It Could Happen Here Weekly 244

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. A Second Electrolysis Union Appears Morocco's US-Backed Occupation of Western Sahara The Rise of Organized Retail Crime Propaganda How Congress Could Bring ICE to a Store Near You Executive Disorder: Spokane Wildfires, Abdul Wins Michigan Primary, Munition Shortage Donation links for Spokane wildfire: https://spokanetribalnetwork.org/ https://innovia.iphiview.com/innovia/GiveNow/AccountInformation/tabid/495/dispatch/accountselection_id$180408_hash$f9c04d9a7ad07c61d181c69d882b312140005878/Default.aspx You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone Sources/Links: A Second Electrolysis Union Appears [email protected] mailto:[email protected] https://linktr.ee/GACWA Morocco's US-Backed Occupation of Western Sahara Saharawi Voices youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SAHARAWIVOICE The Rise of Organized Retail Crime Propaganda https://www.geekwire.com/2026/drone-vs-shoplifter-watch-how-redmond-pd-tracks-an-alleged-thief-from-high-in-the-sky/ https://nrfprotect.nrf.com/attend/event-recap https://radsecurity.com/roameo https://losspreventionmedia.com/top-retailers-rely-on-artificial-intelligence-for-loss-prevention/ https://www.facefirst.com https://missionlocal.org/2026/07/sf-grocery-outlet-facial-recognition/ https://trends.google.com/explore?q=organized%20retail%20crime&date=2019-10-10%202026-07-02&geo=US https://trends.google.com/explore?q=organized%20retail%20crime&date=2019-10-10%202026-07-02&geo=US https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/transnational-organized-crime/organized-retail-theft https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numbers/699107/ https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/senate-hearing-on-organized-retail-theft/662523 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2020&id=D000000741 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2020&id=D000000741 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2853 https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.vera.org/news/the-truth-about-retail-theft https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/07/retail-theft-losses-inventory-nrf https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcing-Walgreens-to-cut-back-in-16536960.php https://www.businessinsider.com/target-closing-stores-due-to-crime-stats-tell-another-story-2023-10 https://www.youtube.com/live/CcfggLuNAIk?si=wpu-uZyUisXLWRZT&t=1768 https://www.youtube.com/live/CcfggLuNAIk?si=wpu-uZyUisXLWRZT&t=1768 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-12/newsom-suggests-ways-to-crack-down-on-property-crime-without-dismantling-proposition-47 https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/01/09/property-crime-framework/ https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=36&year=2024 https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=36&year=2024 https://nrf.com/podcast/how-san-diego-district-attorney-summer-stephan-combats-organized-retail-crime https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049651009/mountain-dew-arrest-felony-count-dropped https://youtu.be/LXwNudSOWls?si=Jbg8Kh3_ucWxmTXQ&t=2327 https://youtu.be/LXwNudSOWls?si=Jbg8Kh3_ucWxmTXQ&t=2327 https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/05/22/states-can-safely-raise-their-felony-theft-thresholds-research-shows https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money2026.html https://www.lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://www.sdcda.org/content/office/newsroom/tempDownloads/8c903f42-47ab-4b6d-baf7-4f5dc5a6f4d0_DA%20Testifies%20at%20Senate%20Hearing%207-15-25.pdf https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/19/us/one-year-old-mississippi-boy-police-shooting https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/15/banko-brown-killed-walgreens-security-guard-video https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/us/south-carolina-murder-trial-cyrus-carmack-belton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHNKn0oAdMo How Congress Could Bring ICE to a Store Near You https://truckingresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ATRI-The-Fight-Against-Cargo-Theft-Exec-Summ-12-2025.pdf https://www.cargonet.com/news-and-events/cargonet-in-the-media/2025-theft-trends/ https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-cargo-theft-costing-60-billion-annually-what-that-number-actually-represents https://www.levernews.com/the-real-story-behind-the-highway-robbery-panic/ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2853/text https://www.newstore.com/articles/unified-customer-profile/ https://law.vanderbilt.edu/eyes-everywhere-ices-expanded-use-of-surveillance-technologies/ https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/mobile-fortify-ices-dystopic-facial-recognition-app/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/06/oregon-state-police-violated-sanctuary-law-sharing-data-ice-lawsuit-claims/ https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/retailers-secretively-using-face-recognition https://vera-action.