing is we, we, as the people can march to the courts and push the courts to do the job right, despite what's going on., We had judges that been arrested for doing the right thing, right? And so, no matter what, we have to stand strong just despite the pressure and just push back. Annie Lee: Thanks, Ke. Chris? Christopher Lapinig: What this administration is doing is you know, straight out of the fascist playbook. They're working to, as we all know, shock and awe everyone, and make Americans feel powerless. Make them feel like they have no control, make them feel overwhelmed. And so I think first and foremost, take care of yourself , in terms of your health, in terms of your physical health, your mental health. Do what you can to keep yourself safe and healthy and happy. And do the same for your community, for your loved ones, your friends and family. And then once you've done that do what you can in terms of your time, treasure, [00:50:00] talent to, to fight back. Everyone has different talents, different levels of time that they can afford. But recognize that this is a marathon and not necessarily a sprint because we need everyone, in this resistance that we can get. Annie Lee: Thank you, Chris. Leti Volpp: There was a New Yorker article called, I think it was How to Be a Dissident which said, before recently many Americans, when you ask them about dissidents, they would think of far off countries. But they interviewed a lot of people who'd been dissidents in authoritarian regimes. And there were two, two things in that article that I'm taking with me among others. One of them said that in surveying like how authoritarian regimes are broken apart, like only 3.5% of the population has to oppose what's going on. The other thing was that you should find yourself a political home where you can return to frequently. It's almost like a religious or [00:51:00] spiritual practice where you go and you get refreshed and you're with like-minded people. And so I see this event, for example as doing that, and that we all need to find and nurture and foster spaces like this. Thank you. Annie Lee: Bun, do you have any parting words? Bun: Yeah. Like Ke said, to fight back, getting together, understanding issues and really uplifting, supporting, urging our own communities, to speak Up. You know, there's folks that can't speak out right now because of fear and danger, but there are folks here that can speak out and coming here learning all our situation really give the knowledge and the power to speak out for folks that can't speak down [unclear] right now. So I appreciate y'all Annie Lee: love that bun. I was gonna say the same thing. I feel like there is a special obligation for those of us who are citizens, citizens cannot be deported. Okay? Citizens have special rights based [00:52:00] on that status. And so there's a special responsibility on those of us who can speak, and not be afraid of retaliation from this government. I would also urge you all even though it's bleak at the federal level, we have state governments, we have local governments. You have a university here who is very powerful. And you have seen, we've seen that the uni that the administration backs down, sometimes when Harvard hit back, they back down and that means that there is a way to push the administration, but it does require you all putting pressure on your schools, on your local leaders, on your state leaders to fight back. My boss actually, Vin taught me this. You know, you think that politicians, lead, politicians do not lead politicians follow. Politicians follow and you all lead when you go out further, you give them cover to do the right thing. And so the farther you push and the more you speak out against this administration, the more you give them courage to do the right thing. And so you absolutely have to do that. A pardon [00:53:00] is critical. It is critical for people who are formerly incarcerated to avoid the immigration system and deportation. And so do that. Talk to your family, talk to your friends. My parents, despite being immigrants, they're kinda old school. Okay guys, they're like, you know, birthright citizenship does seem kind of like a loophole. Why should people like get like citizenship? I'm like, mom, we, I am a birthright citizen. Like, um, And I think for Asian Americans in particular, there is such a rich history of Asian American civil rights activism that we don't talk about enough, and maybe you do at Berkeley with ethnic studies and professors like Mike Chang. But, this is totally an interracial solidarity movement. We helped bring about Wong Kim Ark and there are beneficiaries of every shade of person. There's Yik wo, and I think about this all the time, which is another part of the 14th Amendment equal protection. Which black Americans fought for that in San Francisco. [00:54:00] Chinatown made real what? What does equal protection of the laws even mean? And that case was Seminole. You've got Lao versus Nichols. Another case coming out of San Francisco. Chinatown about English learner rights, the greatest beneficiary of Lao v Nichols, our Spanish speakers, they're Spanish speaking children in schools who get access to their education regardless of the language they speak. And so there are so many moments in Asian American history that we should be talking about, that we should educate our parents and our families about, because this is our moment. Now, this is another one of those times I wanna pass it to Mike and Harvey for questions, and I'm so excited to hear about them. Mike and Harvey: Wow, thank you so much. That's a amazing, panel and thank you for facilitating annie's wanna give it of a great value in terms of that spiritual home aspect. Norm how does your great grandfather's , experience in resistance, provide help for us [00:55:00] today? Norman Wong: Well, I think he was willing to do it. It only took one, if no one did it, this, we wouldn't be having the discussion because most of us would've never been here. And we need to come together on our common interests and put aside our differences because we all have differences. And if we tried, to have it our way for everything, we'll have it no way for us. We really need to, to bond and bind together and become strong as a people. And I don't mean as a racial or a national group. Mm-hmm. I mean, we're Americans now. We're Americans here think of us as joining with all Americans to make this country the way it's supposed to be. The way [00:56:00] we grew up, the one that we remember, this is not the America I grew up believing in. I'm glad he stood up. I'm proud that he did that. He did that. Him doing that gave me something that I've never had before. A validation of my own life. And so yes, I'm proud of him. Wong Kim Ark is for all of us. It's not for me to own. Yeah. Wow. Really not. Thank you so much. Wong Kim Ark is for all of us. And, and , talking about the good , that we have here and, the optimism that Harvey spoke about, the opportunity, even in a moment of substantial danger. Thank you so much everybody. Mike and Harvey: This was amazing and really appreciate sharing this space with you and, building community and solidarity. Ke Lam: But is there any, can I leave with a chant before we close off? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. So this is a chant that we use on the ground all the time. You guys probably heard it. When I said when we fight, you guys said we [00:57:00] win when we fight. We win when we fight, we win. When we fight, we win up. Swati Rayasam: Thanks so much for tuning into APEX Express. Please check out our website at kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. APEX Express is produced by Miko Lee, along with Jalena Keene-Lee, Ayame Keene-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaida, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Ravi Grover, and me Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the team at KPFA for their support, and have a good [00:58:00] night.   The post APEX Express – 6.26.25-Deport. Exclude. Revoke. Imprison – Wong Kim Ark is for All of Us appeared first on KPFA.

So Trump did the right thing over the weekend with some misdirection, the usual suspects are mad, so what can we expect going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trump's deportation plans have always faced a contradiction: he couldn't deport millions of immigrants without crippling essential industries and Republican business whose owners supported him. So Trump started granting exceptions; but that was before Saturday, the biggest one-day political protest in American history, protesting against him. On that same day, nobody came to his birthday parade, and in the middle of that night, Trump made an announcement on Truth Social, targeting blue cities – Harold Meyerson explains.Also: Saturday's ‘No Kings' protests, with 5 million people at 2100 events, was the largest single day of protest in American history. Leah Greenberg of Indivisible will talk about how the event was organized, and what comes next. Plus: The Medicaid cuts provide a lifetime opportunity for us to reach the 70 million people who did not vote and the 60 per cent of Trump voters who are not MAGA -- that's what Ai-jen Poo says. She's director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and President of Care in Action, and a key labor organizer and strategist

