Border Patrol and Remigration Rhetoric

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Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free, and get two point five times the points, in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon dot com d Grab the fan, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus d. comot Rewards program terms apppply, see Simonplus dot com for details This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culturistos with Matt Rogers and Bo and Yang. This is Bo and Yang from Lost Culturistos with Mat Rogers and Bo Yang. Now a quick break, switching topics to one of our favorite sponsors, Vital Proteins. Vital Proteins has introduced their new colloagen sparkling waters. These sparkling waters come in three crisp flavors, strawberry blossom, lemon lime, and blood orange. Each can contains two point five grams of Vericol, collagen peptides, which are clinically shown to improve skin health in as little as thirty days. The formula also includes zero grams of added sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and a one hundred percent daily dose of vitamin C Sip your way to better skin health with vital proteins collag and sparkling water. Get twenty percent off your next order at vitalproteins d. com with proo code Lascojarista twenty at checkout Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilition episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions their time Yep, it's baret time. Hi everyone. Wlcome to Dicketappen here, a podcast where I talk to Molly Konger about animals. Hi Molly I'm so excited to learn about bears. I've been thinking about it all week That's fantastic good.'ve had good bare thoughts Be there are people who think about bears a lot and I think it's not good for their mental wellbeing I was trying to find if I took a picture of that time a baby bear was like standing on the median strip outside my old apartment and I couldn't find it by. So I was thinking about him. Okay, yeah, I hope he's okay.ope he's found a better place to be in the median strip I bought a show and tell item today. Molly can see it, no one else can I was hoping it was gonna be a live bear. It's not a live bear. I don't. I'm not allowed. Because of woke, you can't have a pet grizly bear. If you're about to tell me that those are bear antlers, I'm leaving. Yeah, from these are actually original Jackalope antlers from the California Jackalope it's a Mule deeer shed outlet. You thought it was cool thought you'd like to see it. It's beautiful. Yeah. I think lots of people don't realize that the ans fall off and regenerate I feel like he spent a long time growing those. Yeah, he did. and then he just left them there as a gift for me in the wilderness so I have a few of these. He's not getting laid this spring. Oh no, he's going to grow some more. and he's going to fight another dude with them in order to get laid So that fell off in a fight. so he's just walking around with one look at Oh, he shuts. okay, he shuts them They shed them and regenerate. Like this is how this is how they get bigger and more robust anlts each time But they put a lot of the caloric energy into growing these. it seems like that would really take a lot out of you Yeah, well then they get horny and fight with other male deer for quite a while. Those are antlers, not horns That's correct ye. But the horny it's not related to them. Yeah, they and then yeah, they lose a lot of weight in that rutting time and then they have to gain it all back before the winter just so focused on fighting and fucking they can't eat It's the many such cases. M such cases. ye So I'm not talking about mule deer today, I they are cool The first time I saw, I was like, Iass you what I call a mule day Weve really got the ears going on I want to talk about another type of charismatic, North American meegafauna. Bad There are three species of bear in North America. S a quiz Mlly do you know what they are? Okay, Grizzly Brown All work ush. That's four. He justs gotta keep straying. Panda. Those are even bears. Yeah nominally they are. but I think yeah. You didn't get them all during your period of guessing, brown, black and polar Within brown bear, we have grizzly bears, brown bears, and kodiac bears We used to think that the California bears were a different species or not They just lived here. They just have different politics Yeah, yeah, exactly. we'd have been legalized so they just saw things differently The Brown bears is the one I wantan to talk about. So I'm going to use brown bear as like a blanket term for when they're on the coast in Alaska, they're called brown bears, right And those are generally the biggest ones. and have you ever seen have you been to Alaska, Moll No I would love to go to Alaska. I've never been. Yeah, Alaska fucking rips and love Alaska I found out recently that black bears can be brown and I just we need I think we need to read evaluate the naming system. It's not good, yes. Because people are you know, the advice about a brown bear versus a black bear is different. But if a black bear can be brown and you're relying on a rhyming phrase to know what to do, you don't know what kind of bear that is. Yeah, it's they call them cinnamon bars sometimes. The brown black bears. Yeah. you can tell a grizzly bear at the bigger, they've got that more pronounced hump. They have a different shape to them. Noook, you can tell. I cannot. You fucking know if the grizzly bears coming. and like they don't make themselves you know, quiet But yeah, the big hump that they've got a pronounced hump Grizzly bears can also really get into like a blonde coloration even. Well, yeah, in California, sure Everybody's blinde out there. Yeah, they get frosted tips when they live by the coast for too long, and they listen to sublime here Yeah, let's talk about bears, my bear interactions by way of establishing some credibility. I want to point out that like interacting with bears doesn't make me an expert. I'm not an expert. And what we're going to talk about here is non experts interjecting their inexpert opinions about bears and why that's actually a problem. I'm probably interacting with bears is not a desirable outcome for most listeners Yeah, I mean, I love a bear. like think because I come from a place where there's very little that can kill you. Well, I mean, there are things right there like cars and we have cancer in the UK as well, of course. But like animal wise You're more or less in clear out. We have adders, which is a type of snake and they are venomous, but like I can't think of the time I ever heard ofone getting killed. I'm sure someone has been killed by an added bite It's very rare. don't mean you have a lion on like a flag or something, someomebody has one. But the we have a few lines. We got some flag lines. Yeah, you know the lines the lines in fact we u I love the lines on a flly because they're drawn by someone who's never seen a line just like a game of telephone has resulted in. But he knows they're very maestic. Yeah, it's majestic, kindind of like a dog, longer hair, I think It was the input before he drew the lines I kind of like being on the landscape with animals that are bigger than me and like they are the apex predator irst time I saw a grizzly bear, I had bush planed to a lake in the Wrangles Stain. Elias Wilderness that's in Alaska, southeastern Alaska, massive wilderness area. And we were gonna hike around a bit and then pack raft off the the end of the glacier there it goes into like a melwater river. And so the river's kind of different every year as it melts and the rivers streams braid together. Then we were got a pack r for a few days and then hike out and that was a fun adventure So we landed, we hiked a bit, we inflated our little boats And we padded across a lake at the end of the glacier. and then we got to place where we're camping, we went on a walk and immediately saw a Sal Grisly bear and her cubs Which is sick. That's cute as hell. I would love to see that. I would love to see some baby bears Yeah, it's sick. It best to stay away from them. That's when they they can get angry I would like to see them from like over here. Yeah and then they can be over there. like maybe on the other side of a river Yeah, ye well the Be king there's not afraid of wardrobe, but's true. They do love to eat a salmon ye, it was sick. that was a sick trip generally. We got to see the glassier carving. so like It's when a little baby glass year is born, right? But the Glacier A section of it broke off And I'm talking a section the size of like a city block here. but it's so shiny when it breaks. Yeah, it's shiny. and it's allowed. it's like earth shattering rumble, right? And then this thing was it was majestic, right? Like it looks like a mountain has fallen into the water and that was cool as fark. And then you realize that like It has displaced a mountain sized amount of water.. And now there are like fridge sized ice blocks coming at head highight toward you. So yeah we did some fast uphill running in that moment. But it was Alaskisode it was summerimes it wasn't getting dark, right You have like twenty four hours sunlight At least it wasn't dark when that happened. Tunny time to run from the glacier. Yeah, great time to run from the glacier. I wouldn't want to do in the winterime I don't think they calve in the winterime. Maybe they still do. I think it's to do with temperature rising So that was my I've seen a lot of black bears. I'm a San Diego Black bear truther. that's another fun thing about me. For some reason, people don't think there are black bears of San Diego and that is not true I have seen their footprints eople have seen bears on game cameras thatars pop up on top of Mount Palama all the time. Like the ongoing about whether or not we have panthers on the east coast. Oh yeah, you guys love to you know like it's like a Carolina panther or something People are very sure, I have no skin in this game I think that's a breeding family of mountain lions now maybe in Michigan Is it getting closer They're coming your way. You soon will I've seen a lot of bears or a good number of bears, I' seen a lot of black bears, right we have them in California The fact that I've seen bears does not make me a bear expert, and another non bear expert has been diving into the discourse on bears after a tragedy, like genuinely a terrible thing when a hiker lost their life in last year try and set the American Way Glacier National Park. I just we're gonna get messages about this This British word. Yeah, right. It's not like a buffalo issue. I'm just straight colonizing it I'm sure it had an indigenous name. And so so are you, if you're saying Glazia This is really sad, right? A hiker from Florida was mauled by barntide very shortly related to that, serious injuries occurred in another moring in Yellowstone National Park notot so long ago, a contractor at a uranium mining site was killed by a black bear in British Columbia in Canada. A couple of weeks ago, maybe thirteenth of May, it looks like. Andewual to be killed by a black bear probably worth pointing out that er very rare for black bears to kill people. and also someone at that site clearly had a firearm because they euthanized the bear U just a phrase they use there They killed it, right? Like it wasn't suffering, I don't think. that they killed the bear pretty shortly thereafter and it's undergoing a necruptcy now. Aic That's another incident, I guess to add to this list. And again right there, there was a firearm present there it seems in that didn't prevent the person being mauled Bye the And so, former interterior Secretary Ryan Zinkeke has decided to wade into the debate. Doid we remember Ryan Zininky He's not the one from real world Road rules, right? Th that's the transportation guy I don't think so. If he is, I'm not aware of what real world Road rules is. I'm just having trouble remembering which members of Cabinet have been on reality TV. And I don't think this was one of them. Okay.orry No, not to my knowledge, Sinky he was the Navy CEO officer. He's now a representative from Montana He was interterior Secretary in Trump's first administration, he presided over a series of attacks on public lands that we saw. Trump point Exactly what you want to see from your secretary of the interior. Yeah, ye. He's trying to rebrand himself as some kind of protector of public lands now. He's kind of too late on that one in my opinion. He's certainly not a protector of bears. Last week, he tweeted Maybe he's etated I don't know We're not doing that. We're going keep dead naming it. Last week, two Gisly bear attacks claimed the life of a hiker in Glacer National Park and seriously injured two others in Yellowstone National Park The tragedies are a sobering reminder that grizzly bear populations have recovered well beyond sustainable levels and it is time Oh so we should start killing them? Yep. It's past time for the federal government to delist them and give states some management tools. Kill them back. Yeah, we're gonna to kill them back. This is what we do. Eye for an eye for Florida man.. I was speaking to a a scientist who studies human bear interactions this week and he referred to these as revenge killings. Yeah becausecause they won't just kill. they often, in many instances don't know which bear. Sometimes we can know the size of the bear, right from like the size of the jaws. There'll be kind of several bears there are different sizes of jaws. Th are distance between the different teeth, stuff like this, right? Right? Like if one bear is like if it's like a jaw situation and like one bear just has it out for hikers. Yeah sure. I guess go get him But that's not like they's not happening. Yeah. And they will end up killing a number of bears in an area when this stuff happens, right? It's just a revenge killing. So we'reaking out like we're taking out our anger on that species because they came after our species. It seems like the problem is not that there's too many bears That is correct, Molly. is that is why we're here today. He seems he seems to be positioning this as There's just too many bears. Pople you can't avoid the bears because there's so many bears. Then it's not the case. Millions of people every year visit the greatreater Yellowstone ecosystem and very few of them see a bear, right? And even fewer of them touch a bear Yeah. If you're touching a grizzly bear, it's a bad day for youless, I guess it has decided it wants to be touched. I don't want to victim blame. Obviously like these are wild animals, they're unpredictable. You're in their home What did this guy do? Why was he so close to the bear? We don't know exactly what this guy did.. There are a number of bear safety things which I do want to talk about. And I spoke to Tom Smith last week and I'm gonna turn that into another podcast. But like this is the person who is the guy who writes the studies on human interactions with bears, right? And specifically on how those could be like de escalated And he said he's not aware of an incident in which someone has been killed by a bear in which they were adhering to all the best principles, right? Now I'm not blaming the victim. Like if you don't know, you don't, know, you're inexperienced outdoorsmen, whatever, but I feel like there's a series of just like pieces of advice and if you follow them, you're not going to get in that situation Most of the time. Most the Most of the time. Yeah. I think if I was going into bear country, I wouldn't take a dog. A lot of people take dogs. A dog is a great way to find a bear. If you're looking for a bear You could go send out your dog and they'll come back to you with a bear in toe. Some hunting dogs can also tree bears, but that's not what I'm talking about. becausecause the bear sees the dog as a delicious snack? I think it the dog sees the bear as a threat, right? And it'll stop b back and they'll get. And then like the bear then obviously sees the dog as what the fuck is this little animal? now we're the apex predator here. Yeah, like we're locked in and the dog can smell the bear, right? So he's going to find it. the back can smell the dog, so they' got to find each other. I guess I was thinking of my dog, which a bear would definitely see as a delicious snack Yeah your dog could see. mayaybe it'd be sub snack size. it wouldn't be worth it, but like a little cocktail weenie. Yeah. A sausage dog would try it. It wouldn't give it like I've seen I've sent you a video of a sausage dog chasing off a mounted lion. Like they didn't give a fuck brave. So yeah, don't take a dog. Don't try and pet it. Yeah, donon't take a dog. Yeah, don't try and pet it In this instance, I think the person was moving through thick country where the bear was probably foraging for berries and they probably startled the bear. As you don't want to startle the bear. you're moving through thick country like that, that's when people will say, hey bear or they'll use a bearbell. or they'll talk loudly and converse with people in their group It is generally preferred to be in a group when we're in Christly countountry, right? not on our own. We don't know the details of this incident. There have been some reports that the person discharged bears spray and I want to get on to the bear spray topic later because I have a lot to say about that Let's go back and talk about bears in history. Yes, contextualize the bear. Yeah Rantic he wants to delist the bear from the Endangered Species Act, right? Bears haven't always been protected by the Endangered Species Act That's why California has a bear on its flag that doesn't li here anymore. Oh we don't have those anymore? No, we killed them all We don't have brown bears here. So is he on the flag because you're sorry about it becausecause you're proud of it. No, I think it's more of a pride thing. I think it's more of a got it. fucking yeah. ye. I don't actually know what he iss on the flag. I'll do some searching. I'm pretty sure it's not ' we're sorry about it We have a good source, right of what European people did when they first encountered bears. It's not my story from Alaska Oh, I bet they did not know about them Well, they did because as it turns out, as Lewis and Clark were moving across the plains, right? they encountered indigenous people who very specifically told them not to fuck with bears. Let me quote from Lewis' diary I feel like you would not have to tell if I have never if I no concept of bear and I see a bear, my instinct is gonna be, I'm gonna leave that guy alone. So yeah, but maybe these guys are just built different. as it turns out they're bear poking no desire it's extremely turns out coun of productive for them Let's read from the Lewis and Clarkke Diaries a first on the podcast Qote The Indians give a very formidable account of the strength of ferosy of this animal which they never dare to attack but in parties of six eight or ten persons An are even then frequently defeated with the loss of one or more of their party This animal is said to more frequently attack a man on meeting with him than fulley from him. When the Indians are about to go in quest of the white bear, previous to their departure, they paint themselves and perform all these superstitious rites commonly observed when they about to make war upon a neighbouring nation I think he's talking about brown bears. he talks about white bears there. but I was going to say is he talking polar bears Because you definitely don't do that That''t even do not fuck with it beer. polar bear will end you. That was on the fifteenth of April So he's like, yeah, he takes eight or ten guys, usually one of them dies, they don't always succeed. go check it out. I got it. So by early May, Captain Clark and Dryer killed the largest brown bear this evening, which we have ever yet seen. It was a most tremendous looking animal and extremely hard to kill. Notwithstanding, he had five balls through his lungs and five others in various parts. He swam more than half the distance across the river to a sandbar, and it was at least twenty minutes before he died Th then they go and say they thought it weighed about five hundred pounds, but they didn't have any apparatus to weigh So that's the first interaction with a bear. Less than a month later, Six good huuns of the party fired at a brown or yellow bear several times before they killed him. Indeed, he had li to have defeated the whole party. He pursued them separately as they fired on him and was near catching several of them He pursued two of them separately so close that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and pouches and throw themselves into the river, although the bank was nearly twenty feet perpendicular. Oh my God So enraged was this animal that he plunged into the river only a few feet behind the second man He had compelled to take refuge in the water when one of those who still remained on the shore shot him through the head and finally killed him. That's not fair. They should have let him have that guy. Yeah, It eye for an eye. it's fascinating to me, right? You do see this sometimes in like indigenous like in people's records, right? There was a guy I forgetot his name I forget I was reading about this this one indigenous American guy was like every time I see a bear, I got to go try and take it on. But like he recognized that was like not a normal response, right? Whereas apparently everyone in Lewis and Clarark's party was immediately after killing the first bear they saw Despite having been told, We found the murder monster. Yeah. It tells me so much about the American psyche rate that the indigenous people were like, Yo, they will kill you. And like how much beare meat were they eating Yeah, I mean maybe a bit. I don't know. like you can eat that I mean, it's kind of greasy from what I understand. So they's just goinging after bears just because it's fun I do understand that Lewis and Clark had to collect and catalogue animals, which obviously they didn't bring them back alive, right? They brought back skulls and hides and that kind of thing so that The Western way of understanding the world could catalog and understand these animals and there is a great deal of knowledge that that way of seeing the world gained from that expedition, but they also they also mixed it up with a lot of bears. You can read more examples in their diaries There's this idea that still exist in parts of Liban American sort of psyche that we don't have to live alongside nature, we have to conquer it, right that we have to prove our like apex position And that doesn't always go well for us. I don't need to prove anything to a bear. Yeah. I'm at peace I'm happy to coexist with bears. I'm happy that they're there. They're happy that I'm here, I hope We can have a nice time. I don't want to fight with bears Lewis and Cld, by the way, I find the Lewis Clark exition fascinating Like At the time they were crossing the plains, they were meeting with indigenous people who had been to Paris to check it out and come home I have no concept of that. Right we see them as like questing into the great unknown and these people are like, yeah, no, I went over. But those people have they've been out back. Yeah, ye, they just didn't want it, right? They came back because they liked it. They they were having, they were fine It wasn't that they ha't been exposed to the European world It was just that the European world had not physically expanded to attempt to colonize the places that they lived. So this idea that they go really makes what they did a lot less impressive Yeah, I mean, it was a long journey. Pureight I mean, peopleople hike the Appalachian Trail every year. I'm not impressed. That's go perpendicularative to the. I'm just saying people walk a thousand miles all the time. Yeah yeah, yeah. they did a lot of canoeing. It's a weird hobby Jison Clarkke. It's a fun hobby I like walking. Yeah, I it's an impressive journey but like I think sometimes we have this idea of them like questing into the unknown and that's just not it. L that' haveve met people who have been like, o Oh, yeah, I've been there. Like what do you think of Paris Sadly, the Lewis and Clark expedition was not the low point for the Grizly bear population, but Molly, talking of low points now is a time for us to transition to an advertisement for products and services We are I want to quote from a federal court case here on prrotections for bears. By the nineteen thirties, just one hundred and twenty five years after European settlers moved into grrizly countries Grizzly bears were found in only two percent of their former range. nor did this smug the low point for the grizzly thirty seven separateraci populations were identified in the contiguous United States in nineteen twenty two Only six remained in nineteen seventy five. So is this largely habitat encroachment or overhunting? or I mean, obviously boats. All of the above l. So we were just going out there and shooting them just Yeah they' bounties. They were bounties for b. B the millions Yeah, they were pay they were paying people to shoot the bears. We got a buffalo situation. Yeah. yeah. we got a buffalo situation here. So this wasn't just like People doing hobby hunting and like concurrent habitat encroachment. this was like an intentional destruction of bear Bear doesn't coexist well with like human habitation and specifically Animal agriculture, right? L That's a great name. Yeah doesn't it doesn't give a fuck and it's a big animal and it will tears shit down and people are scared of it Bears used to live all across the plains, right? It was only a small segment of the bears that lived in the mountains They are the ones that survived just because those are the areas that it was harder to make amenable to capitalism That never occurred to me. Yeah, that never occurred to me that they have retreated from the hills to get away from us. Yeah, I don't think it's that the planes bears went to the hills. I think it's that the planes bears are gone. Right They're just the ones that survived because they were like Yeah, that's crazy. The bears just used to be roaming around down here Yeah, the bears would be out and about Actually the eastern mostost grizzly bear sow with cubs that I amm aware of is on the APR Lickking them the Bissouri river breaks That's of the American Prairie Rerve, P people who didn't len to a Buffalo episode. Callback. Yeah.'s's what we callback in the industry. The bears used to be all around, right? Like I guess maybe the planes right is an area that's especially kind of appealing, especially when we look at like the period after the nineteen twenties, right when people were trying to Bring the planet to heal through the application of technology, right I think it's Aldo Leopold who talks about the way humans fuck with ecosystems as a bit like somebody who doesn't know how a watch works taking apart a watch, just being like I know that fucking cog does doesn't look do much to me. Let me whip that bad boy out, make it lighter. I always think of what was it? someomebody who's colonizing and farming in Hawaii brought mongoose because they thought the mongoose would eat they thought the mongoose would eat something that was causing a problem for the crops. but it turns out the mongoos don't even eat that. So now it's like feral Mongooys. Sometimes like around sunset at the beach, you'll see all these like mongoose just like coming out of the underbrush and taking over the beach Okay, that's amazing.'s like they have no natural predators there. Yeah, right. Introducing animals into ecosystems and removing animals from ecosystems has all these downstream effects that like we never think I am to talk to Sophie about this today. L I grew up in the UK, right where we have tons of rabbits. Oh, she has a rabbit in the garden today. Did she show you?. Yeah yeah, I've seen a rabbit, yeah. It's able to identify it. Rabbit population is high in part because we've removed many of their predators, right? The wolves are gone in the UK. The bears are gone in the UK. We have some foxes, but not as many because they are dangerous to sheep populations, right We have some rapttors, but not as many So now we have tons of rabbits. Whatne of the rabits do well, they eat in part, right Then they come in and eat your carrots as depicted in the Peter rabbit Oh, Peter Rbbit is just tearing the garden apart. Yeah every day. mis. McGregor was right. Mony, that it's a bld statement M Moy Kong a childhood villain Now the rabbits have a disease called mixamatosis, which is a horrific disease where like they sort of become almost like zombified. Yeah, I think it came from Australia they got a rabbit problem. Well, they were trying to eradicate them, right? So so they invented a rabbit disease? I don't know this is what now I'm wondering if they invented the rabbit disease. let's Because they did that to another invasive animal, right? Well, they lost a war againere they they gave them all a disease? I know didn't they lose a war against emms Ar The Australians already have a bad record Yeah, so basically it is a disease that existed in American rabbits, only causes mild issues with them, but it is horrific in European rabbits Yeah, it looks like they did it on purpose. Yep. you know up guys. Yeah, mixamometatosis and rabbits like is a thing that like genuinely as a kid would like so I used to shoot a lot of rabbits when I was kid, right? and you' shoot these rabbits with mixamatosis and be like, what the fuck is this? How have we done this to a living They become so pitated that like sometimes crows will start eating them before they've died or like they wander onto the road and get hit right. It's really, really, really horrible. Oh, I'm looking this up and I regret it. Yeah no, Yeahah, Google make some matosis pictures at your own risk. No, don't Act actually don't. Yeah, it almost looks like they have like cataracts over their eyes. It's really, really horrible, right? This is what happens when we continually try and mess with an ecosystem that has existed in harmony. and like it changes based on inputs and changes in the climate, right? Like it's not like it's a fixed thing. It has shifted and changed through time, but it has found a balance every time. And then we come and just keep pressing one side of the scale. This'll fix it. Yeah, is more, but keep chucking more on there and wondering Kill the be' back. I just I can't get over That's just like a child's approach to things This goodness is our policy, right? Like Okay, so let's talk about Ziny, right? Let's talk about Let's talk about the protections that he wants to take away. These protections were passed into law by the Endangered Species Act in nineteen seventy three, and the Endangered Species Act lists grizzly bears in the lower forty eight as threatened If you're not familiar with the ESA, it prevents you from hunting, harming, or harassing listed species without a special permit. Maybe he thought he's supposed to threaten them. Yeah, ye, like harass them. mayaybe it's gonna do' threatened. These are threatening. we should threaten. Yeah. He was gonna post a mean tweet about them that they didn't wantan to be accused of harassing them and violating the ESA One thing that ESA does not do is prevent you from defending yourself against these bears, which seems to be the implication in his post, right that like because you, you're allowed to defend yourself against a person. So I Yeah It's like it's a bear. There was a ninth circuit case not so long ago about someone who had killed three grizzly bears. So if you get arrested for killing an endangered animal Is it like a murder trial where you have to like prove self defense? I think it would depend on way you did it, right? I was standing my ground, Your Honor. Yeah. Sure. I was I don't even want to make jokes about standing groundules fucking horri The ninth Circuit opinion