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Oppose+CORCA+Organizational+Sign-on.pdf https://vera-action.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Oppose+CORCA+Organizational+Sign-on.pdf?ref=levernews.com https://davisvanguard.org/2026/07/orgs-oppose-retail-crime-act/ https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley-durbin-advance-bipartisan-packages-in-national-defense-authorization-act-to-crack-down-on-crime-and-protect-kids-online https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/24/underground-mutual-aid-hillsboro-immigrant-families-ice/ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/5 https://www.tucsonspotlight.org/ice-detention-bars-tucson-mom-from-her-own-trial/ https://news.azpm.org/p/azpmnews/2026/6/11/230128-a-tucson-resident-was-arrested-for-shoplifting-now-shes-in-ice-custody/ https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD004.pdf https://revealnews.org/article/how-a-us-citizen-was-scanned-with-ices-facial-recognition-tech/ https://innovationlawlab.org/news-and-analysis/video-evidence-surveillance-tech-used-op-black-rose https://www.404media.co/ices-facial-recognition-app-misidentified-a-woman-twice/ Executive Disorder: Spokane Wildfires, Abdul Wins Michigan Primary, Munition Shortage https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/wildfire/american-red-cross-volunteers-removed-kaiser-canyon-fire-shelter-allegations-racist-discriminatory-language/293-bb0165df-e18f-4b36-95b7-4278f5a327f4 https://gothamist.com/news/federal-judge-blocks-new-yorks-ban-on-ice-agents-wearing-maskshttps://x.com/GovKathyHochul/status/2084421714528666043?s=20 https://gothamist.com/news/ny-looks-to-shut-down-kalshi-have-it-pay-36-billion-in-new-lawsuit https://abcnews.com/US/capital-closed-hundreds-trumps-bank-accounts-2021-anti/story?id=135273257https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/trump-blanche-acting-nomination-01017021https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28528054-hearn-dismissal-motion/ https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/jeanine-pirro-removal-reflecting-pool https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1097148959431469 https://www.npr.org/2026/08/04/g-s1-137389/max-miller-congress-house-ethics-committee-investigation https://michiganadvance.com/2026/07/30/stevens-dismisses-pac-focus-as-campaign-finance-zoomies/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/us/politics/michigan-democratic-senate-primary-aipac.htmlhttps://www.eenews.net/articles/michigan-senate-primary-puts-data-center-politics-to-the-test/https://abdulforsenate.com/priorities/ https://x.com/MikeRogersForMI/status/2083648125273588199?s=20 https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/2085013160528921029?s=20 https://prospect.org/2026/07/17/cbc-condemns-will-lawrence-local-black-leaders-back-him-up-michigan-congress/https://x.com/WeWill2026/status/2076015931227250722hhttps://youtu.be/3UyXlWgXyAY?si=OsrVNhC2LuJCjgb- ttps://www.wvxu.org/politics/2026-07-16/cook-political-report-ohio-governor-ramaswamy-acton-toss-up https://www.wvxu.org/politics/2026-07-16/cook-political-report-ohio-governor-ramaswamy-acton-toss-up https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/ohio-governor-election-polls-2026.html https://tiffinohio.net/posts/ramaswamy-booed-young-conservatives-convention-cincinnati/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/war-and-conflicts/military-organizations/exclusive-us-has-used-virtually-all-of-its-long-range-precision-missiles-during-iran-war-sources-say/ar-AA29nIXd https://www.aei.org/op-eds/americas-munitions-crisis-is-real/ https://gtac-hub.com/news/crisis-in-us-munitions-supply-as-155mm-production-stalls https://taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-ammo-factory-zero-shells/ https://www.oregonlive.com/wildfires/2026/08/as-oregon-burns-and-gamblers-bet-lawmakers-push-back-against-wildfire-betting-markets-drawing-millions.html https://www.hcn.org/articles/people-are-betting-on-wildfires-should-they/ https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/kevin-warsh-is-facing-more-than-a-communication-problem https://abc7chicago.com/post/25-states-including-illinois-file-lawsuit-president-donald-trumps-new-tariffs/19620616/ https://fortune.com/2026/08/01/fed-chair-kevin-warsh-credibility-shock-rate-hikes-inflation-yield-curve/ https://www.businessinsider.com/bond-yields-inflation-interest-rates-outlook-fed-meeting-kevin-warsh-2026-7 https://archive.vn/gjEFl https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/yen-dollar-intervention-euros-bessent-japan-debt-yields/ https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/02/business/us-buys-japan-yen-intl-hnk https://www.cfr.org/articles/why-the-u-s-intervened-to-prop-up-japans-yen See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:33Speaker 02