The Trump administration has been peddling to the American people that its deportation effort would focus on immigrants who had been convicted of crimes. However, new reporting suggests that is not the case.The administration is mindlessly and callously sweeping up undocumented men, women, and children. Given that statistics show undocumented workers pay an estimate $100 billion dollars in taxes each year, this aimless deportation operation will absolutely 1. hurt human beings and families, 2. hurt the US economy, and 3. hurt US tax revenue. So Trump's deportation policy is a lose-lose-lose proposition.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Trump administration has been peddling to the American people that its deportation effort would focus on immigrants who had been convicted of crimes. However, new reporting suggests that is not the case.The administration is mindlessly and callously sweeping up undocumented men, women, and children. Given that statistics show undocumented workers pay an estimate $100 billion dollars in taxes each year, this aimless deportation operation will absolutely 1. hurt human beings and families, 2. hurt the US economy, and 3. hurt US tax revenue. So Trump's deportation policy is a lose-lose-lose proposition.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Much has been made of the hallucinatory qualities of OpenAI's ChatGPT product. But as the Wall Street Journal's resident authority on OpenAI, Keach Hagey notes, perhaps the most hallucinatory feature the $300 billion start-up co-founded by the deadly duo of Sam Altman and Elon Musk is its attempt to be simultaneously a for-profit and non-profit company. As Hagey notes, the double life of this double company reached a surreal climax this week when Altman announced that OpenAI was abandoning its promised for-profit conversion. So what, I asked Hagey, are the implications of this corporate volte-face for investors who have poured billions of real dollars into the non-profit in order to make a profit? Will they be Waiting For Godot to get their returns?As Hagey - whose excellent biography of Altman, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks - explains, this might be the story of the hubristic 2020's. She speaks of Altman's astonishingly (even for Silicon Valley) hubris in believing that he can get away with the alchemic conceit of inventing a multi trillion dollar for-profit non-profit company. Yes, you can be half-pregnant, Sam is promising us. But, as she warns, at some point this will be exposed as fantasy. The consequences might not exactly be another Enron or FTX, but it will have ramifications way beyond beyond Silicon Valley. What will happen, for example, if future investors aren't convinced by Altman's fantasy and OpenAI runs out of cash? Hagey suggests that the OpenAI story may ultimately become a political drama in which a MAGA President will be forced to bail out America's leading AI company. It's TikTok in reverse (imagine if Chinese investors try to acquire OpenAI). Rather than the conveniently devilish Elon Musk, my sense is that Sam Altman is auditioning to become the real Jay Gatsby of our roaring twenties. Last month, Keach Hagey told me that Altman's superpower is as a salesman. He can sell anything to anyone, she says. But selling a non-profit to for-profit venture capitalists might even be a bridge too far for Silicon Valley's most hallucinatory optimist. Five Key Takeaways * OpenAI has abandoned plans to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, with pressure coming from multiple sources including attorneys general of California and Delaware, and possibly influenced by Elon Musk's opposition.* This decision will likely make it more difficult for OpenAI to raise money, as investors typically want control over their investments. Despite this, Sam Altman claims SoftBank will still provide the second $30 billion chunk of funding that was previously contingent on the for-profit conversion.* The nonprofit structure creates inherent tensions within OpenAI's business model. As Hagey notes, "those contradictions are still there" after nearly destroying the company once before during Altman's brief firing.* OpenAI's leadership is trying to position this as a positive change, with plans to capitalize the nonprofit and launch new programs and initiatives. However, Hagey notes this is similar to what Altman did at Y Combinator, which eventually led to tensions there.* The decision is beneficial for competitors like XAI, Anthropic, and others with normal for-profit structures. Hagey suggests the most optimistic outcome would be OpenAI finding a way to IPO before "completely imploding," though how a nonprofit-controlled entity would do this remains unclear.Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal's Media and Marketing Bureau in New York, where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. Her stories often explore the relationships between tech platforms like Facebook and Google and the media. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google's advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of “The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire,” published by HarperCollins. Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, the National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor's and a master's in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is May the 6th, a Tuesday, 2025. And the tech media is dominated today by OpenAI's plan to convert its for-profit business to a non-profit side. That's how the Financial Times is reporting it. New York Times says that OpenAI, and I'm quoting them, backtracks on plans to drop nonprofit control and the Wall Street Journal, always very authoritative on the tech front, leads with Open AI abandons planned for profit conversion. The Wall Street Journal piece is written by Keach Hagey, who is perhaps America's leading authority on OpenAI. She was on the show a couple of months ago talking about Sam Altman's superpower which is as a salesman. Keach is also the author of an upcoming book. It's out in a couple weeks, "The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future." And I'm thrilled that Keach has been remarkably busy today, as you can imagine, found a few minutes to come onto the show. So, Keach, what is Sam selling here? You say he's a salesman. He's always selling something or other. What's the sell here?Keach Hagey: Well, the sell here is that this is not a big deal, right? The sell is that, this thing they've been trying to do for about a year, which is to make their company less weird, it's not gonna work. And as he was talking to the press yesterday, he was trying to suggest that they're still gonna be able to fundraise, that these folks that they promised that if you give us money, we're gonna convert to a for-profit and it's gonna be much more normal investment for you, but they're gonna get that money, which is you know, a pretty tough thing. So that's really, that's what he's selling is that this is not disruptive to the future of OpenAI.Andrew Keen: For people who are just listening, I'm looking at Keach's face, and I'm sensing that she's doing everything she can not to burst out laughing. Is that fair, Keach?Keach Hagey: Well, it'll remain to be seen, but I do think it will make it a lot harder for them to raise money. I mean, even Sam himself said as much during the talk yesterday that, you know, investors would like to be able to have some say over what happens to their money. And if you're controlled by a nonprofit organization, that's really tough. And what they were trying to do was convert to a new world where investors would have a seat at the table, because as we all remember, when Sam got briefly fired almost two years ago. The investors just helplessly sat on the sidelines and didn't have any say in the matter. Microsoft had absolutely no role to play other than kind of cajoling and offering him a job on the sidelines. So if you're gonna try to raise money, you really need to be able to promise some kind of control and that's become a lot harder.Andrew Keen: And the ramifications more broadly on this announcement will extend to Microsoft and Microsoft stock. I think their stock is down today. We'll come to that in a few minutes. Keach, there was an interesting piece in the week, this week on AI hallucinations are getting worse. Of course, OpenAI is the dominant AI company with their ChatGPT. But is this also kind of hallucination? What exactly is going on here? I have to admit, and I always thought, you know, I certainly know more about tech than I do about other subjects, which isn't always saying very much. But I mean, either you're a nonprofit or you're a for-profit, is there some sort of hallucinogenic process going on where Sam is trying to sell us on the idea that OpenAI is simultaneously a for profit and a nonprofit company?Keach Hagey: Well, that's kind of what it is right now. That's what it had sort of been since 2019 or when it spun up this strange structure where it had a for-profit underneath a nonprofit. And what we saw in the firing is that that doesn't hold. There's gonna come a moment when those two worlds are going to collide and it nearly destroyed the company. To be challenging going forward is that that basic destabilization that like unstable structure remains even though now everything is so much bigger there's so much more money coursing through and it's so important for the economy. It's a dangerous position.Andrew Keen: It's not so dangerous, you seem still faintly amused. I have to admit, I'm more than faintly amused, it's not too bothersome for us because we don't have any money in OpenAI. But for SoftBank and the other participants in the recent $40 billion round of investment in OpenAI, this must be, to say the least, rather disconcerting.Keach Hagey: That was one of the biggest surprises from the press conference yesterday. Sam Altman was asked point blank, is SoftBank still going to give you this sort of second chunk, this $30 billion second chunk that was contingent upon being able to convert to a for-profit, and he said, quite simply, yes. Who knows what goes on in behind the scenes? I think we're gonna find out probably a lot more about that. There are many unanswered questions, but it's not great, right? It's definitely not great for investors.Andrew Keen: Well, you have to guess at the very minimum, SoftBank would be demanding better terms. They're not just going to do the same thing. I mean, it suddenly it suddenly gives them an additional ace in their hand in terms of negotiation. I mean this is not some sort of little startup. This is 30 or 40 billion dollars. I mean it's astonishing number. And presumably the non-public conversations are very interesting. I'm sure, Keach, you would like to know what's being said.Keach Hagey: Don't know yet, but I think your analysis is pretty smart on this matter.Andrew Keen: So if you had to guess, Sam is the consummate salesman. What did he tell SoftBank before April to close the round? And what is he telling them now? I mean, how has the message changed?Keach Hagey: One of the things that we see a little bit about this from the messaging that he gave to the world yesterday, which is this is going to be a simpler structure. It is going to be slightly more normal structure. They are changing the structure a little bit. So although the non-profit is going to remain in charge, the thing underneath it, the for-profit, is going change its structure a little bit and become kind of a little more normal. It's not going to have this capped profit thing where, you know, the investors are capped at 100 times what they put in. So parts of it are gonna become more normal. For employees, it's probably gonna be easier for them to get equity and things like that. So I'm sure that that's part of what he's selling, that this new structure is gonna be a little bit better, but it's not gonna be as good as what they were trying to do.Andrew Keen: Can Sam? I mean, clearly he has sold it. I mean as we joked earlier when we talked, Sam could sell ice to the Laplanders or sand to the Saudis. But these people know Sam. It's no secret that he's a remarkable salesman. That means that sometimes you have to think carefully about what he's saying. What's the impact on him? To what extent is this decision one more chip on the Altman brand?Keach Hagey: It's a setback for sure, and it's kind of a win for Elon Musk, his rival.Andrew Keen: Right.Keach Hagey: Elon has been suing him, Elon has been trying to block this very conversion. And in the end, it seems like it was actually the attorneys general of California and Delaware that really put the nail in the coffin here. So there's still a lot to find out about exactly how it all shook out. There were actually huge campaigns as well, like in the streets, billboards, posters. Polls saying, trying to put pressure on the attorney general to block this thing. So it was a broad coalition, I think, that opposed the conversion, and you can even see that a little bit in their speech. But you got to admit that Elon probably looked at this and was happy.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure Elon used his own X platform to promote his own agenda. Is this an example, Keach, in a weird kind of way of the plebiscitary politics now of Silicon Valley is that titans like Altman and Musk are fighting out complex corporate economic battles in the naked public of social media.Keach Hagey: Yes, in the naked public of social media, but what we're also seeing here is that it's sort of, it's become through the apparatus of government. So we're seeing, you know, Elon is in the Doge office and this conversion is really happening in the state AG's houses. So that's what's sort interesting to me is these like private fights have now expanded to fill both state and federal government.Andrew Keen: Last time we talked, I couldn't find the photo, but there was a wonderful photo of, I think it was Larry Ellison and Sam Altman in the Oval Office with Trump. And Ellison looked very excited. He looked extremely old as well. And Altman looked very awkward. And it's surprising to see Altman look awkward because generally he doesn't. Has Trump played a role in this or is he keeping out of it?Keach Hagey: As far as my current reporting right now, we have no reporting that Trump himself was directly involved. I can't go further than that right now.Andrew Keen: Meaning that you know something that you're not willing to ignore.Keach Hagey: Just I hope you keep your subscription to the Wall Street Journal on what role the White House played, I would say. But as far as that awkwardness, I don't know if you noticed that there was a box that day for Masa Yoshison to see.Andrew Keen: Oh yeah, and Son was in the office too, right, that was the third person.Keach Hagey: So it was a box in the podium, which I think contributed to the awkwardness of the day, because he's not a tall man.Andrew Keen: Right. To put it politely. The way that OpenAI spun it, in classic Sam Altman terms, is new funding to build towards AGI. So it's their Altman-esque use of the public to vindicate this new investment, is this just more quote unquote, and this is my word. You don't have to agree with it. Just sales pitch or might even be dishonesty here. I mean, the reality is, is new funding to build towards AGI, which is, artificial general intelligence. It's not new funding, to build toward AGI. It's new funding to build towards OpenAI, there's no public benefit of any of this, is there?Keach Hagey: Well, what they're saying is that the nonprofit will be capitalized and will sort of be hiring up and doing a bunch more things that it wasn't really doing. We'll have programs and initiatives and all of that. Which really, as someone who studied Sam's life, this sounds really a lot like what he did at Y Combinator. When he was head of Y Combinator, he also spun up a nonprofit arm, which is actually what OpenAI grew out of. So I think in Sam's mind, a nonprofit there's a place to go. Sort of hash out your ideas, it's a place to kind of have pet projects grow. That's where he did things like his UBI study. So I can sort of see that once the AGs are like, this is not gonna happen, he's like, great, we'll just make a big nonprofit and I'll get to do all these projects I've always wanted to do.Andrew Keen: Didn't he get thrown out of Y Combinator by Paul Graham for that?Keach Hagey: Yes, a little bit. You know, I would say there's a general mutiny for too much of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's true. People didn't love it, and they thought that he took his eye off the ball. A little bit because one of those projects became OpenAI, and he became kind of obsessed with it and stopped paying attention. So look, maybe OpenAI will spawn the next thing, right? And he'll get distracted by that and move on.Andrew Keen: No coincidence, of course, that Sam went on to become a CEO of OpenAI. What does it mean for the broader AI ecosystem? I noted earlier you brought up Microsoft. I mean, I think you've already written on this and lots of other people have written about the fact that the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft has cooled dramatically. As well as between Nadella and Altman. What does this mean for Microsoft? Is it a big deal?Keach Hagey: They have been hashing this out for months. So it is a big deal in that it will change the structure of their most important partner. But even before this, Microsoft and OpenAI were sort of locked in negotiations over how large and how Microsoft's stake in this new OpenAI will be valued. And that still has to be determined, regardless of whether it's a non-profit or a for-profit in charge. And their interests are diverging. So those negotiations are not as warm as they maybe would have been a few years ago.Andrew Keen: It's a form of polyamory, isn't it? Like we have in Silicon Valley, everyone has sex with everybody else, to put it politely.Keach Hagey: Well, OpenAI does have a new partner in Oracle. And I would expect them to have many more in terms of cloud computing partners going forward. It's just too much risk for any one company to build these huge and expensive data centers, not knowing that OpenAI is going to exist in a certain number of years. So they have to diversify.Andrew Keen: Keach, you know, this is amusing and entertaining and Altman is a remarkable individual, able to sell anything to anyone. But at what point are we really on the Titanic here? And there is such a thing as an iceberg, a real thing, whatever Donald Trump or other manufacturers of ontologies might suggest. At some point, this thing is going to end in a massive disaster.Keach Hagey: Are you talking about the Existence Force?Andrew Keen: I'm not talking about the Titanic, I'm talking about OpenAI. I mean, Parmi Olson, who's the other great authority on OpenAI, who won the FT Book of the Year last year, she's been on the show a couple of times, she wrote in Bloomberg that OpenAI can't have its money both ways, and that's what Sam is trying to do. My point is that we can all point out, excuse me, the contradictions and the hypocrisy and all the rest of it. But there are laws of gravity when it comes to economics. And at a certain point, this thing is going to crash, isn't it? I mean, what's the metaphor? Is it Enron? Is it Sam Bankman-Fried? What kind of examples in history do we need to look at to try and figure out what really is going on here?Keach Hagey: That's certainly one possibility, and there are a good number of people who believe that.Andrew Keen: Believe what, Enron or Sam Bankman-Fried?Keach Hagey: Oh, well, the internal tensions cannot hold, right? I don't know if fraud is even necessary so much as just, we've seen it, we've already seen it happen once, right, the company almost completely collapsed one time and those contradictions are still there.Andrew Keen: And when you say it happened, is that when Sam got pushed out or was that another or something else?Keach Hagey: No, no, that's it, because Sam almost got pushed out and then all of the funders would go away. So Sam needs to be there for them to continue raising money in the way that they have been raising money. And that's really going to be the question. How long can that go on? He's a young man, could go on a very long time. But yeah, I think that really will determine whether it's a disaster or not.Andrew Keen: But how long can it go on? I mean, how long could Sam have it both ways? Well, there's a dream. I mean maybe he can close this last round. I mean he's going to need to raise more than $40 billion. This is such a competitive space. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested almost on a monthly basis. So this is not the end of the road, this $40-billion investment.Keach Hagey: Oh, no. And you know, there's talk of IPO at some point, maybe not even that far away. I don't even let me wrap my mind around what it would be for like a nonprofit to have a controlling share at a public company.Andrew Keen: More hallucinations economically, Keach.Keach Hagey: But I mean, IPO is the exit for investors, right? That's the model, that is the Silicon Valley model. So it's going to have to come to that one way or another.Andrew Keen: But how does it work internally? I mean, for the guys, the sales guys, the people who are actually doing the business at OpenAI, they've been pretty successful this year. The numbers are astonishing. But how is this gonna impact if it's a nonprofit? How does this impact the process of selling, of building product, of all the other internal mechanics of this high-priced startup?Keach Hagey: I don't think it will affect it enormously in the short term. It's really just a question of can they continue to raise money for the enormous amount of compute that they need. So so far, he's been able to do that, right? And if that slows up in any way, they're going to be in trouble. Because as Sam has said many times, AI has to be cheap to be actually useful. So in order to, you know, for it to be widespread, for to flow like water, all of those things, it's got to be cheap and that's going to require massive investment in data centers.Andrew Keen: But how, I mean, ultimately people are putting money in so that they get the money back. This is not a nonprofit endeavor to put 40 billion from SoftBank. SoftBank is not in the nonprofit business. So they're gonna need their money back and the only way they generally, in my understanding, getting money back is by going public, especially with these numbers. How can a nonprofit go public?Keach Hagey: It's a great question. That's what I'm just phrasing. I mean, this is, you know, you talk to folks, this is what's like off in the misty distance for them. It's an, it's a fascinating question and one that we're gonna try to answer this week.Andrew Keen: But you look amused. I'm no financial genius. Everyone must be asking the same question.Keach Hagey: Well, the way that they've said it is that the for-profit will be, will have a, the non-profit will control the for profit and be the largest shareholder in it, but the rest of the shares could be held by public markets theoretically. That's a great question though.Andrew Keen: And lawyers all over the world must be wrapping their hands. I mean, in the very best case, it's gonna be lawsuits on this, people suing them up the wazoo.Keach Hagey: It's absolutely true. You should see my inbox right now. It's just like layers, layers, layer.Andrew Keen: Yeah, my wife. My wife is the head of litigation. I don't know if I should be saying this publicly anyway, I am. She's the head of Litigation at Google. And she lost some of her senior people and they all went over to AI. I'm big, I'm betting that they regret going over there can't be much fun being a lawyer at OpenAI.Keach Hagey: I don't know, I think it'd be great fun. I think you'd have like enormous challenges and have lots of billable hours.Andrew Keen: Unless, of course, they're personally being sued.Keach Hagey: Hopefully not. I mean, look, it is a strange and unprecedented situation.Andrew Keen: To what extent is this, if not Shakespearean, could have been written by some Greek dramatist? To what extend is this symbolic of all the hype and salesmanship and dishonesty of Silicon Valley? And in a sense, maybe this is a final scene or a penultimate scene in the Silicon Valley story of doing good for the world. And yet, of course, reaping obscene profit.Keach Hagey: I think it's a little bit about trying to have your cake and eat it too, right? Trying to have the aura of altruism, but also make something and make a lot of money. And what it seems like today is that if you started as a nonprofit, it's like a black hole. You can never get out. There's no way to get out, and that idea was just like maybe one step too clever when they set it up in the beginning, right. It seemed like too good to be true because it was. And it might end up really limiting the growth of the company.Andrew Keen: Is Sam completely in charge here? I mean, a number of the founders have left. Musk, of course, when you and I talked a couple of months ago, OpenAI came out of conversations between Musk and Sam. Is he doing this on his own? Does he have lieutenants, people who he can rely on?Keach Hagey: Yeah, I mean, he does. He has a number of folks that have been there, you know, a long time.Andrew Keen: Who are they? I mean, do we know their names?Keach Hagey: Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, like Brad Lightcap and Jason Kwon and, you know, just they're they're Greg Brockman, of course, still there. So there are a core group of executives that have that have been there pretty much from the beginning, close to it, that he does trust. But if you're asking, like, is Sam really in control of this whole thing? I believe the answer is yes. Right. He is on the board of this nonprofit, and that nonprofit will choose the board of the for-profit. So as long as that's the case, he's in charge.Andrew Keen: How divided is OpenAI? I mean, one of the things that came out of the big crisis, what was it, 18 months ago when they tried to push him out, was it was clearly a profoundly divided company between those who believed in the nonprofit mission versus the for-profit mission. Are those divisions still as acute within the company itself? It must be growing. I don't know how many thousands of people work.Keach Hagey: It has grown very fast. It is not as acute in my experience. There was a time when it was really sort of a warring of tribes. And after the blip, as they call it, a lot of those more safety focused people, people that subscribe to effective altruism, left or were kind of pushed out. So Sam took over and kind of cleaned house.Andrew Keen: But then aren't those people also very concerned that it appears as if Sam's having his cake and eating it, having it both ways, talking about the company being a non-profit but behaving as if it is a for-profit?Keach Hagey: Oh, yeah, they're very concerned. In fact, a number of them have signed on to this open letter to the attorneys general that dropped, I don't know, a week and a half ago, something like that. You can see a number of former OpenAI employees, whistleblowers and others, saying this very thing, you know, that the AG should block this because it was supposed to be a charitable mission from the beginning. And no amount of fancy footwork is gonna make it okay to toss that overboard.Andrew Keen: And I mean, in the best possible case, can Sam, the one thing I think you and I talked about last time is Sam clearly does, he's not driven by money. There's something else. There's some other demonic force here. Could he theoretically reinvent the company so that it becomes a kind of AI overlord, a nonprofit AI overlord for our 21st century AI age?Keach Hagey: Wow, well I think he sometimes thinks of it as like an AI layer and you know, is this my overlord? Might be, you know.Andrew Keen: As long as it's not made in China, I hope it's made in India or maybe in Detroit or something.Keach Hagey: It's a very old one, so it's OK. But it's really my attention overlord, right? Yeah, so I don't know about the AI overlord part. Although it's interesting, Sam from the very beginning has wanted there to be a democratic process to control what decision, what kind of AI gets built and what are the guardrails for AGI. As long as he's there.Andrew Keen: As long as he's the one determining it, right?Keach Hagey: We talked about it a lot in the very beginning of the company when things were smaller and not so crazy. And what really strikes me is he doesn't really talk about that much anymore. But what we did just see is some advocacy organizations that kind of function in that exact way. They have voters all over the world and they all voted on, hey, we want you guys to go and try to that ended up having this like democratic structure for deciding the future of AI and used it to kind of block what he was trying to do.Andrew Keen: What are the implications for OpenAI's competitors? There's obviously Anthropic. Microsoft, we talked about a little bit, although it's a partner and a competitor simultaneously. And then of course there's Google. I assume this is all good news for the competition. And of course XAI.Keach Hagey: It is good news, especially for a company like XAI. I was just speaking to an XAI investor today who was crowing. Yeah, because those companies don't have this weird structure. Only OpenAI has this strange nonprofit structure. So if you are an investor who wants to have some exposure to AI, it might just not be worth the headache to deal with the uncertainty around the nonprofit, even though OpenAI is like the clear leader. It might be a better bet to invest in Anthropic or XAI or something else that has just a normal for-profit structure.Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's hard to actually quote unquote out-Trump, Elon Musk on economic subterfuge. But Altman seems to have done that. I mean, Musk, what he folded X into XAI. It was a little bit of controversy, but he seems to got away with it. So there is a deep hostility between these two men, which I'm assuming is being compounded by this process.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. Again, this is a win for Elon. All these legal cases and Elon trying to buy OpenAI. I remember that bid a few months ago where he actually put a number on it. All that was about trying to block the for-profit conversion because he's trying to stop OpenAI and its tracks. He also claims they've abandoned their mission, but it's always important to note that it's coming from a competitor.Andrew Keen: Could that be a way out of this seeming box? Keach, a company like XAI or Microsoft or Google, or that probably wouldn't happen on the antitrust front, would buy OpenAI as maybe a nonprofit and then transform it into a for-profit company?Keach Hagey: Maybe you and Sam should get together and hash that out. That's the kind ofAndrew Keen: Well Sam, I'm available to be hired if you're watching. I'll probably charge less than your current consigliere. What's his name? Who's the consiglieri who's working with him on this?Keach Hagey: You mean Chris Lehane?Andrew Keen: Yes, Chris Lehane, the ego.Keach Hagey: Um,Andrew Keen: How's Lehane holding up in this? Do you think he's getting any sleep?Keach Hagey: Well, he's like a policy guy. I'm sure this has been challenging for everybody. But look, you are pointing to something that I think is real, which is there will probably be consolidation at some point down the line in AI.Andrew Keen: I mean, I know you're not an expert on the maybe sort of corporate legal stuff, but is it in theory possible to buy a nonprofit? I don't even know how you buy a non-profit and then turn it into a for-profit. I mean is that one way out of this, this cul-de-sac?Keach Hagey: I really don't know the answer to that question, to be honest with you. I can't think of another example of it happening. So I'm gonna go with no, but I don't now.Andrew Keen: There are no equivalents, sorry to interrupt, go on.Keach Hagey: No, so I was actually asking a little bit, are there precedents for this? And someone mentioned Blue Cross Blue Shield had gone from being a nonprofit to a for-profit successfully in the past.Andrew Keen: And we seem a little amused by that. I mean, anyone who uses US health care as a model, I think, might regret it. Your book, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks. When did you stop writing it?Keach Hagey: The end of December, end of last year, was pencils fully down.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure you told the publisher that that was far too long a window. Seven months on Silicon Valley is like seven centuries.Keach Hagey: It was actually a very, very tight timeline. They turned it around like incredibly fast. Usually it'sAndrew Keen: Remarkable, yeah, exactly. Publishing is such, such, they're such quick actors, aren't they?Keach Hagey: In this case, they actually were, so I'm grateful for that.Andrew Keen: Well, they always say that six months or seven months is fast, but it is actually possible to publish a book in probably a week or two, if you really choose to. But in all seriousness, back to this question, I mean, and I want everyone to read the book. It's a wonderful book and an important book. The best book on OpenAI out. What would you have written differently? Is there an extra chapter on this? I know you warned about a lot of this stuff in the book. So it must make you feel in some ways quite vindicated.Keach Hagey: I mean, you're asking if I'd had a longer deadline, what would I have liked to include? Well, if you're ready.Andrew Keen: Well, if you're writing it now with this news under your belt.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. So, I mean, the thing, two things, I guess, definitely this news about the for-profit conversion failing just shows the limits of Sam's power. So that's pretty interesting, because as the book was closing, we're not really sure what those limits are. And the other one is Trump. So Trump had happened, but we do not yet understand what Trump 2.0 really meant at the time that the book was closing. And at that point, it looked like Sam was in the cold, you know, he wasn't clear how he was going to get inside Trump's inner circle. And then lo and behold, he was there on day one of the Trump administration sharing a podium with him announcing that Stargate AI infrastructure investment. So I'm sad that that didn't make it into the book because it really just shows the kind of remarkable character he is.Andrew Keen: He's their Zelig, but then we all know what happened to Woody Allen in the end. In all seriousness, and it's hard to keep a straight face here, Keach, and you're trying although you're not doing a very good job, what's going to happen? I know it's an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer, but ultimately this thing has to end in catastrophe, doesn't it? I use the analogy of the Titanic. There are real icebergs out there.Keach Hagey: Look, there could be a data breach. I do think that.Andrew Keen: Well, there could be data breaches if it was a non-profit or for-profit, I mean, in terms of this whole issue of trying to have it both ways.Keach Hagey: Look, they might run out of money, right? I mean, that's one very real possibility. They might run outta money and have to be bought by someone, as you said. That is a totally real possibility right now.Andrew Keen: What would happen if they couldn't raise any more money. I mean, what was the last round, the $40 billion round? What was the overall valuation? About $350 billion.Keach Hagey: Yeah, mm-hmm.Andrew Keen: So let's say that they begin to, because they've got, what are their hard costs monthly burn rate? I mean, it's billions of just.Keach Hagey: Well, the issue is that they're spending more than they are making.Andrew Keen: Right, but you're right. So they, let's say in 18 months, they run out of runway. What would people be buying?Keach Hagey: Right, maybe some IP, some servers. And one of the big questions that is yet unanswered in AI is will it ever economically make sense, right? Right now we are all buying the possibility of in the future that the costs will eventually come down and it will kind of be useful, but that's still a promise. And it's possible that that won't ever happen. I mean, all these companies are this way, right. They are spending far, far more than they're making.Andrew Keen: And that's the best case scenario.Keach Hagey: Worst case scenario is the killer robots murder us all.Andrew Keen: No, what I meant in the best case scenario is that people are actually still without all the blow up. I mean, people are actual paying for AI. I mean on the one hand, the OpenAI product is, would you say it's successful, more or less successful than it was when you finished the book in December of last year?Keach Hagey: Oh, yes, much more successful. Vastly more users, and the product is vastly better. I mean, even in my experience, I don't know if you play with it every day.Andrew Keen: I use Anthropic.Keach Hagey: I use both Claude and ChatGPT, and I mean, they're both great. And I find them vastly more useful today than I did even when I was closing the book. So it's great. I don't know if it's really a great business that they're only charging me $20, right? That's great for me, but I don't think it's long term tenable.Andrew Keen: Well, Keach Hagey, your new book, The Optimist, your new old book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. I hope you're writing a sequel. Maybe you should make it The Pessimist.Keach Hagey: I think you might be the pessimist, Andrew.Andrew Keen: Well, you're just, you are as pessimistic as me. You just have a nice smile. I mean, in all reality, what's the most optimistic thing that can come out of this?Keach Hagey: The most optimistic is that this becomes a product that is actually useful, but doesn't vastly exacerbate inequality.Andrew Keen: No, I take the point on that, but in terms of this current story of this non-profit versus profit, what's the best case scenario?Keach Hagey: I guess the best case scenario is they find their way to an IPO before completely imploding.Andrew Keen: With the assumption that a non-profit can do an IPO.Keach Hagey: That they find the right lawyers from wherever they are and make it happen.Andrew Keen: Well, AI continues its hallucinations, and they're not in the product themselves. I think they're in their companies. One of the best, if not the best authority, our guide to all these hallucinations in a corporate level is Keach Hagey, her new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Sam Altman as the consummate salesman. And I think one thing we can say for sure, Keach, is this is not the end of the story. Is that fair?Keach Hagey: Very fair. Not the end of the story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Donnie Trump – what a joker, huh?Remember his promise to end Russia's war against Ukraine on Day One of his presidency? No joke, he bragged: “It'll be done within 24 hours. You watch.”Well, here we are at Day One Hundred, with the war still raging. So Trump either lied… or failed. But The Donald had a Joker up his sleeve – he now claims that, “when I said [Day One] it was in jest.”Horsefeathers. First it was a core campaign promise, which he talked about at length in at least 53 of his widely publicized events (including two nationally-televised) debates. Second, he repeatedly assured his MAGA devotees that he was not joking, but literally would end Putin's war in a day.He became the joke, because he knows nothing about war and has surrounded himself with Fox News blowhards who know even less. I don't mean that as an idle put-down, but as a screaming civil-defense warning of incoming danger. Unbeknownst to nearly all of us, Commander Trump and his menagerie of macho ne'er-do-wells are quietly-but-rapidly pulling America once again into the Big Muddy.They've blundered into another “forever war,” dumping billions of our dollars into high-tech bombing raids against Houthi militia. Who? Houthis are tenacious guerilla fighters in the small impoverished nation of Yemen. Like the Viet Cong some 60 years ago, they are clever and resilient – and they're confounding arrogant White House and Pentagon autocrats who keep thinking they can bomb their way to world domination.As Pete Seeger put it in his Big Muddy song, “The big fool says to push on.” But we don't have to obey. To push back, go to PeoplesAction.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