says We hold the good faith belief defense for a prosecution under and then they give the legal code, right? It's governed by subjective rather than objective standard and it's satisfied when a defendant actually even if unreasonably believes his actions are necessary to protect himself or others from perceived danger from a grriisly bear That's Interesting that the language because you don't see that. so in self defense in like if I harmed you and It actual. No, it doesn't have to be actual, but it has to be a reasonable assumption. L my belief has to be reasonable But in this and they're saying it's okay if your belief was unreasonable. Yeah. if you Yeah b Sumb as L. Yeah ye. if you if you have no idea what you're doing You can still kill these bears, right? Like it gives you a very broad remit for self defense. Because you could just say you felt that way because it doesn't matter if that's reasonable or not. Yeah. So it effectively doesn't matter Yeah, effectively, if you if you are willing to stay in court that you were threatened by the bear Felt Right. It seems like you can you can shoot the bear. I was just scared. Im I'm a scaredy cat Maybe it relies on toxic masculinity to like self self police itself. Ain scared? No Also, of course, the ESA does not include animals based on how dangerous they are. So Li zinki's argument that We should deal this bears because two people got hurt one person got killed. It doesn't line up with why the ESA exists. And like I'm very sorry for those people, of course, but That's not like an epidemic of bear attacks. No Cattle kill more people by a factor of ten than bears at. Oers kill more people with guns. Yeah. Lightning kills more people than bears. Dog shot a lady with a gun the other day. Oh wow. Well good for him. L it's good to see people pushing boundaries. like bad for her. I guess I'm sorry to hear that. But I do think there are some best practices that could have been followed there that might have prevented the dog shooting The dog was certainly not certified on the range. Right? Yeahah, the dog hadn't gone taken his apple seed clinic or whatever. So the ESA it distinguishes between a threatened and endgangered species. An endangered species is quote in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant part of its range A threatened species is quote likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Right, Like if we start killing them? Yeah, or keep killing them. Yeah R Ride and Ziny just opens up on bears. Yeah, R Ziny takaking his Navy steal training and going Seel team six is going to Yellowstone Yeah, they're going after that bear then you know, then then they look at reasons for this, right disease predation destruction of habitat, commercial take, inadequacy of regulatory mechanisms to protect them. What are natural or man made factors, including bran ziny killing them C Chrisly bears in the lower forty eight are threatened There are defined ecosystems There are six of them in which we're trying to recover the their populations. And one of these is the greater Yellowstone ecosystem The Yellowstone bears have been ping ponged around the ESA for some time, as it turns out. The bears were removed in two thousand seven and then returned in two thousand nine by a court decision. thenen it was removed again under Ziny in the first Trump administration. I feel like if you're on the cusp like that, Leave it alone Like obviously if every time you delist them, they become threatened again, like They love. Yeah Well, in this case, it wasn't the reason for the delisting was challenged in court and found to be insufficient. It wasn't that the population like took could dive We're just changing our mind about how much we care about bears. Yeah. Or like in this case, basically what the court said, I can' actually read to you from the court order. It's Cro Indian Tribeer O vers. USA. The policy implications are greater to Yellowstone Grizzly de listing are significant, but they cannot affect the court's disposition. Although those order may have impacts throughout Grizzly country and beyond This case is not about the ethics of hunting, it is not about solving human or livestock grisly conflicts as a practical or philosophical matter. These issues are not before the court little ellipses where I've skipped a bit By delisting the Greater Yellowstone Grizzly without analyysing how delisting would affect the remaining members of the Lower forty eight Grizzly designation The service failed to consider how reduced protections for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem would impact the other grizzly populations, Thus the service entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem So the bears' got a good layer. There were two different court cases and they were combined in this Montana case, that they got a good lawyer Essentially that what they're sayingough, right? is that like This is an issue which we have to look at like nationally Because if we have state control and Wyoming or Montana the three states, right? Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, O one of them says that we've got too many bears, killing too many cows. Let's open it up on the bears, open season on bears. Bears don't know what state they're in. They simply do not respect borders. They do not. yeah, They refuse to Jurisdictional boundary is meaningless to them. They engage in interstate commerce. so this It's gott to be like a federally controlled issue, unfortunately Our federal government right now is not one that's massively amenable to conservation. It's run by bear murderers. Yeah, they would love to m I mean, Donald Trump's son, right is big into Oh, he does love big game hunting, doesn't he? He does, yeah. He goes on those like rich boy safar. Yeah.'s it's funny. Someone was like, oh someone was talking to me other day about like you should pitch this outdoor publication and then I realized it was owned by Trump Jr. So that's a no for me. Oh That's a clear no for me. I bet they love conservation. Yeah. I' got like I would be down to pitcher hunting publication about like the damage that the border wall does to our landscapes and like I've seen a mule deer try and get through the border wall and it's very very s. Yeah, it's really sad because she had been habituated to going that way for water genetically for generations, right? and now she can't and Yeah, that's pretty fucked. I'd love to rate that for Hunting publication, Not riting it for Dond Trump Jr.s one. I don't think he's commissioning it either to be honest. I don't think they'd pay for it. No I think they're probably using I'd hadat to guess, some artificial intelligence. I've never actually read it and I'm not going to. don't care If you're interested in the ESA and what it's done for Griffy Bears, I'm going link to a Center for Biological Diversity Report, which is pretty good. This published when the ESA was fifty, so it's a few years old now. that People will be thinking, I have seen pictures of people hunting grizzly bears. I thought that you couldn't do that. That's because those bears are in Alaska So they are not considered to be threat. different bears. Differe bears. Yeah. Or like the same species of bears Yeah they just live somewhere else? Lus Arctos Herblis. Yeahah, the same Herblis. Heriblis, yeah. ye. That's They really are for him. Yeah, they really screwed him on the name. This is part of the way the colonial mindset interacts with nature, right? Horrible They named him mister Horrible Yeah Horrible bear that's mean. The other like I'm aware of like Ursus Arctos Syriarchus, which is the Syrian bear Sine cept That makesense. that's descried.. He also lives in other parts of the region, but that's okay. Misleading. Yeah, yeah, we could call him Uasarchust Al sham, I guess, if we wanted to get with it better. There are translations to the Bible that use Syria to describe the whole region as well. So it's okay. But like horrible bear? Yeah, horrible bear. They really did him dirty on that one Could have good it nice bear Maybe I'll petition for that. You should call up those lawyers from Montana. Yeah, I got the coalition together again with the Crow Tribe The bear's not inherently horrible, right? We've just been horrible to the bear. He's just doing what he does. mayaybe that's why he's so bad. Maybe. right?'s like, you, ifre if you're gonna call me horrible, I'll be horrible Yeah, maybe maybes he's playing to the stereotype. So the Alaska bears can be hunted, right? They are hunted. Things do get a little complicated in Alaska with different rules governing sport hunting and subsistence hunting at federal and state land There was a whole program in Alaska right now that is understandably very controversial. The idea is that They will cull the bear to help the caribou population recover You are Looking at a thing which is multif factorial and only But this is like taking the part out of the watch, right? I was talking about ear like like there's other things going on for the caribou. Yeah, yeah. it's not the bear who moves into the caribou's home. It is people, right? Like it's not the bear who caused climate change. Right. Like there are other factors we could address, but we're taking it out on the bear. Yeah, which will be a common theme. throughout our discussion here today. but I understand that we want the Caribbean herd to survive as well But if you're trying to manage the caribou herd for hunting by controlling bear populations to allow more caribou I know, I don't think that's We're modifying the wrong variabable. Y That's a good work pretty good. ye. There is Alaska legislation that I thought was interesting to make such programs go through peer review that appears to be going absolutely nowhere seems stuck in the Alaska House. So we had to get a bunch of scientists to determine whether or not there would be environmental impact of buffalo going back to where buuffalo live, but we can't get a scientific review of whether or not we should be killing the bears. Yes. I know that there are other reasons for us to do environmental impact studies, like hydrology and stuff Thank you. EIS people who reached out We appreciate all our science listeners. But yeah, it is pretty sad that we can't get a get a I guess the argument would be peer review takes too long Okay. but like you could get a couple of people to be like You know what? It takes a lot longer to get all the bears back Get a couple of scientists who wouldn't take that long that they need jobs right now. Get a couple of bear scientists and employ them and see how it goes So let's talk about, I guess, like, why Ziny wants to delist them. A bear stole his wife. L like like in an eating way. They f live together happens in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's living a best life It seems that one is' was a sow with cubs who was foraging for berries. and the other one was a bear foraging for berries who was surprised This has nothing to do as with population levels, as I said earlier. Right It's just like it's an unfortunate thing where somebody was in a bad situation. Yeah, it we live in a landscape where things can kill you. Most of those things are cars But some of them are animals. Well we should start shooting the c. Yeah, but we don't do a revenge attack on Ford every time someone gets in a motor accident, right I looked at Bare volult So Bar vault, if you're not familiar money makes bear cans. You you familiar with bear cans Was it like tin cans you wear around your necks? you jingle jangle? Yes, Yes,. You can talk to the bear. He holds one can, you hold the other one. There's a string Like he's in his tree house, you're in your tree house. Exactly. ye, you say, I'm coming through, please don't eat me. No. A bear can is place I thing that you put your food in when you're camping. I was picturing like a big necklace made out of like old tin cans. L like an old time like a leay, but for bear cans. It made out of like cans and beans. Yeah I don't know why you wouldn' need to buy that. You could make that at home. Yeah, you can make that for free Bear Vault keeps like an open source collection of Bare mulings Bears, according to their data, have killed sixty six people since nineteen seventy four. That's not very many. It's not a lot of people, right? They one a year. Yeah. A little more than that. It's very, very hard to make a public health argument for delifting brown bears.ore people More people than that have measles, like in my immediate area., well, that's a whole other public health issue I'm afraid When they do ESA studies on what kills bears, it's human interactions. I noticed a lot of bears. A guns mostly. Trains. Trains kill a lot of bears. That's so sad Yeah, it's really sad. so maybea, so, you're supped to make noise so the bear hears you coming and trains are loud as hell They come pretty fast, I think. L And I think they're not like super loud if you're just like if they're not trying to be loud, you know, like if you're in a linear direction to the train Maybe they're habituated to it because the trains come so regularly. I don't know. That's so sad. Yeah. never thought about a bear getting hit by a train Yeah. bears get h by cars too, especially black bears. I mean, I'm sure brown bears do. they're bigger I wonder if that's part of why, you know, like there's a sort of, we can't afford to keep Sashion on trains on bears situation here. I'm not sure. I think the train's probably fine. Yeah. I mean, the train keeps going. Some of those bears are pretty big I'm sure it delays their train operations. I mean, if there was like a massive train derailment, yeah, that's maybe we need to build a bearfence or something. I don't know. Yeah, well, we have these wildlife underpasses, right? that allow wildlife to go under or over freeways. While ago, the right was getting really mad about one in Santa Monica This was like a I think Benny Johnson had done like an investigation into this overpass. His theory here was that the overpass was allowing, I'm not joking, terrible cougars to come into neighborhoods and kill people's children We came into the Cougars neighborhood Tas Benny are already fucking there Because And many how many children have been eaten by cougars in Santa Monica? I'm aware of one person in California being killed by a mountain line the last few years. and a few more people have been killed I can think of a couple more people. But mostly on hiking trails, right? Like not their yards. Yes. I'm not aware of a cougar coming into anybody's house. That's not really how the mountain lion lives its life. I mean, sometimes people's Chihuahuas have lost their lives to this scourge. I understand. Yeah, yeah. But not their children. Not their children. And like animals aren' coming to your house and taking your child. And the idea that they're not there anyway they If they want to come into your neighborhood, they can come into your neighborhood. They're good at moving across country. That's what they do This will just keep you from running into it with your Lxus. Yeah, exactly. like it And it's gonna allow like the little Mice and other small creatures, right that can't so we nimbly jump over highway barriers The Obvious other argument for delisting bears is that people want to kill them. Get a different hobby. You can even kill black bears in most states in the western United States if that's your thing, right? It seems like a lot of people just don't want bears around And that makes me sad because I think sharing our landscape with bears is beautiful. and I think it's It's special that we have this thing in this country that like it's one of our like national symbolic mammals, right I mean, he's like a gigantic guy who just wants to eat berries and hang out. Yeah, he wants to kill stuff. sureure, but like just I love the idea of just this huge animal just like roaming around looking for a little sweet treat. Yeah, they they're precious. They're incredibly adaptable, right? They can eat berries, they can eat meat, they can eat fish I love when they just take one bite of a fish and throw it back. so wasteful. He's just like me for real. It's too fishy. He wants it yeah, he wants it like freshher one The other argument, I guess is that certain populations have recovered which kind of It shows a misunderstanding of the importance of having a population for genetic diversity, right? And also like I just I'm really stuck on like Just because there's a lot of them doesn't mean you have to kill. there's a of squirrels in my neighborhood but I'm not allowed to shoot them. And you can't just do a squirrel genocide, Yeah. Oh there's just a lot of these. I'm going to do violence on them. just yeah There are a lot of these and it's been inc inc inconvenient for us like and therefore. It's interesting to look at like The certain population sort of doing well at the Yellowstone bears. The Yellowstone bears have a much higher meat content in their diet than they used to. From all the tourists they're eating. Yes, that's right. ye, that's mostly it. They feed them into the moor. Every year they drop off a bus at the bear cave there ass an offering. and then the bears violated the treaty, that's why they're mad It's because climate change is making it hard for them to find their berries, right? And human pressure is pushing them further and further away from certain areas. Eating more meat is going to lead to more conflict with hunters both in terms of them both being in the same space at the same time, trying to do the same thing. And honestly, it's so harmful for the bears that they've all been listening to Jordan Peterson. The cardboard diet is not for everybody. Just imagining a bear. It's not good advice you guys. Yeah. Yeah, they've become like terrible transphobes That's really why we want to delisted. I think we can look at like what happens when animals lose their protections We can see the way that Wyoming, for instance, dealt with wolves, right? Are you familiar with this incident last year of that wolf that was like Herrifically mistreated in Wyoming. No That was really fucking gross. Did they like torture it? Yes Why because I guess it made them feel big and strong Right So again, this isn't about like managing conflict with livestock. It's not about like you know, ecological management. it's not as This is about people who just want to hurt animals. Yeah. because they didn't just kill this wolf because they didn't want it around They did like horrible to it Yeah, I mean this guy there are videos of this, right? that this guy So they tormented an animal and then they made a video of it. They made it like an animal snuff film. This is just about I'm not saying everyone who wants to dealist Dizy Griszy bears wants torture them in this way, but like is this this desire to engage in this violence? Yeah. L for certain people, right there's an idea somehow that they can prove their like strength and virility and masculinity. Get into power lifting Yeah So what thisis guyed to if people aren't familiar. H name is Cody Roberts. I've never met a good Cody And I've met some nice gies. Oh no there's okay, we know one. Okay Yeah he the wolf on his he ran down the wolf on its snowmobile. So it wasn't bothering you, you pursued it. Yeah, he chased on its snmobile. He taped its mouth shut took it to a bar. Does this man a have a wife and is she okay Good question. I'm trying to work out if he went to jail eighteen months probation Relation he gets to prison term if he fails. He filed a guilty plea to felony animal crruelty I understand that there are people like within the hunting, ranching outdoor space who think this guy is a piece of shit There are many of them I know many of them because that's a very weird thing to do. L Yeahah, it's psycho. It's like's a thought process. Yeah. like what is shhooting it, I don't agree with, but I I understand that you would do that, that's the thing people do. But why did you like chase it down and abduct it? Yeah, why did you choose to make this animal suffer Like like, did you just show no respect for life, right? Like we joke like, oh does he have a wife? Sheo's okay, but genuinely, this is a person who is like a psycho. likeike No, I'm not joking I'm not joking actually. that like if you if this is Your first instinct for how you treat a living creature, like I bet he's not good to women either. Yeah, like this doesn't seem like a person who People should feel sficke for around. Oh It was a young female wolf too. Yeah Oh no What have you found? Sorry. I just was I found a picture of her. Yeah, no, it's really sad the whole thing is really sad. Injure this animal, right toood today to the extent that it can't get away or defend itself and then tape up its mouth drag it to a place where it's going to be in fear for the rest of its life before you kill it It's It's unconscionable. It's horrific I'm not saying that that will happen to bears And I'm saying that like a bear would be a lot harder to do that too. Yeah I would be. You know, I think I think as his punishment, this guy should try to do this to a bear What I am saying is that even if we like go ahead and de list bears without serious controls If we start to manage them just as like ermmin, right? likeike as a pest This opens up all kinds of avenues And I think a lot of people find themselves in a situation that is beyond their grasp. Yeah, right? Like if suddenly if you're a guy who was like, yeah, I'd love to shoot a bear. Now you're allowed to, I think people are going to find themselves in situations they didn't anticipate. Yeah, I know in Alaska for instance, if you want to hunt a brown bear and you're not an Alaska resident, you have to go with a guide That's probably a good thing Right. L I think if we start killing the bears back More people will get care of bl bears A lot of these guys are gonna to die. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bed desaths will go up without a doubt. yeah, yeah already your best chance of G gettingting into an encounter with a bear is Pably hunting, right? Like if''re not hunting bears necessarily, but let's say you're in your hunt. Yeah, becauseuse you're moving around the woods quietly, you could start a one. Right. So that's already against the advice for not encountering a bear. And then if you then you're able to shoot something And then you you, let's say you're in your back country hunting right, you have to pack backpack the now you have meat meat out. Yeah. but then now you're coming back to the carcass for your second load of meat A bear may have found that carcass, right? Somebody might already be there. He might not want to give that up. It's his now. Yeah, you yeah, you're then find yourself in a difficult situation. Talking difficult situations, Molly. I have to pivot to advertisements again. Yeah, hopefully this one's not for Wolf tape We are back Let's talk, Molly about safety in bear Grisly country specifically, right? After this tragedy where this hiker died in Glacia National Park I have seen a number of articles claiming that bear spray is quote a placebo or that you quote shouldn't bet your life on it. Well, I think if you think it's a placebo, you should taste it Yeah, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of not only how Bespray works but also what a placebo is, right? Like you three of the words in your title All of the nouns You don't understand. The bear doesn't know what it is The placebo effect will not work on bearars. Yeah,. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah Well the placebo effectity does work on bars. You can spray things that are not bar spray and they still don't It' like the bear spray before. Yeah It's just the I guess it's not maybe the placebo effect. yeah, it's a noise, it's the cloud. like I guess it's not really a placebo ' it's a bewildering ' it's startling. Yeah, yeah, but you're not saying it's be it will not work. Not actually a placebo. The bear will not have sort of imaginary symptoms of bear spray exposure due to the Yeah. yeah that they have been asperate I should note that most of the articles are written by the same person So what's His motivation here? Why is he? he's like Does he own a company that sells something that like rivals big bear spray? No, it's a person who it's got a guy called Wes Syler, He used to write for oututside magazine and no longer does There's a escalating trend in the severity of his claims about the lack of efficacy of bear spray that correlates with him making income that is directly related to the number of views on the articles making those claims. That is really destroying the information landscape. Yeah. I mean, I think also people not knowing what the fuck they're talking about and being given a platform is also destroying the information landscape.ight but both of those are at play here. Really see this sort of escalating way people write because their income is dependent on click b. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah the click to cash pipeline is not helping us. I make the same amount of money even if none of you listen to my podcast. Yeah, you guys, you could all turn this off right now, I'd still be poor This is not true Right I take really stronger fence at this. I don't know, the qured a way say this is bullshit, right? Like if Bearay never worked and couldn't work, he wouldn't be the only one saying it. Correct. There would be scores of people saying, I tried this had nothing happened. Yeah. also, like we have data on this, right? This is not a thing that we need to pull out of our ars. This is not a thing that we need to rely on individual anecdotes for. This is not a thing that will be determined by the outcome of a single incident in Glacer National Park This is a thing that we have masses of data on. They're spare scientists. I spoke to one, Molly. I can't wait to hear that. I had a very lovely conversation. He has the two studies. and to be clear, Wes Cyiteeses, and I don't know if it's just that he didn't read them or he didn't read them well or that he read them to the best of his ability And this is what we're getting I mean, scientific literacy is Sure It's always okay not to write an article making claims about something that impacts people's safety if you don't know what you're talking about. It's always okay to be quiet. When we're discussing other people's well being. That's fine. Adults talk about be. It doesn't impact your substack in the same way, but Oh, it's a substack situation. Yeah, it's a substack situation. I would suggest that writing that bees spray is dangerous or useless is akin to saying that seatbelts are dangerous or useless and that we can, if we look hard enough, find one person who was killed by their seatbelt. No one's ever been killed by bees Brayge I've been desperate moreore than once didn't kill me. And when we were talking about this earlier, this the most shocking fact of all to me so far Bear spray is less potent than police pepper spray. I believe there's less OC in Bees spray. I would have assumed it's more, but it's laz. Yeah, I think the idea have such sensitive noses. Very sensitive noses. To be clear, it's still very unpleasant for humans. L I consider myself to have a nose of everyage sensitivity. and having been a recipient of Bees spray, it's highly unpleasant. Right, but I just I thought If would have assumed you said o, I've been bar sprayed like, oh, that's way more hardcore. D pepper spray but it's not. Yeah yeah So the bare spray part of the reason I think that it has less of the OC oil in it is that it It has to be propelled out at a velocity that allows it to be used even if the bear is coming at you and the wind is blowing towards you Right So the bear is coming with the wind so you're spraying a. And then the spray would be you don't want the spray to all be blown back to you, right? You want it to be able to get out create that barrier between you and the bear. And it does again, Dr. Smith's studies have shown that bears bay does work even with an unfavorable wind, right? I will link to both these studies Everything he's done, which I think is really cool because this stuff impacts like your safety in Griz countountry Everything he's done is available publicly for free. He yeah V veryy unusual in the academic research space, right? But I think it's great because it allows you to look at this best place of a placebo article And then you can go find the study. I will link it right here and you can say, huh sure seems like this guy can't read a study. And does he has he read those studies? He claims to, yeah, he quotes them. So it's not that he just isn't aware of them, he just doesn't believe the expert Because of a personal experience. I think he either didn't grasp the table or didn't grasp So again, the person who wrote these studies is extremely easy to contact and anyone doing reasonable journalism would do so. Right. So I guess is he saying I read the study and it's wrong or is he saying I read the study and it agrees with me. He's saying I read the study and it says B Bray doesn't work. It agrees with me again. Oh no. Yeah, ye He could have just emailed the author. Could have just asked? Could have just asked? Yeah So like there are incidents in the study which are considered successful and non successful uses. Some of the non successful uses are with a black bear when you spray it and it comes back later That' still the brown bear is not killing you in that situation, right? I'm sorry, a black bear. It still worked. Like efficacy doesn't mean Yeah. and at some point when you're making a study like this, you have to decide like what are You're trying to create a binary relationship about theories of things, right? The other study he wrote was efficacy of firearms for their defense in Alaska It's worth noting that in the efficacy of firearms study, more than one hundred and twenty bears died out of a datas set of something like two hundred and fifty. none of the bear spray bears died. Oh, that's a lot, right? Yeah Yeah, it's a lot. And I feel like it's better if everybody survives the encounter. Yeah, it's better for all of us if we It used this extremely well researched tool Right. And again, having read Zero studies. I've read zero studies. But I know Only one point one persons a year are killed by bears. Yeah So if this never worked and couldn't work more people would have been killed by bears. Maybe yeah, yeah, certainly a lot of people who used the best forray didn't get killed by bears, right? Like None of them did It is possible to use bears spray and be killed by bears like especially it's happened to maybe fifty people. Resid ye resesid use of bear spray will attract bears in well that's unfair. Well, it's an interesting smell, right? And they have an amazing nose. so I'm guessing like They will come check it out. And I know that like there are instidces where people have, for instance used bear spray in the way that one might use bug spray, i is. spraying their tent. That's not going to work, yeah. Yeah, Well you've got to bring them in That's like saying I'm gonna to use this gun to protect myself by making a circle around me with bullets. Yeah, yeah, exactly. smearing myself But the bullets in a circle around my t. Yeah. It's not quite cargo cult thinking, but like its know it's like magical thought process, I guess. That's not her best f was. you spreay it out the b. A H homeopathic gun is where you just lick the bullets. Yeah yeah Let's talk about the things that you can do, right? L you can keep a clean camp This is really big donon't attract them. Yeah. So if we look at like Yosemite, right? Yosemite and that like Yosemite Kingss Canyon Sequoia park system, You can't bring Basspay in there, right Oh But you have to have a bear can So I've backpacked in that area. They have done surveys that showed that most people were acquainted with best bear practices, but were're not following them on the trail. So it's not that they didn't know better, it's they don't care. I think people it's hard to like fathom a giant several hundred pound half ton creature It's going to come in and steal my cliff bars. Right it will And it get's hard to fathom how good their smell is. because they love a delicious snack. Like they're berry boys. They're berry boys. They're going to come get your little treat. Yeah, they love they love a high carbohydrate, like energy snack. They're endurance athletes, they want to eat your cliff bar U if you're keto, you're fine. Oh, I bet that was like candy they love candy. Yeah. I know it wouldd be unethical to give a bear skkittles again it'll be wrong So we want to keep a clean camp war're in Bear countountry, right? That means stuff with odors. It's not just our food, but also like maybe the clothes we cooked in. We have a scented toothpaste, stuff like that Wow. Yeah. Like had if I was in the habit of using a shampoo that smelled like I think I spoke to Dr. Smith about this. Like he said, if I used a Apricot shampoo wouldn't bring it with me. Wow. 