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• 1:18Speaker 03

  I'm Melissa Jelton, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

• 1:57Speaker 05

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 2:00Robert Evans?

  Here's what you missed.

• 2:01Speaker 07

  There should not be a single law enforcement agency that does not have body cameras.

• 2:06Speaker 05

  It's real.

• 2:07Speaker 07

  Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything.

• 2:12Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

• 2:13Speaker 07

  And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools.

• 2:16Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 2:20Speaker 05

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

• 2:24Robert Evans?

  or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:29Robert Evans?

  Call So Media. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation 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 going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart, putting them back together again, and occasionally discovering that there is in fact a second union. I am your host, Emile Wong. Now, a little while back, I did an interview with a group of electrolysis workers who were working for a company called Real U Electrolysis. And we talked about their unionization efforts and the kind of horror show that was going on there. Now, what I didn't mention at the time was that in the process of talking to those workers and that union, I learned that there was in fact a second union that had been organized kind of unrelated to the first union at the other location.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  And that is who we are talking to today to get an update on what has been going on in general with the entire situation and also talk about their union. And a thing that you will kind of commonly experience randomly, unionizing places, which is that sometimes there is another organizing effort at another one of the locations of the same place that you were organizing, and you don't know about it because everyone's keeping it secret.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  So, yeah, to talk about this, I'm joined by Lake and Andy from Gender Affirming Care Workers Alliance. Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Hi, thank you for having us.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited to talk to you both. And I guess, before we get into the initial organizing, just what was it like finding out that the other shop was also unionizing?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, it was terrifying. So like, our number one priority during our Lakewood campaign was secrecy. We absolutely knew how hostile management was towards any kind of improvement of workplace conditions. So going from almost spy versus spy level of opsec to figuring out that Vancouver was also unionizing and was doing a walkout, like, I think that was when we learned.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Was when the day that they kind of imploded. And we were terrified. Like, we did not think there would be any way out of that for Lakewood. Yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a rough way to find out when, yeah, the other union is like, oh, God, okay, we have to do, we have to do a walkout and we have to go on strike because they're firing us.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was certainly understandable. I wouldn't say we knew why the walkout was happening. When we found out that the walkout happened and that a strike was starting, our campaign kind of came to a halt. Like, realizing there was another campaign happening made us had to reconsider what we were doing. Like, we had our own grievances, and we were really just in the process of getting people on board. We had maybe a core group of five, but we had 13, or up to 13 in the end. But we had like 10 to 12 electrolyrists because that number was constantly changing. We had to stop and reassess.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  And obviously, we wanted solidarity with Vancouver. We wanted to do whatever we could to support them, but we also didn't want to lose our jobs. One of the first things we decided at Lakewood is that we weren't going to ask anyone to lose their job in order to unionize. We weren't going to put anyone in a position where they would then become unstable. Almost every single worker at Lakewood desperately needed this job.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Without it, we would risk homelessness or other things. So we kind of got stuck. I mean, it was a tough situation to be in, knowing that we would have been on their side. And with more information and more planning, we would have probably joined them, but we weren't there yet.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And this is, I guess, partially also like, you know, one of the things that's difficult about doing campaigns is that sometimes, like, sometimes campaigns move at the speed that the workers are organizing at. And then sometimes they move at the speed of like, oh, my God, the boss is firing everyone. We just have to go now.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  And that's, yeah, that's always one of the issues is like, as much as you want to be setting the tempo, sometimes you're responding to like, what management is doing, and that can get very rough very quickly.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I think Vancouver did great with their circumstances. Like you said, management set the pace and they had to respond. At Lakewood, we were really trying to do the opposite. We wanted to put us, put ourselves in a position where we were taking an action and management was responding. And in the end, we did. We paused when Vancouver went on strike. We tried to assess how best we could help them without just also imploding Lakewood. Part of what we realized is that management had not realized any campaign was happening at Lakewood because they were going to use us as no votes in the election.