I've been in London this week talking to America watchers about the current situation in the United States. First up is Edmund Fawcett, the longtime Economist correspondent in DC and historian of both liberalism and conservatism. Fawcett argues that Trump's MAGA movement represents a kind of third way between liberalism and conservatism - a version of American populism resurrected for our anti-globalist early 21st century. He talks about how economic inequality fuels Trumpism, with middle-class income shares dropping while the wealthy prosper. He critiques both what he calls right-wing intellectual "kitsch" and the left's lack of strategic vision beyond its dogma of identity politics. Lacking an effective counter-narrative to combat Trumpism, Fawcett argues, liberals require not only sharper messaging but also a reinvention of what it means to be modern in our globalized age of resurrected nationalism. 5 Key Takeaways* European reactions to Trump mix shock with recognition that his politics have deep American roots.* Economic inequality (declining middle-class wealth) provides the foundation for Trump's political appeal.* The American left lacks an effective counter-narrative and strategic vision to combat Trumpism.* Both right-wing intellectualism and left-wing identity politics suffer from forms of "kitsch" and American neurosis.* The perception of America losing its position as the embodiment of modernity creates underlying anxiety. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, we are in London this week, looking westward, looking at the United States, spending some time with some distinguished Englishmen, or half-Englishmen, who have spent a lot of their lives in the United States, and Edmund Fawcett, former Economist correspondent in America, the author of a number of important books, particularly, Histories of Liberalism and Conservatism, is remembering America, Edmund. What's your first memory of America?Edmund Fawcett: My first memory of America is a traffic accident on Park Avenue, looking down as a four-year-old from our apartment. I was there from the age of two to four, then again as a school child in Washington for a few years when my father was working. He was an international lawyer. But then, after that, back in San Francisco, where I was a... I kind of hacked as an editor for Straight Arrow Press, which was the publishing arm of Rolling Stone. This was in the early 70s. These were the, it was the end of the glory days of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, the anti-war movement in Vietnam. It was exciting. A lot was going on, a lot was changing. And then not long after that, I came back to the U.S. for The Economist as their correspondent in Washington. That was in 1976, and I stayed there until 1983. We've always visited. Our son and grandson are American. My wife is or was American. She gave up her citizenship last year, chiefly for practical reasons. She said I would always feel American. But our regular visits have ended, of course. Being with my background, my mother was American, my grandfather was American. It is deeply part of my outlook, it's part of my world and so I am always very interested. I read quite a bit of the American press, not just the elite liberal press, every day. I keep an eye on through Real Clear Politics, which has got a very good sort of gazetteer. It's part of my weather.Andrew Keen: Edmund, I know you can't speak on behalf of Europe, but I'm going to ask a dumb question. Maybe you'll give me a smarter answer than the question. What's the European, the British take on what's happening in America? What's happened in this first quarter of 2025?Edmund Fawcett: I think a large degree of shock and horror, that's just the first reaction. If you'll allow me a little space, I think then there's a second reaction. The first reaction is shock and terror, with good reason, and nobody likes being talked to in the way that Vance talked to them, ignorantly and provocatively about free speech, which he feels he hasn't really thought hard enough about, and besides, it was I mean... Purely commercial, in largely commercial interest. The Europeans are shocked by the American slide from five, six, seven decades of internationalism. Okay, American-led, but still internationalist, cooperative, they're deeply shocked by that. And anybody who cares, as many Europeans do, about the texture, the caliber of American democracy and liberalism, are truly shocked by Trump's attacks on the courts, his attacks on the universities, his attack on the press.Andrew Keen: You remember, of course, Edmund, that famous moment in Casablanca where the policeman said he was shocked, truly shocked when of course he wasn't. Is your shock for real? Your... A good enough scholar of the United States to understand that a lot of the stuff that Trump is bringing to the table isn't new. We've had an ongoing debate in the show about how authentically American Trump is, whether he is the F word fascist or whether he represents some other indigenous strain in US political culture. What's your take?Edmund Fawcett: No, and that's the response to the shock. It's when you look back and see this Trump is actually deeply American. There's very little new here. There's one thing that is new, which I'll come to in a moment, and that returns the shock, but the shock is, is to some extent absorbed when Europeans who know about this do reflect that Trump is deeply American. I mean, there is a, he likes to cite McKinley, good, okay, the Republicans were the tariff party. He likes to say a lot of stuff that, for example, the populist Tom Watson from the South, deeply racist, but very much speaking for the working man, so long as he was a white working man. Trump goes back to that as well. He goes back in the presidential roster. Look at Robert Taft, competitor for the presidency against Eisenhower. He lost, but he was a very big voice in the Republican Party in the 1940s and 50s. Robert Taft, Jr. didn't want to join NATO. He pushed through over Truman's veto, the Taft-Hartley bill that as good as locked the unions out, the trade unions out of much of the part of America that became the burgeoning economic America, the South and the West. Trump is, sorry, forgive me, Taft, was in many ways as a hard-right Republican. Nixon told Kissinger, professors are the enemy. Reagan gave the what was it called? I forget the name of the speech that he gave in endorsing Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention. This in a way launched the new Republican assault on liberal republicanism. Rockefeller was the loser. Reagan, as it were, handed the palm to Rocket Goldwater. He lost to Johnson, but the sermon they were using, the anti-liberal went into vernacular and Trump is merely in a way echoing that. If you were to do a movie called Trump, he would star, of course, but somebody who was Nixon and Reagan's scriptwright, forgive me, somebody who is Nixon and Reagan's Pressman, Pat Buchanan, he would write the script of the Trump movie. Go back and read, look at some of Pat Buchanan's books, some of his articles. He was... He said virtually everything that Trump says. America used to be great, it is no longer great. America has enemies outside that don't like it, that we have nothing to do with, we don't need allies, what we want is friends, and we have very few friends in the world. We're largely on our, by our own. We're basically a huge success, but we're being betrayed. We're being ignored by our allies, we're being betrayed by friends inside, and they are the liberal elite. It's all there in Pat Buchanan. So Trump in that way is indeed very American. He's very part of the history. Now, two things. One is... That Trump, like many people on the hard right in Europe, is to some extent, a neurotic response to very real complaints. If you would offer a one chart explanation of Trumpism, I don't know whether I can hold it up for the camera. It's here. It is actually two charts, but it is the one at the top where you see two lines cross over. You see at the bottom a more or less straight line. What this does is compare the share of income in 1970 with the share of the income more or less now. And what has happened, as we are not at all surprised to learn, is that the poor, who are not quite a majority but close to the actual people in the United States, things haven't changed for them much at all. Their life is static. However, what has changed is the life for what, at least in British terms, is called the middle classes, the middle group. Their share of income and wealth has dropped hugely, whereas the share of the income and wealth of the top has hugely risen. And in economic terms, that is what Trumpism is feeding off. He's feeding off a bewildered sense of rage, disappointment, possibly envy of people who looked forward, whose parents looked forward to a great better life, who they themselves got a better life. They were looking forward to one for their children and grandchildren. And now they're very worried that they're not those children and grandchildren aren't going to get it. So socially speaking, there is genuine concern, indeed anger that Trump is speaking to. Alas, Trump's answers are, I would say, and I think many Europeans would agree, fantasies.Andrew Keen: Your background is also on the left, your first job was at the New Left Reviews, you're all too familiar with Marxist language, Marxist literature, ways of thinking about what we used to call late-stage capitalism, maybe we should rename it post-late-stage-capitalism. Is it any surprise, given your presentation of the current situation in America, which is essentially class envy or class warfare, but the right. The Bannonites and many of the others on the right fringes of the MAGA movement have picked up on Lenin and Gramsci and the old icons of class warfare.Edmund Fawcett: No, I don't think it is. I think that they are these are I mean, we live in a world in which the people in politics and in the press in business, they've been to universities, they've read an awful lot of books, they spend an awful lot of time studying dusty old books like the ones you mentioned, Gramsci and so. So they're, to some extent, forgive me, they are, they're intellectuals or at least they become, they be intellectualized. Lenin called one of his books, What is to be Done. Patrick Deneen, a Catholic right-wing Catholic philosopher. He's one of the leading right-wing Catholic intellectuals of the day, hard right. He named it What is To Be Done. But this is almost kitsch, as it were, for a conservative Catholic intellectual to name a book after Vladimir Lenin, the first Bolshevik leader of the Russian Revolution. Forgive me, I lost the turn.Andrew Keen: You talk about kitsch, Edmund, is this kitsch leftism or is it real leftism? I mean if Trump was Bernie Sanders and a lot of what Trump says is not that different from Sanders with the intellectuals or the few intellectuals left in. New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles, would they be embracing what's happening? Thanks, I've got the third again.Edmund Fawcett: No, you said Kitsch. The publicists and intellectuals who support Trump, there is a Kitsch element to it. They use a lot of long words, they appeal to a lot of authorities. Augustine of Hippo comes into it. This is really kind of intellectual grandstanding. No, what matters? And this comes to the second thing about shock at Trump. The second thing is that there is real social and economic dysfunction here that the United States isn't really coping with. I don't think the Trumpites, I don't think the rather kitschy intellectuals who are his mature leaders. I don't think they so much matter. What I think matters here is, put it this way, is the silence of the left. And this is one of the deep problems. I mean, always with my friends, progressive friends, liberal friends, it's terribly easy to throw rocks at Trump and scorn his cheerleaders but we always have to ask ourselves why are they there and we're here and the left at the moment doesn't really have an answer to that. The Democrats in the United States they're strangely silent. And it's not just, as many people say, because they haven't dared to speak up. It's not that, it's a question of courage. It's an intellectual question of lacking some strategic sense of where the country is and what kinds of policy would help get it to a better place. This is very bleak, and that's part of, underlies the sense of shock, which we come back to with Trump after we tell ourselves, oh, well, it isn't new, and so on. The sense of shock is, well what is the practical available alternative for the moment? Electorally, Trump is quite weak, he wasn't a landslide, he got fewer percentage than Jimmy Carter did. The balance in the in the congress is quite is quite slight but again you could take false comfort there. The problem with liberals and progressives is they don't really have a counter narrative and one of the reasons they don't have a counter-narrative is I don't sense they have any longer a kind of vision of their own. This is a very bleak state of affairs.Andrew Keen: It's a bleak state of affairs in a very kind of surreal way. They're lacking the language. They don't have the words. Do they need to reread the old New Left classics?Edmund Fawcett: I think you've said a good thing. I mean, words matter tremendously. And this is one of Trump's gifts, is that he's able to spin old tropes of the right, the old theme music of the hard right that goes back to late 19th century America, late 19th century Europe. He's brilliant at it. It's often garbled. It's also incoherent. But the intellectuals, particularly liberals and progressives can mishear this. They can miss the point. They say, ah, it doesn't, it's not grammatical. It's incoherent. It is word salad. That's not the point. A paragraph of Trump doesn't make sense. If you were an editor, you'd want to rewrite it, but editors aren't listening. It's people in the crowd who get his main point, and his main point is always expressed verbally. It's very clever. It's hard to reproduce because he's actually a very good actor. However, the left at the moment has nothing. It has neither a vocabulary nor a set of speech makers. And the reason it doesn't have that, it doesn't have the vocabularies, because it doesn't have the strategic vision.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and coming back to the K-word you brought up, kitsch. If anything, the kitsch is on the left with Kamala Harris and her presentation of herself in this kitschification of American immigration. So the left in America, if that's the right word to describe them, are as vulnerable to kitsch as the right.Edmund Fawcett: Yes, and whether it's kitsch or not, I think this is very difficult to talk to on the progressive left. Identity politics does have a lot to answer for. Okay, I'll go for it. I mean, it's an old saying in politics that things begin as a movement, become a campaign, become a lobby, and then end up as a racket. That's putting it much too strongly, but there is an element in identity politics of which that is true. And I think identity politics is a deep problem for liberals, it's a deep problem for progressives because in the end, what identity politics offers is a fragmentation, which is indeed happened on the left, which then the right can just pick off as it chooses. This is, I think, to get back some kind of strategic vision, the left needs to come out of identity politics, it needs to go back to the vision of commonality, the vision of non-discrimination, the mission of true civic equality, which underlay civil rights, great movement, and try to avoid. The way that identity politics is encouraged, a kind of segmentation. There's an interesting parallel between identity politics and Trumpism. I'm thinking of the national element in Trumpism, Make America Great Again. It's rather a shock to see the Secretary of State sitting beside Trump in the room in the White House with a make America it's not a make America great cap but it says Gulf of America this kind of This nationalism is itself neurotic in a way that identity politics has become neurotic.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's a Linguistic.Edmund Fawcett: Neurosis. Both are neurotic responses to genuine problems.Andrew Keen: Edmund, long-time viewers and listeners to the show know that I often quote you in your wonderful two histories of conservatism and liberalism when you, I'm not sure which of the books, I think it may have been in conservatism. I can't remember myself. You noted that this struggle between the left and the right, between liberalism and conservatives have always be smarter they've always made the first move and it's always been up to the liberals and of course liberalism and the left aren't always the same thing but the left or progressives have always been catching up with conservatives so just to ask this question in terms of this metaphorical chess match has anything changed. It's always been the right that makes the first move, that sets the game up. It has recently.Edmund Fawcett: Let's not fuss too much with the metaphor. I think it was, as it were, the Liberals made the first move for decades, and then, more or less in our lifetimes, it has been the right that has made the weather, and the left has been catching up. Let's look at what happened in the 1970s. In effect. 30-40 years of welfare capitalism in which the state played ever more of a role in providing safety nets for people who were cut short by a capitalistic economy. Politics turned its didn't entirely reject that far from it but it is it was said enough already we've reached an end point we're now going to turn away from that and try to limit the welfare state and that has been happening since the 1970s and the left has never really come up with an alternative if you look at Mitterrand in France you look at Tony Blair new Labor in you look at Clinton in the United States, all of them in effect found an acceptably liberal progressive way of repackaging. What the right was doing and the left has got as yet no alternative. They can throw rocks at Trump, they can resist the hard right in Germany, they can go into coalition with the Christian Democrats in order to resist the hard right much as in France but they don't really have a governing strategy of their own. And until they do, it seems to me, and this is the bleak vision, the hard right will make the running. Either they will be in government as they are in the United States, or they'll be kept just out of government by unstable coalitions of liberal conservatives and the liberal left.Andrew Keen: So to quote Patrick Deneen, what is to be done is the alternative, a technocracy, the best-selling book now on the New York Times bestseller list is Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson's Abundance, which is a progressive. Technocratic manifesto for changing America. It's not very ideological. Is that really the only alternative for the left unless it falls into a Bernie Sanders-style anti-capitalism which often is rather vague and problematic?Edmund Fawcett: Well, technocracy is great, but technocrats never really get to do what they say ought to be done, particularly not in large, messy democracies like Europe and the United States. Look, it's a big question. If I had a Leninist answer to Patrick Deneen's question, what is to be done, I'd be very happy to give it. I feel as somebody on the liberal left that the first thing the liberal left needs to do is to is two things. One is to focus in exposing the intellectual kitschiness, the intellectual incoherence on the one hand of the hard right, and two, hitting back in a popular way, in a vulgar way, if you will, at the lies, misrepresentations, and false appeals that the hard-right coasts on. So that's really a kind of public relations. It's not deep strategy or technocracy. It is not a policy list. It's sharpening up the game. Of basically of democratic politics and they need to liberals on the left need to be much tougher much sharper much more vulgar much more ready to use the kinds of weapons the kinds of mockery and imaginative invention that the Trumpites use that's the first thing the second thing is to take a breath and go back and look at the great achievements of democratic liberalism of the 1950s, 60s, 70s if you will. I mean these were these produced in Europe and the United States societies that by any historical standard are not bad. They have terrible problems, terrible inequities, but by any historical standard and indeed by any comparative standard, they're not bad if you ask yourself why immigration has become such a problem in Western Europe and the United States, it's because these are hugely desirable places to live in, not just because they're rich and make a comfortable living, which is the sort of the rights attitude, because basically they're fairly safe places to live. They're fairly good places for your kids to grow up in. All of these are huge achievements, and it seems to me that the progressives, the liberals, should look back and see how much work was needed to create... The kinds of politics that underpinned that society, and see what was good, boast of what was and focus on how much work was needed.Andrew Keen: Maybe rather than talking about making America great again, it should be making America not bad. I think that's too English for the United States. I don't think that should be for a winner outside Massachusetts and Maine. That's back to front hypocritical Englishism. Let's end where we began on a personal note. Do you think one of the reasons why Trump makes so much news, there's so much bemusement about him around the world, is because most people associate America with modernity, they just take it for granted that America is the most advanced, the most modern, is the quintessential modern project. So when you have a character like Trump, who's anti-modernist, who is a reactionary, It's bewildering.Edmund Fawcett: I think it is bewildering, and I think there's a kind of bewilderment underneath, which we haven't really spoken to as it is an entirely other subject, but is lurking there. Yes, you put your absolutely right, you put your finger on it, a lot of us look to America as modernity, maybe not the society of the future, but certainly the the culture of the future, the innovations of the future. And I think one of the worrying things, which maybe feeds the neurosis of Make America Great Again, feeds the neurosis, of current American unilateralism, is a fear But modernity, talk like Hegel, has now shifted and is now to be seen in China, India and other countries of the world. And I think underlying everything, even below the stuff that we showed in the chart about changing shares of wealth. I think under that... That is much more worrisome in the United States than almost anything else. It's the sense that the United States isn't any longer the great modern world historical country. It's very troubling, but let's face it, you get have to get used to it.Andrew Keen: The other thing that's bewildering and chilling is this seeming coexistence of technological innovation, the Mark Andreessen's, the the Musk's, Elon Musk's of the world, the AI revolution, Silicon Valley, who seem mostly in alliance with Trump and Musk of course are headed out. The Doge campaign to destroy government or undermine government. Is it conceivable that modernity is by definition, you mentioned Hegel and of course lots of people imagine that history had ended in 1989 but the reverse was true. Is it possible that modernity is by-definition reactionary politically?Edmund Fawcett: A tough one. I mean on the technocracy, the technocrats of Silicon Valley, I think one of their problems is that they're brilliant, quite brilliant at making machines. I'm the machinery we're using right here. They're fantastic. They're not terribly good at. Messy human beings and messy politics. So I'm not terribly troubled by that, nor your other question about it is whether looming challenges of technology. I mean, maybe I could just end with the violinist, Fritz Kreisler, who said, I was against the telegraph, I was against the telephone, I was against television. I'm a progressive when it comes to technology. I'm always against the latest thing. I mean, I don't, there've always been new machines. I'm not terribly troubled by that. It seems to me, you know, I want you to worry about more immediate problems. If indeed AI is going to take over the world, my sense is, tell us when we get there.Andrew Keen: And finally, you were half-born in the United States or certainly from an American and British parent. You spent a lot of your life there and you still go, you follow it carefully. Is it like losing a lover or a loved one? Is it a kind of divorce in your mind with what's happening in America in terms of your own relations with America? You noted that your wife gave up her citizenship this year.Edmund Fawcett: Well, it is. And if I could talk about Natalia, my wife, she was much more American than me. Her mother was American from Philadelphia. She lived and worked in America more than I did. She did give up her American citizenship last year, partly for a feeling of, we use a long word, alienation, partly for practical reasons, not because we're anything like rich enough to pay American tax, but simply the business of keeping up with the changing tax code is very wary and troublesome. But she said, as she did it, she will always feel deeply American, and I think it's possible to say that. I mean, it's part of both of us, and I don't think...Andrew Keen: It's loseable. Well, I have to ask this question finally, finally. Maybe I always use that word and it's never final. What does it mean to feel American?Edmund Fawcett: Well, everybody's gonna have their own answer to that. I was just... What does it mean for you? I'm just reading. What it is to feel American. Can I dodge the question by saying, what is it to feel Californian? Or even what is to be Los Angelino? Where my sister-in-law and brother-in-law live. A great friend said, what it is feel Los Angeles you go over those mountains and you put down your rucksack. And I think what that means is for Europeans, America has always meant leaving the past behind.Edmund Fawcett was the Economist‘s Washington, Paris and Berlin correspondent and is a regular reviewer. His Liberalism: The Life of an Idea was published by Princeton in 2014. The second in his planned political trilogy – Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition – was published in 2020, also by Princeton University Press. The Economist called it ‘an epic history of conservatism and the Financial Times praised Fawcett for creating a ‘rich and wide-ranging account' that demonstrates how conservatism has repeated managed to renew itself.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Grab your popcorn and your antacid.After a mind numbing week of schizophrenic headlines and market mayhem it seems Trump has backed off from his civilization ending tariff rhetoric. Even Fox News hosts are admitting this wasn't 12D chess but a massive blunder which has succeeded only in normalizing chaos in America, weakening the dollar internationally and strengthening trade relationships between BRICS nations and emerging markets.So Trump tucked tail, but not before priming the pump for insiders to cash in on the announcement with some pretty blatant insider trading. I have renamed him ‘Pump & Dump Trump' … I think it's fitting.Ultimately, nothing has really changed in Groundhog Day political hell. In a nutshell, both China and the USA have dumped crushing tariffs (trade taxes) on their own citizens since 2017 and are calling it a ‘trade war”. Convenient for them isn't it?Even crazier? Trump is now using the crisis that he himself created to bring back the ‘essential vs. non essential' rhetoric of COVID to determine what companies get tariff pardons while championing a bill to make it easier for him to declare national emergencies and circumvent judicial review.Alas, the #UNIPARTY chaos continues, uncertainty prevails, markets restrict into survival mode, debt and deficits grow, the money printing continues and inflation rages on.And all you got was a stupid hat.Today we cover the headlines which have dominated the week with lots of Q&A and commentary from our live chatters on Rumble, Facebook and Twitter. I cannot wait to talk to you all!!Tune in LIVE ——> https://rumble.com/v6rwucd-realitydc-heats-up-tariff-whiplash-pump-and-dump-schemes-and-scheming-influ.htmlStart COOKING with toxin free ceramic!! The 100% toxin free P600 sizzle set is 55% OFF for the SJ audience!! Go to https://www.chefsfoundry.com/joy today to claim the limited time discount!Watch LIVE TODAY and follow the SJ Show on Rumble HERE: https://rumble.com/c/TheShannonJoyShowShannon's Top Headlines April 10, 2025:A Timeline Of Tariffs, China & USA: https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/us-china-trade-war-tariff-retaliations-timeline-2017-to-2025-lawsuits-125041000509_1.htmlInsider Trading On The Tariff Wars? https://croakycaiman.substack.com/p/the-call-heard-around-the-swamp-whenCOVID Trump Is Back - Essential Vs Non-Essential Businesses Get Favors: https://x.com/ShannonJoyRadio/status/1910316141655777595Elon Gives Himself A Not So Small DOGE Treat: https://www.ft.com/content/ede5b41d-4b97-494f-b8ce-4f13b11f9ad1?accessToken=zwAGMm1-SDdwkdPt5bQdS5dJT9O4zk8TsR-a0Q.MEUCIQDWE362nT6DOvCxRDP80ENwwV97EreEqYyJ1Zc1OWmnfgIgVyZadHM76Yng2wpEdqv7WLq3hncX0kYUCGnPyRwmnVM&sharetype=gift&token=42578836-67db-403d-b1fb-335c29e2247dSilver Still Looking Nice: https://www.mining.com/ubs-tells-investors-to-buy-silver-amid-trump-tariff-turmoil/SJ Show Notes:Please support Shannon's independent network with your donation HERE:https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=MHSMPXEBSLVT6Support Our Sponsors:Please help us welcome an AMAZING new sponsor Blackout Coffee!! Here is a GREAT deal just for the Joy audience - 20% off your first order—just head to https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/?p=Y7GEtILQS and use code joy at checkout.SJ Collagen SPECIAL DEAL!! Get your Native Path collagen 45% OFF with a stock up special for the SJ audience! www.getnativepathcollagen.com/joyBe ready before you need it! Stock up now and protect your family. Go to https://www.allfamilypharmacy.com/JOY and use code JOY10 for 10% off your order.Colonial Metals Group is the company Shannon trusts for all her metals purchases! Set up a SAFE & Secure IRA or 401k with a company who shares your values! Learn more HERE: https://colonialmetalsgroup.com/joyLightly prepped and READY to go. Always be prepared for ANY emergency with The Satellite Phone Store! Everything you need when the POWER goes OUT. Use the promo code JOY for 10% off your entire order TODAY! www.SAT123.com/JoyPlease consider Dom Pullano of PCM & Associates! He has been Shannon's advisor for over a decade and would love to help you grow!Call his toll free number today: 1-800-536-1368Or visit his website at https://www.pcmpullano.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

So Trump is an idiot. That's not news. But what is news is how remarkably quickly the economy is tanking thanks to his "tariffs for 'Murica" plan. And here at the bottom, you and I will feel the greatest weight of this crash while the world looks on, watching the US just beat the shit out of iteslf for no apparent reason.  PLUS some words from Richard Wolff on Econ 101 and thes times, the Panama Canal purchase on hold, and more!  