'use they just wantan to come check out that sweet tree. Yeah, L its it's kind of if you think that they eat berries, right? You make yourself smell like a fruit. like it's kind of on you. Like I get Yeah, it makes sense like Winnie Poo, he's just like following his nose. Yeah. You find a sweet tree. Yeah I don't want to blame anyone for not knowing things because we're all none of us are born knowing anything and like it's not like they issue PSAays about bears every day there's pamphlet of the trailhead. Yeah, there's definitely when you go to your cemety, you have to sign in with a ranger for a wilderness permit and then they'll give you the once over There are other things we would not do, right? I would not sleep alone in a Hint in bear country, if there were two of us in probably two tents, right? Like just gives one of us a chance to deploy the bear spray of the bear does come in. We can get bear fences, we can try very hard not to surprise bears, right? I was trail running in Alaska last year in some pretty thick brush, right? I used a little bearbell.'s Dorky like. No, it sounds cute as hell I wantm to look at ye. Well That's an unfortunate video that you'll probably see when you Google Bearbell of a hiker who thought the Beowbell was a repellant instead of bllack bear is charging him and he's waving his bell. just ring the bell at it n. Yeah, yeah ye.ound People are purchasing these solutions but not understanding the functions of them. Yeah. I don't want to blame people for that because part of the way we get to a place where we could destroy so much of our megafaun is so few people care about or understand it, right? That's an education issue that we can't solve quickly or like on a podcast I think that behoove anyone who's going camping in especially L Griz country, right? So in Alaska, Wyoming, not all of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and I've camped in those places. I've camped in all of those places. to learn about these things, right? because It's not just a negative incident for you. L it's also a negative incident for the bear. Even if you have to bear spray a bear, right? That it fucking sucks for the bear. I mean, been I've been pepper sprayed and the bear can't even go like wash his hair with Dawn. Right, Yeah, he can't stand in the shower, like looking down, I know there I guess the positive outcome of that is that the bear will be like likely to not want to come around people so much, right? Because they'll associate this negative att traaction with the bear spray. Right. So this seems like that it does work and then also if we're all doing it You you won't have to do it as much. Yeahcause the bears will leave us alone. Yeah, we have the solution for being in bear country, right? Like it is to carry our bear repellent. Unless the bears are like me, know I've been pverish spayed by kinds of cops and' I'm still gonna to go look and see what they're up. Just just on keep on tanking. ye. I'm a very stupid manar.'s like the Yosemite I guess anything. Just keep spraying me Th people why are this? There were some instidces where I guess brown bears got sprayed charged the person, but like As they were charging, the person sprayed them and they came through to spray But then as the spray got more condensed, know, they knocked the person over and kept on charging They were like, o, I don't m Yeah Yeah whichich is obviously not a great outcome, but it's a better outcome. then you're getting muled by the bear, right? I don't think get eaten by bear. But like, I really want to push back on this narrative that we should be all carrying firearms. First of all, people most people don't need a gun. Yeah, I mean like there are reasons to wearing guns, I own lots of them. Defending yourself from bears probably isn't one unless you're already very proficient with firearms. And even then, I don't want to kill a bear. L But I just I think if you're telling every casual hiker who goes to where bears might be that they need to own a gun A lot of those people would not have otherwise owned a gun. Yeah are not good at handling a gun in a situation where they need to use the gun against the bear. It's going to go badly, but also one hundred percent. Now there's a gun in their home that they would not otherwise have had in their home. Yeah. And the odds of a firearm accident in the home are now higher. Yeah yeah, infinitely higher than it didn't have one, right? Like So like it's not going to work out for you in this limited instance that you think you need it for And then you've introduced a dangerous. Now you have a gun you didn't need. Yeah. Like it is impossible, Molly. if you are getting if I am getting muled by a grizzly bear and you bare spray that bear, I will have spicy eyes and hopefully survive. If you shoot that bear, it is very possible and it has happened that you will also shoot me. Because the average person, not a good shot under controlled circumstances. Bear attack, not a controlled circumstance. Yeah And like everyone this is especially a thing with men, right? They will tend to overestimate their ability with firearms dramatically in my experience This is not a fuck around a find out situation. You don't want to find out that you're not very good at shooting as a grriisply bear is charging you. And even if you are very good at shooting at the range, you're not in this situation. Yeah You're not. You have to deploy the firearm right now we have to like your hands are shaking, there's piss running down your leg. We're scared. Yeah, you have to incapacitate the bear I've been in close situations with big animals It's scary Like thinking I'm going to die now. It has a profound effect on the human body. And it's not one that And it doesn't improve doesnt actually enhance your John Wick characteristics. Yeah. So I would highly recommend that if you're going to Bear Cry, you get some bears spray. fly what you can't fly with bears spray So you're have to buy it when you get buy it when you get there. This is not like big bear sppray. This is also an accusation that like big bear spray sort of funded these studies or that This is silly, right? The dathspray industry is not that big guys works. It is statistically more effective than using firearms. It works. was it cost like forty bucks? Yeah, not even that. And how much does a gun cost? A lot more than that? Yeah, a lot more than that, especially if you're going to actually practice with it, right? If you're gonna to get Bearspray, I would suggest you Dummy just got water in it And you can practice, right? There are a couple of safeties on a bear spray. I've both got one. I do have one here W like within armss reachhing your arm. Yeah I go over here. Yeah, I got my racka sts my best break. But like it's There the safety on it and there's actually a zip tie when you get it to stop the safety coming off just to stop it. like blobe in your bag going off in the shipping container. Yeah or in the Walmart or whatever. So you kind of want to remove that, right? And then they they sell packs, which has the water one and the spicy one and you're gonna practice deploying the water one, right? And like that's smart. Yeah When you're carrying your be spray If it's in the bottom of your backpack, the bear doesn't give you that much advance notice. Yeah h So the best spray is like when I was When I'm running in places where there were grizzly bears, I wear an a little running vest put it in the front here binoculars and I have a little binoculular pack I put it on the side there. I've done it on my belt before I Googled bears sppray and the pictures? Yeah. The pictures that are used outide this pro. I got gotta I gotta see this. What's what yeah? How do I send you How do I send you this picture? You can just put it in the chat. This is not a real picture. Is this a real picture of a man spraying bear? Because the bear is sort of enveloped in this cloud of spray. So it just looks like one of those soft effect paintings of the bear silhouette in like a cloud. Yeah, looks like like a I'm a big fan of t shirts of wolves howling at the moon. It's like It's a bear. An old man spraying I don't know why if you're staging it is Bizarre Because that's not a real picture of something of that happening. I don't know. I don't think so because there's no bear body and you can see this you can see the bush, right? L it's just its head. They haven't bothered It's very close. Yeah, yeah. And the bear doesn't look too upset It's kind of that is a fascinatingase because if we scroll down there there are better images of people using Bearspray. Just incredible, incredible product photos. Yeah, that is really quite remarkable suggest everybody who is going into b country by bearspy and practice using it. Like it's better for you, it's better for bears. It's cheaper than a gun. You can if you want to buy a bear fence, little electric fence that goes around your camp, if you're camping in the back countountry. I think that's a good idea if you're in an area with lots of bears They weigh very little now. I might buy myself one actually after talking to Dr. Smith Well I won't because I haven't got enough money, but I'd like to. Maybe I'll hear from the bearefence people you can Follow all the best practices, right and you're not just going to learn them from a podcast. You're going look up the pAark system. you're going to look at Dr. Smith's research Ask a park Ranger. he'll tell you. Yeah That's his job. Yeah. Some of their jobs depends depends what kind of ranges they are Some of them are the cops.. They're overwhelming bulk of evidence suggests that The way to go with bs is spaspay bear kills an oil rig. we will have we will continue to have bears on our landscape. But it is something that we should like genuinely care about R. like the trophic cascade is not as much a of a thing as it was once made out to be I'm sure you've se that thing about how wolves change rivers. No. You have to tell me about wolves too A whole other episode. Yeah, well fucing Wall management is a whole other thing then Bears have entered the discourse this week because a bear killed someone. We don't talk about it when some kills a bear, right Be they're in Alaska they're killing bears from aircrafts right now And I'm not saying that like a human life is equal to a bear life, but I'm saying that hunting from an aircraft is such bitch behavior If you want to take a bear, do it with a knife, like like a hero or bow But Or you know, do it Lewis in Clark style. Use a musket. that That's fine. Yeah. Yeah try it. Eight of your friends in a musket at the edge of the river and you don't have bear sprace, your only option is to jump into the river. twentyw feet cliff. withith a bear that you could have left alone So Yeah, I want to I guess like And by saying that like the outdoors isn't entirely safe And that's part of what makes it beautiful There have been times when I have been in the wilderness where I thought I was going to die And a going back to the wilderness Because like it's also one of the things that makes me feel so grateful to be alive And it's okay if it isn't entirely safe. We know that when we enter the wilderness and we do our best to mitigate that risk, right? We plan, we take safety precautions, we bring our first aid kit in our beare spray and we tell someone, where we're going on when we're coming back, and we do all this stuff. but We understand that there is some inherent risk And that's all right. L if we wanted to see wildlife and have no inherent risk and have it be comfortable, we would just go to the zoo ight And the zoo sucks compared to the outdoors, right? Like I don't want to see a bear in a cage. It's undignified for the bear. It's so sad for them in there. Yeah, it's demeaning to me to see something demeaned for my entertainment in that fashion. Like we can't comprehend animals outside of the habitat I don't think. seeeeing a Gisbey bat in Alaska trying to eat salmon or seeing him black bear in California doing its thing, having some berries. L that's cool. And I want you all to have that. I want your children and grandchildren to have that And so like, We should be very skeptical about people making safety based arguments. for destroying our a megapfauna here Like you'llar it with wolves, right? You're hearing people doing it with cougars, which is absolutely ridiculous. Like mostost of these animals will not bother you if you leave them alone Yeah, and like if very very occasionally people have been killed by cougars who' not bothering the cougar, right? L Ver occasionally, you know, a freak accident Yeah doesn't justify destruction of an ecosystem. People get killed by lightning, but we're not just killing clouds. People get killed by cars, we don't get bombing the Ford factory. I understand the desire to be safe Like we will take away a lot of things that are really beautiful if we just want to be safe. But again, we're controlling the wrong variables. If you're worried about people dying in unfair and, you know terrible accidents There are things we could talk about. Yeah. There are policy decisions that could be made that would save thousands and thousands of lives. Yeah. if you want people to be safe and be concerned about free healthcare Bears have killed sixty six people I bet that many people died today from not being able to get their insulin. Yeah, ye, right, yeah. there's a perfect example, right? Like if you want to keep people safe, then think about things that will keep them safe. and I think we can We can very easily keep people and bears safe, but the threat to the bears is us, That's it. The only other thing that kills bears really is other bears then So it's on us therefore to advocate, right? like Bears can't adocate for themselves. Luckily they had people who brought that court case in twenty nineteen, but like If we want to continue to enjoy the outdoors in the way that they are, we need to stop randomly removing shit And bears are one of those things, especially brown bears that it's very easy to whip up fear about that Just leave them alone I think we should be wary also of sort of anthropomorphizing them. Like I see this sometimes with people and animals. like they don't exist for entertainment. they don't see the world in the way we do and that's okay. They're animals, they have their own logic coe exist with them, but like It's not like a Disney animal. It's animal which goes about the world using its own logic, using its own understanding, trying to pursue its own ends through its own means, right. But nonetheless, it is maestic thing to see on the landscape and something that we should takeake care that, you know we don't let cororporate interests and people who find entertaining distory. I would love to see a bear We'll de, we'll add that to our list, okay? We to see a bear? Yeah, I am going gonna take Molly camping. We will mayaybe we'll go to we'll go to we go Yellowstone area like I've never been ye. haven't you know? you've been Yellowstone. I've never been out west I've got some friends got a cabin outside the park. Maybe we could have a little cabin trip. Sophie said Mbe Yellowstone. We can go in there and like look at the guys I ennjoy the Yellowstone ecosystem. No disrespect to my Yellowstone friends. but That's a lot of tourists. The gu ain't going outside to be around that many people. Yeah, like there's there's Yellowstone style nature outside the bounds of the park. You go there. Yeah. I mean, even if youre just if you're getting away from you can get it just get away from old Faithful and let that park ode and you can get away from people just fine. But yeah, we can go we could go to Yellowstone to see a therear, maybe see an ellk P'd be cool Elk make a pretty. I bet that's big as hell. Yeah, Elk's a big as shit. They like like a cow with horns Not the cows cows have horns, el cow have antlers, sorry, it's mistake But yeah, we we could go to Or like that like the greater ye, like outside the park, like that wyoming area just outide Yellowstone It's really beautiful be a fun place to go camping, maybe see a bear have a clean camp Maybe we can find our way to find a way to expense that bare fence That's I'm saying We willll podcast from out there. Yeah. It becomes business. Yeah yeah, we will podcast from Bear Country, proving that we can happily coexist with bears. Thank you to all the Ferret peopleople, by the way. I can't believe how many ferret people contacted you. Yeah, massive outreach from the Ferret people. So yeah, if you are someone who can help me get on one of the Ferret counting surveys I will count ferrets with you We will make a ferret podcast and we will change America's perception of the black foot ferret on your behalf. It's already working. You got me. I love them now.. Yeah. Marley's Team Ferret. Yeah, you can't see this because it's a podcast, but she has a massive tattoo. It's one of the big just s Around the neck. Yeah Around the neck. ye. There's a further one in the lip, but it says Team Ferret Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Mony's become a fairer advocate. I hope you've all become farer and Black bear advocates Send me pictures of your bears. Molly, do you know what fat bear week is before we go? That is my favorite thing about bears is fat bear. Okay. sick. goodood. Yeah. Bears getting plump in the in the autumn before they hibernate is I mean, how could you hate them? How could you hate them? They're just Ro poly little guys hunting for a little sweet treat. Yeah, their bulking cycle is incredible to me Like the u the way a bar just adds thickness in a relatively short period of time, it's remarkable powerful. Yeah, it's powerful. That li the power of salmon. Maybe we didn't have trawlers Wed eat more fish, but yeah, check out Fat Bear Week, if you haven't, if you're not from the US, I hope this has been fun funund little diversion into animals that live here. They used to live all the way down into Mexico actually, but now sadly Mexican bears. Yeah, well, there are still Mexican black bears. They have bears too Yeah, yeah You got toa look up where bears live Yeah, they live ye we could do a whole other one on the Jaguars that they're being fuckked by the Border Wall right now pretty badly. but that'll be a fun episode in over in Arizona there. yeah, there's pretty cool animals H friends Don't tell them This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. 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Sign up today at Simonplus d. comot Rewards program terms apply, see Simonpllus dot com for details This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culturistos with Matt Rogers and Bo and Yang. This is Bo and Yang from Lost Culturist, with Mat Rogerss and Bo Yang. Now a quick break, switching topics to one of our favorite sponsors, Vital Proteins. Vital Proteins has introduced their new collagen spparkling waters, designed to bring together refreshing flavor and clinically backed benefits in one simple daily ritual. Th sparkling waters come in three Cisp flavors, strawberry blossom, lemon lime and blood orange Each offering a bright enjoyable taste that fits easily into any routine. Each can contains two point five grams of Vericol, collagen and peptides, which are clinically shown to improve skin health in as little as thirty days. It's a straightforward way to support your skin from within, simply by sipping something you already enjoy. The formula also includes zero grams of added sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and a one hundred percent daily dose of vitamin C That means you get a refreshing beverage that aligns with your goals while also supporting collagen production, immune support, and that healthy glowy skin look many people strive for. With clean ingredients, refreshing flavor, and research supported benefits, they offer a balanced option for anyone looking to support their skin health in a convenient, enjoyable way. Sip your way to better skin health with vital proteins, collagen sparkling twenty percent off your next order at Vitalproteins. com with pro code Laskaljistus twenty at checkout. We'll be right back. Thank you again to our sponsor, Vital Proteins. Welcome to A itpp and herear a podcast about what workers can do when they try. I am your host Mo Wong And with me today to talk about A company known, I guess in Portland for being a place where you shop and known most other places for being the people who make pens is Morgan and Rene from Booji Workers United. Morgan and Rede, welcome to the show. Thank you. Hi, thank you, Mia Yeah, so and obviously, I guess as you may have gotten from the word union and the title probably containing the word union, I don't know. we haven't written it yet. is that Yeah, one of the one of the moojie stores in Portland is unionizing Can you talk a little bit about like what Mooji is for people who are unaware of this slash don't follow pens and or haven't been to the store? Yeah, so u Mooji is Probably I would describe it as a worldwide Japanese minimalist lifestyle department store. And that's a lot of words to say It's a department store that is for essentially basics. Muji is short for a full name that essentially translates to no brand And that's the idea that they're trying to push for. They're trying to show to people that it's like an eco friendly company and they try and push like high quality products And Our location in Portland it's the only one on the American West coast and We have a relatively small shop. There's only thirty two people in our bargaining unit, and this is a wall to wall bargaining unit which essentially means that everyone below the lowest management level at this location is involved with the union. Yeah, which is A really cool and B So you're talking about how this is the only one on the West Coast. This is mostly a Japanese company that operates a little bit in the US and does things here, right Winderciting? So It is a Japanese company. Its actually primarily operates like all over the world. It was began in Japan in the eighties, I believe, if I know my company history correctly. But they pretty rapidly expanded to across Asia and Europe and then have also since expanded into Africa and the Americas The Americas were relatively late. I don't think that there was a store in the Americas before the turn of the millennium. and the Portalland location itself opened in I want to say twenty eighteen sometime, like just pre COVID Yeah, so it's relatively recent and I guess the thing that's even more relatively recent is he all starting to organize a union. So can I askort of, how did that start and what was the sort of things that started to get the ball rolling on it So I guess the way that organizing started was back in November of twenty twenty five, maybe shortly before that. We had a round of appraisals. theseese are like yearly end of fiscal year appraisals. Technically supposed to be the end of the fourth quarter, tyypically they get pushed back by a month or two, just company practice because the appraisals are tied to our raises. and Each employee who's worked for a year or more at the company gets a praise. And so we're scored in a system of one to five. and if you get a three or better, I believe the system goes, you get a raise that is directly tied to the number that you got. They use decimal systems so. the thing is that this year they gave us the lowest raise in a memory of any of the workers that are currently there, myself included for context, I'm One of the workers that has been at the store the longest and at for no more than for years now We have a pretty high turnaround, which is how I ended up being the the longest tenured of the were the management workers And this came in a year that was the best year in the Portland locations's history Yeah, there's this competition that Muji runs internally where it puts each store under like a group of stores worldwide, almost like almost like worldld Cup groups in a way, where you're just kind of like randomly sorted into groups. And each year one of the groups is chosen and within that group they examine the performances of each of the stores within that group and select a winner to be the store of the year So in twenty twenty four We won Sore of the Year and it was kind of a shock to a bunch of us to have such low races after that. Yeah. For example, my raise of sixty five cents last summer. Jesus Christ. was the highest by a significant margin.? Yes. It went as low as around like twenty five cents. Yeah, that's right I haven't done the math, but like Is is that subinflation? Like I Yes, that is subinflation It tends to be there are employees who have been working for more than two years who still get paid around minimum wage Jesus Christ In addition to that, the staff members who are key holders and full timers and above get bonuses And the bonuses are directly tied to the amount of money that the store makes over the target amount for the month. And they drastically increased the targets for the year going forward, which meant that because of that, our bonuses were getting lower So this year for the last month since that raise I've actually been making less money per month than I was the year before Jesus Christ. so you you're getting pay cuts Basically yes Jesus Christ after winning story of the year. incred incredible stuff, incredible stuff from the people who are of running their company in an extremely normal way. That was the spark that set this push for the union ablaze. And so in November, I contacted the IWW, Industrial Worers of the world and received a response. And so at first it was just me and one of the IWW representatives that were meeting together to talk about forming a union And We ended up having those meetings somewhat regularly and the amount of people attending those meetings slowly started to grow. So it was maybe like two people, three people here and there And then we took a break for the holidays because people were just generally unable to make it out and everything was super chaotic at the store And after the holidays, I had the idea of hosting potlucks, essentially and inviting people to pot lucks. A, I can't remember Renee. wereere you coming to these meetings before or after the pot lucks? The first meeting I went to was at the haall where it was essentially just us grieving about our working conditions while the seasonals were there and sort of it was I don't know how much it was in the works for you, how much stuff you had done up until that point, but I think that was the moment where we sort of became confident as a body in our prospects or unionizing Um, and then yeah the polics therea Yeah And the potluucks ended up starting to pull around aroundround ten people I think the highest attended one was actually twelve And so when you have a shop that has about thirty two people in the bargaining unit, that is about a third of the shop attending an early union meeting while we're still in the underground phase before organizing And we managed to successfully remain underground up until we decided to go public on our own terms on march thirty first We had a march on the boss Which slightly inconveniently, the boss had actually left the shop about forty five minutes early in for her ship. And we had accounted for her leaving early, but we didn't account for her leaving that early. And so the march on the boss kind of had this antic climate moment where the manager just wasn't in the store anymore and there wasn't anyone that actually had supervisory authority The store for the march Which I think there's two things there I want to come back to one is the like oh yeah, of of course management management never found out about the union, but just left early because their' management and it's like Oh, right. No, yeah. What what happens if you leave just randomly walk off your job site like forty five minutes early? You're fucked But management is just like, yeah, fucking, I'm just done. I'm just out. like I'm just I'm just leaving. everythingvery's going to be fine even if I'm not there. So I'm just gonna leave really Right God I wanted to talk about the potlucks a little bit because that's a iss a really good idea as just a way to make sure you can consistently get a bunch of people there and Yeah, can you talk about sort of what that was like and how they've been and what the effect of that has been The Partls came about because I had the idea that People are going to be more willing to come to an event if it wasn't just going to be a meeting where they sat down and had to talk shop and they had to start talking about work while they're off the clock But they'd be, much more likely to come if the meeting was framed more as a way to just hang out with their coworkers and eat dinner. Yeah. So this actually came from my experience. When I was a kid, I grew up Bahai and even though I'm no longer Bahai, the way that our community did it back home was mostly through community feasts and having prioritizing like the feasts first and then the religious discussion later So taking that sort of idea and putting a more of a union spin on it was the idea behind that and it was a massive hit Oh yeah. Renee, do you have any more thoughts on that Yeah I think the fact too that Oh Worker body is I don't know if uniquely is the right word, but especially tight knit and supportive of one another, really just sort of helped thingsings flow in a very natural. And u easy going way. it was just super Like salient for everything to come about. out of these poocks. We just sort of like sat down and immediately started like complaining about work Oh yeah, yeah. got us going and like prettyt much every meeting Sense That's how we Let's like start our our discussion in our meetings is just What bullshit have you been facing from your managers. et And we have to cut it short every time Yeah, it feels bad sometimes to have to cut these complaints periods short because I think They can go on for two to three hours if u we're not careful. And I think the early ones did actually go on for two to three hours and we had entirely potbucks that we didn't get any actual business done. We just spent two to three hours eating food and complaining about work with each other And honestly, that kind of helps people get more comfortable with the idea and it really agitated people in a in a way that I don't think we would have been able to do if we had just tried to talk to people at work about unionizing or had like a more formal meeting. and it really just kept the momentum going Yeah. I think it has this effect of realizing Every Be I mean, even I would walk in and bait thinking like, you know, this is like such a taxing endeavor unionizing the workplace and every once in a while you'd have some sort of Hesitation. I