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  They wanted us to be considered one bargaining unit because they thought that we would say no and that the union would lose the election.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  So our spy versus spy shit was successful.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  We were doing well.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Management deceived.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, perfectly.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So do you want to rewind the clock a bit and talk about sort of how organizing efforts started? It was not connected to the other campaign at all.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  It wasn't, but I think we were dealing with a lot of similar issues.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  In our first, like, year, as we got on-boarded and saw how things were versus the position that was promised to us and sold to us. Everyone kind of started catching on to things and started like building a list of grievances. There were concerns about the lack of training and patient safety. There were concerns about the lack of time to do our job, you know, working during breaks, working during our lunches. There was really unclear and inconsistent disciplinary actions being taken left and right. Like, one person would be told they could do something. Another person would do that and get written up for it.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  It felt targeted. At some point, Lakewood realized that there was no position you could be in where your, where your job was safe. You could be management, you could be the owner's absolute favorite electrolysis, you could be the best at your job, you could keep your head down and do absolutely nothing, and one day you would be disappeared for whatever reason, if you got one. It was like a span of like two or three months where we lost maybe five employees. And everyone heard a different reason if, if one was given.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Which is a pretty clear. Sign that something is is going wrong.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  And I think I was the second employee to be disappeared at the location.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ. Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  There were two employees where we were told they resigned and everyone very, very much knew that these are employees that wouldn't have resigned.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  These were employees that were ready to start careers and build their life around RealU. We all believed in RealU's mission, but yeah, eventually we just realized it it didn't matter.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Um, there was no job stability for anyone. And that was a really big issue because that's what all of us came to this job for.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  We were hoping for long term careers that paid us livable wages.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  And also were safe for us to be ourselves in. There's not a lot of jobs where trans women get to be trans women.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  And like this was a job that almost celebrated it. And I know for me personally, I was really excited for the opportunity to be able to help the community.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I come from Florida, born and raised, unfortunately.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Where transitioning for a long time was kind of a pipe dream. Like it was not a realistic goal of mine until moving to Washington. And now I get to take or I used to get to take part in people's transition every day for my job.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I don't know. And that's, I think, like, one of the kind of cruelest parts of all of this and like what management has done is just like ripping that away from both you and from the community.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And it didn't have to be that way.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  No, it really didn't. Yeah. And I guess, speaking of the cruelty of management. Yeah. Andy, I guess, do you want to talk about when you said getting disappeared? What, what, what was going on with that?

• 11:51Speaker 03

  So I had brought a lot of the grievances that I was seeing and had towards the owners of the company, Anna and Leah, alongside the manager of the clinic at the time. And anytime anything wrong with the business was brought up, hostilities just grew.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  And they kept growing the more and more that we said, hey, you know, there's issues with the training, there's issues with the amount of time that people have to do your jobs. And it was honestly a really hostile environment created by Anna.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  And before I had gotten disappeared, I was in my educational program for electrolysis. I was in the process of completing that before my termination.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  And I had brought up some of my concerns because as I was learning more and more about electrolysis, I realized that so many of the things we had been taught were just wrong.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  And because Anna and Leah didn't want to address it