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found Click On Picture To See Larger Picture Trump unveils the first gold card visa, Liberation Day has now passed and the fake news and the economist are pushing doom and gloom. Trump set everything up to force the Fed to lower rates, low inflation, jobs, low energy. The Fed is trapped. The economic is going to boom, the window is closing for the [CB]. The [DS] is panicking, DOGE and Trump are figuring out how the money laundering scheme works, who is getting the kickbacks and how they over through the government. Trump made an announcement that DOGE found something incredible, could this be how they use the SS numbers to cheat in the elections, or is this about the kickbacks or something else. Trump put out the information so the [DS] makes a move. Panic everywhere.   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Economy Trump unveils first $5 million ‘gold card' visa US President Donald Trump unveiled the first “gold card”, a residency permit sold for $5 million each, aboard Air Force One on Thursday. Holding a prototype that bore his face and an inscription “The Trump Card”, the Republican president told reporters that the special visa would probably be available “in less than two weeks”. Source: breitbart.com https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1908019051676434850 https://twitter.com/CollinsforTX/status/1907811075766047118 impose them. Trump sued over China tariffs  President Trump was sued  over the 20 percent tariffs he imposed on Chinese goods i It marks the first known legal challenge against Trump's tariffs, which have fulfilled a campaign promise and rattled financial markets. The lawsuit contests Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), arguing the law authorizes asset freezes and similar economic sanctions, but not tariffs. “Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy,” the lawsuit states. Source: thehill.com The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 is a United States federal law that grants the President broad authority to regulate international economic transactions during a national emergency. Enacted on October 28, 1977, it's codified under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, sections 1701-1707. The act was designed to replace the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, narrowing the scope of presidential powers to peacetime emergencies rather than wartime scenarios. Under IEEPA, the President can declare a national emergency in response to an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the U.S. national security, foreign policy, or economy that originates largely from abroad. Once declared, the President can block transactions, freeze assets, and impose economic sanctions on foreign entities or individuals. The law requires the President to notify Congress of the emergency and provide periodic updates, but it doesn't mandate Congressional approval to maintain the emergency.   To cut your tariff, buy American stuff So Trump's tariffs should benefit the trade-deficit U.S. even if they ignite a trade war.  But a trade war is far from inevitable.  Reciprocal tariffs create incentives for countries to buy from the U.S. in order to sell to the U.S.  Vietnam, for example, bought $13.1 billion from the U.S. in 2024, whereas it sold $136.6 billion to the U.S.  To bring down Trump's 46% tariff rate on Vietnamese products, Vietnam will probably negotiate with Trump, agreeing to buy more U.S. products. During his first term, Trump's tariffs,

In this episode of The Missing Secret Podcast, John and Kelly discuss the concept of why people don't always see things like we do. And they discuss what is the effect on both of us and them. During this podcast John points out that sometimes the difference of opinion has no real impact. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And everybody processes information differently. That's why there is a difference of opinion. But sometimes there is more at stake. It's more than that a difference of opinion. It's right or wrong. The opinion that is right is always the one that is closest to the truth, or what we would define as reality. The truth is reality.John talks about Elon Musk sending an email to all 2 million federal employees telling them to respond to see if there are real people behind the emails. As John and Kelly discussed it, they had different opinions. Processing the same information but differently. But it's just a matter of opinion. Then John talked about the Ukraine more. Trump saying Ukraine started the war. A clear falsehood. Now we've moved from something that is just an opinion to something with real consequences. Over 1 million people have been killed in this war. Biggest war in Europe since World War II. Clearly Trump is wrong. Ukraine clearly did not start the war. So Trump is clearly wrong. And the decisions he's making for the United States are to our detriment. Because he's ignoring the truth. And that's the point. When people have a different opinion, sometimes it's just a matter of opinion.But sometimes there is way more at stake. Key is to tune into what is the truth. The position that is closest to the truth, which is reality, is the opinion that is correct. John talks about teaching his think it be it methodology to his class at the University of Texas. Most of them are fully on board. Excited about what they're learning. But if a few are resisting it, then they are doing it at their own peril. Because their own successes is on the line. And to deny something that clearly is proven to be true and based on science, is to their detriment. But it's their choice.Buy John's book, THE MISSING SECRET of the Legendary Book Think and Grow Rich : And a 12-minute-a-day technique to apply it here.About the Hosts:John MitchellJohn's story is pretty amazing. After spending 20 years as an entrepreneur, John was 50 years old but wasn't as successful as he thought he should be. To rectify that, he decided to find the “top book in the world” on SUCCESS and apply that book literally Word for Word to his life. That Book is Think & Grow Rich. The book says there's a SECRET for success, but the author only gives you half the secret. John figured out the full secret and a 12 minute a day technique to apply it.When John applied his 12 minute a day technique to his life, he saw his yearly income go to over $5 million a year, after 20 years of $200k - 300k per year. The 25 times increase happened because John LEVERAGED himself by applying science to his life.His daily technique works because it focuses you ONLY on what moves the needle, triples your discipline, and consistently generates new business ideas every week. This happens because of 3 key aspects of the leveraging process.John's technique was profiled on the cover of Time Magazine. He teaches it at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business, which is one the TOP 5 business schools in the country. He is also the “mental coach” for the head athletic coaches at the University of Texas as well.Reach out to John at john@thinkitbeit.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mitchell-76483654/Kelly HatfieldKelly Hatfield is an...

President Trump was issued a referendum on November 5: Clean up the filth, trim the fat, and take out the trash. So Trump rolled out the MAGA Diet. He's moving quickly to get us all on it. Dan Bongino becomes Kash Patel's deputy at the FBI, with rumors that Matt Gaetz will be working with them, too. (Pinch me.) Trump fires the chair of the Joint Chiefs as new polling suggests a disturbing disconnect between Democrats and reality. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna calls for all members of the House and Senate to be drug tested as federal workers receive a homework assignment that will weed out people not working and expose fake people on fake emails collecting pay and defrauding the American people.