guess. But then everyvery time I would leave, it would just sort of be like, This is like this is the only option And we're definitely going to do it and We're all with it and it feels good Well yeah Yeah, it seems like from everything that I've heard and everything that you're saying, it seems like it's a really powerful way to sort of both combat atomization Both as it just like, oh, this is like a social space where you and the people you work with who are your friends can exist with each other and then also in a in combat sort of alienation and admization stuff by just doing the union work of, oh my God, we all have all of these issues with our bosses Yeah Yeah And when we return, we' going to start talking I going to ask about the issues with the bosses. But first your I don't know, the product services that support this podcast. We are back I was like, Oh, I have a good transition. I can go from complaining about the bosses to talking about what the bosses are doing. And then I was like, shit. I was supposed to cut an ad piv We didn't think of that one fast enough. but you know, speaking speaking of doing things fast enough. Yeah, I wanted to ask if we we get into sort of how things have been going more recently and where the campaign is going and elections stuff Other than sort of the pay raise stuff, what are the kinds of things that people have been dealing with? at Muji. So there's a lot of small things that have kind of piled up. and honestly, I say small things, but each one of these is kind of just like shocking on its own. not surprising necessarily to anyone that's worked in the service industry at all. Yeah. So beyond the raises, there's just been like a long pattern of emotional abuse from the bosses. People have been have been yelled at for pretty much no reason. The bosses have directly insulted workers' abilities like on the floor as they're doing stuff They've done things like pressure staff not to use their sick time even going so far as occasionally implying that getting sick is like your own fault and that people are able to perfectly prevent themselves from getting sick. Yeah. In your job you have to be around people all the time because you're doing a service God. I hate this like king weird pseudo eugenesis shit about disease that's just everywhere now that runs the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC Like this um This weekend or this last weekend at the time of recording was Memorial Day weekend. and on Saturday, the peak day of that weekend, there were three thousand customers approximately in store over the course of the day. And reminder that we are a team of thirty two people in total And so of course, not all thirty two people are going to be at the store at once at the same time. And so when your crew is maybe ten, fifteen, if you're lucky, people big and handling a customer volume of about three thousand over the course of a day You're interacting with so many people that it's worse than maybe it's not worse than because kids can get pretty pretty nasty sometimes. much respect to all of the teachers out there. Yeah. It can get to be a bit of a biohazard, especially when you're working in places like the fitting room that don't have ventilation and you're possibly interacting the closest with customers and you're constantly interacting with like clothing that has been like pressed up against people's bodies. You're interacting with people that just aren't being super conscious about the space and maybe you're in this small confined area with two, three, even four other people for a prolonged period of time. Of course, the customer service team is going to get sick more Yeah, that's like a small, medium sized like convention. That's just running through your store over the course of one day. It's like, oh yeah, everyone has like pax pcks or whatever their like convention plague is, but that's just like Going to work. It's like, oh yeah, no, of course apparently somehow you're supposed to like magically have the like anti disease talismans Yeah as like the plagued masses character And on top of that, I've called out maybe Once a month, I think that maybe there's one month where it was twice a month since January. And I've already used up all the allocated sick time that I get for a year. Jesus. And that's with one of the better sick pay plans as a full timer. And so I can't imagine what people are having to go through at part time where they're already not getting enough hours to pay rent off of their job and they're having to decide essentially between coming to work sick or calling out and taking that financial hit. Yeah. I know one of our staff members has actually been evicted because they were not able to make rent because they didn't make enough hours. Oh my Godd. O're just having your sick hours projected. on the app This is an Oh my go Yeah, that's right. If your sick hours can get rejected, you don't have sick hours. like ye What? And there's more too. It doesn't end there They apply policies that we have this employee handbook that has this list of requirements and expectations And it is not really a huge part of our employment typically, but the policies that they have listed there are applied inconsistently. Stuff like the uniform Code is one of the biggest examples of this where they will more heavily enforce the uniform code against people of color or people with alternative styles of dress Even they they can be fairly fatphobic. There have been multiple people that have said that the managers will pressure them to essentially cover up parts of their body that they will allow skinnier people to show What? Jesus Christ Oh my God, that is so incredibly shitty and Got to be illegal somehow, even under like unhinged American labor law that just feels like it is feels like a very open form of discrimination. but Jesus Christ Oh my god Yeah. do you have anything to add, Renee? Along those lines Just sort of like being asked to profile people All employees can be scheduled to cover the securities breaks which basically just involves standing around one of the entrances and reporting anything Fishy and wit the radios. anything think suspicious. They they say suspicious. So wait so so they could just cooopt you into being a security guard Yeah, the security guard doesn't have any duties regarding like loss prevention U All the managers do that as part of their duties, I guess. but Yeah. so They just sort of say suspicious And on that note too, there have been times where people have been maybe not strictly disciplined. I actually don't know for sure if there's been an instident of someone being written up, but there have been times where the managers have approached people and essentially just I yelled at them for allowing someone to get out of the store with merchandise even though loss prevention is very specifically not part of our job description and that the official store policy actively discourages staff from engaging in active loss prevention like that So You're getting yelled at for doing the thing you were told to do that is explicitly not part of your job. That's supposed to be the manager's job and the managers are pissed off that you're not doing What's nominally their job that you also and the written thing you're not supposed to do. Exactly. Incredible. incredible, incredible catch twenty two logic here It's real just Oh yeah, you're explicitly not supposed to do this. you could get punished if you do it, but also if you don't do it, we're gonna yell at you. It's God. Jesus Christ Yeah Yeah Naturally, there's not really anything that we can do about this besides unionize and besides start taking actions on our own, because the law certainly isn't going to help us for this. Even Oregon state law, which is which tends to be more protective of workers than other states are there incredibly overwhelmed right now with requests. and going through the Boie Bureau of Oregon Labor and Industries, I think is the acronym. Going down the Boy website lists, there's a complaints box It says on the website that they have an incredibly high backlog of complaints that they're trying to process and that they're going through a triage system. And none of the things that we've listed so far would be placed very highly on that triage. In addition to that, We don't have access to like direct access to our HR department at work. They ask us to go through a third party reporting company called Lighthouse. And as far as I know, no one has ever heard anything about Lighthouse doing anything to resolve a situation between them and management when management is treating them unfairly. Incredible And it essentially feels like just shouting into the void, interacting with lightighthouse because you're just sending a complaint to a body that you don't have any access to and just hoping that they fix something. So so they've contracted out their HR department. And so you're just like talking to their or is it that you can't communicate with them directly and that Very weird So they have an HR department. The workers at the physical location We cannot communicate with HR We are not given their phone numbers or their emails or anything like that. All of our HR communication has to be done through our general store manager. So when we have problems with the general store manager or assistant store managers we can't really go to HR because we have to go through the very people that we're having problems with in order to reach our HR Incredible This all me to makeaking HR even faker, which is incredible Oh good Lord It would also be remiss, I guess to forget about the sexual assault. Oh, Jesus Chist. Maybe not specifically sexual assault, but definitely sexual harassment, possible sexual assault that has been raised to management before, where the management supposedly pushed those complaints to HR, but then HR would wait for weeks before doing anything about it. Oh my God. This happened a year or two ago. No, it was probably more in the realm of two to three years ago. if my memory is correct where we had a coworker that was not just profiling people and calling security on people that were doing nothing. But he was also sexually harassing other coworkers Jesus Christ And The store managers told us that they had pushed these complaints to HR, but HR wasn't doing anything. and it took them about a mononth, I believe. Oh my God too fire this person And essentially what they were doing before is they were telling people that if they talked about the situation or cateed drama about the situation, that they would retaliate against the people that were talking about the situation. Oh my God, Jesus. They didn't say outright, but they implied everything up to job loss for the people that were talking about this. Oh my go And they started pulling people into the office and essentially having one on one conversations. Oh my God. that were honestly quite scary to the people that were trying to spread the word about this. And they created quite a hostile store environment for a long time Around that time was actually the first time that we had attempted to try and get a push to unionize, but that ended up dissolving And that was essentially the end of that up until this most recent push Yeah, God, that's really hideous, both the way in which they just pushed it the ladder to HR and then just didn't do anything about it for like a fucking month that that also just The only thing they did do about it was retaliating against people who were trying to talk about it. That is Jesus that's disgusting Yeah, about the most that they did during that month to the actual coworker in question that was doing the harassment was they tried to maintain some degree of physical separation between him and the other coworers And that was it. They kept him on the roster. They kept him at the same positions that other people were working. He had essentially all the same job responsibilities as other people and still had a pretty high degree of contact with other coworkers during this whole time So the people who were trying to speak out against said until this guy was fired were getting punished more than he was Essentially, yeah. Jeez all the way up until he was finally fired. and I don't know what it was that actually got them to do it this time, but They wanted to wait until they had something actually on camera, I believe. but It's kind of hard for you to catch something like harassment words on camera Yeah If their bar for sexual harassment is stuff that they can catch on camera, they're never going to get most instances of harassment And they're not doing their proper job investigating these accusations Yeah, and that also means that their deliberate strategy is to wait for someone to get hurt again. Exactly That's right. They're just throwing them to the fucking lionead Mm Y strategy to like detect that a bus is about to hit someone is to push someone in front of the bus and take a picture of it which is just so unbelievably unacceptable And I want to be clear too that This whole list is very much non exhaustive There have been so many cases of just patterns of abuse from management and Yeah it's not possible for me to go down the entire list of things. I mean, as I mentioned previously, it would be two to three hours of people complaining about stuff that they had gone through at work during these meetings. And occasionally you get some repetition, but this is something that is very Consistent. it's just a part of working at the store Yeah, every day there's just Another unique horror that someone is experiencing . And I guess this brings us to Okay, so how do you make the horror stop That is It unionizing. So Yeah, let's talk about what's what's been happening recently in terms of like how the Union is immobilizing and about the upcoming election, which will be a few days after you're hearing this, assuming you're listening to this the day it comes out. Yeah. so we've been sort of ramping up a little bit. It's been ebbing and flowing since Yeah we started. you know, last like November. But uh We're really trying to Kick it into gear getet people aware, get people Uh Engaged So we have a few things we've been doing Well on may first for Mayday Um, we tabled with the IWW and just started a petition This for signatures from the community support for acknowledgement if we ever need to pull it out and u S our bosses that are you know, this is no light endeavor. This is not like something they can laugh off. Yeah But It ended up being sort of successful beyond what I imagined We got lots of attention, lots of people saying They didn't know that we were unionizing people taking lots of pictures of us, our big banner got one inquiry for a journal report That I think it's out now And we were also written about in What was it? wasas it Oregon Live or was the Oregonian Do you remember Lina We had a small article published about us by the Northwest Labor press that was then picked up by the Portland Mercury. That's right Yeah, so so we did that and then other than that or sort of fighting some recently published propaganda from our boss is with just play. A hilarious amount of misinformation. Oh no Yeah, average boss communication. The other big thing that's been happening is that the reason that the election is happening so long after our initial March and Declaration of intents to unionize Is that the bosses have been trying to divide up the bargaining unit in a fairly strange case where the employer has been contending that the merchandising staff, which is essentially the back of the house staff, but only like a subsection of the back of the house staff, are not eligible for unionization under the same union as the rest of the staff are They did this under the notion that the merchandising staff don't share a community of interest with the rest of the staff. And the other thing that they tried to do is they tried to take the keyholders, which are sort of like a shift lead position away from the bargaining unit by trying to get them designated as supervisors, specifically section two hundred eleven supervisors under the National Labor Relations Act. And we managed to shoot down both of those contests in a board hearing with the National Labor Relations Board. Hell yeah. And the process took a little bit over a month, if I remember correctly. Without going too heavily into detail about it, the community of interest rule basically says that if employees don't share a community of interest with members of a bargaining unit, they have to unionize under a different union And then the other thing is that the NLRA says that If you have supervisory authority and there's a whole laundry list of authorities that are defined in the As If you are a supervisor, then you don't get to unionize legally, period. And so what made this case strange is that typically employers try and add groups of employees onto the unit they believe are on the side of the employer, the anti union side And the union generally has to contend that these people don't share a community of interest or are supervisors or whatever So it's kind of a bit of a strange situation where it's turned on its head where instead the employer is having to prove that these people are not sharing community of interest or our supervisors. And so even though we couldn't afford proper legal counsel And so the union representatives were myself and a friend of ours who is a member of the IWW We were able to essentially represent ourselves in this board hearing and The case was decided in our favor on both counts. Hell yeah. So that rocks. It really does. I was I was not shocked to find out that the case was decided in our favor on the community of interest issue because that would be like saying that the back of the house workers at a restaurant can't unionize with the front of the house workers just because they have different job descriptions. Yeah Sish. Right Kellifer. I was surprised, att first, I was surprised at least that we managed to win on the issues of supervisory authority, but the keyholders I thought that it would take a pretty solid case in order for us to defend against that. huge props to our friend who I'm not sure if they're comfortable being named dropped as an IWW member like Five to the worldld. So I'm not going to name them, but it is a large thanks to this friend of ours that we won that case Oh So that's where we stand now. and the board hearing was decided in our favor and the election has been decided for next week And both sides are now just trying to have our campaigns in preparation Hell yeah It's a sort of different version of like the very common Dick of because bosses want there to be more time in between when you like file your paperwork to unionize and the election because it gives him more time to do intimidation and fear tactics. And like that period in between deciding to unionize and getting to actually do the vote is one of the periods where a union is most vulnerable And it's also really impressive that yeah, you just sort of walked into the board hearing and beat them by just reading a bunch of labor law stuff. Yeah Yeah Worers of the world too fucking anti union lawyers zero. Yeah. basically Basically yeah. It was very strange cross examining my manager U oath Hell yeah And then going to work, I didn't manage to attend the entirety of either of the days of the hearing because to close. I had to go to work at noon on both days that the hearing was. That's so nuts whichich is why I wasn't there for the full hearing for either of the days. So I ended up having to log on in the morning onto the Zoom meeting and attend the first two and a half hours and then hop off call and leave And then go to work and see my managers at work Oh my god Oh my god It's also that's so nuts that you didn't get time off to go to the union hearing Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they were getting paid, right? That's wild. They were getting paid. Oh my god the managers were that were testifying in favor of the employer. Capitalism a bad system. Wow We could possibly have expected this. Yeah, it was actuallyively a challenge to find witnesses to testify for us because the people who would be able to call as witnesses or coworkers are people who are maybe working the days of the hearing and can't actually get time off to come testify because they have to be at work. Oh my God. That's so fucked. There was one person who we approached because we were hoping that they would testify for us who couldn't because she was working that day. Oh my God. it's too too complicated of a process to want to try and like subpoena them andillgally get them to have the time off to come to the hearing. Jesus. So we ended up just having to figure out a way to present different witnesses and have a slightly weaker case because of it. And thankfully that didn't end up mattering. But for a minute, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to have as good of a case as we could have because we were not able to get a key holder on the stand like we were hoping Yeah, I'm glad I'm glad you're able to pull it together. That's really impressive. and Yeah, that you still just beat them even though they had And I guess that is one of the lessons of this is like, yeah, if you're willing to to work in and work together and figure out how to navigate the system and figure out where you can apply pressure. L yeah, you can beat a bunch of people who have way, way, way way more resources than you do. becausecause they're usually just wrong. Yeah I want to actually really drive that point home that neither I or my co representative have experience in any sort of like legal fields. Neither of us are even law students. We are just the people that decided to step up and take on this role And I don't think that there is some like special unique quality about us that allowed us to do it. It was just putting in the work that was required It's a scary thing being asked to essentially represent yourself in a legal setting And I think it's a testament to how people capable of things that they're not necessarily trained to do. and that this whole process of unionization does not necessarily require the vast resources that you might think it entails It requires some planning it requires some tactics, but it is something that everyone is able to do Oh yeah. I guess if I was really on my game here, I would have something about like the concept of the organic intellual et cetera, et ccetera. I don't think that's really what's going on here. It's just like in the same way that economics is designed to be esoteric and you know, like finance is designed to be difficult to understand, but in the immmortal words of Dani Olson, there are plenty of C students who've gotten economics degrees. like you can understand this. It's just it just takes some work and it takes some Dedication to fighting together and it takes yeah, people working together. but these people are not smarter than you. They're not better than you. They have more money, but that's ultimately not the factor that decides everything And I don't want to discount the amount of support that we received from the rest of our coworkers as well. Yeah. This was truly a group effort and everyone helped out in their own small ways, whether it was helping take care of social media posts, whether it was helping cook for us host meeting locations. I've been dealing with a pest problem at my apartment. so I've been unable for about the amount of time that all this legal process has been going on. so I haven't been able to host potlocks anymore. And a former coworker of ours has been hosting instead and putting in the work for that.. It really is something that works when everyone comes together and takes part in the process Ohll yeah So speaking of everyone coming together and helping to work for the process, if people want to help y'all, what can they do We are looking actually at a bit of a financial struggle right now The biggest thing is that We don't have enough the funds at the moment to go on strike, not for any significant duration, at least. Yeah. We have to go fund me Muture Workers United. Yeah, we will put that in the description The other thing is that we are looking for a lot of social media support actually. Mushi is a very media driven company and we are trying to set up an Instagram account that has a lot of visibility You can follow us also Moodji Workers United on Instagram. and it seems like people have been sharing our articles and across the internet, both the NWLP article about us and then Now you're interviewing us, which is an enormous help to to us Mia. Thankk you. We super appreciate it. Yeah. Thankk you so much Of course, coffy cube I don't know if you have anything to add to that R Just the Instagram We have lots of very talented artists working at Mji, like everyone Great graphic designers a lot of just very fun and cool people So yeah I'm sure that will be expressed in our future social media posts Oh yeah, we'll link that in the description too Awesome. Thankk you, Mia Yeah, out of one final thing, you want to plug direct action Yes, I do. So We've spent a lot of time talking about the legal side of unionization because our union is currently seeking federal recognition with the NLRB I want to emphasize that this is not the end of unionization. The goal is not a contract. The goal is to use direct action to enact the changes that you want to see in your workplace for what are probably obvious reasons. I don't want to talk about specifically stuff that we have planned or maybe not even stuff that we've done in the past. But for example, one thing that I can talk about is that we have an ICE response plan Like what do we do if I shows up at a workplace and tries to tries to raid us? We have a plan for that And I obviously don't want to go further into detail about that, but that is something that we did as an example of a direct action. There's also other stuff. There's lots of historical examples of workers getting gains in their workplace. You have examples of stuff like justust a simple march on the boss has historically worked to sway the boss even without necessarily a change in the contract or you can have stuff that's all very legal and above board, obviously, of people like just agreeing to not be as friendly with their boss at work and and emotionally sway their boss that way, or having smaller outside of work actions where people are helping each other out and having a workplace mutual aid project. Or even something as simple as implementing like a workplace fitness plan. That's something that we've discussed a couple of times at meetings very loosely goingoing on hikes together or having like the community sports and stuff just to keep each other in shape and keep our communities healthy All of this stuff is stuff that exists beyond the contract. We're currently emphasizing the contract because that's what we are at the moment seeking because the contract helps this feel more real for people who aren't quite on board with the idea of ununionization yet. Yeah. Unionation at a workplace gets you much more just a a better contract with your employer and you can enact changes at your workplace faster if you work together with your coworkers and and organize your coworkers Anything to adranate Everyone in the union is very aware, you know, regarding their respective capacities to help. what they can You know and cannot do their limits and I think just after you know, working together enough, everything marries in a very effective way and and yeah, even just like like all of these sort of direct actions that Luna was naming are came out of our meetings just ideas that people think might be fun to do or or, you know, people sharing their hobbies and want to share them with other people Yeah And so yeah, it really is just sort of a fun hangout I don't want to trivalize it, but But it's like you know, extreme hang hanging out Well yeah, I think it touches on something that's really important about all of this, which is People will in the abstract talk about unions as like social institutions, but like What that actually means is this like, yeah, it's a place where you and your friends and the people you work with go and do stuff together h. and you know, I I guess I guess I want to rarap up on like, If you want a way out of the stolifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the modern capitalist experience, you too can create you can create a union and resist all of those things simultaneously Yeah. Yeah. This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum pllus. Powered by two times the cleaning power of Dawn, Cascade Platinum pllus doesn't just remove one hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes, it cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Imact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the I Heart Radio app Everywhere, podcasts are heard ONDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, ONDeck's loans up to four hundred thousand dollars make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trrust pilot reviews, ONDeck delivers funding you can count on. Applying mininutes at onndeck dot com Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OndDck or Celtic Bank, ONDeck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval. It's America's two hundred fifteth, but you deserve some presents too. Simon malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. 