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  and didn't want that information being out there. I was put in the position where I either had to sign a non-disclosure to forgive my student loan debt.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Or I could choose to just be fired and then assume the debt.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Jesus. I mean, they, they, they just literally forced you out of the company.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Correct. It was an involuntary resignation.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is, that is only voluntary and like the strict Hobbesian sense where like Hobbes considers that if someone has a gun at your head and tells you to do something and you do it, you still voluntarily made the decision and odd. I, I don't know about you. I don't hold to the strict Hobbesian interpretation of voluntary.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  I don't think I agree with that.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  I think that if you are coerced into a decision, it's not voluntary. I don't know. Like,

• 14:19Speaker 02

  oh, God. Obviously, I think the other part of this that's just really grotesque is what you were talking about in terms of just the education being wrong. Because this is something that's really common in trans healthcare where like there should, yeah, there is just a bunch of stuff. The medical professionals are being taught that was developed from something someone figured out kind of in the eighties and has never been updated in the course of like the last 25 years of the development of science and then just also the development of there being more and more trans people who have been, you know, just like experiencing treatments. And it's frustrating, I think, because you really rarely ever get a scenario where there are trans people who actually

• 15:03Speaker 02

  are in a position sufficient enough in any kind of medical institution to even like get to talk about it. And the fact that their response was to just like disappear you and like force you out of the company is really bleak.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. And on that note, I would say most of the employees received about two weeks training before working on patients.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  That. And the educational program that I went through was four months.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  So if you kind of compare the timelines there of

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  how we were trained in the job versus the education that I got, it just wasn't enough.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Not only was it not enough, but anyone who voiced that it wasn't enough, put their job at risk.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  I mean, there's more than one Lakewood worker that went to management saying, hey, I don't feel well trained enough. I don't feel informed enough.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  And they were met with, well, more than one situation in which they were like directly asked, like, do you feel comfortable working on patients? Do you think you're capable of this job with the implication or the direct like

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  verbal statement being if you don't, maybe you should find somewhere else to work.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  But all of us signed up for this job with the agreement, like we signed these loan agreements with the idea that we'd be going to this in-depth training.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Like the owners themselves during our, my interview process at least, talked up ZAP Masters constantly. Like this is the place to go to learn about how to provide electrolysis for transgender clients specifically.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  And then I worked there for 16 months and never saw any training after my first few weeks. Like,

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  I think the entire 16 months there, after my first month, my sessions were only observed three times.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Jesus. Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Only three times. And I have not, I was not an electrolysis provider before this.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  This was my entry into it. Their training was the only training I got.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  And the only reason my sessions started being shadowed at all is because providers themselves started asking for like auditing sessions.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  There is an instance that I would like to bring up. I was overseeing the training of new hire. And during this training period, I had a patient on my books who had requested to never be on my books again, which, you know, totally fine, totally valid.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  But the fact that they were put on my books

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  after requesting not to see me again was an issue. It's not totally fine or totally valid. Yeah. Us to do that. That, that's not fine on management's part.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  And so as I am training this new hire and we're going into this session, the patient wasn't comfortable with me

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  being there in the room to provide training to the new hire. So I had to leave the new hire alone with that patient.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Because they weren't comfortable with me being there.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is just absolutely unacceptable way for any of this to be running, especially with a delicate healthcare thing that can cause injury to people.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  If we can back up for a second, can you explain a little bit for people who didn't listen to the first episode or people who don't remember about the absolutely wild, I guess, nominally student loan, like indenture program thing? That was, that's a key component of this whole, of this whole story.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  So just about every worker until like some of the most recent workers got a job at RealU Electrolysis with the understanding that we would be hired and trained and receive pay while