Trump sent out his utterly un-American post again this morning: "He who saves his county does not violate any law." It's a statement, a belief, that cannot coexist with our Constitution, cannot coexist if we're a nation of laws. So Trump is forcing Americans to choose: Him or the rule of law. What say you America? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on Welcome to Cloudlandia, We start with the mysterious drone sightings over New Jersey, exploring the thin line between conspiracy and curiosity. These nocturnal aerial visitors become a metaphor for our complex modern world, where information and imagination intersect. We then investigate the profound impact of cultural icons like Mr. Beast and Kylie Jenner, examining how influence transcends traditional expertise. Our discussion reveals how public figures navigate changing landscapes of leadership and visibility, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of success and social capital. The episode concludes by challenging our approach to information consumption. Drawing from personal experiments and wisdom from thought leaders like Warren Buffett, we explore strategies for staying informed in a noisy digital ecosystem. Our conversation provides practical perspectives on navigating media, understanding cultural shifts, and maintaining perspective amid constant information flow. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS We explore the presence of drones over New Jersey, questioning whether they are linked to government surveillance or civilian activities, while considering the broader context of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Dan and I discuss the concept of anticipation being more stressful than actual experiences, suggesting it as a contributor to mental distress. The impact of cultural icons like Mr. Beast and Kylie Jenner is examined, highlighting their influence despite lacking traditional skills in their fields. We ponder on how cultural shifts are altering perceptions of corporate leadership, using a hypothetical scenario of a CEO's public safety being compromised. The dynamics of news consumption are analyzed, contrasting real-time news feeds with curated platforms like RealClear Politics to understand how they balance diverse political viewpoints. I share my experience with digital abstinence, noting the benefits of reduced distractions and the negligible impact of disconnecting from the continuous news cycle temporarily. The concept of "irrational confidence" is explored, discussing how it characterizes overachievers and can be cultivated over time to foster personal growth. We reflect on long-term investment strategies inspired by Warren Buffett, emphasizing the enduring need for certain products and industries. I consider the importance of balancing cultural awareness with the need to filter out unnecessary noise, contemplating changes in my information consumption habits. Insights from personal experiments in digital and media consumption are shared, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between transient cultural information and lasting knowledge. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dean: Mr Sullivan. Dan: Mr Jackson are the drones looking down on you. Are the drones looking down on you. Dan: I mean, how many do you have up there? What is going? Dean: on with these drones. Dan: Yeah, I bet there's just a bunch of civilians fooling around with the government. Dean: Yeah, I wonder you know like you look at this. I think it's so. I wonder you know like you look at this. I think it's so amazing that you know we've had a theme, or I've been kind of thinking about this, with the. You know, is this the best time to be alive or the worst time to be alive? And I mentioned that I think probably in every practical way, this is the best time, but the anything in the worst time to be alive column just the speed and proliferation of, you know, conspiracies and misinformation and the battle for our minds. You know, keeping us in that. You know everything is just enough to be. You know where you're uncertain of stuff. You know there's a lot of uncertainty that's being laid out right now in every way. I mean, you look at just what's happened in the last. If we take 2020, fear you know. Dan: Well, tell me about it. I'm not very much of that 2024. Tell me about it. I experience very much of that. But why don't you tell me about that? Because I want to note some things down here. Dean: You know what? Dan: Every month, more money comes in than goes out. What more do you need to know besides that? Dean: I agree with you. I'm seeing the light here. It's just on the top level. We went through an election year which is always the you know the highly funded, you know misinformation campaigns or you know putting out there. So everybody's up on high level. Dan: Are you talking about lies Are? Dean: you talking about lies? Are you talking about lies? Who knows Dan? Dan: When I was growing up we called them lies. Why so many extra letters? I mean lies, that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word. Why is Greek and Roman stuff in there? Dean: I think that's the thing, If we just simplify it. But if we bring it down to lies and truth, it's much more. Dan: I like lies and truth. Dean: Yeah, it's much more difficult to discern the lies from the truth. Dan: Yeah, he's telling a lie here, folks, his mouth is moving Exactly. Dean: You know that's the truth, but I just look at that. It's like you know the things that are. You know the things that are happening right now. Like you look at even with the government, even with the congressional hearings or announcements on, almost just like a matter of fact, oh yeah, there's aliens, there's totally aliens. There's. They've been here for a long time. We've got some in, we've got all the evidence and everything like that. But you know, carry on, it's just kind of so. It's so funny. Stuff is being like, you know, nobody really is kind of talking about it. And then you get these drone situations in New Jersey, all these drones coming out and the government saying I know nothing to see here, nothing going on there. Dan: Well, my take if you're going to be using drones. New Jersey would be my choice. You know I put drones over New Jersey. Not a lot happening there. Dean: All the memes now are that it's some highly sophisticated, you know fast food delivery service for Chris Christie. That's all the meme things. They're on a direct pipeline delivering fast food to Chris Christie. That's just so funny. Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean the whole point is that civilians could do this. I mean, I think everybody probably has the you know, or certain people do have the technological capability now to put up drones, you know, and just put some lights on them and put them in the night sky I'm sure anybody does that and then you know, and then you'll be on social media. Dean: Somebody will film you and everything like that you know it's at night and they're mysterious. Dan: Always do it at night, never do it during the day You've got to use the right words to describe them too, dan, you've got to use the right words they're mysterious drones. And if you practice you can get them to fly. In formation it looks even more interesting. I'm swooping a little bit in formation, everything else, well, I don't believe there's aliens. Dean: Okay, good Everything else yeah. Well, I don't believe there's aliens, so you know I mean. Dan: I don't believe there's anything more alien than people I've already met. That's what. Dean: I mean yeah. Dan: You know I've met some alien thought forms on the part of some people. But see, I think you got to make a fundamental decision about this up front. This is worth thinking about or it's not worth thinking about. Yeah, okay, so I made the decision. It's not worth thinking about that. If something new develops, I'll probably know about it in a very short period of time, and then I can start responding to it. Yeah, but about six months ago a new resolution plunked into place in my brain, and that is I'm not going to react to an experience until I actually have the experience. Dean: So say more about that. Dan: Rather than making up a fantasy or the possibility that there's an experience to be it. Actually you're getting. I think mental illness is having an experience before you've actually being afraid of an experience before you've actually had it. It's the anticipation of having an experience that I think causes mental illness. Dean: That's true, isn't it? Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's like yeah, I haven't seen Probably not the only thing, probably not the only thing about mental illness, but I think that would qualify as an aspect. It certainly is a paranoia, certainly an aspect of paranoia, yeah, but things are moving. I think we're witnessing one of the greatest innovations in the history of the United States right now. Can I tell you what it is? Would you be interested? I'm all ears. Yeah, President is elected, and then there's this period from the day after the election until the inauguration. Dean: Yes. Dan: And it's basically been fallow. Nothing grows during that time and Trump has just decided why don't I just start acting like the president right after the election and really create a huge momentum by the time we get to the inauguration? Let's be so forceful right after the election that all the world leaders talk to me. They don't talk to the existing president. That's his name. I forget what I forget Joe, joe, joe. All right, that's the name, that's the name of the beach, that's the name of the beach, I just find it remarkable how, around the world, everybody's responding to the incoming president, not to the actual president. That's the truth. I think he's, and he's getting people. There's foreign policy changing. You know there's foreign policy, mexico, their foreign policy you know, their export import policy is changing. Canada export import policy is changing. Canada export-import policy is changing. And all he did was say a word. He said I think we're going to put a 25% tariff on both of you. And all of a sudden, they're up at night. They're up at night. Dean: I happened to be, in Toronto when all that was being announced. I happened to be in Toronto when all that was being announced and all the news was, you know, that there's an emergency meeting of all of the premiers to discuss the reaction to Donald Trump's proposed tariff. You know, you're absolutely right. Everybody's scrambling, everybody's. You know, they're definitely, you know, thinking about what's coming. You know. Dan: And then he goes to Paris for the opening of, you know, they're definitely, you know, thinking about what's coming, you know. And then he goes to Paris for the opening of, you know, the you know, the renovation of Notre Dame Cathedral. Yeah, looks good, by the way, I don't know if you've seen the pictures. It looks really good. I was in there. You know I've been to Paris, I think I've been to Paris three times and I went the first time. I said, oh, I've been to Paris, I think I've been to Paris three times and I went the first time. I said, oh, I have to go to Notre Dame Cathedral. And I went in and I said, gee, it's dark and dingy and I'm not sure they even clean. You know, clean the place anymore. And all it takes is a little fire to get everybody into cleanup mode, and boy, it looks spectacular. So Trump goes there and it's like he's the emperor of the world. You know, all the heads of state come up and they want to shake his hands and everything like that. I've never seen anything like that with an incoming president. They want to get on his good side and everybody's giving them money for his inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg's giving them money. The head of Google's giving them money for his inauguration. Mark zuckerberg's giving them money. The head of google is giving them money. Jeff bezos giving them money. Abc's giving them 15 million. That'll just go into his library library fund. Yeah, and everything else. Wow. You know, I've never seen them do this to an incoming president before. Yeah, time magazine called him the person of the year Already. I didn't even know there was a Time magazine. Dean: I'm actually thinking. I've been, I've been like thinking, dan, about my 2025, you know information plan and you know I've been kind of test driving this idea of you know, disconnecting. Where I struggle with this is that so much of the insights and things that I have are because I, on top of culture, you know, I think I'm very like tuned in to what's going on. I have a pretty broad, you know, observation of everything and that. So where I struggle with it is letting go of like at the vcr formula, for instance, was born of my observation and awareness of what's going on with mr beast and kylie jenner and these, you know, that sort of early thing of knowing and seeing what's going on you know before many of our contemporaries kind of thing. Right, many of our people are very decidedly disconnected from popular culture and don't pay attention to it. So I look at that as a balance. That part of it there's a certain amount of awareness that is an advantage for me might be affected if I were to be blissfully unaware of what's going on in culture, you know. Dan: Yeah, I don't know. I mean you could put Charlotte on to the job you know, yeah, and that's so I look at that. Charlotte. For our listeners, charlotte is Dean's AI sleuth. She finds out things. She's a sleuthy integrator of things that Dean finds interesting. You ought to talk it over with her and say how can I stop doing this and still have the benefit of it? Dean: Yeah, my thing. I think that where there might be an AI tool that I could use for this, but Charlotte, from what I understand, is bound by her latest update or whatever. She's got access to everything up to a certain date. She doesn't have real time information in terms of the most recent stuff. Have you heard, by the way, dan, what is? We're imminently away from the release of ChatGPPT 5, which is supposedly I want to get the numbers right on this. Let me just look at a text here, because it's so overwhelmingly more powerful than ChatGPT 4. The new ChatGPT5 has 10 trillion gpus compared to chat gpt4, which is 75 billion. So the difference from 75 billion to 10 trillion sounds like a pretty impressive leap. Sounds like a pretty impressive leap, and that'll put it over the top of you know, the current thing is a 121 IQ, and this will bring it to being smarter than any human on the planet. Dan: And so we don't even know, but not at doing anything particular. Dean: No, I guess not. I mean just the insight processing, logic, reasoning, all of that stuff being able to process information. I'm still amazed I was talking. Dan: When it comes out. Three months after it comes out, will you notice any difference? Dean: I don't know. Dan: That's what I'm wondering, my feeling is that I'm not even sure what cat GPT is two years after it came out, because I haven't interacted with it at all Right, I've interacted with perplexity, which I find satisfying. And you know, yeah, there's an interesting. I read an interesting article on human intelligence and it said that by and large, there's an active, practical zone to human intelligence where you're above average in confidence and you're above average in making sense of things, and it seems to be between 120 and 140. Dean: Yes, 120, 140. Dan: And about 40, 140,. Your confidence goes down as you get smarter and your awareness of making sense of things gets weaker, gets weaker. And from a standpoint of communicating with other people, the sweet zone seems to be 120 to 140. Dean: Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think that, yeah, yeah. Dan: You've got above average pattern, You've got above average pattern recognition and you've got good eye-hand coordination you know, in the artisans of the word that you can see something and take action on it quite quickly. You have the ability to do that, and probably in new ways, probably in new ways so you don't have a lot of friction coming the other way. You know when you do something new? yeah, but iq, you know, iq, iq is one measurement of human behavior yeah but there's many others that are more prominent, so yeah, I think this is you know, I think silicon Valley has a big fixation on IQ because they like to compare who's got the biggest. They like to compare who's got the biggest, but I'm not sure it really relates to anything useful or practical beyond a certain point. Dean: Well, it's not actionable. There's no insight in it, not like knowing that you're Colby, knowing that we're 10 quick starts is useful information. Dan: Yeah, it's like having six quick starts together with some alcohol. Right, it's a fun party. Dean: Yes, like you said your book club or your dinner clubs, our next-door neighbor our next-door neighbor's husband and wife and Shannon Waller and her husband. Dan: Our quick start out of the 60 is 56. We just have the best time for about three or four hours Good food, the wine is good and everything else. We just have the best time for about three or four hours Good food, the wine is good and everything else. And regardless of what happens transpires during those four hours, the world is completely safe from any impact. Dean: Right, exactly, it's so funny it's not going to leave the room. Yeah, everybody's safe, yeah. Dan: Go back to culture. What do you mean by culture when you say? Dean: culture. What? Dan: do you mean by culture? When you say culture, what do you mean? Dean: I mean, like popular culture, what's happening in the world right now, like having an awareness of what, because I'm a good pattern recognizer and I see and I'm overlaying things. I'm curious and alert and always looking for what's with Mr Beast and recognizing that neither one of them has any capability to do the thing that they're doing. Mr Beast didn't have the capability to make and run hamburger restaurants and Kylie didn't have any capability to run and manufacture a cosmetics company, but they both were aligned with people who had that capability and that allowed them to have a conduit from their vision, through that capability, that if they just let people know their reach that they've now got a hamburger restaurant and you can order on Uber Eats right now or you can click here to get my lip kits. You know, access to those eyeballs, that's all. So I look at that and if I had not, if I had been cut off from you know, sort of I would say I'm in the tippy top percent of people of time spent on popular culture. I guess you know, and I look at it as I look at, it's a problem in terms of a lot of time and a lot of you know that mindless stuff you would think like screen time, but all the inputs and awareness is just monitoring the signal to get and recognize patterns. You know. So I'm real. Yeah, well, let me throw you a challenge on the culture side. Dan: get and recognize patterns, you know. So I'm really sorry, yeah, well, let me throw you a challenge on the culture side. Dean: Yeah. Dan: Okay. So in New York City there's going to be a meeting of you know, I guess it's a shareholders meeting for a big health insurance company and the head of one part of the health insurance company is walking down the street. Somebody shoots him in the back and kills him, kills him the CEO, and they, yeah, they catch up with him. You know, a week later and you know he's arrested in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania and they find all sorts of incriminating evidence that he in fact is the person who was the shooter. And now he's got, you know, he's got sort of a manifesto about that. These CEOs are doing evil and even though he doesn't think that his action was an admirable action, it had to be done. I would say that's a cultural factoid because up until now being a CEO is like being an aristocrat in our capitalist society. I get a CEO and now the CEOs are trying to be invisible and they're hiring like mad new security. So all the status value of being a CEO got disappeared on an early morning sidewalk in New York City because somebody shot him. Shot him in the back, you know, I mean it wasn't a brave act, shot him in the back, but the reason is that you, as a CEO, are doing harm to large numbers of people and someone has to stop you. I would say, that's as much a cultural fact as Mr Beast or Kylie Jenner. Dean: Yeah, I mean, would you say that again? Dan: I mean, I think, every CEO in the United States. Dan: United States has instantly changed his whole schedule and how he's going to show up in public and where he's going to be seen in public where he doesn't have large amounts of security, with one action broadly communicated out through the social media and through the mainstream media. He just changed the whole way of life for CEOs. I would say that's a cultural fact. It's a negative one. You're talking about positive ones, but I believe for every positive thing you have, there's probably a corresponding negative one. I'm struck by that You're just not going to see CEOs around anymore, and I mean, half the value of being a CEO is being seen around and they just removed the whole reward for being seen around, just removed the whole reward for being seen around. Dean: Yeah, I wonder, you know like I mean. But there are certain things like other I don't know that it's all CEOs. You know, like I think, if you are perceived as the part of the vilified, you know CEOs, the almost back to Occupy Wall Street kind of things, if you're a CEO of a company that's viewed as the oppressor, like those insurance things, but I don't know if that's true for the CEOs of NVIDIA and OpenAI and Tesla, and you know what I mean. Dan: I think, if you're yeah, I wonder, but we'll see, but we'll see, we'll see. Dean: Yeah, yeah, are you the people's CEO? You know, I think. Dan: Yeah, I mean my yeah. Somebody once asked me about this, you know. They said how well known would you like to be? And I said just be below the line where I would have to have security. Dean: Right, yeah, if you look at it, can you think of anybody? Dan: I wander around Toronto on my own. I go here and I go there and everything else, and nobody knows who I am. That's my security. Dean: Nobody knows who I am yeah, but you wonder, like you know, if you look at the level of fame of you know you? You've mentioned before the difference between Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. Warren Buffett is certainly very famous, but nobody's mad at him. I guess that's part of the thing. He's very wise, or viewed as wise. Dan: He's usefully wise. Dean: Yeah, exactly. Dan: Investing according to his benchmarks and his strategies has proved very valuable to a great number of people. Dean: Agreed. Dan: Plus, he's got a fairly simple, understandable lifestyle. He still lives in the house he's lived in for the last 40 years, still drives a pickup truck and his you know the entrance to his home is filled with boxes of Diet Coke. Dean: Cherry. Dan: Coke Cherry Coke, cherry Coke. Dean: Cherry Coke, not Diet Coke. No, I'm not. That's a subject, I'm not an expert in Cherry Coke. Dan: Cherry Coke, not Diet Coke. That's a subject I'm not an expert in. Dean: That's the funniest thing. Right, that's one of my top two. Dan: Warren Buffett, you have merit badges in that area. Dean: Yeah. But I think culture, you know, I don't know, I'm trying, it's a slippery beast, this thing culture you know, it's a slippery, slippery beast and you know there's I think that's part of the thing, though it's like the zeitgeist you know is, I think, having an awareness zeitgeist gosh, you just had to slip in a german word, didn't you? Dan: you just had to get a german word, yeah I've been sort of fixated on schadenfreude for the last month. I've just been why I've just been watching the democrats respond to the election and I'm fully schadenfreude. I've been fully schadenfreid for the last month. But zeitgeist, the spirit, I think that translates into the spirit of the times. Dean: Yes, that's exactly what it is. That's what I meant by. That's what I meant by. I'm very like, I think I'm at the tippy top of the you know percentiles of people who are tuned into the zeitgeist, I think that's. I would be self-reportedly that, but yeah, and I don't know, but at the cost of there's a lot of useless stuff that gets in there as well, you know, and negative, and you're faced with all of it. So, my, my filter, I'm taking in all the sewer water kind of thing and having to filter it through rather than just, you know, pre-filtering, only drinking filtered water. Dan: You're getting rid of the fluoride drinking filtered water. Dean: You're getting rid of the fluoride. Yeah, exactly, winter haven. Florida, by the way, is one of the first in the country to be getting rid of fluoride on the oh no, this will happen really quick. Dan: Oh yeah, it was just that. Dean: I, I just said I just saw that winter haven was like one of the first movers you, you know, polk County Florida is removing and, by the way, polk County Florida is now fastest growing county in the country. So then, so there you know, 30 something, 30,000 something people that we grew by, yeah, so, new. Dan: You're to date right, you're to date Over the last 12 months, over the last 12 months. I guess that's how they measure it yeah. Dean: So my thought, dan, was that I was looking to. You know, like my tune in to the zeitgeist is on a daily, real-time basis, I'm getting the full feed, right. No, no filters. Yeah, what I was thinking. What I was wondering about was if I were to change the cadence of it to more sort of filtered content, like I would say what you do, your, you've chosen a filter called real clear politics. Right, that's your, that's your filter, and you probably have five or six other filters that are your lens through yeah, it would be the go-to every day. Dan: You know I start the morning and. I go on my computer, I go to the RealClear site. So it's. RealClear comes up as RealClear politics, but then they have about eight other RealClear channels. RealClear politics, RealClear markets, RealClear world. Realclear defense, energy, health science, you know, and everything like that. But the beauty of it is that they're aggregators of other people's output. So you know everybody's competing to get their articles on real clear. You know the New York Times competes to try to get. You know, get every day maybe one or two of its headlines, supposedly for most of my life. The most important newspaper in the world and they have to compete every day to get something of theirs onto the real clear platform. And it seems very balanced to me, right to left from politics. You know, politically, if I look at 20 headlines, I would say that five of them are real total right, five of them are total left and there's a lot of middle. There's a lot of middle about things like that, you know about things like that, you know, and then I'll punch on them, and then that takes me right to the publication or the site that produced the headline, and then I might see three or four things and I discover new ones. I discover new ones all the time. And it's good and there's a lot of filtering that's being done, but I do. They're not interpreting these articles. They're just giving you the article. You can read the article and make up your own mind about it. Now they do some editing in some cases because they interpret the headlines and they have a sidebar where there's topical areas where it's clear to me that real clear has created the headline. That's not the originating. Dean: You know the originating source of the article that's kind of like that's the drudge playbook, right yeah? Dan: I used to like drudge but he went wacky. He went wacky so I didn't read him anymore. Dean: Yeah. Dan: These guys are pretty cool. They're pretty cool. They've been going now for a dozen years anyway, as I've been aware, and they seem really cool. You know they carry advertising. That's not if I'm thinking of horses. I don't get horse ads, you know. 10 minutes later you're done. Dean: Something like that. Dan: But they do have their advertising model, but I don't, you know, I'm not interested in buying anything, so it doesn't really affect me, but that's really great. You know what's really interesting. Peter Zion, you know I'm a big fan of his. And he's got a blog and he came out about a month ago saying I'm going to put in a new approach and that is, you'll always get your free blog and video to go along with it. So it's written and then it's also got the video, but it will be a week later than when I put it on, and if you want it right away, it'll cost you this much. And I'm giving all that money to some cause. Okay, so I'm fundraising for some cause and I just went a week with no Peter Zine and then I started getting it every day and it makes no difference to me whether I got it last week or this week, okay, and so I just waited a week and I'm right up to date again as far as I'm concerned. Dean: Right yeah. Dan: Like when Syria fell. You know, the Syrian government collapsed last week and he had nothing on it until seven days later. I want to go over, but he's adjusting his format now. He says I'm going to give you four stages to what's actually happening. So you know, he's experimented with something and he's finding that he has to adjust his presentation a little bit just for people saying you know? You know, I'm going to tell you over a three-day period what happened. This happened on the first day, this happened on the second day, third day and this is where we are on the fourth day, and everything else and that's good. I like that. Everything else you know and everything, but that's part of the culture. You know it's part of the culture. Dean: Yeah. So my thought like my sense of culture. Dan: it's what culture is. Whatever's happening right now that you're interested in, yeah, it seems to show some interesting movement. Dean: Yeah, I think you're, I think you're right. I mean, my thought was of experimenting, was to go to more of a rather than a minute by minute, always on direct feed to the zeitgeist is going through a daily. You know, I had a really interesting two days at strategic coach in Toronto just a couple of weeks ago, when you know I was. I referred to it, as you know, workshopping like it was 1989 with my phone. Dan: You were practicing, practicing abstinence. Dean: Yeah, I was, and what I learned in that was, and I did it two days in a row with zero contact with the outside world, from nine o'clock to five o'clock when the workshops were going on, no checking in at the breaks or at lunch or, you know, no notifications. You know dinging while I'm in the workshops. It was certainly anchoring, you know, presence to me in the in the workshops, but also noticed that nothing really happened. You know like I didn't miss anything in that five, in that nine to five period. You know I got a bunch of emails over the day but there were maybe two or three that were like for me or of any real interest or necessity for me. You know I have two inboxes. I have a, you know, my, my dean at dean jackson. My main mailbox is monitored by, you know, people, stakeholders in the, you know, because sometimes an email will come in and if it has something to do with our realtor division, diane is in there and sees that and can respond, or Lillian is able to respond. But then I also have my own, a private email just for me, that I give to my friends, and whenever you email me, that's the email that you use and those ones are not. Those aren't seen by anybody but me. But there's even far fewer of those that come through than come into the main one. Dan: Well, it's an interesting experiment that you're doing here, because it seems to me that one is the world is changing all the time. As far as news is concerned, the world is. I guess that's what news means. You know that things are changing, but if you don't pay attention to it over a long period of time and you don't feel inconvenienced, by it then, probably, it wasn't important probably it wasn't important, yeah, you know, and like I'm in six and a half years now with no television you know right and and you know, I've gone through two, two full presidential elections without watching television and yet I don't feel that I've missed anything important by not watching television Because I have real clear politics and I have a computer and I get videos. I can go to YouTube. And if somebody's giving a talk somewhere I can watch, where on television you would never get the whole speech. You know you would be broken up with commercials and everything like that. And then you have some commentators telling you what you were supposed to think about that, which I don't really require that I'm perfectly able to understand what I'm thinking about it and everything like that. So I don't know, I don't know. Well, my thought experiment. Dean: You know what you? Dan: should do is say what kind of cultural information is sugar and what kind of cultural information is protein, I get it, and so that's kind of where I was thinking. To me that's where you're going. Dean: I'm thinking about slowing down the cadence so, and to have a daily, like you know, something like real clear and you know there's thinking about where that is filtered sort of thing for me, thinking about where that is filtered sort of thing for me. And then weekly, you know, like I think, if I just looked at, if I went to print as a thing, if I were to say, you know, time Magazine, newsweek, the Inc Magazine, people Magazine, like I think, if there were some things that I could and the Weekend Wall Street Journal, I think with those you could, that would be kind of a really good. I don't think I would miss out. Dan: I'm really big on the Weekend Wall Street Journal, I think that's a great print. That's a great print medium. I literally haven't read Time magazine. I don't know, maybe 20 years or, but it seems like they're probably on top of what's even if it's slanted, you're going to get a sense of what the core thing is. Dean: That's actually right. Yeah, I know. Dan: A lot of Democrats canceled their subscription over the last three or four days because Trump person of the year. Yeah exactly. See, now, that's an interesting piece of information, yeah yeah, what they wrote about him I don't find interesting, but the fact that certain readers they must have made him look good, you know, for that sort of cancellation, you know you know it's like this is being categorized as the kiss the ring phase. Dean: That's what abc there was being characterized. That time magazine kissed the ring by making him person of the year abc. You know, kissing the ring, giving him 15 million dollars, and well, they didn't $15 million. Dan: Well, they didn't give him $15 million, they were required to give him $15 million yeah exactly, and George Stephanopoulos has to apologize publicly for defaming him as he should. As he should, yeah, for defaming him, you know, as he should, as he should. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dean: So Trump's got to have at least one court case. Dan: Trump's got to have at least one court case going in his favor. Dean: Yeah. Dan: Yeah. Dean: But I look at that as you know, that's a really. I think that would be a really useful thing. Would certainly get me back three or four hours a day of yeah you know, of screen time. It would give me more dean time to use, because it would certainly condense a lot of that but you have some interesting models that are, I would say, are cultural models. Dan: I would say more cheese, less whiskers is a cultural model. I mean, if you have it as a thought form, you can see, you can simplify happenings around you. You know, that seems a little bit too much whiskers, exactly, too much whiskers. Yeah, that seems like a fine new cheese. Yeah, that seems like a fine new cheese. For example, taylor Swift gave $100 million in bonuses to everybody who helped her on her tour. Dean: I don't know if you saw that. It's crazy $200 million. Dan: The truck drivers, the ones who got $100,000. They got $100,000. And her father delivered the checks. That seems like a really. That's like a fondue, that's not just cheese. Dean: That is only the finest cheese fondue. Yes, exactly, that's so funny. Dan: when they hit it big, they're real jerks and they're real pricks and she's not. She's showing gratitude. That's very much a cheese. That was a very cheesy thing for her to do. In your model, that's a very cheesy thing for her to do. Yeah, in your model, that's a very cheesy thing. Dean: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I look at you know another thing that's happening is I don't know whether you've followed or seen what Deion Sanders has done with Colorado football over the last two seasons, but he basically went from the basement of 1-11 team the worst team in college football to the Alamo Bowl in two seasons and Travis Hunter just won the Heisman Trophy and he could quite possibly have the top two draft picks. Dan: His son didn't win the Heisman Trophy Hunter. Oh, you're saying Travis Hunter? I? Dean: was saying Travis Hunter. He could possibly have the top two picks in the NFL draft between Jadot and Travis Hunter and it's just, I mean, it fits in so perfectly with my you know, 100 week, you know timeframe there. That that's, I think, the optimal. I think you can have a really big impact in a hundred weeks on anything but to go from the basement to the bowl game is like it's a really good case study. But that really is. You know, I often I think there's so many things that play like a crystal clear vision of what he was trying to accomplish In his mind. There's no other path than them being the greatest football team, the greatest college football team in the country. That's really it. Building an empire. That's certainly where he's headed and his belief, that's the only outcome. You know it's so. I was. I read a book and, by the way, I'll have an aside on this, but I read a book years ago called Overachievement and it was a book by a sports psychologist at Rice University and his assessment of overachievers people who have achieved outsized results. One of his observations is that, without fail, they all have what he characterizes as unreasonable confidence or irrational. That's irrational confidence. That's what it is, and I thought to myself like that's a pretty interesting word pairing, because who's to say how much confidence is rational, you know, yeah, it's kind of it's it's and first of all, I. Dan: I don't think the two words even have anything to do with each other I don't either. Dean: That's why I thought it was so remarkable. You know, I think irrational confidence I mean, yeah, spoken by. Dan: spoken by someone who I thought it was so remarkable, irrational confidence. I mean spoken by someone who probably has very little. 0:46:50 - Dean: I mean interesting right Like people look at that, but I thought I've overlaid it with your four C's right Is that commitment leads to courage? Yeah, that commitment leads to courage First of all. Dan: I think it can be grown. I'm a great believer that commitment can be grown, courage can be grown, capability can be grown, confidence can be grown. It's a cycle. It's a growth cycle. It's like ambition. It's like ambition. I'm much more ambitious today than I was 30 years ago way more ambitious and 30 years ago I was 50. That's when most people are kind of are peaking out on ambition when they're 50. I mean I was in the valley 50 years ago, compared to where I am now, but I've always treated ambition as something that you can grow, and my particular approach is that the more you can tap into other people's capabilities for your projects, the more your ambition can grow. It's an interesting thing. Irrational confidence. Dean: Yeah, and I thought that you know, so it's pretty interesting. Dan: There must be a scale somewhere, you know, get on the scale, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rational, oh, he's above. Rational, above irrational, oh, that's totally irrational confidence. Dean: yes, he's just setting himself up for disappointment. That's like I think're in the confidence of living to 156. That's irrational. Yeah, it is till I fail, exactly. Yeah, but that's okay, it's not going to make any difference to you. I always love your live, live, live pattern. It's not going to affect you. Dan: Live live, live, go on. Dean: I saw somebody doing an illustration, Dan, of how long it takes for the world to adapt to you not being here, and the gentleman had his finger in a glass of water and he pulled it out. Dan: Watch, yeah, watch, how long the hole lasts. Dean: It's the truth, you know, yeah, yeah. Dan: I don't know if you got a hold of that book. Same as Ever, the Morgan Household book. Dean: I did. I've read it and it's fantastic. It's good, isn't it? It really is it kind of calms you down. Dan: You know it kind of calms you down. You know I told Joe Polish I said you know how to get that guy as a speaker. I think he's great and anyway, you know he said he makes he has that one great little chapter on evolution. How long it takes, you know, like evolution, three or four million years, and he says stuff that you know is lasting over a long period of time you know is really worth paying attention to, really worth paying attention to. You know that and I find one of the things that you know at my advancing age at my advancing age is that I can see now things that were are equally true today as they were 50 years ago yeah, I see that too. Dean: Absolutely see that too. Absolutely, see that through. I'm on the cusp right now. Like you know, we're coming into 2025. And so this is the first time I started thinking about 25 years ahead was in 1999. That 25 year timeframe, you know, and certainly when I made those, you know five or three stock in. You know investment decisions. But looking back now, you know there were clues as to what is what was what was coming. But there are certainly a lot of through line to it too. You know, like I think, what I did choose was you know it's still Warren Buffett, it's still Berkshire was a great as a 10 times or more stock over 25 years. Starbucks and Procter and Gamble they're equally. Those were durable choices. But you know what was what I could have, what was there? Looking back now, the evidence was there already that Amazon and Google and Apple would have been rocket ships. You know guessing and betting, dan. It's like guessing and betting with certainty. Or you know where you think, like I think, if we look and maybe next week we can have a conversation about this the guessing and betting for the next 25 years, you know. Dan: Yeah. Dean: Yeah. Dan: I think he Warren Buffett. He said that Gillette, I like Gillette. He said I think men are going to still be shaving 25 years from now. Dean: That's what he said. That was. What was so impactful to me is that he says I can't tell which technology is going to win, even five years from now, but I know that men are going to go to bed and they're going to wake up with whiskers. Some of them are going to want to shave them off. King Gillette is going to be there, like he has been since 1850. Dan: And it's like railroads, he's very heavy into railroads. We're going to be moving things. People are still going to be moving things. Dean: I had a really good friend. Dan: Trains will still really be a good way to move things from one place to another. Dean: Isn't that funny. I had a good friend in high school. His big insight was he wanted to start a pallet company because no matter which direction things go, you're still going to need to stack them on a pallet and move them. Put my mom there. So funny which direction things go, you're still going to need to stack them on a pallet and move them, put them around there. Dan: you know so funny that pallet. They're really good. Yeah, I love it All right. All right, we're deep into the culture, we're into. It's an interesting word. It's an interesting word but anytime you talk to somebody about it, they have very specific examples that are their take on culture. And you talk to someone else and maybe culture is everybody's views on culture. Maybe that's what the culture is. Dean: Maybe, maybe, all righty. Okay, have a great day. I'll talk to you next week. Bye, bye. Dan: Okay, have a great day. I'll talk to you next week, okay, bye, bye, okay Bye.