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Thank you again to our sponsor, Vital Proteins Welcome to It Could Happ Here, A show about things falling apart, the thing falling apart, the past few years, the Democratic Party That's foot for to be talking about today. I'm joined by Sophie Ray Liicherman Hello. Hi, I'm not excited about this This is great. last time we were on an episode together, we were talking about our two favorite Democrats, Bill and Hillary Clinton Ah, yes, they gave me COVID at the DNC. I'll never forgive them Not talking about them today, but we are talking the DNC, the other DNC, the one who puts on the DNC the Democratic National commommittee we're going to be talking about the DNC autopsy. Oh boy. First some background Yes After the Democrats lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency in twenty twenty four, if I'm reading that correctly including losing the popular vote, something that has not happened in twenty years the Democratic National Committee, the DNC wondered Why did that happen So the DNC commissioned a report on What happened with the twenty twenty four election And this report came to be known as the twenty twenty four autopsy The newly elected DNC chair, Ken Martin pledged to make the upcoming report public announcing after his chair election There has to be some lessons that we gan on that so we can operationalize it Not just here in DC, but through all the fifty seven state parties We have to look backwards and look forward at the same time The twenty twenty four election autopsy was commissioned in early twenty twenty five and was supposed to come out later that spring but got pushed back to the end of summer and then the fall And finally, in December of twenty twenty five Ken Martin announced that the DNC would not in fact be releasing the autopsy report in Martin's brief statement explaining or rather not explaining Wh he's back pedaling on his promise to make their report public He claimed that the committee is, quote, already putting our learnings into motion Who votes K Martin in to be the chair? ' I know his career is basically Minnesota guy. Yes. intering government jobs Vice P president chair and then Basically around four hundred members of state party chapters are chosen to be members of the Democratic National Committee who then in turn vote on national party leadership and decide how primaries operate. Though if a sitting president is a Democrat, President can effectively choose the chair Senen reported that DNC officials had concerns that the report would, quote inflame ongoing tensions within the party. At a time, they felt they had begun to generate winning momentum And the committee officials decided that it would be a quote unquote, strategic failure on the part of the DNC to publicly look backward That was their reasons for not releasing the report. We're already winning elections in twenty twenty five. So there's actually no point in just looking back at why we lost in twenty twenty four. And this was alluded to in Ked Martin's statement announcing that he would not be releasing the report Qote, We are aled on what's important and that's learning from the past and winning the future Here's our North star Does this help us win If the answer is no It's a distraction from the core mission the report would just be a distraction from letting us currently win going forward her the DNC chair That logic is ul No, because that's not the real reason why the report wasn't released. We'll get to why the report was ex to that. Okay. veryer soon. That sounds like a majorly half ass reason. so okay Same more, same more. I'm listening. As the public release of the autopsy was continuously delayed in twenty twenty five, and it just eventually cancellled The speculation about the contents of the report grew DNC must be hiding the report because its findings on why the Dems lost so bad in twenty twenty four must run contrary to the interests of party elites burying the report that DNC must be trying to protect the future political prospects of Kamala Harris Obscure the misuse of massive funds donated to the DNC and election campaigns Or the report must actually definitively prove The Biden Her administration's failure to act on the genocide of Palestinians while aiding and abetting Israel must have played a significant factor in the election, possibly the determining factor. So if the report found such things then the DNC might want to suppress the report. not have that information be public Now we know that's not the reason the report was not released The autopsy finding that the Democrats pro Israel position cost in the election was not the reason the report was buried Because last month, the DNC begrudgingly released an incomplete version of the election autopsy which actually does not contain a single mention of Israel, Palestine or Gaza It is not discussed in any way in a one hundred and ninety two page report. what is what is it this report? We will also be getting into what's in the report. Okay. Yeah A lot of bad statistics for one unsourced graphs. and discussions on whether you should spend more money on digital ads or TV ads is really really the bulk of the report Honestly But before we get more into the report's findings Let's discuss the circumstances that led to the publishing of the unfinished autopsy nearly a year after the finished version was supposed to come out. So this autopsy was autored by a guy named Haul Riviera who's a longtim Democratic strategist and personal friend of DNC chair Ken Martin No Riviera has not worked on a presidential campaign since two thousand four. Oh wow. And despite being the sole person like tasked with running the report, and it's unclear how many people actually worked on it, but it was led by Riviara and seems to be mostly be done by him And despite that, Riviera only worked on it hard time while managing other contracts was seen and reporting that Rivivera would say that he would only be available to conduct autopsy interviews before nine AM or after seven PM or on weekends That's when he conducted interviews for the report was only before nine AM in the morning or after seven PM in the evening. weekdays and then also weekends What is weird are doing? What's this problem Uh notot much. Yeah, apparently. N notot much Sir. because yeah, this report was like delayed Almost a full year. only after his initial spring twenty twenty five deadline Did Riviera actually reach out to state party chairs in battleground states interview them for the report He did not contact like Ky Harris campaign staff until September And maybe we're not even asked to be interviewed Portions of the autopsy were first revealed DNC National Finance Committee retreat for top donors held at a hotel in Milburg, Virginia last October Percy and N At the Donor retreat, Riviera himself gave a quote ourour long presentation with slides. in part drawn directly from the report in part, via running his findings through an AI engine, unquote. There was AI generated slides. He ran his report findings through an AI engine, according to CNN which also generated slides. and that was what presentation on the report at the Zon at retreat was based on was that the AI's regurgitation of report findings Hold on, hold on a second. So he's not willing to do work. After nine AM or after seven PM. conducting said that time. No two can't do any of that time, but yet he's just like using AI. Great DNC feeling really hopeful. continontinue What did CNN find So one of the slides that Rivivera presented at this at this donor retreat attract the candidate's quote unquote area of focus by quote unquote content slash theme CN notes, quote, Riviera used an unclear methodology for the breakdown assiting percentages to ten categories of content or theme for Trump Harris and their running mates. The percentages in every column, one for each candidate added up to well over one hundred percent What he was trying to do here is like measure campaign themes, like you know, how much Trump focused on immigration compared to Harris, right he had These like ten categories of like what the campaigns are focused on. But the percentages did not actually add up to one hundred percent. Of course they didn't. So he's just like making this stuff up, right? Like it's it's again, they know, there's like an unclear methodology for the breakdown. The fact these add up to over one hundred percent, like you cannot trust the legitimacy of any of this research now. After parts of the presentation were leaked to CN. Senen then obtained even more information about the contents of the shelved autopsy. Before publishing their findings, Senen presented the DNC with what they knew about the report pting the DNC to just release the full report as submitted by Paul Riera Around this time, donors were also threatening to withhold funds for not publishing the report, so that probably also contributed. One of CN's sources said that after the autopsy was published Ken Martin informed DNC staff that Paul Riera was no longer associated with the committee For these fucking people I mean, I did not read the entire report intentionally so that you could tell me about it, but the highlights that have been spread across the internet are didid not mention Gaza didid not mention Joe Biden's age and did not mention when Joe Biden dropped out late Effectively so. we'll get into some of some of those in a little bit more detail. I think one of the most interesting parts about the DNC's publishing of the unfinished report is that the published version of the autopsy contains annotations and corrections, marked in red DNC added to the copy of the report as submitted by Riviera And these were added for its public release. Okay. At the top of every single page, all one hundred and ninety two pages reads a disclaimer, quote Disclaimer This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented, unquote That is in red at the top of every single page Ken Martin did issue a statement when the autopsy was published Reading quote When I was elected DNC chair, I commissioned an after action review of the twenty twenty four election that I wanted to be honest and transparent, and with actionable and specific takeaways for the future of the Democratic Party When I received the report late last year, it wasn't ready for primeim, not even close. And because no source material was provided, it would have meant starting over I could not in good faith put the DNC's stamp of approval on the report that was produced after last November's massive deemocratic wins. I didn't want to create a distraction by not putting the report out, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction For that, I sincerely apologize for full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged. It does not meet my standards and it won't meet your standards. But I'm doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word I don't know, man. that doesn't really sound very trustworthy, bro U sounds pretty bad. sounds pretty bad. Here's a half asked report. I it's not very good And I've delayed it for over a year. But yeah, I guess here it is. No, it doesn't include any of the big issue things Enjoy It's a stunning sequence of events that kind of highlights all of the issues that everyone already has with the Democratic Party The guy who was chosen to do the autopsy just happens to be a personal friend of the DNC chair. And said friend then fails to interrogate the institutional bias of the party It is such a condensed condensed little version of why the party has had so many, so many troubles and the report as published seems unwilling to actually be able to learn from successes that have been happening. S since the twenty twenty four election Eectively, what this report actually is is a poorly sourced opinion piece. Yeah. that's dressed up as an election autopsy misspells names. it has typos, factual and statistical errors, and unsourced claims Multiple key sections are left completely blank because Riviera never submitted them The report is less interested in collecting data and interviews to inform analysis. but rather starts with certain assumptions and then cherry picks data to support those assumptions But it doesn't even do that well because the included data is often inaccurate and at times the analysis contradicts itself. Jesus Christ A state partarty chair told CNN, quote, It was very clear that it felt like Ken's theory of the case for the future of the party Through the lens of twenty twenty four. as opposed to a quote unquote autopsy and after reading the report, I agree. This is very much a report that's designed to fit in with what Ken Martin wants the message of the last election to be It tries to squeeze that into these like very rough shapes. of like an after election report. It's Really not This just like reeks of like lazy AI work all the like left out sections, that the things that don't add up The misspellingically the statistical and like factual errors Yeah are really confusing. and it feels like someone's getting, if not the actual writing, but it feels like the research was like AI assisted in the way that, you know, AIs will shoot out Different answers for the same question. Sure. So it feels like that in a few areas And like like you've already mentioned, right, the report never brings up Biden's age or mental state as a factor contributing to the election. And in as much as the report criticizes Biden critiques the Biden administration's failure adequately prepare Harris to be a viable candidate Does it disgust The debate? No It doesn' bring up the debate. where now we know that like from an interview from Dr. Jill Biden from a few weeks ago that she legitimately thought that Joe was having a stroke on stage during that debate with Donald Trump even though she took him onto a different stage afterwards to tell him how good he did. And then they went to a waffle house. I mean The fact you do after you go after you believe your husband has had a stroke. When shit has hit the fan, Garret. Go to waffle House. Maybe Maybe the waffle house actually is to move. I'm saying, the waffle house is the least shocking of the entire situation Butight That's not mentioned in there at all No It says, quote, The White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and a half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch, unquote. That's all it says about about switching from Biden to Harris. That's all it says 't I don't disagree with that statement because, you know, the amount of people that we spoke to when we went to both political conventions, one of the common things that they said about Pamala Harris is like how ineffective she's been and how they don't use her and how how can we trust her when they don't even trust her to do basic things for the administration which was one of the main like Republican talking points about her is like She has no skills, which is not true That was a position that was against her is not utilizing her enough And then, you know, they're like, biby Bobby Boo, she's your candidate without Yeah, a primary Do they mention anything about there not being a primary Okay The report never interrogates or considers Biden's decision to run for reelection or lay blame on those who encouraged and enabable that decision nor does it identify the lack of a legitate primary as a contributing factor leading to the results of the twenty twenty four election We're gonna take a quick break while I have, you know I attack of my mind through the ads. And we're back Let's now pivot to how the report describes its own research methodology J This is quoting from the start of the autopsy.ote The report analyzes a range of publicly and commercially available data to identify actual investments, actions, and eventual voter behavior The analysis also includes qualitative data obtained in the form of in person and virtual interviews with more than three hundred organizations and individuals After this sentence, the DNC has highlighted and annotated A little note that reads No source material or data provided Unsourced claims cannot be independently verified So despite claiming that three hundred people or organizations were interviewed, which may be true The report never says who these people are nor does it allude to their relevant expertise This is just an oped A source at the DNC told CNN that Riviera did not even provide a list of names of the people he spoke to. the DNC nor did he submit interview notes or recordings. So there's no record that we have of like who these people are or why they were interviewed or what they actually said And it's not like he's like quoting from people like with quotation marks. It's like regurgitating maybe portions of interviews into different text. Right. Riviera also failed to provide data that he said was given to him by senior campaign leadership. that he says is influencing the report, but we don't see it. And he did not provide it to the DNC. So like they don't know. It's just it's just some guy saying trrust me, bro That's what it sounds like So after the introduction to the report is a section called the Eecutive summary This section was not provided by the author This section is completely missic. Great after the missing executive summary section, P it moves on to the electoral landscape which has just very basic stuff.Qote Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to healthcare, manufacturing or job losses, and failing infrastructure, yet continued to be persuaded to vot against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party, unquote. Really basic stuff, very like average ten year old can say this Next, the report talks about How the Democratic Party rebuildt itself in the nineties, how after three consecutive presidential losses, the Democrats embraced a new strategy, which got Clinton elected in nineteen ninety two. And we all know how well that went Mhh Then there's seven pages of summarizing party history from two thousand eight to twenty twenty four I don't know if he was getting paid by the word But that's just like it's just seven pages that just don't need to be there And then the report reads, quote We must be careful to draw the right lessons from this experience and not miss opportunities to identify and build upon some of the positives of the twenty twenty four cycle We must acknowledge how close the margins actually were. ort then goes on to misstate how close the margins were But on the other hand, it goes on to say that in the past sixteen years, quote Democrats have lost ground at every level of government. This remains true even in the face of the blue wave in the most recent elections twenty twenty five goovernatorial and mayayoral wins in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, Detroit, and elsewhere may lead to a false sense of security and a belief the Democratic Party has again found ways to bring voters back to the booth with their messaging While these wins are welcome and point to optimism entrenched in the major party strategy A dive into the details shows some of these elections were tighter than Democrats should be comfortable with points to room for improvement in future efforts. Unquote It never gives this dive into the details So we don't even know what it's taking there And to me, this paragraph just demonstrates unwillingness to understand why some of these elections went the way they did, especially the one in New York City doesn't want to acknowledge why someone like Zoron ran such a successful campaign And claiming that the margins were tighter than what Democrats should be comfortable with. also ignores the fact that Zorons. The biggest opponent in both the primary and general election was another Democrat who ran as an independent someone who was associated with the Democratic establishment Bizarre little tidbit that they throw in there. This is so weird Just like a highly unnecessary tangent And it just shows this like uncomfortableness and you know, on one side being uncomfortable on the other side just, you know, also being incurious about why those elections have gone the way they did Yeah. and what you can actually learn from them Baffling not going to go over every single section of the report because there's a lot And the way the DNC annotated it interesting because at a certain point they stop actually trying to address or annotate specific claims Yeah and instead just to annotate the titles of entire sections, writing No sourcing provided for several claims in this section, and No evidence provided for many claims in this section, public reporting and data contradict several claims Wow The introduction for the What happened? Electoral overview section is also compleompletely missing. as well as the National Review section These are just not included. The author did not provide those sections The next section, the one on Battleground State Ocomes, contains very basic factual errors in just the second sentence ote States which had consistently and reliably voted for Democratic candidates, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin voted for Tump andout All these three states voted for Trump in twenty sixteen I don't know if Rivivera has a different definition of consistent or reliable But these are these are notably swing the states And swwing states that voted for Trump in twenty sixteen Yeah, just like A lot of little details like that just don't make sense. Later on in this section and beyond, it gets dates wrong It gets the percentage of votes wrong. It falsely claims that a Capitol police officer was beaten to death by insurrectionists on january sixth. That's true that did not happen An officer killed himself a few days later, but he was not beaten to death on site at january sixth. The report uses the word gaslighting, which I think is funny. I just kind of wonder if you like uploaded this to one of the like AI softwares to tell you if it's AI tell you if it was you know, plagiarized and those kinds of things, how much of it would be flagged Yeah, Wh knows, right? Like those those sorts of tools aren't the most accurate themselves. No, but it's just crazy. Budy the level of errors is is shocking. Yeah likeike for instance, The report claims that in the twenty twenty four election, Democrats netted two seats in the House, flipping ten seats from Republicans while losing eight. This is not true This is just not a true claim. Democrats netted one seat rather than two Flipping nine Republican held seats while losing eight Democrat seats. It's like there's just small little arrowas like that that I'm like How did you do this Unbelievable. There's also a bunch of just unfounded claims about the intentions or assumptions coming from the Harris campaign may be true But they're not supported in the actual report Like you're not providing evidence, you're not providing citations for some of the claims about what the Harris Party intended in some of their messaging or stances But I want to move on to one of the biggest takeaways that the report had It argues that anti Trump sentiment was assumed by deemocratic campaigns and that campaign ads should have hit Trump harder to remind voters of how bad he is quote The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump's negatives. The retrospective job approval for Trump was too high and the campaign and Allies failed to remind voters of his incompetence The idea Trump's negatives were quote unquote baked in is a major failure of analysis and reality given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term, unquote. the DNC notes No evidence was provided for these claims And that this claim contradicts claims elsewhere in the report. because A lot of the report also criticizes Harris. only defining herself as not being Trump as focusing too much on Trump and not defining herself So the report kind of tries to have it both ways here campaigns did not hit Trump hard enough We're also too focused on Trump. illuminating what attacks against Trump should have looked like exactly Is there any mention in these reports about Epstein The do No. No. Yeah no, absolutely not. Yeah. because it was baffling to me that because they needed to have Bill Clinton make the worst speech at the DNC that they didn't target Trump over his relationship with Epstein at all during the campaign. So, you know Of course it's not in there I mean, yeah, there's a a lot of things that you could hit Trump on. and a lot of yeah, Democratic ads like D mayaybe not in ways that people found convincing. you know, like when we were at the DNC, a lot of the anti Trump stuff was based around like the horror of january sixth. Yeah, not his regular failures as president. Yeah, right? Like like like like the day to day incompetence that he showed as president. It was like Trump is threat to democracy which did not turn out to be a compelling enough reason to vote against Trump Oh my goodness. The report claims that Harris struggled with defining herself beyond not being Trump. just framing the race as prosecutor versus felon ort notes, quote, The truncated campaign timeline didn't help But the campaign did not quickly resolve on how to tag Trump and define Harris report says that Enthusiasm gap was predictable generated more enthusiasm than Harris does not provide evidence to support this claim, though. Some people may believe this to be true But this claim is not supported in the actual report And it reads, quote, Anti Trump sentiment alone was insufficient to motivate voters. The Harris campaign appears to have relied on Trump being unacceptable rather than building an affirmative case for Harris Base voters needed reasons to vote for Harris. as well as vote against Trump DNC notes, no evidence provided for these claims I kind of agree with portions of this. I think I think, yeah, you do need reasons to vote for Harris. You cannot be justified as not being Trump This does contradict the previous takeaway that Ati Trump's siment was not driven hard enough into voters Perhaps this claim isn't necessarily wrong. But it is armchair analysis. It's not actually attempting to substantiate its claims. It's lazy and sloppy And it ignores that There were also reasons to not vote for Harris It' not just that the campaign needed to generate reasons to vote for Harris, but it also should have addressed or changed its course to address the reasons that people might not want to vote for Harris which we will get to at the end of this episode In terms of the election analysis included in this report, A lot of it is focused on comparing Harris's performance to state level races where Democratic candidates outperformed her Also where she outperformed them And the analysis often conflates the two. It reiterates that, quote, lower profile races needed affirmative cases to vote for candidates. just opposition to Trump credits, successful state campaigns to local name recognition and digital presence things that Harris was not necessarily lacking in. Harris spent a decent amount of money on digital presence and as vice president, had a degree of name recognition There's more just odd errowors here The report gets the number of twenty twenty four governatorial races wrong It forgets that Delaware had a governatorial race And it focuses much of this section of the report on Josh Stein of North Carolina Who's the governor? Yeah While Stein was able to keep the governor's office under democratic control, It is concerning how Robinson was able to capture forty five percent of the state's vote Even after his repudiation of equal rights for everyone and proudly and loudly asserting He was a black Nazi, unquote Man, I forgot about that guy. I'm mad that you brought him up. I forgot he existed. A lot of the section of this report is actually praising Josh Stein for how well he ran his campaign while also Finding it concerning of how much the vote Robinson was able to still get It gets the number wrong Robinson did not get forty five percent of the vote. He got just over forty percent And later in the report, it says he got forty two point seven percent, which is also wrong. So it has two different numbers The report says forty five and forty two point seven, neither of which are correct The correct number is forty Well This a lot of stuff like this It's just kind of baffling. And it's even more baffling because of how much of a load bearing section this Josh Stein bit is R? It writes about how Josh Stein ran almost eight points ahead of Harris. and it says that Stein didn't just win by default He addressed the exact problems Harris did not. Never actually explains what those are. It doesn't actually explain this, it just says it in a sentence Later on it says that based on the North Carolina governor's race, Democrats should quote foocus less on abstract issues and identity politics and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability. unquote. Harris campaign was not actually focused on abstract issues and identity politics. They were trying to address these things often inadequately, especially on the economy, because of how much Harris had tied herself to Biden She did address housing affordability for like a decent bit of the campaign, whether voters actually knew that That's a whole other question, right? It's whether they were successful in communicating platform on housing affordability is a different question. But it's not that Stein's success was focused on this as opposed to focusing on abstract issues is not really what the Harris campaign was actually focused on The report continues, quote, Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young black men compared to Biden's twenty twenty performance However, Stein recovered significant ground with both groups suggesting his campaign found effective ways to reach these voters. Dyin's results suggests it's possible to win women and compete with men with the right approach. Does it explain how Stein did this? It doesn't course it doesn't It doesn't say Now, the report also praises Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, who was elected in twenty twenty four Running on a platform of housing affordability, reducing costs for families throughout the state, and improving public safety allowed him to easily capture the governor's office. His message resonated with voters concerned about how biodyonomics failed to lower the cost of eggs. and how the Trump administration would gut avenues of education and upward mobility Stein and Ferguson Notably, both then incumbent attorneys general for their states a definitive strategy to approach voters. Their wins provide a blueprint for candidates in other states seeking to align themselves with their voters. unquote Ferguson's win in Washington State is presented as a blueprint for candidates as compared to Harris's failed strategy But in fact, Ferguson ran almost four points behind Harris Harris did better in Washington than Ferguson did But the report promotes Ferguson's strategy or its opinion on Ferguson's strategy as the winning blueprint, despite it doing worse in Washington So that's what I mean in terms of there being lots of self contradictory claims Yeah, did nobody prorofread or edit or peer review. Well, no, I think that is a big part of this, right is that once the DNC received this They saw how bad it was and it was like We don't even want to prove freeed to edit this. Like this is just so bad. we just don't even wantan to deal with it anymore. Like it's just done. We're just putting on the shelf. But dude released it anyways? Well, mean, they released it after public pressure because of you know, accusations that they were hiding certain findings that were damaging to the Democratic Party or the interests of party elites. No, it's just that somebody did a Bad ob When in fact, it's just like, oh, this was just like a massive fuck up Like that's that's why you're hiding Right. Right. Like this this this section that I just like read and the section on like Stein. Yeah, that's the only time where the word cost is used in relation to prices. This is this is the only mention of affordability. Oh my God. The report does not A single time Mention inflation? Oh my God except in adjusting donation numbers for inflation. it does not it does't mention inflation as an issue It doesn' not mention the causes of inflation, messaging around inflation And how that may have been a factor contributing to the results of the election Economy only gets mentioned six times Okay. Just thinking back to when we were at the RNC and I'm sure you had the conversations with, you know, newly eligible voters, young males Yeah. and you ask them, you know, why they were voting for Donald Trump they would always say The economy is the first thing. It's the first thing, Yeahah. And that's the core of Trump's ad strategy How are they not understanding that, you know Bringing out Oprah at the DNC instead of talking about how you're gonna to lower the price of milk and eggs and gas and help people get jobs Like how are they not realizing that you're not reaching normal human? connection. And this like continues to be a problem now, right? Yeah People will look at macroeconomic factors. Sure and be like, by some accounts, the economy is actually not doing terrible. But those sorts of statements don't reflect the reality of Americans who are dealing with rising prices and may not be experiencing the same wage growth that some statistics show in the macro sense And specifically the way that there's this like condescending messaging around macroeconomics Yeah, that really Polarizes people against you because they're having a very hard time. They don't have a lot of hope for the future And just asserting that actually on a macro level, the economy is doing well It feels like you're gaslighting them, right? Yeah you see this in like the discussion of like, you know, the vibe session. Yeah Which I mean, I have a lot of opinions on, but thats that's another episode. ye. and Right now We're going to go to ads Boy Okay, we are back So after this section talking about the governatorial races and stuff It has a list of strategic implications for Democrats based on these state level races And these implications are Antti Trump sentiment has its limits Iregular voters are swing voters Candidate definition is essential Clear