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  being trained by RealU, but that at some point they would send us to ZAP Masters in Centralia for an electrolysis training program and to get us licensed via Oregon State. Washington doesn't have electrolysis licensure requirements. You could buy a machine and start providing. You shouldn't, but you could.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  So the idea was that they would pay for our ZAP Masters training, they would pay for our machine, they would pay us while we were learning this job and starting with them.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  And they total all of that at around $19,500 plus interest. So 19 to 21,000 is the number that gets thrown around.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  They would pay for that and forgive it if we agreed to work for them for four years after they license us. So this four year timer doesn't even start until we're finished with school and get our license in Oregon.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  It included a clause where not only do we have to work for them for four years, but we can't work for other electrolysis clinics. Which these kinds of employment agreements are literally called trap agreements.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  If that kind of clues you into anything.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's, it's an indentured servitude agreement. It's like, and that's like, oh, God.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  Listen, hindsight is 2020.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ. Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  A lot of us had the foresight to know it wasn't a good situation, but we were coming from worse situations.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think a way to think about this also is just that like, you know, there, there's two parts of this that are predatory. One is the recruitment that is designed, you know, based on, I mean, just lying to people about how this is going to go. And then there's the secondary part. That's the exploitiveness of the agreement itself. And I don't know, I, I think we have this very, very annoying tendency to look at being in inherently exploitative. Situation to something as you know, something that like through neoliberal personal choice, you could just avoid being in in these situations entirely. And that's just like not true.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  No, unfortunately, if you have a regular job, you are being exploited.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And you know, the fact that like, going back to the sort of like Hobbesian consent thing, it's like, well, okay, like, is anyone actually like, you know, operating freely in a set of conditions where, yeah, like, if you don't take the job, your alternative is that you don't have food and you, you know, you can't pay your rent and you don't, you don't have a home anymore.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Exactly. I mean, when I came to Real You, I was homeless.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Before being employed with them. You are not the only one. I think

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  many of us were. Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  And and that's something that I think is also really bleak about the way that this was structured, which was like, one of the things that we talked about in the last episode was that Annalanta, like, very specifically said that she was targeting trans people because you could just, like, treat them a little bit nicely and they would do anything for you. And, yeah, it's like, you know, this is, this is a deliberate targeting of a population that has an unemployment rate that is, what, like, four and a half times the the general unemployment rate in the US? That is, at all times and at all places, operating in like Great Depression levels of unemployment. And that's, yeah, you know, whose like homelessness rates and like rate of having