Keith unveils our 2025 National Home Price Appreciation Forecast. Learn the factors driving the housing market and discover why Keith's predictions have been spot-on for the past 3 years. Gain the insights you need to make strategic real estate moves in the year ahead. Don't miss this must-listen episode packed with actionable real estate insights. The Fannie Mae home purchase sentiment index rose, indicating growing consumer confidence. Trump's immigration and tariffs policies and their potential impact on housing demand and labor market disruption. Hear about the impact of the under supply of housing in the US and the potential impact on home prices. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” or for Spotify. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/533 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching:GREmarketplace.com/Coach Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai    Keith Weinhold  0:00   Welcome to GRE I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, today is the day that I'm giving you our 2025 national home price appreciation forecast. You'll get the exact percent that I expect home prices to rise for Fall next year. Learn the factors that really move prices. Importantly, I follow up and you get the results of previous years forecasts too. Will it be a holly jolly forecast or more Grinch like today on Get Rich Education.     Mid-south home buyers. I mean, they're total pros, with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider, their empathetic property managers use your ROI as their North Star. So it's no wonder that smart investors just keep lining up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone. They're headquartered in Memphis and have globally attractive. Cash Flows, an A plus rating with a better business bureau and now over 5000 houses renovated. There's zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate, while their average renter stays more than three and a half years. Every home they offer has brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter. Remember that part and in an astounding price range, 100 to 180k I've personally toured their office and their properties in person in Memphis, get to know Mid South. Enjoy cash flow from day one. Start yourself right now at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid south homebuyers.com   you know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info. Oh, geez. Today's experience limits your free articles access, and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers. It's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read, and when you start the letter, you also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now just text GRE to 66866, while it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text GRE to 66866.   Corey Coates  3:12   you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  3:28   Welcome to GRE from North port, Florida to North Pole, Alaska and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are listening to get rich education episode 533 Yes, your favorite slack jawed real estate podcaster here is indeed the GRE founder. I'm also an active Forbes real estate council member, best selling author. I write our weekly Don't quit your Daydream newsletter. And perhaps most importantly, I am an active real estate investor, I am here to help you invest well in real estate, and that is because most Americans have enough saved for an absolutely incredible single day of retirement. Look the content that you choose to listen to will shape your behavior, it'll even gradually alter your identity over time and forge your dreams. Middle class financial advice will keep you squarely in the middle class. They get robbed of the fruits of their labor through taxes. Get robbed of their purchasing power through inflation, and they get robbed of their financial future by staying financially illiterate. I mean, if you're grinding hard and sacrificing experiences to be debt free at 36 well then that means you aren't using other people's money. You, it confirms that you've got no leverage. Why celebrate that? Celebrate financial freedom or a great vacation, or, you know, anything else, like with your friends and family to the Canary Islands. I mean, that's stuff that's worth celebrating, that's extraordinary in this one and only life that you got. I love the old African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You and I are on this journey together. Dream of living the life where you just give a light touch to some of your investments while they are building your wealth, just adjust the sales of your ship a little here and there. Now. We'll get into the big picture real estate forces in my exact percent home price appreciation figure shortly. But doesn't that sound amazing where you can just do this? I mean, that's what I do. I just give a light touch to my investments. For example, at the beginning of this month, I looked at the statements as they came in in emails from my property managers in various real estate markets, like I usually do now when you have a perfect month as a real estate investor, US landlords, or should I say, housing providers, acknowledging last week's show we develop our own vernacular. A perfect month is when you have 100% rental occupancy and no repair items. Once though you have more than about five rental units, it's hard to ever have a perfect month. It's always good to budget something toward long term vacancy and maintenance. But I had a pretty good month last month. For some reason, my properties needed a few new appliances, a replaced fridge. Here, a new microwave. There, a lot of appliances like a fridge, you know, they can still look pretty close to new, even if they're used. That's fine for a rental. This was just a $280 fridge replacement, for example, in this one rental, single family home of mine. So yeah, just that monthly scan of your property manager statement, seeing that income and expenses look kind of reasonable to you, and then going about your day and the rest of your month. Now, it wasn't always that way for me. As I started and grew, I self managed my own properties for the first six or seven years, and sometimes, you know, something will happen where I want to get more proactive and maybe take, say, a 90 minute block of time to shop for lower insurance premiums if I see those rates rising in a certain market or something like that, but that's how it feels to give a light touch to your active direct real estate investments. Keep that going, because this is all happening while you keep other people's money working for you, the banks, the governments and the tenants.    Hey, something that's become newsworthy, an index measuring consumer confidence in the housing market, rose again last month, and that is the latest sign that potential property buyers and sellers are growing more accustomed to today's mortgage rates and prices. The Fannie Mae home purchase sentiment index that has now increased to 75 points. So the index has risen 11 points or more than 16% in the last year. So there is, however, not one shred of evidence, for example, that sub 3% mortgage rates are coming back anytime soon, maybe not even in this decade or in your entire lifetime. Who really knows? I mean, it's soon going to be three years since the Fed began their aggressive rate hiking cycle and the market and consumer expectations are finally adjusting and settling down, and that right there that factors in just the touch to the housing forecast that I'm going to deliver to you today. And before I get into that, since we are get rich education, do you know what the federal funds rate is like, what it really means? Let me explain this to you in a way where I think you'll not only learn, but I'm going to give you an example so that you can actually remember it. And I'm going to over simplify it, the federal funds rate, that thing that Jerome Powell and his committee set, that is the rate that banks pay other banks to borrow from each other. It's a little over 4% right now. Okay, let's just say it's 4% here's why the federal funds rate is typically lower than mortgage rates. Say that Wells Fargo pays bank of America this 4% federal funds rate to borrow so that Wells Fargo can then turn around and lend the funds to you for a real estate mortgage loan. All right. Well now you can see that Wells Fargo had to pay Bank of America 4% that's why, when you go get your real estate loan from Wells Fargo, you can understand and see why they'd have to charge you, say, 7% in order to make a spread. That is why mortgage rates are higher than the federal funds rate. Wells Fargo made the spread of 3% because they borrowed at four, and they lent it to you at seven, and you yourself you borrowed at seven because your tenant pays your interest and principal for you, and you get the leverage and all of the other benefits. So again, the federal funds rate is the rate that banks pay when they borrow from other banks, and since they need to make a spread arbitrage, this is why mortgage rates are higher. Again, that's oversimplified, but I think that's a way where you can really remember what that is and why that is that way. All right.    Well, with that lesson understood, let's talk about the big national home price forecast for next year. And here's what's interesting. Look at the forecasts that my peers have made. All right, I've already got the forecasts from 16 other housing analytics platforms here, and they have all predicted that home prices will rise next year, all 16 of them, but they've all forecast something different. And everything we're discussing today, by the way, is nominal, meaning, not inflation adjusted. All right. Note that the average of all these platforms, all 16 of them, is a 2.8% gain for next year. All right, if you look at all of them the range, the highest is Goldman, Sachs at 4.4% and the lowest is Moody's Analytics at just 310 of 1%   I'll tell you now that my forecast today, it wouldn't even fit on this chart, it is going to be off the chart. And this is something that might ramp up your intrigue. Maybe you think I would look at this and choose something safe, and since I have the benefit of seeing how 16 others have weighed in that, I'll just pick something in the middle of that. Oh, no, not at all. This is an independent forecast. So since our forecast is off the chart, then that means that what I'm going to tell you today either has to be higher than the highest, which is that 4.4% from Goldman Sachs, or lower than the lowest, which is that 310 of 1% from Moody's. Yes, it is outside of those brackets, busting the bookends today. And as I lead up to it, I will detail the reasons why the calculus that went into this forecast. So before we're done, yes, you will get the exact percent number that I expect existing single family home values to increase by or decrease by next year. It is the fourth straight year that I'm doing this. And now a lot of people make whimsical predictions, you know. But today, you're gonna get something that you rarely, if ever get accountability, because I'm also going to show you the results, you'll see how well my forecasts have actually performed each of the past three years. Sheesh, don't you wish everyone followed up on the prediction that they made now, oh gosh, most housing price crash Predictions Fail Faster than your average New Year's resolution. All right, we need first historic context in order to put this future that we're talking about into perspective. Let's look at how bad other predictions have been this is something that Yahoo Finance recently pointed out, the year by year, reasons that people thought housing prices would crash Since 2012 so we're talking about the past 13 years here, starting in 2012 it was shadow inventory. Remember that that never came true. 2013 higher mortgage rates. 2014 in that year. People thought that housing prices could tumble hard because QE was ending in October of that year. That is quantitative easing, which is dollar printing. I mean, basically QE, that's just the Genteel way of saying inflation. In 2015 they thought a manufacturing recession would make home prices crash. In 2016 home prices were back to their pre global financial crisis high. Well, people thought that seemed shaky. In 2017 I don't know what it was. No one had a good reason. But the word crash just gets attention, so some media tried to scare people with that headline. Anyway, in 2018 it was mortgage rates went from 4% up to 5% seriously like that was the top reason. In 2019 it was that home price growth was cooling off in 2020 of course, it was the COVID 19 pandemic in 2021 it was mortgage forbearance in 2022 it was that mortgage rates hit 7% that was the first time we saw those in a while, even though 7% is still below the long term average of seven and three quarters percent in 2023 it was historically low housing demand. People thought that would bring down real estate prices. In 2024 it was sustained higher mortgage rates and an uptick in inventory. And what's it going to be in 2025 I don't know. Clickbait artists will have some other farcical reason why home prices will crash. Just watch, all right, well, with that, look back every year since 2012 of course, real estate prices definitely don't always go up. In fact, when we look at a longer term history, the national home price appreciation rate every year since World War Two. Like I told you on a previous episode, there were only two periods where home prices fell, that's over a period of 80 to 85 years. There was just 1% attrition in 1990 and then the only appreciable loss period, of course, were those years around the 2008 global financial crisis, where you really probably could consider that an all out crash, prices were down more than 20% nationally, more than 40% 50% in some markets, all right. Well, how did that concerning period compare to now? Well, 2008 is when conditions were largely opposite of what they are now that is back 2008 we had an oversupply of homes, and it was all supported by poorly underwritten mortgages, meaning the borrower really couldn't afford the payment. And also that's when people had low or no equity in homes, so they just walked away, so borrowers had no equity to lose, nor any credit score to protect, and it was oversupplied there about 17 years ago. I mean, that era was so bad and also such an anomaly, that home prices actually fell below the replacement cost, if you can believe that, meaning that you could ostensibly buy existing property for less than the cost that it would take to build a property, then all right. Well, all three of those conditions are opposite. Now today, we have an under supply of homes. Secondly, we have carefully underwritten mortgages, and thirdly, we have record high equity positions, about 300k on average. People are not walking away from that unless things got absolutely dire. All right, with that historical context. So here we are building up to my factors for the forecast, and then the big reveal of the percent figure here, before we're done, to be clear, what I'm providing is the projected sales price of existing single family homes per the National Association of Realtors, stat set. All right, so why existing? And not include the new builds into that? Well, first of all, there are way more existing home sales. Then there are new build sales each year. And see, the thing is, though, that tracking new build that really skews the numbers, because what can happen is, one year, you might have a ton of luxury new build homes. Well then that skews the numbers up too much. Or then there's the more nascent trend of what's happening lately, building smaller homes this past year in order to help with affordability and building smaller that can skew the numbers down. So sticking with existing homes that allows us to keep things more same same. Today, you'll learn about what goes into my forecast and the factors that actually don't matter as much as you would think, like the incoming Trump administration. You'll also hear an important clip from Trump in a few minutes for the second week in a row, I'm bringing you the show from a fairly interesting place, Anchorage, Alaska. This city of 300,000 people, is at sea level. The west side is confined by a coast. The east side is confined by mountains. It's a modern US city. There are high rise buildings and convention centers and freeways and a really convenient International Airport. What's interesting about being in America's northernmost city right now? Anchorage is. That Saturday, just a couple of days ago, that was the winter Equinox for half of the globe, the entire northern hemisphere. And here, the sunrise time is about 10:15am, and sunset about 3:45pm, that right there is just five and a half hours of daylight. That's it, but it feels like more than that. It feels closer to perhaps seven plus hours of daylight, because at high latitudes, the sun barely drops below the horizon, so therefore you get more Twilight on either end of sunrise in Sunset. Well, this is a real estate show, so I hope that's not too much of an astronomy lesson for you here. But anchorage can never get 24 hours of daylight or darkness, because it simply is not far enough north. In fact, when I fly from, say, the center of the 48 states out here. I travel more west than North. The thing for you to remember is that the only places on the globe that can get 24 hours of daylight and darkness are inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles. They're at 63 and 1/3 degrees of latitude or greater, and Anchorage is just 61 I've been skiing here, but suffice to say, with a lot of darkness, it's been a good place for me to study research and put my effort into this forecast that I'm sharing with you today, which you'll hear after the break.    This week's episode is supported by ridge lending group. It's the same place where I get my investment property mortgages and refinancings, you can go ahead and originate your loans at the same place I get mine, that is Ridgelendinggroup.com.  Also freedom family investments, you can make a loan and get a stable return of 7% 8% or Even 10% yet still have some measure of liquidity. Why park your funds at a bank? You can learn about their private money loans by texting FAMILY to 66866, if you want 8% or more on your money while it's on your mind, just text FAMILY to 66866, and see if it's right for you. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, more next you're listening to get rich education.    Oh geez, the national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings, so your bank is getting rich off of you. You've got to earn way more, or else you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk. Your Cash generates up to a 10% return and compounds year in and year out. Instead of earning less than 1% in your bank account, the minimum investment is just 25k you keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back. Their decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And you know how I'd know, because I'm an investor in this myself, earn 10% like me and GRE listeners are text FAMILY to 66866, to learn about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text, FAMILY to 66866.   hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge lending group NMLS, 42056, they've provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation, because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start Now while it's on your mind at Ridge lendinggroup.com that's Ridge lendinggroup.com   Tom Wheelwright  24:08   This is Rich Dad Advisor Tom Wheelwright. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and Don't Quit Your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  24:24   welcome back to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, with the factors that are weighing into my home price appreciation determination for next year. Here now all of these factors matter, but I'm generally going to start with less weighty factors and proceed more toward the weighty factors Trump tariffs. Could Trump tariffs increase materials costs, the cost of materials that go into homes? Well, yes, of course, they could. Could it also increase the labor costs that go into those homes, if, say, businesses decide to onshore. Sure in order to avoid paying the tariffs, yes, and you would have to pay a higher wage to Americans. That's obviously inflationary, but applying tariffs is slow, and it takes a long time to trickle through, okay? But here's the thing, even the threat of tariffs can produce inflation, and we already have the threat that's something real. And now see if you're a consumer and you want to buy a new washer, dryer set or a microwave, well, you're more motivated to do that today, not in a year, because this threat of tariffs might mean that that appliances price will spike. You might want to buy your new car now, if you anticipate the terrace could be coming and it's going to affect that well, the apartment building owner feels the same way before she or he buys 48 washer dryers for their apartment building. Home Builders and remodelers they want to get their materials orders in now, in some cases, whether that's for concrete, drywall, lumber, any component that goes into a home where they think that a tariff could jack up the price, you really need to be paying attention to whether you think this is going to happen or not. So Trump likely means more inflation, and that correlates also with sustained higher interest rates of all kinds, including mortgage rates. And there's no certainty there. There is just that correlation. Now, a lot of real estate investors anticipate that a president with a real estate investor background like Trump Has he is going to return 100% bonus depreciation and extend his tax breaks, okay, all of these things, especially that bonus depreciation, can really enhance your tax situation, but that's not part of the home price appreciation forecast for next year. Okay, we're just looking at next year here. How about mortgage rates? How is that going to factor into home prices for next year? Mortgage rates hardly matter. And the newer listener that you are, the more of a surprise that is, rates are about 7% now, a lot of experts think they're going to go to 6% in a year. But who knows? I mean, a year ago, everyone thought rates would be substantially lower today. But here's the thing, it's not just a who knows. It's almost a who cares about what mortgage rates will be when it comes to prices. Because, like I've shared with you before, since 1994 mortgage rates have risen 1% or more seven different times, and home prices went up all seven times.  Long time listeners like you, you already know this, so for the complete backstory on the why, you can listen to earlier episodes, but the short story is that higher rates, you gotta look at what's happening when there are high rates that's a confirmation that the economy is strong, and when the economy is strong and people feel secure in their job, what do they do? They buy a home. So mortgage rates matter, but a person's personal economy matters more when they make a decision to buy a home or not. A sharp fall in rates that correlates with a recession. So higher rates usually lead to higher home prices, something that almost everyone in real estate thinks of oppositely. On weeks with lower rates this year, we did have lower housing inventory, and with higher rates, we had higher inventory. So that did affect that the next factor is more important than tariffs and mortgage rates, and that is Trump and immigration. Okay? Because this affects the supply versus demand component of housing, something supremely important. Well, more immigrants mean more housing demand, pushing up prices and on immigration, who really knows how many of this surge of fresh immigrants are going to be deported? Will it only be the illegals, or will it be others? Or will it be none at all? Or will it be something else, will trump deport everyone? I mean, that is not easy to do, and it's really expensive. Here are Trump's latest public remarks on how he's going to treat recent immigrants to the US. The interviewer is Kristen Welker from NBC, and she's heard shuffling some papers here too. So don't let that throw you off as you listen to Trump.    Speaker 1  29:39   You raised the point that the logistics are complicated. You said yourself, everything's gone. You mean you need 24 times more ICE detention capacity just to deport 1 million people per year, not to mention more agents, more judges, more planes. Is it realistic to deport everyone? First of all, they're costing us a fortune, but we're starting. With the criminals, and we got to do it, and then we're starting with others, and we're going to see how it goes   Keith Weinhold  30:06   well there, before Trump's first day in office for his second term, see he's already saying we'll see how it goes with deporting immigrants. He now realizes how costly that is. If there is mass deportation, housing demand goes down, but we'd also have fewer laborers, which a lot of those immigrants are, to build the new housing that our country needs. So there's somewhat of a canceling out effect there. It could mean higher home prices because it could even mean higher home prices because most fresh immigrants are renters. They aren't occupying homes that they own anyway, and just how many people we're talking about here, the Pew Research Center estimates that 13% of construction workers are undocumented. That disruption to the labor market that can produce higher inflation, because the slowdown in home building means less supply and higher prices. Now let's get to the biggest factor before I provide my track record, and then the big number, and that is more on the housing supply versus demand. So yeah, it's really fundamental economics. That's the core driver of next year's anticipated home price change. All right, let's start with supply. How undersupplied of housing are we still in the US? Well, an update on the Fred active listing count, and this is for single families, condos and townhomes. It's that we are up off the bottom, but we're still a good 40% or so below the equilibrium point where demand meets supply. America grew its available inventory 27% this year, pretty significant, and next year, it might grow another 15 or 20% that's my best guess. All right then, well, let's try to project future supply by what you have to do is look at new housing starts. That means shovels in the ground. That means taking a backhoe and excavating for spread footings, digging that trench that you're going to pour concrete into, starting homes from the ground up. Well, we don't have enough starts either not enough. In fact, we could be digging a deeper hole with the under supply at our current level of building, US housing under supply will grow by over 200,000 homes per year if we continue at this low level of building. And would you consider all housing types, single family homes, apartments, mobile homes, condos, ADUs, everything? Freddie Mac estimates that we are currently under supplied by a whopping 3.7 million housing units. Now, you probably heard figures like that before, but let me put it into perspective. At two persons per home, our shortage is greater than what could house the entire population of Libya. That's what we're talking about here. And some agencies estimate we're even more undersupplied than the 3.7 million homes. Now, of course, I'm making only a national forecast today. There are regional variations in some Texas and Florida sub markets, they have built plenty of new build single family homes now, let me tell you something scary. What if your income dropped by a third, making 1/3 less in the future than you do right now? Like that would be a moment of panic for a lot of people, you and your family, as you hold that thought when it comes to supply, this year had historically low home sales. When I talk about sales, these are not prices. This is different. This is the volume of sales. Next year, there will likely only be a few more sales than this year, and there weren't many this year. Now see for you, as an individual real estate investor and a consumer that goes grocery shopping, you know, you are interested in real estate prices, but the industry, if you work in the industry, like as a builder or as a real estate agent or even a furniture provider, they are more concerned about the number of home sales. This sales volume that I'm talking about, and here's what's going on, normal is about 5 million home sales per year. It was over 6 million during the pandemic, and now we're down at 4 million. So I mean, in a short period of time to go from 6 million down to 4 million, that is a drawdown of transactions by a third. So just imagine if you are a home builder or a real estate agent, or you're in the retail furniture business and your volume is down by a third. I mean, what would happen to you if your income were down by a third? And you're in one of those industries and you don't have a way to pivot, so that is scary stuff for that subset of people. Well, while all of that was happening to sales volume, lower and lower volume. Home prices have just kept ticking up these past few years. All right. Well, that was supply, and there is one last factor to weigh before I reveal the forecast number, and that is demand. There is a long way to go before there is enough housing inventory for the pent up demand in the housing market, pent up demand from these people that can't quite afford a home. Demographics is destiny. You know, it is one of the easiest things to project, because demographics is a known forget immigration here, because I already talked about that just domestically, the US had its own high birth rate years from 1990 to 2010 and most people don't know about this. Many of those years between 1990 and 2010 there were over 4 million births annually, and that peaked in the year 2007 All right, you might be wondering, so what? That's the past? What about the future? Well, in housing prices, that right there is the future, with today's first time homebuyer now being a record 38 years old, like I told you about a few episodes ago. Alright, if you add 38 to the year that they were born, 2007 that home buyer demand won't peak until the year 2045 so that is a big part of where the demand just keeps coming from, and is going to keep coming from this wave of demographic demand that might not slow down much until the 2050s and what could slow prices is if a major recession that included a lot of job losses were eminent, that could slow home price growth. But nobody expects that. you know something, on future demand, What if health and fitness influencer Brian Johnson is right, and Earth now has the first generation not to die. What would that do to real estate prices? Have you ever thought that through that would really expand housing demand, but that wouldn't affect things for a couple decades. All right, well, let's talk track record and understand that it is pretty difficult to predict the future, and I have made all these forecasts at the end of one year, just before the forecast year even starts, just like I'm doing today, and here's how I've done at the end of 2021 for 2022 I forecast 9-10% home price appreciation the year ended, and in 2022 they came in at 10% so I got that one right. For 2023 before that year even began, I forecast 0% just that home prices would stay flat. And by the way, so many people were calling for a housing price decline that year because mortgage rates had risen. But as we know here on the show, when mortgage rates rise, home prices typically do too. And I also said back then was supply so low, I don't really see how home prices could fall. Well, the year ended, and sure enough, they came in at 0% and all of this is published in on record. You can go back and find all this, in fact, for 2024 you can hear the forecast that I made near the end of last year for 2024 and you could do that by going back and listening to Episode 481 this is episode 533 that was 52 weeks ago, and you will hear that my forecast back then for this year's home price appreciation was 4% this year is not quite over, plus housing data lags somewhat, in fact, through October, however, they were 4.1%   we've almost got that November number, not quite, but it's very likely going to end up being 4% this year, just like I had forecast at the end of Last year, but it's still officially to be determined. Before I gave the awaited fresh forecast for next year with what looks to me like really nailing the forecast spot on three years in a row now you might be wondering something, how did I know? How did I have the foresight to know that and nail those. Forecasts. You know, at this point, I have to concede that there's probably a little luck that has come into play, but this is what I do. I study research and even participate in the National residential housing market. What you're getting is my best estimate. It's not any sort of promise or guarantee. I mean, like all other 8.1 billion human beings on earth, I don't have a crystal ball, and a streak like this has gone on for three years, but it cannot go on forever. So this is what I can best surmise. So really, for 2025 The short story is that I expect more buyers than homes, which creates bids and buoyant prices. I also expect continued inflationary pressure. Those are the two chief factors that went into this. We don't ever revise our forecast mid year. This is it. For 2025 I expect home prices to increase by 5%. Yes, there it is 5% projected appreciation for next year. And to be clear, that is the NARS national median existing single family home price, the same stat set that I have cited all four years again, it is nominal, meaning, not inflation adjusted, so at Christmas or New Year's or your next dinner party, when You see your slack jawed brother in law that thinks the housing market is always going to crash, give the dude a hug and a turkey leg and tell him that I expect plus 5% and pass me the wishbone for good luck on our fourth consecutive housing price appreciation forecast, I really hope that this helps with planning your own portfolio moves, whether that's you owning more income property next year or doing a refinancing, or how you think about your own primary residence. And do you like the forecast that I've done here near the end of each year ever since 2021 if you do let us know, write us or leave us voicemail at get rich education.com/contact let me know you can always get a hold of us there year round with any type of feedback or questions.    Hey, if you appreciate this show here, do you think that you could help me out in one small way? Call it my Christmas gift request. There's only one item on my Christmas list, and it should only take a couple minutes of your time and none of your money. Leave a podcast rating and review for the get rich education podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you listen, the rating is the five star thing. The review is a few short sentences about why you like the show. I would really appreciate the gift from you, and I will read your review myself too. If you don't know how to do it right inside those listener apps, just open up a browser tab and search how to leave an apple podcast review, or Spotify podcast review, or whatever platform you prefer to listen on it would feel like a little Christmas gift to me after all these years, I'd love your feedback given that way. Tell me what you think, and thanks from me and the entire team here at GRE Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 2  43:46   nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  44:06   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com    