accomplishments and concrete plans matter more than vibes Parties matter Voters are sophisticated. The eight to ten percent who split tickets are decisive. They evaluate candidates individually Geographic formula is non negotiable Strong urban, plus competitive suburbs, plus limited rural losses. You need all three Unquote Yeah no shit In order to win elections, you must win elections. Yeah. That's what this is saying is that in order to win elections, you have to win the election. Yeah, we know. We know. Yeah, there's this there's this announcer in the NBA that got slammed many years back for stating Well, you know, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. And that's exactly what this is They're like, hey, if u you get more votes than the other guy. You win It's It's crazy. It's lazy. that this whole this whole thing reeks of just like, yes Lackadaisical Insufferable laziness. Yes And I want to mention two other strategic implications. Please. one. Elections remain winnable with the right candidates and strategies, even in difficult environments Demographics are tendencies, not destiny and voter support is impacted. goodood and bad campaign choices, unquote. Wow, thank you so much for for saying that if people people believe in and like the candidate, maybe they'll vote for them Wow, Voter support is impacted through campaign choices Just just a Yes. So that's obviously laughable. Yes. This last one is more interesting. Male voters require direct engagement The gender gap can be narrowed. employ mail messagers address economic concerns And don't assume identity politics will hold male voters of color Men hate women Man It's not the messenger. It's not the messenger. It's the message It's not about who the messenger is, it's the message itself and they can't grasp that Why is that their take They're doing the same identity politics. Yeah' that is like trying to critique. It's like no, we need men to talk to male voters. That's the only way That's also identity politics. You don't understand, it's not about who's giving the message. it's about what the message actually is How did white dudes for Harris work out You literally tried this You literally tried to do this. It did not work. Harrison once again, I did block that out of my brain. I did not like hearing it Yeah, theirir take is sorry, if you want to talk to the boys, you also have to be a boy. It's crazy. What It's lazy. It's stupid All right What else hit me there I know that you're saving some of the worst for the end. Yeah, I am saving some of the bad stuff for last. There's two other small areerras I want to go through. like let's do it claims that tens of thousands of voters in a handful of states or who sent Trump back to the White House? That's not, that's not That's inacur. Aurate. That's just that's not accurate and the DNC knows. What happened at all? Okay. And out of thirty four Senate races report only reviews six of them which it attempts to extrapolate a pattern from. and it does not reveiew Wisconsin a key swing state The author also just did not include the section on house races. This section is completely blank It's also missing Mm. Now, It does have a list of, you know lessons that we can learn from Senate level and state level races positive ones are that Democrats should maintain a year round presence. We should Always be campaigning Don't just wait till the end, just always keep a level of engagement. And that engagement should be community oriented. It should be grassroots in nature. You should be establishing partnerships with local community organizations groups in working class communities because Member to member outreach is more effective Rather than having strangers do door knocking, you should have people from that neighborhood be door knocking in their own neighborhoods. their messaging should be bilingual and culturally competent All the stuff is like, yeah, like I sure this is like I kind of agree, right? This is like yeah, very, very basic, but yes, this is this is a good idea. You should strengthen your connections in Latino neighborhoods and with unions and you should lean on those win elections. Yep, That's how politics works. You learned very young, Stanger Danger And so it's like if you are someone like me who has cameras at their house and you see a strange person coming to your door, you're not necessarily going to answer that. No, someone with a clipboard is going to approach me. It's like, o no way. I'm not happ not doing it. I can't're I'm already overstimulating, please leave me on But if it's like Oh, hey, it's my neighbor. Yeah. I'm going to open the door for them and hear them out I fear that's just common sense. I don't think that was necessarily needed in this report. That's common sense. It's something I don't disagree with for like the first time in all these things that you've said Now the sort of negative things that the Democrats can learn from Yeah. includlude what the report calls the leadership voter gap The fact that the Democratic Party leadership seems increasingly alienated from the priorities of voters. And voters may still support their local Democrat on the state level or local local races, but maybe we'll vote for Trump because he's offering an alternative to the stagnating corpse of the Democratic Party, Even if that alternative turns out to be all terrible and in some ways worse So this what they called the leadership voter gap They also identify late engagement doing the bulk of your campaigning from like September to November ceding the entire summer for the Republicans to establish kind of the territory of the race of like what the issues are The report mentions messaging misalignment This is similar to the leadership voter gap where there's tensions between the leadership of the party or the concerns of the president and what working class Americans are cononcerned about The Bidenomics framing emphasized macro statistics rather than the micro realities voters experienced daily and specifically tied President Biden by name to actual economic anxiety. unquote I think that's completely fair Another of the key challenges is Republican inroads with working class voters This section has a typ out, so it's kind of hard to read It essentially states there's so many typones. but it essentially states that the Trump campaign targeted working class households with populist messaging which distracted from his anti worker record And working class men, particularly in manufacturing and construction, saw Trump as more aligned with their cultural values than Democratic candidates. To getit these down, Democrats need to have a year round presence, more economic messaging, and address cost of living concerns That resonate more than quote unquote, identity politics. This is kind of where the actual election analysis portion of the document ends The rest of the document is on how to more effectively spend campaign funds deebating door knocking versus text and phone banking addressing dropping voter registration rates, comparing media and ad spending, digital versus TV ads Is there anything interesting in those findings? Not really. Okay's filling, it's filling the page count The Democrats got a lot of money The problem isn't the funds. We have the funds. It's that there's small ways that you can use them better Sure Yeah All of this is just treating the symptom, not the problem The problem wasn't that you were spending more on digital and not enough on broadcast The problem was the candidate and the message differeiffnces in ad spending. It's not that you had ads running ' that the ad you had running connecting with the people whose votes you needed The people that were going to vote for you already That's who those ads were targeting to as opposed to bringing in voters who were like, oh man, I'm really not sure Trump was pretty bad last time I'm on the fence here. Or just for first time voters. The firstirst time voter registration was down significantly Yeah, the fact that you ran ads in certain places, that was not the problem. No, You weren't advertising to the people that needed to be advertised to Your messaging was wrong. And there's yeah, there's this more core issue that people do not get to actually pick the Democratic nominee. And the Democratic nominee had a lot of issues and direct ties you many failures of the Biden administration, which brings us to our final section here I'm afraid Based on three polling studies The campaign pollsters concluded that it was quote Important for the Vice president to find separation from the status quo They recognized voters were looking for change and felt it was necessary to find ways to demonstrate how a Harris Walls administration would be more effective in addressing American needs. pooststers acknowledged, the loyalty demonstrated by the vice presresident also suggested it was contrary to strong signals in their data how Even measured breaks would help position the Vice president to win. The vice president, Harris, did not do these measured breaks. She remained extxtremely loyal to the legacy of the Biden administration while she was vice president and while she was campaigning for president in twenty twenty four Now these campaign pollsters were also part of discussions on how to respond to Trump attack ads In particular, the attack ad focused on the Vice president's prior statements on Transgendered Americans. you can't call them that bro They all recognized the attack as very effective. and felt the campaign was boxed in The ad was a video of her saying what she said And it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities If the vice president would not change her position and she did not, then there was nothing which would have worked as a response, unquote This polling section is also missing its conclusion, but Let's get into that a little bit more Okay Before the autopsy was released, Rob Flattery I'm going to say flattery, I don't know what it actually is, but I'm calling it flattery He was Harris's deputy campaign manager and wrote an article in the Bulwark about what He said in his autopsy interview Also noting he was one of the few Harris staffers who was actually interviewed. Flattery argued the main issue of the twenty twenty four campaign was branding. And he clarified that the commala is for they them ad was not actually the most effective attack ad A acccording to campaign data, it was the Trump ad from july twenty twenty four with clips of Harris saying that quotequote Biodyonomics is working Flattery wrote that quote The brilliance of the Trump teams ad strategy was that everything was a proof point that leveled up to a core narrative She cares about liberal shit, not you position on immigrs, she's focused on the wrong thing. Harris talking about trans prisoners, focus on the wrong thing Bonomics is working, focused on the wrong stuff It was brands, not messages. The trans ad worked because of what it implied, not what it said, unquote Rob Flattery, like the autopsy insists that There was no way to directly respond to the Pamala is for they them Trump is for you A claiming that they tested five to six response ads against ads about the economy and the economy ones tested better So not wanting to make the fight about an issue we were losing, we talked about the economy more A literal rebuttal would have been a loser I absolutely stand by's decision, look at the twenty twenty five elections in Virginia, where Republicans made trans issues the core of their advertising strategy It failed because voters didn't find it relevant, unquote That's exactly what Trump did with the They them ad. That was a big part of his ad strategy as well So there's this sort of learned helplessness to address both like the trans issues as well as the Israel Palestine stuff, which we'll get to in one secondc Harris not seriously addressing that they them add also did not seem to help. And you don't need to run an ad directly opposing that slop. But through media appearances, you can pull the old Uno Rversso affirming that you'll stand up for the rights of all Americans, no matter their gender or race, That includes making healthcare more affordable and more accessible And it's Trump and the Republicans who are focusing on bullying a disadvantaged small minority of Americans distract from the fact that they have no real economic plan. You can talk about the economy while still standing up for trans people. It doesn't need to be the focus of your campaign, but it sure as hell was a key focus of Trump's campaign. and you not addressing it did not help and contributed to real harm and negative polarization against trans people Yeah, I mean A trans person did not speak at the twenty twenty four DNC, which was weird and not normal Trans people have spoken at many DNC conventions in the past. But in the twenty twenty four, nope and trans issues were barely even mentioned largely absent It doesn't need to be a key issue But the fact that Republicans made it made it aK issue means that it is worth addressing in some way and affirming that you will actually stand up for the rights of trans people beyond making very kind of vague confusing statements like Kama made that She'll follow the law. which just does not make sense to anyone This sort of learned helplessness around Like not being able to address these issues This is the same thing with Palestine. Yes. Altering of course is simply not considered possible and in part with Palestine, because Harris was the vice president Flattery wrote quote given the Biden administration's position Gaza was an impossible issue to communicate around Protesters drove coverage away from campaign events digital creators or even supporters were afraid to say anything nice about Biden because their comments sections would get rocked For many voters watching the horrific, painful footage out of Gaza, it became a moral question One we didn't have a good answer for In ways that may not be reflected in a poll, it meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. As one person from the campaign told me We spent the entire election with a giant rotting fish around our necks Is Joe Biden the giant rotting fish? Well, no, I mean, it's in part, yes, but like don geninocide in Gaza. L this like you know, well documented mass death. They didn't let a Palestinian person speak at the DNC either. They had They had one panel on it, which I attended. It was phenomenal. It was the largest attended panel of the Cvention And then they refuseed to let a Palestinian person speak I mean, and even beyond just letting people speak, it's like There was no real plan to actually stop from happening. Like you can you can cut off aid Israel. You can do serious things. You can You cannot send them weapons. You can take away weapons. You can do more things. As you've seen, America is not afraid to occupy territories in that region You could literally invade and be like, no, you have to stop but like the not being able to even consider could have an answer for this moral question You could just change your position not being able to even consider that and the compounding difficulty of Harris being in the VP role. madeade this the giant rotting fish around the campaign's neck. Yeah and the fact that the autopsy does not actually address this question and Flattery does, I think is another damning indictment against the autopsy and its sheer incompetence pretty campaign manager himself acknowledging that this was a serious a serious issue that meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. The whole deal in this bulwark article is that politics is now about brands, not messages This is K kind of silly, right? becausecause these two things are related. Yeah. But the brand of the Harris campaign was largely defined as not being Trump being more of the same. which in twenty twenty four wasn't exactly great. No Another of Trump's main ads featured a clip of Harris saying that she wouldn't have done anything different from Biden So the branding issue certainly wasn't helped campain's unwillingness to sever ties with Biden and criticize his policy. Now Flattery argues that would have been hard, if not impossible because of Kamalist's position as sitting rightice president. If she doesn't go against Biden's policy, it puts fractures within the party and the White House itself but also it would demonstrate how she effectively held no power as vice president So like there is there is these issues But if you actually have principles, that would not actually be an issue. You could just blaze through that could actually take the real correct stance on issues like Palestine and acknowledge massive failures that the administration had. And you are now going against the status quo of the administration despite being the vice president, right? That could have been an option, one that was just never actually considered for whatever reason I mean, statistically speaking, at that time, Joe Biden was had a very low approval rating. And so, you know, Kamala running as the pro Joe candidate doesn't really resonate with voters because they're unhappy Exactly, right? And if your message is just more of the same And then it seems pretty easy for your opponents to define what your brand is And whenever she tried to say You know, I'm going to change this. I'm going to change that. they were like But you're in office now. Harrass herself to not. actually campaign on progressive immigration policies. She did not campaign on trans rights, she didn't campaign on identity politics. No. in absence of a real message It's all too easy to associate the campaign with the concerns of like liberal elites disconnected from the economic realities of most Americans. and her previous statements on Bidenomics and how she wouldn't have done anything differently Absolutely compounded this Flattery wrote that the campaign underestimated just how disillusioned people were and the widespread degree of anti institutionalism But unlike the autopsy He at least acknowledges Biden should have never have run for reelection in the first place and that Democrats should have run a real primary, which would have provided an opportunity to actually address all of these issues about feeling tied to the death worsihiping aspects of the Biden administration with Camala being the VP Speaking of the autopsy, Let's get to the final sections of the autopsy. Yeah. neear the end of the report A paragraph reads Building to win requires a new thinking And building to last requires thinking about more than the next election. It requires finding the best way to connect with the right voters in the right places. And twenty twenty four has proven anything There is enough money Do it all the right way. And that's kind of the end. That's not conclusion of the report because the final conclusion section is left blank. Super. It's missing as well. So that sentence is kind of the last piece of analysis. because it actually has no conclusion. I think that's the perfect perfect representation of what this report is. is that it does not have a conclusion. It's literally missing the conclusion. There is very little you can actually take away from this report positively to improve election strategy going forward because there is no conclusion Anyway, that's the that's the twenty twenty four autopsy It turnurns out was real, but was just really bad and didn't address anything real? did not address what I would argue were key issues affecting the campaign Biden's decision to run again, his age the lack of a primary And Israel, Palestine. Yeah That and honestly, people like to choose their candidate in a democracy, reallyally And this entire thing reallyally is very frustrating because Who knows when A nonsis male will be the candidate again afterfter that. M. Yeah I mean at this point. I think anyone who can address Serious economic as well as these moral issues read like imperialism and the U.S military. It's going to serve a better a better chance. Yeah because that is the situation we have we have found ourselves in The Democratic national Committee It's a bumber This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade pllatinum pllus, powered by two times the cleaning power of dawn, Cascade pllatinum plus doesn't just remove one hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes It cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. 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Sip your way to better skin health with vital proteins collagen sparkling water twenty percent off your next order at Vitalproteins. com with proo code Laskjaristus twenty at checkout. We'll be right back. Thank you again to our sponsor, Vital Proteins Hello everyone, and welcome to Itit Happ Here. My name is Dan Al Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics, and today I'm joined by Dror Nagar Razavi. She is a political anthropologist at the I'm going get this right. Musavar Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University. and her work is on the role of think tanks in shaping U. S. security policies towards the Middle East and Iran specifically And I've recently had the pleasure of being at a symposium with Dr. Rsavi and I thought she would be a really Welcome viewpoint for our audience. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. So I think in regards to the war in Iran There's been such a focus on the Strait of Hermz and the economic impact of that that conditions on the ground have really slipped from our radars. Like I don't see it as often and I think I'm a very well plugged in person So Can we start there? Can you tell us more about the situation and what it's like for like the average Iranian right now Yeah, thank you so much for leading with that because I do think that is absolutely missing in not only mainstream media, but in much of the policy discussions that both of us Follow closely It's very bad on the ground for ordinary Iranians on all fronts. Economically It is. very dire at the moment. Inflation is now at unbelievably high rates. The level of damage that happened to the country, the physical damage cause a lot of people to lose their jobs, if not their lives because They hit hospitals, they hit schools, they hit factories. These are places where people were So now all of those people are without a job. Cost of living again has skyrocketed People who depended on the internet somehow to do their work are also now out of a job because it's been the longest internet shutown in Iran's history at this point. So that's the economic aspect that implicates every single person inside Iran at the moment. And we're hearing that Even people can't exchange the dollars. so Things are really, really bad at this point And then you add on the layer of the number of people who have been killed by the latest count. I think I saw seventeen hundred civilians have been killed threeree point five million Iranians were displaced And this was mainly people trying to escape major city centers They went to areas that were very under resourced. and so they were also suffering from lack of water and electricity wherever they were going. Those people have now slowly been coming back to the major cities Many more thousands of people were injured or mained. And then of course The entire population has been terrorized by this war and the uncertainty of whether it's going to start again. I mean, the threats that Trump has given up until just a few hours ago was at any moment the bombings could start again And then lastly, I want to say in terms of, I touched on the infrastructure, but They hit desalination plants They hit hospitals, they hit oil depots People's quality of life right now inside Iran is pretty bad. And then you layer ono that a now even more repressive government. that has been executing people they accuse of being traitors at unbelievable rates Total down on levels we haven't seen previously. So again, short story, it's very bad inside of Iran right now Yeah, I really wanted to make sure that people got that full scope You know, we forget that there's an internet blackout. We forget that Iranians have already dealt with such a repressive crackdown right before the war started. You know, like I want people to make the connection that like Tnditions are super suuper dire You know, since you did mention that point, maybe we can elaborate a little bit How do you think the Iranian regime is using this moment. I know short term, they are utilizing it to just crack down on any dissent, but How do you think it willll be used kind of medium and long term Yeah. so, you know In our line of work, it's always hard to make predictions, but we can use past experiences. as a someomewhat of a guide here So just to remind your listeners In January, there was a major uprising of Iranians against their government and there was one of the most massive crackdowns since the nineteen eighties when there was a massacre. against political dissidents. And so going into this war, there was already One of the most brutal crackdowns happening And then what people who are much more knowledgeable about Iran's domestic politics are telling me Is that The people who are essentially replacing the leaders that were killed by U. S. Israeli strikes R more hardliner and are more aligned with the hardline factions of the IRGC or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is one branch of the military in Iran that is very, very powerful and is loyal to the suupreme leader, who is now the son of the previous Supreme leader who was killed on the first day of the war, actually And so using the last time Iran was at a war, which was in the Iran Iraq War, repression is going to get so much worse under war conditions because anyone who they don't like or who anyone who speaks out can then be made a traitor and an enemy of the Iranian people. and so they can use warfare as the grounds to essentially go even further in their oppression. And that's what a lot of human rights activists and people on the ground are worried about Yeah I also read a really interesting article I'll put in the show notes about the popular mobilization that the Iranian regime has like really fostered over, you know, many years through a variety of ways, whether it's through inserting, you know their forces in universities or through particular kinds of cultural practices around like martyrs and things like that. So like the Iranian regime is also kind of mobilizing its supporters in a way that I mean, obviously for people who like want democracy and freedom, like this is the worst case scenario We as in the United States, I shouldn't take responsibility for that at all. but neither of us should Yeah, neither really. it's not our fault. but we really have given the worst actors, a huge victory. And also to that point, if you don't mind me jumping in. Yeah, yeah, of course. It's also, you know, triggered nationalism among segments of the population. The war has made many people who were even protesting in January against the government now coming out and defending att least not the sovereignty of their country or the integrity of their country. I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. so there's all these strange now alliances forming and the government is actually playing some parts of it smartly where you'll see them Having women without hijab coming to pro government rallies and having a Lebanese woman singer's voice at their rallies, which for those of you who don't know, women are not allowed to sing as solo. Artists in Iran, they can be part of a chorus. So they they're also playing this interesting imag game where they want to also show look We can also be open and inclusive att the same time that they're executing peopleople at the highest rates since the nineteen eighties I'm gonna to have to look for that video of the Lebanese singer Yeah So we participated both of us in a symposium at Princeton, I think it was titled like The Long Arc of Fascism, very interesting set of presentations And your presentation was about the different kind of political strands that facilitated this war on Iran So I just wanted to just start off with, could you outline the argument of your presentation for our listeners Yes. what I argued in the conference, which was fantastic and I really learned so much from your presentation as well wasas the idea that this war was made possible in a sense because several different strands of fascism have come together in this moment and I called it converging fascisms just to go quickly through it because I don't want to drill on and on, but the idea is that one of the core strands has been this growing anti Muslim. sentiment that really goes across so many different fascist movements that we see, whether it's the far right in Europe, Here in the United States, Islamophobia is so central and of course the shootings at the mosque in San Diego is just the latest of a long string of violence The Hindurutva in India Anti Muslim sentiments racism is central to the fascism that we see there. And then of course in Israel, that's been a core element of their anti Palestinian racism generally, but also specifically anti Muslim racism. So that's kind of the big strand that I identified as coming together. And within that, there's an inflection of anti shhia sentiment. and there's lots of scholars who have talked about how Really the anti Muslim Project starts with the seventy nine Revolution. this like modern manifestation of it. And so it's always had this anti shia sentiment to it Inflection. Yeah. Inflection. Thankk you The second strand that I wanted to highlight was this white supremacy and Aryanism which is interesting because it actually and the far right of Iranian ors and Iranian diasporic actors in particular those that are tied to The former Shah of Iran's son, Rzapah Habi, who are really linking They're wanting to overthrow the regime in Iran to restoring Aryan nation that existed for and this is their words not mine, the Arab invasion of Islam And this is really important for the far right movement that supported this invasion was this idea that they're going to save Iran from Islam, which again, the Islamophobia, but also the racialized violence against Arabs in the region and particularly against Palestinians. There's this very strong anti Palestinian current in this movement that I'm talking about where they are actively recruing and aligning themselves with Israel in the genocide which is So horrible The third strand that I wanted to talk about was settler colonialism and nativism. I think your listeners probably know enough about this, but this is essentially the Bringing together of both the settler colonial violence that we see in Israel, the United States, Australia, etcetera, with the anti immigrant sentiment that has swept across much of the world, including in places like South Africa Then the next strand that I talk about is nostalgic paternalism I call it that. You always need a little bit of patriarchy. Right? rightight? Yeah, yeah. And it's basically like the people who call Trump Daddy, you know, this idea that We need some strong man in our lives. And like Egyptians had this with Cisi, you know, this idea that we just need this strong man to guide us forward is so dominant in a lot of these fascist groups. Modi is somebody's, you know, paternal figure. And again, Ralai this the self proclaimed leader of the Iranian opppposition and exile has numerous times called himself the father of the Iranian people and he's used really cringe language around how Iran is this abused woman and he's going to come in and save it. completely out of touch with this amazing feminist movement that came out of Iran organically In twenty twenty two called the Woman Life Freedom Movement, he's put himself in direct opposition. against that movement, which is wild to think about. And then the last kind of fascist strand that I identified. and this really also links to Naomi Klein's work, who was also at the conference Are these techno fascists that's like the palanteers, the anthropic dystopian future that a lot of these techno bros want to impose on the world, that is very anti human And so all of these strands come together at this very particular moment to justify and advance a war that some actors have wanted for a long time. And I say that it's kind of the blending of these at this particular moment that enabled this war Yeah, I think the convergence a is an apt description And yet, especially the patriarchal stuff like cringees the right word. like It's extremely cringe but also, you know dangerous that all of these things are coming Coming together to facilitate this kind of violence and then the war in Iran is facilitating the expansion of fascism here and vice versa. I wanted to just kind of get your opinion of something I read this article by Mustafa Byumi in The Guardian. about How in the United States, what actually drives Islamophobia is at its root anti Palestinian racism. I mean, and you certainly, you know, in your presentation talked about that strand as well In the Iranian context, is the anti Palestinian racism kind of tangential to the kind of broader racialized Islamophobia Yeah, how would you see that Yeah, no. I agree to a large extent to what Biomi is saying, I think Anti Palestinian racism is central to how the opposition in Iran views itself. This hasn't been helped by the fact that the Iranian government, the current Iranian government has been at least materially and ideologically one of the biggest supporters of Palestinian liberation and has used the issue As many other dictators in the region have, by the way. have used the issue to actually suppress and oppress their own people And so for a long time, there was a sentiment inside Iran that the Iranian government is sending its resources, sending its weapon making Iran an isolated rogue state. On behalf of the Palestinians, while we, the Iranian people suffer And so this created this People the people. tension We're anti Palestinian Sentiment grew inside Iran. and outside Iran, obviously, in these fascist movements. And then that feeds back into the Islamophobia this idea that we have nothing in common with the Palestinians because they're part of a religion that has also oppressed us or a part of a ethnic group that has oppressed us So it's this feedback loop. That's pretty horrible. Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's good that we outlin kind of the different mechanisms there. And it's really, you know, it's it's so unfortunate because like You see polling of like Palestinians and Palestinians were very much against what the Iranian regime did in Syria, for example. Yeah. But like you said, there's a weaponization of these These different causes, just like the United States weaponizes the womoman lifeife Freedom movement, you know, every regime uses things for its benefit just to add like a slightly hopeful note is that I actually think the experience of this war has actually made more thoughtful Iranians more of themselves now in the struggle of Palestinians. Interesting because they are actually seeing the hollowowness and hypocrisy of what the U. S and Israel say and do. And so now I think There's been a little bit of a shift back in the direction of solidarity with the Palestinians. Oh that's excellent to hear You know, we could talk about this all day. likeike there's such a disconnect between diasporas and what happens on the ground and this is not specific to the Iranians, but I imagine even if you lean that way, but you're in Iran being bombed by Israel That's going to change your opinion in a way that like, if you're in Los Angeles waving the Israeli flag, it's a little bit different. Absolutely. There's kind of stakes there Yeah yeah, you're like, who's the one dropping the bombs on? Exactly. Yeah. ye. That is actually a very hopeful note before I turn it into a less hopeful one So your research is on, as I said earlier, kind of the think tank landscape in DC. I remember, by the way, finding out about you back in the heydays of Twitter and being like, somebody's studying think tanks. L that's so cool. That's so clever. Like, yes, we should be studying them in this way. And basically like your research is like the types of knowledge and the sources of knowledge that become hegemonic in these spaces And then that of course, impact American policy. So Could you I know this is kind of a hard to ask, but could you tell us like some basic findings of your research the past couple of years? Yeah, so thanks for that setup because I actually have a book coming out on this and it's called The Geopolitics of Expertise And that's one of the central findings of the book is that This think tank landscape needs to be understood as a transnational space. That's one of the key findings in which A lot of actors and stakeholders, especially from the Middle East or Swana region are invested in shaping the narrative from the inside out And this is something that I think traditional models of understanding US empire, for example failed in understanding, which is that You know, when you have Arab Gulf states or Turkey or Morocco or Israel invested in ensuring the debate in Washington is shaped in a particular way that meets their interest, which is not always aligned with the U.S They're gonna to throw millions of dollars into think tanks to essentially shape what I call the common sense on any number of issues And so they are co constructing the imperial imagination And this is one of the key findings. And then when it comes to Iran in particular paradoxically want to ensure that Iran remains an unknowable enemy That's the other key piece of the book, which just that this constructed unknowability is key to ensuring that the U. S. maintains a posture of confrontation with Iran And that means that you want to have this enemy that you can never fully figure out or this enemy that's always unpredictable, this enemy that never follows the rules because if you had predictable rational Enemy You'd eventually have to make some type of peace with them because that's actually the rational course of action. But when you have weapons manufacturers, when you have foreign governments, when you have all kinds of interests shaping the debate in Washington, you don't actually do what's quote unquote, the rational. policy for U. S. national security interests as narrowly defined. So sorry if that was too rambly of an explanation of the book. No, not at all I mean, it's interesting because we come at it from different disciplines. know I'm a political scientist and in the interternational relations landscape, there was Well, first and foremost, like American empire is not really recognized in American political science. But there was this argument that percolated and like I remember going to grad school and learning this is that like The United States is hegemonic and we can like study hierarchy. and there have been political scientists who have studied like global hierarchies, but it's a liberal hegemon and it can't be considered an empire because it does provide these voice opportunities for our subordinates, essentially, to come and shape policy.eresting. And so it's an interesting not a flip on its head, but it's like a kind of a nuancing of that argument here is like Yeah, they are here and they are shaping policy and shaping kind of US empire, which I think you know poses some questions about like the agency of these actors, of course, but also like what is the broader project of US Empire? Like we don't need to think of it all the timees like kind of top down in a way. Exactly. There's lots of actors implicated or coherent or right or right Or, you know, even the Iran warar is a clear example, right? There's been winners and losers as people in DC like to say, of this war. Oil companies are reaping the greatest profits of like the last decade because of this war becausecause of the shortages coming through the Strait of Hormmz Weapons manufacturers are doing really well right now. Private equity and AI are doing well But the damages that we are now seeing coming out of the production side across the Gulf, including inside Iran is going to have very long term detrimental effects for all of these same industries paradoxically, but in the short term. They're winning. Meanwhile, everybody else is losing. food prices are going up Gas prices are going up. I have a friend who works in research with helium. There's no helium in the world right now. So if you want to go get an MRI, good luck. because there's not much healing. Most of it comes out of this one facility in Qatar And I was just reading an article about how Qatar has lost so many billions of dollars as a result of this war, as a result of the attacks on some of its facilities. And it's like Doha has a ghost town. And I used to live in Doha and for anybody who has, you know, been there or whatever, I mean Doha like at its best is a ghost town. Like often it is a ghost downwn if it's not like a busy season. So like What even does it mean that these places, I can't even fathom what's going to happen long term given the impact of this war? And that was was just sixty days of war. Right. Yeah. So we don't knows like in such a short amount of time, the amount of damage it caused is unbelievable Yeah. Like you said, it's good to start to disentangle who's Who is benefitting? In service of which actors here Are we attacking Iran? Yeah. And this is like the most corrupt administration imaginable. It really is like kind of breathtaking the level of corruption. So yeah, hopefully you know, historians and political scientists and political anthropologists will have years and years of research to study this moment All right, well is there anything else you think people should keep an eye on when it comes to the situation in Iran Moving forward, I think we need to be much more critical about who is shaping the narrative on Iran moving forward A lot of the figures who are now disavowing the war in these Th tanks and saying, you know, war was such a bad idea, Trp fumbled it and this was a terrible idea had essentially been, I say, hedging for this war for a long time which is that By constructing Iran as this unknowable enemy, you can't negotiate with an enemy that you can never predict You can never negotiate with an enemy that lies about everything. These are the narratives that these Iran experts have been advancing for years And now we're expected to go and turn back to that same group to get us out of this mess. And that's what I would urge all of the listeners is be much more critical about who is analyzing Iran in such a moment L at who they work for, look at what types of analysis they've done in the past. How do they access Iran How do they know what they know about Iran It sometimes takes five extra minutes when you're reading a New York Times piece to just go through and highlight who they're quoting as experts, for example. and New York Times has all kinds of problems, but pick whatever Wall Street journal foreign affairs, foreign policy, and just to five minutes of due diligence on who that peieace is citing as an expert on Iran. And that's my key takeaway for people Yeah That's such a good takeaway. I mean, I think there's so many aspects of our politics in which people are trying to convince us The same people who got us into these messes are are like all we have. like Democratic Party operatives that like led us to Trump Eact are the ones like now pretending they really dislike the genocide in Gaza and whatever. And it's the same thing. These Iranian experts, they're not even Iranian sometimes. it's just Iran experts claiming expertise and it's like the way that you have shaped this discussion is why we're at this point So yeah, that's a very Good takeaway. I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Nagar. This has been really enriching. Thank you so much, Dana. I will put all of the things we talked about in the show notes. Does your book have a publication date yet? Nobody I signed the contract, so good, good. So people be on the lookout. But it'll be with Stanford University Press Yeah, excellent, excellent. So I will make sure to note that and flag that. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. off course This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum pllus. Powered by two times the cleaning power of Dawn, Cascade Platinum pllus doesn't just remove one hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes, it cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the I Heart radio app Everywhere, podcasts are heard Cash flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to two hundred thousand dollars right when you need it, cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat with flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment. Get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at onDeck dot com Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OndDC or Celtic Bank. OndDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amount subject to lender approval. It's America's two hundred fiftieth, but you deserve some presence too. 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With clean ingredients, refreshing flavor, and research supported benefits, they offer a balanced option for anyone looking to support their skin health in a convenient, enjoyable way. Sip your way to better skin health with vital protins collagen and sparkling twenty percent off your next order at Vitalproteins. com with pro code Laskjistus twenty at checkout. We'll be right back. Thank you again to our sponsor, Vital Proteins. Welcome back to executive Dysfunction happen here. No, Is that all right, Garrison? I thought we were that was pretty close. There's another like show or column called executive Dysfunction now Oh is there? Yep. Sons of bitches. They stole it from us. That covers like legal issues relating to the Trump administration So Okay, well that brings us neatly into our first or. did it? This is could happen here Executive Disordder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis, today join. by James Stout, Robert Evans, Mia Wong and Sophie Lichterman were covering the week of may twenty seventh to june third Let's talk about intellectual property lawsuits. Let's right off the bat. Anyone. whoo is in any capacity using ED or unnotice It iss going to be us against the Viagra people I'm talking today about Patagonia, the brand suing Tigonia The drag queen. Goddamit, this is Goddamn. Yeah, I've successfully walked you into my little world. This is a situation very reminiscent of people remember the North Faces lawsuit against the South But Yeah. I would argue it's actually kind of different, but okay, I get what you're saying. The South L lawsuit was funny. If people aren' familiar. It's really funny bound to arbitration, they arbitrated this settled, and then the guy turned around and launched the butt face weeks later and they sued him again. That was a beautiful case of somebody trying to troll a company and also like trolling the concept of like intellectual property laws. in like a really creative way, which is different from what's happening, yeah. Yes. What is happening here is that Win Wiley, whose drag persona is Patty Gonia, right There was a lot of fundraising for outdoors causes, environmental causes, public lands, that kind of thing. has attempted to trademark their use of paty Gonia for clothing Patagonio is suing Wiley to protect its trademark on its logo because some of the logos that Patagonia has used are very obviously like they're mirrored Patagonia logos. Yeah, she's trying to get a trademark for her Patagonia logo, which is just Patagonia instead of Patagonia in the company logo for Patagonia I'm sure she tried to tried to trademark like the it's a Sarah Fitzroy, right? Like it's escape orr if she just tried to trademark Patigonia? It looked like I'll double check that right now. Yeah, because I think what she has offered as a settlement right now is to stop using the logo but using that name. Yeah, the second is whether Patagonia should be entitled to trademark registration. and at least they have a picture in the trademark application of her Patagonia logo. Yeah,ah, and they've claimed it's confusingly similar Yeah And you made a good point when we were talking about this earlier, James that I hadn't thought of because you are better minded than I am in this way, which is that it because my initial thinking on this was like when I saw that she was trying to trademark just like her version of the Patagonia logo was like, well, you just took their logo and put your name on. Like that is fucked up. But you pointed out, well, Patagonia's logo includes this like actual mountain range that she includes. And Patagonia doesn't really have the right to trademark the silhouette of a mountain range It is a little more nuanced than I thought initially. Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of things at stake here that people perhaps don't understand. One, like in a moral level, not a legal one, folks, because But yeah, morally, I think we should be asking the question is it okay for a company that grosses one point four billionars a year to own the rights to a skyline Like I think we should be asking that. I think also like people maybe should look a little bit deeper into I've written about this bunch of a bunch of outlets,. like Patagonia has millions of dollars for military contracts that they don't like to talk about and they did through a different company called Lost Arow. And like people just need to stop seeing a giant company like this as woke that like the companies ain't going to save us a sustainable shorts aren't going to save us like Buying a fancy fleece is not the way that you're going to make the better world that you want to live in That's my take I feel like Pattty was kind of poking the bear here hundred percent like in a massive way, really? Yeah Yeah ye, yeah no clearly she knew what she was going for here. Yeah. And Patagony clearly doesn't want to be fighting this lawsuit. Where are you seeing this stuff? Is this like a blue sky d story? Where are you seeing this? No, this is like a big this is I came into it like I saw it at first on Reddit, but it's also just been pushed into my news feeed. Like I've never heard different article. Its it's a big story right now Unfortunately I followed her, just like generineally been aware of her for probably six or seven years. six seven. The New York Times has a feature that's just on this right now It's a sizable tale. Interesting I did note that most of her murch is sold out, so the the string effect it's in full source here. Yeah. Yeah. like if you wanted to find a way to sell as many Patty Gonia stickers that look like the Patagonia logo as possible. You would sue her. This is the way to do it Yeah, they're doinging out for one dollar plus legal fees. People don't seem to have grasped That doesn't mean that all that is at stake is a bug here. the feesA will be very substantial Yes, ye Although the fees will be substantial, that said This is clearly a fight Patty wanted to have. Yeah. So like I am not in a situation where like I feel particularly angry or disturbed about this lawsuit. Like this is something that any company would have done some version of this in response It's not good that Pentagon is doing this. It's just what any corporation would do that has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. And that shouldn't change your opinion of Patagonia from what it was previously, but your opinion of Patagonia should never have been that it's like an altruistic entity, right? Yeah, two percent of its shares are held by its purpose trust, which are all the voted shares and ninety eight percent of its shares are held by the Holdfast Coective, which is a five hundred one C four So like I think people see that as like, you know they'd like to say the Earth is our only shareholder. but like the purpose trust is, as you say, Robert duty bound to make a profit to give to the C four This is not the same thing as like activism It's different. It's a company. It's a company that has to make profit. Like you said, Robert, and I think people need to grasp that Yes. And if they I mean, literally if they were not if they were to not fight what she's doing here. like this could cause serious issues for you. Yeah Yeah. I think someone tried to put their logo on a gun. I heard I couldn't find reporting on this, but a a couple of people have mentioned it to me. and obviously they'd sued about that and they got you know, so they didn't if they hadn't done this one, they couldn't do that. Right. And again, this should not, I'm not you shouldn't be like, well, Patagonia' in the right But also you shouldn't be like, wow, I've completely changed my opinion about this company. you know? Yeah, yeah It's just they're doing what they do. Yeah I think the underlying structural thing here and something we've talked about on this show at some length is just the underlying violence of the intellectual property system like irrespective of this case, this is a Yeah kindind of silly case of it, but you know, like there are a lot of people in the world who are dead right now because a bunch of a bunch of corporations get to hold like ens on vaccines for example. Yeah. insulin This has always been an extremely violent regime that is enforced by quite like one of the most powerful international bodies that has ever existed and Yeah, if you want to hear more about this, a friend of the show, Vicki Astraweild released a book called The the Extended Universe about how Disney pioneered a whole bunch of this Yeah, you should read about because the entire system is just pure violence and always has been Yeah, we have some episodes from years ago that I made about drug IP and evergreening as well. Y. that's a very good point, man. Moving on, we learned this week that the F fifteen E pilot who was shot down over Iran in April had been shot down the week before over Kuwait. What Hrible horrible week Yeah' fit ro. think you've had a bad week at work This person is joining just the list of all timers, like that guy who got nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's that guy who got sunk on four consecutive ships. Is there such thing as a reverse ace? Like if this guy gets shot down three more times is he like an anti? if he gets shot down three more times, he ain't going to be able to reach the controls of the plane. Like he's already compressed his spine so much Yeah, I'm surprised. I didn't think they would let them I didn't think period after getting shot down and ejecting, you would be allowed to fly a plane at all. likeike ye quickly No, I was not aware that there was a problem My understanding is you're not normally supposed to. L I don't think this is how normally things would be done, which kind of suggests that there was they didn't have enough pilots. Yeah, right. It's kind of remarkable that they were able to get him another fifteen quickly, I guess. But yeah, yeah, he probably not fly any more planes for a while I would imagine not. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Maybe. Maybe the fifteen's are free I found Exact Yeah, sounds like he's just feeding at fifteen. can't he's like He must Yeah, the desert gods demand an F fifteen sacrifice every six days Marco Rubio in the House has claimed that Africanas, we spoke about this last week right they're raising the cap to admit Africanas as refugees. Africana should be admitted and others not because they quote have a high likelihood of assimilation we have gauged that there is real interest from a unique subset who would be interested to coming in the United States and who we assess have a high likelihood of rapid assimilation and success in our society, and hence this program was created. That's not a program that's going to exist in perpetuity. It's a program that's designed to the fact that we are seeing the demand We are seeing applications from South Africa, people willing to enter the United States. and we think this is a group of potential refugees.fan Allies are refugees. They have been vetted. eleven hundred versus this new seventeen thousand. But it's more than just veting We're also trying to determine, again, is the immigration policy of the United States, like everything we do has to be geared by the national interest. And it is in our national interest if we are allowing people in our country be people that can quickly assimilate into society and be successful. Why can't they assimilate into society? background into their centers in my district in Qeen. they have assimilated and contribute and pay taxes. Yeah, but we've already assumed a lot of Afghan refugees. As you said, you have them in your district. We've already assumed a large number in the past The point is that the general policy has been to limit the entry of refugees from all over the world and then to create the special track because of a unique circumstance in the short term of a high demand from a number of immigrants that we have determined if they pass the vetting and the checking, would very quickly assimilate and contribute to our society I think it's really interesting. It's one of the more Leah. Ellucidations is the way they see immigration that we've had. Yeah. likeike you said, it's not about vetting. It's not about background checks. It's specifically about people who can quote unquote assimilate I wonder what the economic strata of the Africaners getting refugee status are. I mean, it's there in terms of the way the Ruby is looking at it, their economic strout is white Which yeah. Well, wonder I wonder where their actual economic strata is that is an interesting aspect. Like South Africa iss a place where that maps on very, very cleanly. Yeah ways likeike that's I'm saying. Like it's like's I'm saying Yeah definitely a lot. Yeah. And I think just having the means to apply for this, Yeahah, I mean, that's Carly like Rubyo are saying that he's doing this because there is a demand. Let me tell you there is a demand all over the world. Like I have seen demand to live in the United States every continent on the planet apart from the ones that are covered in ice This is as clear as you're going to get to them saying these folks are white they're coming to America and we're going lock out the folks who are not. L I thought it was very interesting to see him go right up to that line Next, I have Medicaid work requirements, work, study of volunteering requirements of eighty hours a month will be imposed by the first of January for the forty states who expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act is according to a notice published today in the federal reggister today being Wednesday. This will impact millions of Americans and the speed at which this is being done will also be very hard for state bureaucracies to keep up with, right? We have less than six months for a massive change and like The requirement for states to monitor this It's going to be very difficult for them to retain the stability and pivot to this and that's going to impact people whether or not they are working Which sucks This is something I'd like particularly impacts trans people because there are a shit ton of trans people on Medicaid and A lot of those people are also disabled and that's 's been an absolute nightmare for them. If you are in a position where you can hire someone for I think the worker what's the word? It' like thirty hours a week? I think is the requirement? eightighty hours a month. Is it eighty hours a twenty is a week Yeah, like if you're in a position to just hire someone for that, you should do it because that's the difference between these people Having food and not having food Yeah, this is a potential this will kill people. Yeah. L just just the fuck ups in the bureaucracy even if people are able to find the work or volunteer or study or whatever. Yeah the delays that that will cause will kill people This is also a thing by the way that some unions have historically done. L WWW has done this, which is like get like getting people positions to be able to do volunteering Yeah And if that's the thing you can do, you should do this because this is a Unfathomable humanitarian crisis Yeah for a bunch of the most vulnerable people in the U.S Yeah real bad. Yeah, it's not good at all. I think there's a good point Mia that like if you're in a place to help people coordinate their volunteering and document that, like that was a good that's a good thing to start thinking about You ask you got any small things few more small things. Trump signed an executive order to expand AI cybersecurity capabilities and protections And last Friday Telsey Gabbard resigned as director of National intntelligence. citing her husband's recent cancer diagnosis Trump has selected Bill Pulty, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as acting director of National intntelligence Polte is a Tumpoyist with no intelligence background And even Republican senators don't seem too keen on this choice Senate, Majority Leer John Thune told reporters, quote Well We don't need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals there If he's somebody, they wanted that position permanently, he's got As you know, a lengthy road ahead of him. Catch up with the war in Iran Iran this week hit a commercial vessel with an anti ship cruise missile in the Persian Gulf as well as firing at U S. facilities and hitting the international airport in Kuwait where they killed at least One person there This comes as talks are continuing to fail to reach a resolution, at least in part because Israel refuses to stop attacking Lebanon and committing war crimes Axios is reporting that Trump said in a call to Netanyahu, quote, You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Ebody hates Israel because of this. Sure In recent days, the IDF has explicitly threatened Beirut and further expanded his ground campaign Again, right this war is now becoming very much a regional thing, has been a regional thing since it started, But like the peace deal is also a regional thing and the fact that Israel refuses to do anything other than exactly what it wants, which seems to be Killing more and more people in neighboring countries means that it's going to be very hard for this water to countter an end, which is going to have long term economic consequences for the whole world NBC has also reported talking of the whole world It was a Chinese man pad that shot down that F fifteen E that's for the second time in April that such equipment along with long range radar was possibly supplied to Iran in the early days of the conflict by China. Obviously this makes any kind of detunt with the US and China difficult, right? It's not clear if partular actual ManPads manan portable air deffense system for people who aren't familiar. if the particular service to MSL used had arrived recently or have been in stockpiles for some time. appears that China at least right before or early on in the conflict was perhaps supplying some air defenses to Iran mayaybe you can explain just a little bit about how The bombing campaign has been relatively unsuccessful in its objectives in many ways Let's go on a break and then we can talk about the California elections and the Supreme Court Okay Elections in California. Why is California like that What is going on over there? It's because I left. It's my fault. Yeah. We' grieving, Sophie. That was the last thing holding it together there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry Let's start with the LA Mayoral race I wantanna talk about it. It's my duty to talk about this I would like to talk a bit about Spencer Pratt. Wh may may be advancing. Who may be advaning that's what I'm saying at time of recording, which is Wednesday, june third at around three thirty PM Pacific Tim, Pratt is currently in second place with thirty percent of the votes Bass is at thirty five percent and has already been guaranteed to move forward. And Nithia Raman is in third with twenty two percent. And like I said, there's sixty percent of the votes counted So why the fuck is Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV cast member? I'm not even gonna to give him star. running for mayor. grew up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and lived there until the fires happened and he and his parents' houses were're unfortunately burned down. And he started making videos on TikTok, was getting a lot of attention for it and decided that it was his destiny to, it was according to his website, his mission to run for mayor. H his own campaign website Prat is a media entrepreneur questestionable outspoken advocate depends on who you're talking about and an emerging political leader. He does have a political science degree from USC. I will say that But he does claim to be Karen Bass's worst nightmare Now, if you're not a millennial who had television in the late two thousands, you' probably unaware of how unhinged Spencer Pratt is Here are some highlights. Listeners, we apologize for what Sophie's about to make you experience. This is a lot of audio, Sophie We need all of it Oh gosh Oh no, He's doing Garrison just a copyright regry We're just do it, justust do it For me, that was the best. like I was proud of myself for not doing what I wanted to do to you, becausecause what I wanted to do and say to you, dear I didn't because I was praying Im praying like I do every day to not say the things that I wantna say to you, to your mom. No I'm not.'s. Do you see how I'm not saying them? Yeah. I'm very proud of myself L like your heads about explode.. I am sorry if I disrespected you, but I'm very emotional these days. Ver So I say things that I feel I was the one that wanted to kill anybody that would ever talk like that about my sister, and I still would But that goes for my mom too. And as a family, that's how we all should be. Well, I didn't say anything negative about your mom. Your mom is just the vagina that made Heidi come ono Eth. Your mom is not Jesus or God or the creator. So why can't I say that? So why can't I say that? Why can't I say that No it's not It's my opinion. It's my opinion Hey, preacher, preacher. This isn't Bible study. earth preaching. No one's preaching. No one's preaching. No one's preaching here. Itaches R. You're not her sister, you're not her friend. You're a liar. walk away from these lies ' she's gonna sit here and keep lying to you. You're the biggest poser in this town. You know what you're gonna burn for. You're gonna burn. I' I I know I know. She's sensor. Go back to a real estate job. you liar. Yeah, that was Spencer talking to his sister in law about his mother in law. all this is fake. This is all acting. like this I don't this this doesn't move me at all. Half of this is acting, half of this is not acting. Yeah. Yes is that is is. Here he is talking to his own sister. Okay I don't know. We've reallyready cataloged this shit I'm gonna to leave, but I't to say hi How are you guys? Good, how are you Excellent, how are you Wh win, win, when w. What are you crying about seventy? I don't you crying about that That's why you're not in my life in crazy bitch. 