Many of President-elect Donald Trump's announced cabinet nominees are well respected and will likely have an easy path to Senate approval. Others, not so much. So Trump has proposed doing something no president has ever done before: Skirting the Senate approval process altogether via recess appointments. This appointment scheme delegitimizes Trump's cabinet picks, sets a […]

Many of President-elect Donald Trump's announced cabinet nominees are well respected and will likely have an easy path to Senate approval. Others, not so much. So Trump has proposed doing something no president has ever done before: Skirting the Senate approval process altogether via recess appointments. This appointment scheme delegitimizes Trump's cabinet picks, sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations, and is likely unconstitutional. John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (11/11/24). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant.  !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");   Rumble("play", {"video":"v5m3ai2","div":"rumble_v5m3ai2"}); Video Source Links (In Chronological Order): (23) Staceyjbird on X: "@decensorednews @TLAVagabond You don't understand. He gets a large say in who gets in. Thats what it's been from the beginning. Quit with the propaganda.

Tia Levings, New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, opens up about her harrowing escape from Christian fundamentalism and reclaiming her life. Tia discusses the impact of religious pressure, the lies behind Christian nationalism, and her healing journey from trauma. Learn how Tia chose progress over fear, created healthy boundaries, and now advocates for societal change.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.In this episode you will learn about:Insights into the dangers of Christian fundamentalism and nationalismHow Tia navigated trauma from religious control and rebuilt her identityThe impact of high-control religion on self-development and individualityTia's healing process and journey to reclaim her life after escapingHow she uses visioning and journaling as tools for self-growthEpisode References/Links:Tia Levings InstagramTia Levings WebsiteA Well-Trained Wife! Pre-order LinkReligious Trauma ResourcesGuest Bio:Tia Levings is the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, a memoir detailing her escape from Christian patriarchy. Her next book, The Soul of Healing, releases with St. Martin's Press in 2025. Tia's work sheds light on the abuses of Christian fundamentalism, religious trauma, and evangelical patriarchy, and she has been featured in Salon, HuffPost, and Newsweek. A sought-after speaker, she's appeared in Amazon's docu-series Shiny Happy People and her social media content has garnered millions of views. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Tia is a mother of four and enjoys hiking, travel, and painting. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS!Check out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox Be in the know with all the workshops at OPCBe It Till You See It Podcast SurveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates MentorshipFREE Ditching Busy Webinar Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!Lesley Logan websiteBe It Till You See It PodcastOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley LoganOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTubeProfitable Pilates Follow Us on Social Media:InstagramThe Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channelFacebookLinkedInThe OPC YouTube Channel Episode Transcript:Tia Levings 0:00  We've all had hard, bad experiences, but it's what I was able to do with it that I'm able to move forward and do more things as a whole person. I don't consider myself broken anymore. I don't consider myself scarred. I consider myself whole. And to get there, I did everything that healing has to offer.Lesley Logan 0:20  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 1:02  Be It babe. Get ready. If you haven't read the book that we're going to talk about, then you need to take a pause and order her book. It is very informative, is very important, is very needed. We have our guest, Tia Levings, today and I'm actually going to try to make this as quick as possible, because I just want to get into her brilliance. So she is the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, and she does have another book coming out. And she escaped the patriarchal fundamentalist Christian life, where there was just so much trauma and abuse that she was going through. And then we talk about her journey in that. And also we talk about why she's doing what she's doing today, and what's so important about it. And she's had so many be it till you see it, moments in her life, like truly so many, and she still is. And I just find her absolutely one of a kind and truly amazing. And I am so excited for you to hear this podcast. So take away your distractions. Enjoy this and if you haven't read A Well-Trained Wife, then please do. It's a beautiful book, and it's an important example of things that are happening to women and people every day. And you know, it's very easy for us to judge what we don't know, and then we can know it, and we can have some empathy for it, and we can also kind of understand why things are going on and how also can we reach out? What is it that we can do? So here's Tia Levings. Thank you so much for being a listener on the show. Thank you, Tia, for being a guest on the show. I'm so excited for everyone to hear you, and if they don't know you yet, to know you. All right, loves Here you go. Lesley Logan 2:35  All right, Be It babe. I'm gonne be honest. I don't fangirl very much. I'm a fan girl a little bit for now, because I have heard this woman on another podcast over a year ago, at the time they're recording this, and then when I heard she was gonna have a book and I'd have to wait till the summer of 2024 and I was like, I hate the publishing world. Why are we waiting so long? Tia Levings is our guest today. She is the author. She's a bestselling author. New York Time's Bestselling Author, congratulations, of A Well-Trained Wife. I absorbed this book as quickly as I could. And then I was kind of bummed that I put it down, and I was like, well, I, maybe, I should have (inaudible) much longer. Tia, in case they don't know you, can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at? Tia Levings 3:10  Yes, I am the New York Time's Bestselling Author of A Well-Trained Wife. I'm still practicing saying that. It's my memoir of escape from Christian patriarchy, and I educate on the abuses in Christian fundamentalism online. So a lot of people meet my work through either just like you did, an interview or my reels or my social media platform. Lesley Logan 3:28  Yeah, your reels have been so informative. So we're recording this right now in the summer of 2024 we're before the election, and one of the things that I've loved about your work that you've put out there is explaining to people why some of these rules and laws and things people want to change, why people would want that to happen? Because I can sit here and go, why would anyone want that? And then you're and then you're so good be like, well, this is how they live, and this is why it's like that. And so it's been really fascinating. I was able to share with my husband, and then as I listen to your beautiful book, I would tell Brad, I pause and go, here's what's going on in her life right now. I would share with him, so he probably feels like he knows you, too. So you have your book, and it's about your story. And in the beginning of your book, you talk about being a young girl going to church. And it took me back to my parents were very into church, went every single Sunday, we also were church hoppers. So there's part of your story that part of me goes, oh, my God, this could have been me. I went to a Christian university. I went to Assemblies of God. So, speak in tongues, you know, dance in the aisles. A little more fun. Tia Levings 4:35  A little more fun. Lesley Logan 4:37  Just a little more fun. But you had stomach issues and anxiety and just like this worry and fear and so but I noticed that in your book, as you tell your story, you also then continue to try to be this good Christian woman. And I was like, oh my god, she was being it till she saw it in a way that was negatively affecting her. So can we talk a little bit about, about like, Why? Why you were doing, why were you trying to fit in so much, and how did that affect you? Tia Levings 5:07  I love this question because what you're really describing is faith. And faith is the idea that you can become this thing, you can grow in this way that you aren't yet, but if you do these things, then you will achieve this and you trust that you will get there. And that's tangled up in fundamentalism because they drop the promise constantly that if you follow this formula, you will achieve this promise. And the promise they kept showing me was acceptance, love, blessing, prosperity, happy family, happy husband, happy parents. I am a very sensitive person, and I came onto this planet with a lot of big feelings and a lot of raw nerve endings and expressing out how do I get loved? What do I have to do in order to be loved and accepted and safe? And I'm hyper aware to everything. So I think that there is a personality piece to this. I think there's a cultural piece, a family history and generational trauma piece. There's a lot of things that went into little Tia became a people pleaser, really, at a very early age, and I was in a culture that sent almost exclusively messages that I needed to change myself in order to be desirable, so I was very eager to follow those formulas and fake it till I make it because I didn't want to burn in hell. I didn't want rejection. I didn't want, I didn't want to be miserable or unhappy or called a heretic or, you know, cast out so that, that's it. Lesley Logan 6:34  Yeah, and I think how many young people, especially young women, you know, I think you describe a lot of our listeners, highly sensitive, highly empathic. You know, they would say that they're a people-pleaser. And we've said on the show before, guys, people-pleasing has gotten very few people anywhere. Yeah, if you have found someone who people-please their way to the top, please, by all means, send in my way. I'm happy to figure this out, but it broke my heart, because I was like, oh, my god, yeah. I remember being like, oh, how do I be even better at being this Christian girl who shows up because you don't want to be the, of course, you don't wanna be the things they say could happen to you, and, of course, you want all the things that they promise. So it is interesting how your sister, you mentioned in your book, is not the same way, did not end up in the same path. Tia Levings 7:20  Monica, she's just not as sensitive. I don't know how to describe it. We come from the same family, but she's just not as sensitive. She's sensitive in a different way,. I think. She understood that exteriors were exteriors and internals were internals. And I think there's some, probably some family stuff that is just her experience of our family is different than my experience. And so to give you an idea, I was born with a tooth and I had colic. I was my mom's firstborn. We have a very different bonding experience than my sister, who was born compliant and affectionate and calm and so she didn't have, I think, the same creative rage, I think, to feel wanted (inaudible) she was wanted. Lesley Logan 7:21  Wow. I think if you were a firstborn, I was gonna say, are you firstborn? Because there's something like, I am a firstborn. I also think, my siblings and I were born, my mom was 21 when she had me, and 25 when she had my brother. There's three of us in there, so she. Tia Levings 8:20  Everyone has a different experience of your mom. Lesley Logan 8:22  Yeah, everyone has a different experience because, you know, that's a young mom, first of all, with not a lot of help, and she ended up having some postpartum issues that definitely affected how my brother was even raised, and so it's so, you are correct there, and I think that's really important for us to dive into. And I think when you guys read her book, you'll understand. You might have a sibling or a cousin, like, how did you end up like this? But it's just like, it's a, we, no one is like, a constant. You know, we're all kind of changing. Okay, so I want to explore some things. You mentioned fundamentalism. I think there's an interesting problem in our life today that there's Christians and then there's Christian nationalism and there's fundamental, like, can you kind of explain some of the differences? Because I know that there might be some Christian listening, who might I'm not trying to discount or make fun or truly ignore, that that is something that you might believe in. But there are differences in what Christianity was, or it should be, or is, and then what Christian nationalism, fundamentalism, is. Tia Levings 9:21  Yeah, thanks. I like being able to draw these distinctions, because I think they're just really relevant to where we are today. And my number one pushback that I always receive is not all Christians. And I'm like, I am very aware that all Christians are not the same, painfully aware, that is, that has been the glaring truth of my life. So at least, bottom, you know, Christianity is a belief system that the only thing you need to belong is belief, is proclaim your belief. And so a lot of people have used the word Christian throughout history because it's so broad and it's just part of our world religions and our and our archeological history, it means different things in different time periods. And so I think in like, I'm Gen X and when I grew up in the 80s, Christianity was pretty like it was a lifestyle. It was a belief choice. It was a belief system, different than Catholicism or Judaism or Buddhism. But it's just one of the world's religions, and there was a mainstream presentation of it. And in previous times in history, maybe there was more agenda attached to it, but in the 1980s it really felt like you could just decide to be Christian or not. You could take your kids to church. You could be more devout or not. There wasn't a larger framework and agenda you were buying into when you decided to be a Christian. It was your decision for your life, and it was your personal walk with Christ. That is not what it is today. Today it is in a political movement. It is buying into entire ideologies and groups that don't really have anything to do with Jesus whatsoever. Whereas I was more familiar with different denominations and flavors of Christianity when I was growing up, like you mentioned, Assemblies of God is different than Southern Baptist, but we have enough in common that we might sit at the same table. It's not like that anymore among Christians and Christian nationalists, because they're so divorced from Jesus. Christian nationalism, buys into this fundamentalism that's been rising over 50 years, that's been, that has a political agenda that has dominionist theology at its core, which is that Christianity should take over the entire globe and they truncate or that's not the word I want, they co-opt into evangelisism, because that's how the Mets, the Methodists spread. You evangelize your belief system, either through your lifestyle, your words and deeds, or through active missions. And so it helps spread this message. But it's, it's one of the lies I hope to uncover with my work the most, because this, what I'm from, is not just an alternative lifestyle or a belief in Jesus. This is a political ideology bent on dominating the rest of the culture, and that's why it's important to unpack it and examine it. Lesley Logan 11:54  Yeah, I think I'm an elder millennial and so I grew up in the 80s and the 90s, and I never remembered people's business of politics even entering a conversation on a Sunday. It just wasn't (inaudible).Tia Levings 12:09  Technically, it's a law for them to tell you how to vote, and we kind of adhered to that back then. Lesley Logan 12:13  Yeah, we did. And you just kind of loved everybody you know. And my parents were those Christians, like, you moved in the neighborhood, and they would show up at your door and they bring you food. And if someone passed away, they're like, how can we help you? How can we like, they took my mom, took pregnant teenagers off the street who've been kicked out of their houses. That's the type of person we were and if you're nodding along because that sounds familiar to what you're used to, that is not what they're preaching today. Because it's really like, it's I don't see them taking anyone's kid in. I see all them wanting to kick everyone's kids out that don't believe it in the way they believe. And that, to me, is so antithetical. And you're like, what Bible are we reading? How are we doing this? Tia Levings 12:55  Today is about legislative morality and making their views make, by force, making, forcing you to comply with the way they believe and getting involved in politics to the exclusion of any American plurality or democracy, and it's taken them years to get here. This didn't just happen. This is not one President's fault. This is a long standing strategy that does involve our lifespan, but we were too little, and it was too new to really be a force in our formative years. Lesley Logan 13:23  Yeah, so I guess, like you've read this, you wrote this amazing book, and in this book, you talk about and I also found it very fascinating, because you say, people say, not all Christians, and in your marriage, in your life, in this world, you went through many different types of different churches, and they seem to just get, continue to get worse and worse. As far as, like, what you as a woman could do and even what your kids could do, you know, obviously, with, the book is here, so you've got out, so we're not spoiling anything, but you all have to, like, the story is just incredible. You have to read it. But I guess I want to go to the after the book, because after the book ends that part of your life, because there's another be it till you see it moment, like you went through a healing process. It just is intense. And I guess maybe we can talk a little bit like, what does years of abuse or years of control do to a body? And how did you get to a place where you could actually write them? I mean, you're a writer, so that's not the problem. But like, get the point where you could actually tell the story, and not almost relive it? Tia Levings 14:24  Yeah, I love that question too, because it's really more my focus once I get this off my chest, you know, I have to tell you what broke me before I can tell you how I healed from it. So I have another book underway called The Soul of Healing. And the contrast of these two books is that in the beginning of A Well-Trained Wife, I'm a child who should be developing as a child. I should be developing my sense of self through normal child development, which is denied you in high control religion. They do not want to nurture individuality. They do not want you to become your best and highest self. They don't want you dreaming and daydreaming of what you can become. You're supposed to become what they want you to be. That's the whole goal. Tia Levings 14:58  When I was in recovery when I broke out of that, I was faced with a dilemma. I had to become someone, become who I am. But I had had no self-development. There was no foundation there. There was just like this broken heap of rubble to put back together and say, okay, I'm going to kind of make a person out of this. And I couldn't have done it without vision and imagination and healing. I did it with 10 years of trauma therapy and putting myself back together. As far as the challenges go, like, what's broken? How can I heal this? How can I address this trauma? All of that happened, and the writing was a piece of that. The writing was, it started out as a therapeutic journal, and then it developed into a novel, because I thought I would tell this hard story with some distance, emotional distance to it. But that's where I was at the time. I wasn't able to say this happened to me. And then it was a book with a pseudonym, because I tried someone else's name on that didn't fit either. And then finally, as I get through my healing and I have become Tia, I'm ready to tell my story of what happened to Tia. And all of that is becoming who I wanted to be, and it's, it's a building process. I have a vision board that somewhere in the middle, there, I eventually hung alongside of it a victory board, because my visions were coming true, and I had needed to mark them as accomplishments, and I became a real different, I have a different life today that you can see in pictures, because they came they came true. Lesley Logan 16:20  Okay, hold on, okay, I love a vision board, like, I still have this vision board. You don't know this yet, but my listeners do. I had three stints in my life where, like, I was without address and, I never had to sleep on the streets, I always had a car or a couch to crash on. So I'm very, very grateful. And I was also had a job, and so I like also tell people it's just sometimes expensive to get into housing. But I, during one of my last stint of that, I did a vision board, and my new apartment was so small I had to, like, just put it in the closet, and I would pull it out every once in a while, and I'd go, oh my god, that's happened. Oh my god, that's happened. But I didn't realize I should have put a victory board, and so now we should all have almost like a book. It opens up and you could, oh, you're great. So okay, so okay, okay, this is so good. The amount of be it till you see it you've had then you had a be it till you see it to become Tia. That is something I don't think we ever give people credit for. I'm sure there's so many people are like, oh, look at her. Now she got out, and now she's this, you know, spokesperson, who's just like, charging up and trying to call these people out, but there was 10-plus years of you becoming you.  