'cause you come do barbecues and just start crying. I was just enjoying myself and my wife. and I get crying sisters in front of me. She just wanted to say hi. But that gets us crying away. What the fuck do I need to do to you He used to ignnoy me at the party much What just happened? We're over having a little conversation and then all of a sudden I got people storming out of here. I't do right now. I know it's your brother, but she's off his rocker. I don't know what's out of it. Here I'm talking about my little sister who's not relevant to my life. Oh God. Oh, hey, I like to fade out And to say just to say she has told people not to vote for her brother in modern times. J to say shacking shacking stuff. Yeah. He seems like he's an even tempered guy. Yeah, one last slip, just becausell I never want to talk about him again. So I''s so deep on. I am the managing executive producer of this podcast. Let me have this Thank you. He yelled at me very gnarly. I surrounded somebody's yelled in my face for three years. I'm overry it. I don't wan to hear anything other somethingbody Youll in my face, son. Walked away from me before we have a problem Pe don't know how dangerous I am. Like I just really had to like hold myself smashing his head off, you know This is like All right, so this is so this is like if like Cavicular like ran for office in like ten years. Yeah twenty maybe Yeah twenty years. Yeah. Yeah Yeah. And and you know, it's a reality TV show.'re there's parts of it that are scripted, There's parts of it that are enhanced, There's parts of it, but you can't you can't fake that fucking vein popping out of his head A lot of it's scripted, but you don't get cast, so to speak to be that kind of character if you're not already a giant asshole. R? I mean, yeah, it's in some ways less explicitly scripted than like WWE. But you fall into certain roles because that's what you are getting paid to. that is your job is contingent on performing this kind of real not real thing. And I honestly, you know, like the sort of like like IOL streamer thing is a very similar version of that for the contemporary age. And I think so it really there was there was one specific like like line there that really reminded me of like one of one of Clavic Killular' like on camera meltds. Im like, oh, this is really just What if you had a guy like that just run for office Yeah for like the mayor of whatever city in like twenty years. Yeahah. Yeah. Well, I want to talk a little about his campaign style. He shared this video on X the Ething app And it got millions and millions of views with people saying it's the best campaign video of all time. And so we're gonna play it for you now. No This is more of him than I've ever seen This is the Batman wand. I haven't seen this to be cle. He did not make this video. He did not make this. Hes shared it and he he's big on the AI sharing video trend. Yes. His website is filled with it. Yeah. There have been a lot of AI videos in the LA race this time. There's been a lot of these LA election like Batman videos. Yes. Let's I guess let's watch this one. sureure until until we get bored with it. yeah Wait, hang on. just break that down. Yeah. I think this makes sense to watch a little bit then pause talk. Yeah. Yeah, we have to explain. firstirst, we start with the entire Hollywood sign of Flame this I do you see It's these these goons dressed in all black tactical gear with the whitec that says DSA, which is one of the best things I've ever seen. my favorite part about this video. Yes, the paramilitary DSA forceces in Los Angeles, S then it goes into the sort of Dark Knight rises like courtroom Yeah Karen Bass in thele except Karen Bass has Joker makeup. And Kamala Harris is, I think drinking alcohol on one side and that's. Oh yeah she's like straight from the buddle too. is I'll say too, I think there's a little bit of district fucking hunger games The hunger games. Yeah the hunger games capital in that design too anyway. Yeah. and Gavin Newsom's in like in, you know, like yeah, aristocratic garb. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's Gavin. Okay Thankking you There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools. My children aren't safe Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy. right Wow. Wow. I I know Holy shit. Holy shit. I'm fascinated by what we've got. amazing. James, have you not seen this before? Absolutely not No I haven't seen this either. I shared this video in our work chat like Like a month and a half. Yeah, no shit I have seen it. Oh God. I didn't watch it. I gotta control my exposure to this shit. It's made me very angry. So we now have a marionette of like a Latina. L a Ramen Okay God. Yeah, that makes sense. there's like DSA people DSA thugs and tactical gear like put Yeah they throw the woman on the ground who's complaining about, yeah, the homeless drug addicts. Yeah. I think we're good. it's all that kind of. It's like it's Yeah whatever. there's like a fake Batman scene. they asked for Spencer Spencer in a fake Batman costume, blah blah, blah Yeah, I mean Spencer Pratt is Batman. That's what that's Spencer Pratt is Batman. Yes You know, that's the kind of stuff these's sharing and, you know, one of the biggest things he's run on is that his house was burned down and he was didn't have a place to live and he claimed that he was living in a trailer on the property where his house used to be. And then it turned out that he was actually not staying in that trailer, but he was staying at the hotel Bel Aire, which is one of the nicest hotels in Los Angeles. Yeah. Oh yeah. bet And And in response to that, he made this video st y all the. 's a ro.. I'll begin the prrince of a town called Velaire Wow. Oh God. Oh I don't want to G me get no No. Millions of views, millions of views and and this like weird rogue, no no qualification political candidate thing is working People I mean we need a change. And part of the BBC in terms of fundraising during the race of Prat has blown away the other two And he raised two point seven million dollars between april nineteenth and may sixteenth. That's nearly ten times what Bass, a long time politician raised in the same period and approximately seven times what Nithio Raman raised I mean, no one likes Bast, right? It's the other thing, right? The Democrats have like doubled down on doing exactly the same shit they've been doing for decades across California. Yeah, it's this like feckless moderate liberalism. Yeah, like castoral libs will be how I describe the Democrats. Yeah. and just to say like Nithia Ram did enter the race late and she is , far left from Karen Bass. so we're seeing that. But the thing that's really interesting to me about this is There's nine point six nine million people in LA County and You know, I'm comparing it to what I think will probably be about what it'll be for twenty twenty six. But in twenty twenty two, you know, Karen Bask got two hundred seventy eight thousand votes. Rick Carusso only got two hundred thirty two thousand votes And Kevin D Leone only got fifty thousand votes Out of nine point six nine million people, that's the amount of people that actually voted in the primary in twenty twenty two And and it's looking to be very similar for twenty twenty six. Yeah, maybe even a little bit lower. I mean I agree. I think it might be a little bit lower. Not only has one hundred fifty thousand votes, but he's in second place He's in second place. Yeah. Again, this is interesting because you're seeing higher than and a lot of places higher than average turnout And I think part of why is just because most people voting know that like both the California Mor and gubernatorial elections, the likeliest outcome is like someone who isn't The worst possible choice but isn't going to like make things better. Like LA's not going to have a good mayare Most people are fairly confident of that. And so there's just not a lot of 's not I don't think people are very motivated because they feel like what the fuck is the point of caring about Sure this, you know. And I don't I'm not saying that's the right way to look at it. I'm just saying that that's what I think is part of what's going on here. Yeah, like I know like just from the discourse around San Diego, like like people they're tired of being shamed into vote for like some mediocres candidate who will just give all their money to the cops like the last five mayors have done. Yeah, We're going to keep seeing these kind of candidates. It's going to become a regular thing. We even have, you know, Jersey Shore star, Mike the situation, Sarreantino saying he's thinking about running for a New Jersey governor I hate this trend. This trend sucks and in the words of Lauren Conrad, he's a sucky person. He's a sucky person. I hate Spencer. I'm never gonna like Spencer. Please don't make him your mayor Los Angeles. Do better. He's awful. He's horrific. He hates unhoused people Terrible person. No, bad. Yeah shame. I'm done I hope to never have to talk about this person ever again Yeah. In case people don't know that two top winners of the LA Mayor roll primary advance to runoff So Bass is going to be there. She is she is in the lead And right now this is between Pratt and Ramon and Prat Lee the second place has been sliding as more and more votes come in. as of Wednesday afternoon. He's still in second. As for goovernor, Yeah Deve Hilton, Republican is in the number one spot with three almost one point four million votes as of Wednesday afternoon Sarah is in number two twenty five percent of the vote. Tom Steyer is in number three with almost twenty percent of the vote And this is about fifty five percent of the vote in Visero is a former Biden cabinet member Health and Human Services seecretary. Yeah. So more of kind of moderate liberaly Steyer, the more progressive candidate, but it seems because he is a billionaire, that did in some ways affect like enthusiasm to vote for him on that have Democratic side. Yeah There's another Republican candidate who's in fourth place with over half a million votes. But again, the amount of votes that are actually happening compared to the amount of people Insane It's so low. It's really bad. There's a massive field of candidates, but no one really captured the imagination of people here. No one was enthusiastic for this I guess I can cover a couple of small San Diego things quickly. Saniego Masure A. Measure A was a tax on second homes defined as unoccupied for the majority of the year. You tear? Yeah, it it looks like it's goinging the nation. Oh, it's not super sorry,'s not Yeah. Unfortunately not, like it's I mean, there is nothing that unites San Diegans more than hating tourists, but I think you have this interesting alliance of like boomer homeowners thinking this will mess with their property prices and generally not wanting to pay taxes. Yeah. And people who understand that any money we give to our city is just going to go directly to the copbs. Where do you get that idea from that that is a sentiment among the people who voted for this demonstrated anywhere? Yeah, like if you go if you look on social media, right like this say San Diego, nexte door, Reddit, etcetera, Red and then from meetings like We've had discussions within unions and'm part of like So if you look at what our city is doing right now, it's slashing the arts budget, it's slashing the parks budget. Yeah. It's slashing everything apart from the police budget, which is continuing to increase, right? Most notably in San Diego, they have started to try and charge for parking at the park and at the beach. and on major thorfares, which like Charging San Diegans to go to the beach is the most radicalizing thing that any politician could ever do incredibly stupid as a revenue generating measure. like people have People have vandalized parking machines in very busouhy neighborhoods because this is just like so offensive to people And I think there's like just a growing G diss with a mayor and then like the idea that giving them any more money would result in better outcomes for people just as't kind of fly anymore, if that makes sense. L they They've done all these revenue generating measures. It's like a loss in faith that any revenue will actually just go towards their like standentard liing. Our city spent, I think one hundred million do on a building filled with asbestos, which is worth less money than the land would be if the building wasn't on it And from years and years tried to kind of play political football with the fact that they bought a cancer tower. like ye There's a reason that San Diego is sometimes referred to as Enron by the seea. and I think folks are folks are kind of having enough of it They're reissuing under the perfect sun folks who want to read more about San Diego politics. This sort of alliance between like small capital, you know, people who don't want to pay for a tax on the second home. That alliance with people who've like lost faith in services, right? Wh who are going to oppose oppose funding because because they don't think it's actually like worthwhile. That's an interesting coalition of the modern moment. Right. Yeahah, yeah. And it's definitely like a creation of Like specifically in California, right this idea that we don't get to choose basasically we're going to get a Democrat and that Democrat will just do whatever they want. made that position very appealing to people, I guess Moving off from California, I do want to mention just briefly that Sam Fstag won the Democrat primary from Montana's House district. This is really interesting. He's a progressive union organizer He used to be a smoke jumper for a service firefighter He is one of those folks who was like I guess his entry into national politics came from Doge. Doge was cutting all these guys like GS two people, right? P People at the Forest Service, people at these big public lands management agencies who are making barely making a living. Yeah. who have struggled for a long time in places like Boseman, right where second homeowners have driven up the price significantly That sort of pathway to progressive politics is one that's very interesting to me and one I want to do a lot more reporting on. but I thought it was a positive sign to see him winning that primary Speaking of elections Before we go and break, I do want to talk about the Supreme Court, following up on a story from last week Last week, our final segment on the show. was on the five year battle in Alabama. over two different house maps or technically three, but the Republican ones were very similar. It was about these Republican drawn maps that have only one bllack majority district and a court ordered map that has two Fllow the Supreme Court's weaken of section of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year Late last month, a federal district court ruled that the GOP drawn map in Alabama intentionally discriminated based on race and diluted the voting power of black Alabamas. So they placed an injunction on that map and ordered the state to use the court approved map that was already in use in previous elections for the upcoming primaries This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, who on Tuesday night overruled the district court issuing a four page unsigned shadow docket ruling allowing Alabama to use the GOP map that eliminates a Black majority or a Black opportunity district. Supreme Court said that the state is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims. quote At this preliminary stage, the state has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the district court's injunction, unquote This is the first time the Supreme Court has evaluated another court's interpretation of their Louisiana ruling And in this case, the Supreme Court is saying The district court got it wrong In the updated rules for Section two as a part of the Louisiana ruling, in order to succeed in arguing a Section two violation Plaintiffs have to submit an alternative map must quote meet all the state's legitimate districting objectives just as well as the state's own map including, quote unquote, the state's specified political goals and any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution. Yeah. So The alternative map that plaintiffs need to submit when challenging a map based on section two has to have the same like partisan goals represented is what these updated rules in the Louisiana rulingead. And the Supreme Court said that this was not followed by the district court's ruling Section two challenges must also quote provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation And quote show that voters engage in racial block voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation. unquote. So basically The Supreme Court claimed that the district court ordered map fails to do all this by not maintaining the state's quote Constitutionally permissible community of interest on the Gulf Coast by cutting into a section of the Gulf Coast in the Black Opportunity District Also failing to avoid contests between incumbents The Spme Court said that the district court's ruling, quotequote departed from the updated standards set in the Louisiana ruling As to intentional vote dilution The district court did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith because it interpreted the state's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus, unquote Scotus is basically saying that just because it was definitively demonstrated to Alabama Republicans their map had a discriminatory effect and then they pass it anyway That itself does not qualify as intent So showing quote unquote intent is effectively impossible. like at this point because we maps can be slliced st up like crazy and they can do that based on party. And this is what the Supreme Court is saying, quote The district court also failed to follow our instructions that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns, unquote This was specifically the thing I was most curious about is if this idea that the district court wrote if this idea that showing someone that Math is doing discrimination If you show someone that and then they pass it anyway, that does that prove that that person then had intent because they knew it was discriminatory? And the Supreme Court is saying no, that does not, that does not actually show intent. That is the main way that the Supreme Court has overruled the district court ruling They also argue that the district court meddled in the state election too close to the primary even though it's actually the Supreme Court ruling that is green lighting this redistricting midway through the primary process. That's kind of the added on at the very end of the four page on Signhadow Docket ruling The macro level implication of this is that the voting Bs Act is un enforceable the parts of the Voting Rights Act that are supposed to protect from literally this specific thing This specific thing of intentionally diluting black people's votes so that they can't elect candidates. was the Jim Crow practice that this part of the Voting Rights Act was specifically designed to do and You can't do it anymore It is just the Supreme Court has decided that this part of the Voting Rights Act doesn't exist. Yeah Yeah and they've decided this because they want to like they want to do racist gerryandering so Republicans can win elections And that's, I don't know. I mean, like arguably the death of multiracial like any semblance of multiracial democracy in the U.S which is Not great. Yeah I don't know. It's it's really Really bad Yeah, I mean, it's it's what they've been working for for decades, right? It's what Yarvin's always talking about, right? It's the repealing the twenteth century, you know, Like that' that has been the goal for a very long time And they see this as one of the most important steps towards doing that Yeah, this is Pretty devastating. I think there is a way to do, I think some more in depth analysis like on this topic. that might have to be in the future. Yeah. I mean, I did a full episode on this like a couple of weeks ago I mean, specifically the way that the interpretation in the Shadow Docket ruling, how it clarifies certain things like, you know, just because Statistically, different races may vote. For different parties, that does not actually prove racially polarized voting pattern. Like there's certain things here that we can do a lot more analysis of. And like in terms of proving intent A lot of states don't even need to do like mustache twirling. I'm going to look at race maps and draw it based on race maps. They can just draw based on party affiliation And That is going to get the party the actual effect, right? Be these maps are passed by the party that's in control of the state legislature. and they want to maintain power with their party. So that's going to be the most effective way to do that. And if they just do that, then there leaves very little ground for these maps to be challenged on any sorts of racial grounds Even if there is racial discrimination as an effect, right? And this was the biggest change of the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana. It was Alito, right? who technically wrote that one? Yeah Yeah. But being like like we are in a different place. We are in a different social social place now than when the Voter Rights Act was passed And so therefore, we are going to update these rules accordingly evenven though literally, you know three years ago The Supreme Court ruling in the opposite way. in Alabama in a very similar situation. The change in those few years is very stark. and this is all goes downstream from the ruling in twenty nineteen It specifically allows partisan gerrymandering because there's no law in the United States disallowing that. So like the Supreme Court is like, cannot make a new law by saying this isn't allowed. because there's just no law on the books. So legislation wants to has laws against that then they can cannot disallow partisan gerrymanddering in the courts effectively because there's no law preventing it And it's worth keeping in mind that The specific standard in the Voting Rights Act literally says effects, which which is specifically an effects based test and not an interpretation or like not a like proving intent test And the Supreme Court was just like, no fuck you. So that that's sort of just where we are now legally is that They're just making up what they think the test should be and making everyone else follow that B Yeah. I mean three three justices did dissent in this recent ruling, Sort of our Kagan and Jackson He wrote, quote Before the court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election held under a tried and tested congressional map that protects Black Alabama's right to vote and with which all voters, election officials and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic eection held under a never before used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamans. that Alabama adopted in unabashed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this court And that will require official to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters in just days at best A Task Alabama previously represented would take months The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law I respectfully dissent We'll go on a break now and conclude with One more, one more section of the And we are that hope All right, we need to talk about a Fairly obscure bureaucratic rule change that is being rushed out by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, which is where It's the like management bureaucracy office that's currently headed by one of the guys who wrote Project twenty twenty five This change that they' proposing right now is effectively the formalization of all of the sort of doge and then sort of post doge departmental cuts of grants from the U.S. government The way this is largely being covered right now and I understand why we're going to run through that one first is that this is Eectively the death of American science because one of one of the things that This does It's like a four hundred page document One of the early sections of it is that instead of the current system where grants for scientific projects go before a peer review committee of scientists that are usually independent, And then those scientists give their recommendations to the department on whether or not this is a good use of funds and then the department executes those recommendations, right So grants, grants are determined by scientific, by a scientific peer review process. This kills that. and says that instead of the way that it has worked, which is that agencies adopt the recommendations of it, this has not been how it works Fally, like it hasn't been a legal stipulation that this is how it works, but this is just literally how All science has worked since. World War II, basically with the exception of the McCarthy era is that these independent committees do the review of the grant and the federal agencies submit the grants. Instead of that, the heads of federal agencies will appoint one person who will individually look through every single grant and approve or deny them So this is the formalization of the Doge process. This is the administration basically centralizing control of the entire scientific grant process and this actually turns out It turns out is for all grants, which we'll get to in a second But what this means is that instead of againg Like scientific peer review being the thing that decides what science gets funding It's now political appointees. And specifically Trump administration political appointees, there are a whole in this ruling, there are a whole bunch of absolutely or not theres really the proposed change There is just a bunch of just absolutely unhinged screeds about the U. S anti AIDS programs turning into woke left mobs in Africa that support like gender politics and stuff I've sound very incoherent explaining that. I swear to God, I am more coherent than actually reading out the quote. It's just it's completely unhinged weird right wing conspiracy stuff for like half of it and half of it is like extremely technical Budget change stuff in the doge stuff, this has been talking about like, you know, sexual health clinics in Like a country in Africa that's supported by the U.S. government, right? Yeah Yeah, they'reulling all these examples and then just like screaming stuff about how they're like abortion centers and you know, like doing like Gital mutilation or whatever There's been some good reporting on this by Elizabeth Jenxi, who used to do like program reviews for the NIH before A lot of things, including this administration took over This is effectively the centralization of All of the grants given up by the U.S. government, right? And you remember if we think back to like the early days of Doge, right you'd find these giant lists of grass that they gone through and just cut They had absolutely no legal authority to do that. They just did it Yeah This is the formalization of that process, right? This is setting up the bureaucratic apparatus to allow just one random griper they've like hired and stashed off at a room in like BNIH or something. go through and cut whatever grants they want. They also have the power to terminate grants that have already been given out at will. There's other even weirder things where they're also very paranoid about like scientific collaboration with other countries, which is just the basis of how all science is done. There's likeike restricted countries effectively where you can't collaborate with scientists from those countries. whichich even by U. S. standards is not Things ye That's like messed up by the standards of like American foreign policy. And then also, if you are doing any collaboration with any scientist from another country and there's money involved in it, that grant has to be individually approved by like this person that they've set up This makes scientific collaboration effectively impossible Right? Because most of those things aren't going to happen because this is going to, you know reproduce the sort of doge bottencks that we saw where suddenly all these grants disappearing, even ones that would eventually get approved, the people who were supposed to be getting them are completely screwed because their reliance on that grant coming in in order to do their research end Pivot in control