Tia Levings 17:25  Yeah, it's very important. I was a shocked, broken mess in 2007 when I escaped, and that was a time when there wasn't the same amount of resource trauma, informed resources didn't really exist yet. Language didn't exist. I certainly wasn't in a habit of accurately naming my experiences. So I had to learn how to call what happened to me by its actual name. I had to learn how to externalize the story with honesty and stop putting like rose-colored glasses on and daydreams and idealism. I had to stop protecting so that I could be honest from the page. That's one of the things you see reflected in my book, is that I speak very plainly about really hard things. That's the reflection of being able to say what happened to me in no nonsense terms, that was a growth step. And so all of that together builds to somebody who has a voice and has learned how to use it. It's not something I had. In 2007 I couldn't have ordered a pizza because I stuttered and stammered too badly to have a conversation with a stranger without so much anxiety that I would have just shut down. And today I can do an interview like this. That all took practice. Like, right now, I'm practicing because I want to be able to do Tiktok lives. And I've never gone live on Tiktok before, two days ago. So I'm practicing in five minute increments on Tiktok. It's that kind of like little have a vision of where I want to be and I want to, I need to practice the mechanics of it, and so I give myself time to practice and envision and all of that. But there's also a lot of grief work involved in that. I don't want to gloss over the grief work, because being able to envision what I want for Tia meant I had to first contend with what it cost me. I can't just envision myself back to 20 and start over. I have to have a new vision for Tia at 50. What does Tia at 50 look like, and what can she do with what she's been given? Lesley Logan 19:14  Oh, my God, you're 50.Tia Levings 19:15  I am. Lesley Logan 19:16  Oh my, gorgeous. Anyways, I know because that's the other thing I don't think people even give themselves credit for. They like leave the job, they leave the relationship, or they leave the religion, and then they don't realize that there is a grief process, because you are grieving what was, what you lost in doing that, what, you can't get time back? I can't imagine you going through all the things you went through in trying to heal yourself and also be a parent to your beautiful children. And so, because we have so many moms who listen when you have a baby and you didn't even have them at the hospital, you had your first at home. I still, somehow, they still insert mom guilt, somehow it comes in. It's not, it's like, so how, what did you have to tell yourself to go through that? Because you had to also give yourself permission to take care of you so that you could take care of them. Tia Levings 20:09  Yeah. So during the years that I was healing, I was raising four children and also going through a vicious divorce and custody investigations. And, you know, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't bad. I just saw it ends with us, and I got so angry because she hands over, in the movie, this is a spoiler, in the movie, she hands her newborn to her abuser and says, I would like a divorce, and no mom from abuse is going to, number one, put her newborn in the father's hands and give him potentially volatile news, that's not going to happen. But also he's like, oh yeah, I think we should, oh yeah, I agree with you. Thank you. No abuser says that. That is not what it's like to leave domestic abuse. So I had a big process to go through, and I had children to raise and life to change, and I had been, you know, always resisting the internal fundamentalism in our home in their early childhood and try to raise them the way that I wanted to. But it was a different scenario when I had teenagers and I didn't have fundamentalism, telling me I had to churn out this cookie-cutter. So it was kind of wild west in some regards. I had a second husband during those years. We had that to contend with. And so there was a lot, there was a lot happening. And just like knowing what TIA is, isn't, it was a question. It was, still a question, I hope it's always a question. The only thing I promised myself was that everything that I'd been through had already taken enough time. It had already taken my life. It took my past. It took my childhood. It took my children's childhood. It took my virginity. It took all the glossy imagery that they promised and never delivered on. It was not going to get my present and it was not going to get my future, because that was the only thing I had control over. So that was my promise to myself, was it changes from here on out. Lesley Logan 21:47  Yeah, thank you for bringing up that movie. I haven't seen it. I saw your post on it, and then I saw, like, people are, like, backlashing up, like, lively, and they're trying to figure out why. And I'm like, I don't think it's any of these reasons. I think what people aren't saying is what they can't always articulate what you did so well, just like, this is unbelievable. This is not how it works. And they didn't have anyone who got experience with it on that movie. Because I just think that you would really, yeah, so, but that's a different episode. Okay, so here's the thing that I find fascinating about you, and I'm so grateful for you, because you're putting towards the things like, I like, even though I grew up somewhat in my, I don't think I ever there's parts of me I watch Tiny Happy People with you in it. I was like, oh, I do think my parents got that book at some point. We were never on the blanket, but we were spanked sometimes. I was like, this is because God loves you. And like, I was, so there's some interesting things that I think my parents tried out and then also let go of because they were very much into football. And my grandparents' version of church was watching, oh, my god, I can't think of it right now, but it's like a Sunday night prayer movie with angels. It's not coming to my mind, but like. Tia Levings 22:52  Touched by an Angel? Lesley Logan 22:53  Touched by an Angel. Yes, we watched every Sunday. My grandma's like, this is church, we're going. So I had some outside influence I think that really kept my life away from that. But, so you, but you have now, because you can, you can pinpoint these things, what I find so fascinating is that you are spending time trying to help people understand what fundamentalism is, what we're looking at here. And I, one, commend you, and I'm grateful for you. But two, and I'm also wondering like, why are you doing that? Tia Levings 23:21  Because somewhere around 2015, yeah, I think it was 2015, I realized that everything I'd run away from, and then I escaped and with the risk of my life and losing everything and leaving everything behind, all of that was coming from my country, and there was be no, there was no hide and be quiet and be anonymous about it anymore. It was you need, you have a story to tell. You know what it's like to live in that America because you lived in that America, being the only people who can tell what it's like to live in Project 2025, or the Christian patriarchy, to that extreme, is somebody who's lived it and but there's not very many people who can talk about it. They are, if they survived at all, if they got out, they haven't done the work to tell the story without re-traumatizing themselves, they haven't, don't necessarily, have the same talents and gifts for clarity or for being able to write or being able to put themselves out there. And so I knew I'm like, well, there's a handful of people who can do this, and I'm one of them, and I have a responsibility to tell the story and to get the workout. The situation has only intensified as I made that decision. My book is timely and we knew that two years ago, we knew that four years ago, and it just keeps getting more timely. And I'm like, please read it before the election. Lesley Logan 24:35  I know, that's why I posted today, because I was like, I don't think I get this I want, I'm gonna try get this episode out for the election. But I was like, how can I get this book in everyone's hands because what kills me is that people continue to say on any post about Project 2025, oh, Trump's doesn't know anything about this. And I am like, okay, because there's a picture of him with the, like, you want to just go, you want to shake people. You're like, what are you doing? We can't shake them, that would be abuse. But your book is so timely. And also you can spot things and almost, in a way, translate, because it is all English. It's just that it's a different worldview. So it's a different language, and you can translate it. For those of us who are going, what is going on and what does this actually mean? Tia Levings 25:18  Even with Project 2025, the mechanics of it matter. So Trump not only knows about it, but he's president because of it. The Heritage Foundation, you might remember this, there was a push in the first Trump election, in the, in that election cycle. Two, they didn't like him, the Evangelicals didn't like him, and they wanted to pick someone like Ted Cruz or Chris Christie. And there was this debate over who's going to be the Republican candidate, and Trump was popular, but not so much with evangelical voters, more with the MAGA crowd. Then all of a sudden, boom, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham endorse him, and it's like this pivot. Everyone's like, what we're endorsing Trump now? The reason why they did that was because they're involved with the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025. Project 2025 founders and architects decided that a popular president could get their Supreme Court justices in and can get their legislation through. So they went with the most popular president and put him in office as a figurehead. He's there because of them. So it is bigger than him. It is ludicrous that he would pretend that he doesn't know about it when 80% of his administration was staff appointees from those organizations, it was 110 conservative organizations. And so that's why it also will outlast him if they swap him with another candidate, for example, Vance, or anyone else like him, if they're endorsed by the founders of Project 2025, we are in the same boat and that's what lands us with this legislation, with the Supreme Court appointees we've had, and with Speaker of the House, Johnson, like that kind of trend. Lesley Logan 26:52  I know that's the thing that so, concern's the wrong word, sometimes you're just like, okay, how, it's, you start to go, how do you take a group, this is such a huge group of people, and if we escape one at a time, like Tia, you escaped, we're going to be in this forever. Obviously, you're sharing these amazing things that are helping us understand it. How do you see a possibility for us to, I don't, I don't want to say, break the spell, but help them see that I feel like they don't realize they're being used, and that, I think pisses me off the most, but they're being used, and that Tia Levings 27:24  They're being (inaudible) not wrong about that. They're under mind control. They're under a spell. We know that in our bodies, you know we can feel that in our bodies. What I do about it is I choose the other way. I choose light, I choose life. I choose energy and progress. I want humanity to continue evolving and progressing as a society, not going back to puritanical times. There is a reason why we're not Puritans anymore, like, many reasons. We like progress and technology and goodness and education and rights. There's, our society moved forward because we don't want to be like The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorn and you know, all of, all of the things that were true in the 1500s. We choose life. So I choose life. I choose to go forward. That means I choose political ideologies and groups that maybe I don't agree with 100% but they're moving in the right direction. They're protecting my agency to continue to vote. I wasn't allowed to vote in Christian patriarchy. We will lose our right to vote in Christian patriarchy. I don't want that, so I vote for people who protect my right to vote. That makes sense? Lesley Logan 28:25  Yeah, no, it totally does. With all this stuff where you have to kind of like, especially right now, especially in the time that we're in, guys, I think we're 74 days out from when we're recording this. How are you protecting, so how are you protecting yourself? Because every day you have to look at this crap and translate it for the rest of us, it really, absolutely, is like a touch point of my day to see what you're okay, I'm not crazy. This is what I'm seeing. This is very helpful. And, oh, this is why it's going on. So you are definitely helping so many people who are trying to figure out what they're seeing, right? But how are you protecting yourself? And I guess, continue to be it till you see it as being Tia? Tia Levings 29:00  Yeah. So Tia needs a lot of time to sit on the floor. I need time to be unplugged. I need time to stretch and move and get sunshine and walk. I'm really clear on my boundaries, and I use them every day. I also like a good, flexible boundary, not a rigid one. So that means sometimes I take a little step back and then take a few days off. I'm fortunate that my, I mean, it's the twisted curse of content that I make, it's still really timely and relevant, which allows me to repurpose older content sometimes when I need to take a little break from always diving into the most current issue. I'm also really grateful that there are so many other voices joining this that I'm not the only one out there. There's a lot of creators that all have their own strengths for explaining things, interpreting things, and sometimes there's a current event that'll come up, and I'll just like, I'm sitting this one out. I've got the middle of (inaudible) book release, or I've got something else, let the others carry it, and they do. And I know that we're not like, putting our heads together and deciding that, but I know that we're all doing that. We're all aware that this is a movement, and it's a counter-movement of intelligence and love and strength, and sometimes we need to set it out. It's also, interestingly enough, many of us are introverted, and so I noticed that you do what we can do, and then we understand that that's where our limit is, and I go take care of my needs, like my nervous system regulation is my top priority. So that's what I mean when I say I need to go sit on the floor. If I'm feeling overwhelmed or tired or something, I'll just sit down, and let the planet support me, and let everything, like all the energy fields, just kind of come down and the energy drop. Lesley Logan 30:35  Thank you for sharing that I think so many people here need to hear like you, to have gone what you went through, and also to be so aware of what you need, that is a superpower, because there are so many people here who haven't gone through that journey, who do not know how to sit down. Tia Levings 30:51  Right and we're caught in this new cycle full of urgency, and my promise to myself, one of many, but one of them is that I resist urgency. I want a life that resists urgency. So if someone's prodding me to hurry or push or forcing me to do something, I'll go the other way, just to spite them, because I'm not going. I was like, when I was a toddler, I would sit down. My tantrum style was to sit down and throw a fit and I think, oh, she just knew what she was doing. She just knew. No, no, I'm not going in there. No, you can't make me. Channel my inner two-year-old a little bit.Lesley Logan 31:22  Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think you mentioned that in your book, and you mentioned you have a second book. So I feel like I don't, you probably can't talk too much about it, but did you always know you were gonna write the second book? Did it come through after this first one was finished? Do we get to have more Tia? Like, more?Tia Levings 31:39  It's called the soul of healing, and it's how I healed and how you can, too. It's a survivor's guide to do the thing that I did, because that's the follow up question I always get, and why we're having this interview. You did this, you went through this big story, and you put yourself back together, and that's what's fascinating. It's not, so, just a parade of the bad things that happened to me. We've all had hard, bad experiences. But it's what I was able to do with it that I'm able to move forward and do more things as a whole person. I don't consider myself broken anymore. I don't consider myself scarred. I consider myself whole. And to get there, I did some things that, I did everything that healing had to offer. So I was like, this really is a second book. It was, this book would have been way too much for that. So it sold really well, really quickly, in preorders. And that meant I was given the opportunity to sell the next one so close, on the heels of it. So The Soul of Healing comes out in 2025, probably in the summer, early fall. Lesley Logan 32:38  Great. We don't have to wait because, like, too long, because, like, I already knew I was gonna buy a year ago. I already knew it was a deal. And let's just say, I think maybe the hard conversation is like a lot of us are hoping that come this election, that things will go the way joy is presenting itself, and then we'll just move on. And can you give, be the bearer of bad news, but the bearer of honesty, which is, what if they lose, hopefully they lose, what can we expect? Maybe, you're not a future teller, but do they just keep going? Because that means they just do. They've had 50 years of trying, so what do you see? Tia Levings 33:14  I think that if they lose, which I which I ardently hope they do. Because it's terrifying if they win, if they lose, that we'll see a large chunk of people quietly awaken when their disillusionment falls away, when they see the emperor has no clothes. It gets contagious, becomes contagious, and so I think we will have societal change. There will always be a core of fundamentalism. You know, running through the tradwife movement is massive, and it is part of this. Those are people who are not going to like spin on a dime because it's November and the election went one way that I don't think they're the majority. So I think that the more we move forward, the more we crowd out antiquated ideas that don't bear good fruit. And generations, I have a lot of hope in generations, this new rising Gen X and below. I've always had technology. They have access to more psychological information than any other generation in all of humanity. I have hope for that. I think that's going to take us optimistic places.Lesley Logan 34:17  Yeah, I do. I believe. I believe it too. I hope for that. Okay, I mean, I just want to spend all I just want to hang out with you. So, just so you know, I'm coming through Georgia, can we have coffee? We're gonna take a quick break, and then we're gonna come out and find how people can find you, follow you, get your book, and then your Be It Action Items. Lesley Logan 34:37  All right, Tia, where do you like to hang out? You mentioned TikTok lives? Where can people just absorb as much of your amazingness? And where can they buy your books? Tia Levings 34:45  Yeah, I'm on every social platform except for Twitter. Don't do Elon. I'm at @TiaLevingswriter on all of those. I hang out on Instagram the most, and I do have a private readers group if you want to do book discussion and help me launch my books, it's AWTW readers, it's free, it's just private, so that we can talk about stuff, and I might have my substack, TiaLevings.substack.com, which is the anti-fundamentalist, where I share an active deconstruction process in our headlines, family news, current events, and we'll also what I'm deconstructing personally now, and I'm on TikTok. Like I said, I'm trying new things. I've always been unafraid of technology. I want to learn how to do it, but it's really just enough time and bandwidth things. So we'll see what happens there. I just realized I was feeling a little intimidated by a process, and I wanted to deal with that, so that's why I'm doing that. Lesley Logan 35:36  Thank you for, that's a great little, like, yeah, we for (inaudible) why don't we explore wine and see what's going on? You don't have to, but you can just at least understand it. Okay, you've given us so much and, oh, by the way, you have, I believe you have a freebie on, like, the fundies thing as well. If you're in a fundamentalist situation, you're like, unclear. If your family is like, you have that as well in your sites as well. Tia Levings 35:57  Yeah, if you go to tialevings.com I have tons of resources on there, and one of them is the Fundie Cheatsheet. You'll get it if you sign up for my emails and it, it gives you all like the insider terms of what I'm talking about, where I'm from, and also peaks to see where it's going. Lesley Logan 36:11  Yeah. Okay, super cool. Okay, so bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps to be it till we see it. What do you have for us? Tia Levings 36:19  Oh my goodness, these were hard to narrow down. My bold, my bold steps, okay, so spend time with yourself is the number one. Like tune out all the noise. Learn how to sit in silence. Learn how to move in walk. I do this when I'm walking a lot, and I try to become my own best friend. I pay attention to my nerves and what's coming up in my body, and I honor that, even if I don't have language for it. And then I spend a lot of time envisioning. I don't believe you can become something with intention unless you can see it. So I need to be able to see it. So I do vision boarding my journaling. I've practiced many times in the mirror being able to speak or smile or do the things. So whatever it is I'm trying to be. I try to really spend time envisioning what it's like to live a daily, ordinary life as that person, and then make those changes as I go. I don't know if those are beady enough for you (inaudible).Lesley Logan 37:13  They are. They're brilliant, they're brilliant, they're wonderful. Yes, they're as amazing, more amazing. I thought they'd be from you. Just, yeah, you should know, you probably do already, because you've done so much work, but you're a gorgeous, incredible, smart human who is so generous. And I'm just so grateful that we got to have this moment and that you took time out of your busy promotion of your amazing, bestselling book, because it's really important to me, and I think every one of my listeners needs to hear it so listeners needs to hear it. So thank you. So you all are going to get the book if you haven't gotten already, because I told you to.Tia Levings 37:48  Thank you so much. Thank you.Lesley Logan 37:49  Oh, are you kidding? Like, I have only ever self-published and I did a terrible job of it, and that's so hard. Well, first of all, first of all, I didn't know you should have an audience first. So there's that. It's still, people still get it, and it's such a niche book anyways. But I have had so many friends who written books, so many people who've been on this it is so hard to authentically get on the bestseller list. It is very easy, if you're a dick on the side that we won't discuss, to have your family buy a bunch of books for you or your friends or a group you know, but you for you and other authors like you, authentically getting there because single people bought a book and told their friends about it. So you, just like incredible achievement, and I hope you continue to celebrate. Lesley Logan 38:35  Thank you again for being here. You guys, how do you use these tips in your life? Make sure you tag Tia and tag the Be It Pod and get her book for your friends, because this, for us to overcome what is actually trying to happen, and not just the US and many, many places where they're trying to control women, specifically, we have to be educated on what it looks like so that we can make sure it doesn't happen. Because we can be it till we see it in the ways we want to be and the life we want to have and we want a vision. So thank you, Tia, so much for being here. Until next time, everyone, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 39:01  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod. Brad Crowell 39:45  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 39:50  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co. Brad Crowell 39:54  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi. Lesley Logan 40:01  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals. Brad Crowell 40:04  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For some reasons Donald Trump is threatened by the fact that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's in her youth. He has even accused her of making it up. So Trump decided that he would work at McDonald's for a day, but even THAT was exposed as a sham, a con, a show. As New York Magazine put it: "So in an effort to highlight his claim that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, Trump pretended to work at a closed McDonald's where he served pretend orders to supporters pretending to be customers." The most accurate nickname for Trump really is "Don the Con".If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support us and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For some reasons Donald Trump is threatened by the fact that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's in her youth. He has even accused her of making it up. So Trump decided that he would work at McDonald's for a day, but even THAT was exposed as a sham, a con, a show. As New York Magazine put it: "So in an effort to highlight his claim that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, Trump pretended to work at a closed McDonald's where he served pretend orders to supporters pretending to be customers." The most accurate nickname for Trump really is "Don the Con".If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support us and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jack Smith has filed his opposition to Trump's motion to dismiss based on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Fischer case. In Fisher, the Supreme Court ignored the text of the federal statute that criminalize conduct that "obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding" and invalidated the convictions of the insurrectionists who did exactly that. So Trump filed a motion saying, in substance, "invalidate my conviction too," seeking to have thrown out HIS charges for obstructing the congressional certification of Joe Biden's election win. Glenn discusses Jack Smith's response which exposes the absurdity of Trump's claim.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support us and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

So Trump can't even go golfing anymore. Everyone's trying to kill him. The level of evil is the highest it's ever been. This is a battle of Good vs Evil. Let's expose the lies and discuss solutions. ~Todd & Casey Follow us on x and ig: @toddspears1776 @SoundBoardLord Business Inquiries: Casey@inthehotseatmedia.com Todd@inthehotseatmedia.com Buy Our Shirts: HotSeatMerch.com Music by: TwoYearOldBear Love Ya Miss Ya Mean It! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So Trump & Elon had a Chat on X + Beer & Psalms Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America) https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

So Trump & Elon had a Chat on X + Beer & Psalms Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America) https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

So Trump asked for more secret service before his rally incident but was ignored, allegedly