• 22:43Speaker 02

  been homeless is like orders of magnitude higher from the general population. And, I don't know, it's extremely bleak that, you know, the opportunity to both like, help your community and also make a just absolutely seismic, like, class increase from like, being homeless and struggling to feed yourself to like, having stable employment, is ultimately kind of this like, debt peonship trap.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, you put it pretty clearly.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Capitalism sucks. Like, Jesus Christ, bad economic system, good lord. Oh.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Agreed.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  God. So, speaking of capitalism, we should probably throw to ads. And then when we come back, we could talk more about resisting capitalism, which is to say, how how the organizing got going and what's been happening since.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, sounds good. Sounds good.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  And we are back. Yeah, so let's get into a little bit more of like, how the organizing process started and how it sort of went.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  I think Andy might be a good one to start with this, because unbeknownst to everyone, there were three different starts to our union efforts. Andy, before you got got. Yeah, I was looking into the possibility of trying to start a union at the shop. I was reaching out to different union organizations. And I was also looking at what government agencies that I could be reaching out to about some of the things that we were experiencing at our workplace.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  So that would have been around November of last year? Yeah, that was around November.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  And then Andy disappeared. There is a string of firings. And I would say our efforts started again around January of this year. Kind of just started with one of our workers chatting with their patients.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  The trans community is also pretty involved in organizing mutual aid, unions. So like, when you're shooting this shit with your patient and they hear, like, a workplace ripe for organizing, they tell you.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Wait, that is, that is, that is maybe the sweetest thing I've ever heard. Like, oh.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  It was pretty good.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Trans people are so good.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  This wouldn't have happened.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Oh, trans people, truly, truly amazing. Oh.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  So yeah, we had a patient who was an IWW member, who told us, look, you gotta start. You gotta get in contact with the GMB and start learning how to organize. So we did.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  That's amazing. Okay, it's not quite salting, because he was someone who was a patient and not like, an employee, but it's like, it's kind of like an accidental salting. Oh, my God.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  None of this would have happened without our patients.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  They've been supportive the entire way. When things in Vancouver started happening, we all started having patients ask or tell us that, look, I don't want to put you in an awkward position, but if y'all started unionizing, that'd be dope.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  It was really nice getting their support.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  It sucked that we couldn't talk to them about it. Because like we said, we were kind of doing spy versus spy level of consent.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  We didn't want management to know. So our patients didn't know until kind of the last month.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Which sucked. I mean, these people that we've been seeing weekly or more often for months, weeks, up to a year.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  It sucked not getting to tell them what was going on, knowing that they cared.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's this really stark example of like, what community actually is versus what it's sold to us as. We're like, yeah, you have this thing where, you know, you have genuine community with the patients that you're treating in a way that's staggeringly, unbelievably rare in any kind of trans healthcare field. And, you know, and from that community, you get, hey, you get, hey, you should organize and like, you know, people trying to help do the organizing. And then, you know, you have the sort of, like, the corporate version of community, which is the bosses running a terror campaign and like disappearing your trans coworkers.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a pretty stark contrast.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Honestly, part of why it went on for so long is every red flag that management had, there were at least one, if not two, green flags between your coworkers and your clientele that made up for it.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  But going back to organizing, January, we got in contact with the Tacoma GMB for the IWW. GMB is General Membership Branch, so it's essentially just the local IWW to us. And we had a organizing rep who would do kind of like monthly calls with us at first, just telling us how to organize, what conversations to have, and how to get people interested. The AIOU conversation, agitate, educate, inoculate, organize, push, one of those.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You got it.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Because none of us had any organizing experience. So we had all of this energy to write our conditions, but we didn't know how to do it. So we started having conversations with the IWW and just slowly started building up our group of trustworthy workers that we knew wanted this. It wasn't hard. Most of us lean left, if not radical. So finding union sympathies was not difficult. Finding the grievances was even easier. I mean, these things are pretty clear in the workplace.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. The boss is once again the best organizer. Huh.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. What really did it for us is when paychecks started bouncing.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I just still, so I just want to hold on this for a second of like, what do you mean, the paychecks are bouncing? What the fuck? Like, Jesus Christ.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's about how we felt.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Like, at the end of March, they swapped us from direct deposit over to paper paychecks. Our first one was in April, and there was, at Lakewood, only one person who had it bounce. I think Vancouver also had some issues, but like we said, there was no communication between the branches. So we didn't know what they were dealing with.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  And the management kind of did their best to keep the locations separate. Like Lakewood was told things about Vancouver to kind of view them negatively, and the same with Vancouver.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which again, is this real sort of image of like, what the world's ruled by bosses is, which is like, yeah, that they're deliberately trying to isolate people from their community, and deliberately trying to separate people and instill sort of like, fear and hatred against.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  Each other. And then you get put in this position where it's like, it becomes difficult to actually like, do the kind of like community building and the kind of like solidarity and organizing that you want to, because everyone also has to like hide from this boss surveillance state. I feel pretty bad, like all the way up until we heard about Vancouver's walkout. I kind of referenced Vancouver as like the Vancouver cult. Because it sounded like everyone was really happy and fine with how things were going. And Anna and Leah were just doing what they want in Vancouver and everyone's fine with it. And everyone's happy with it. And it was okay over there.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  So, I mean, that was part of why we didn't contact them initially. We didn't know who it was safe to. Yeah. Liquid had our own experiences of like talking to a worker we thought was on our side. And they immediately turned around and go talk to management. Oof. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Communication just wasn't there between us and Vancouver. So when checks started bouncing, the total number was always unclear. The first paycheck, it was just one. That second paycheck in April, it was already a few more people. Jesus Christ. So when they told the first worker, they had no idea why that check bounced. And then the next paycheck, more checks bounced. It was like immediately obvious they were being

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Untruthful, dishonest. Like, like, what, one paycheck bouncing is already unacceptable. Like, the correct number of paychecks that can bounce is zero. But it's like, the one, there's more than one. Suddenly, it's like, that it becomes a lot less likely that it's like, they fucked up and more likely that like, like something deliberately like malicious and messed up is happening here. Exactly. Each paycheck, the frequency kind of just went up, like how many people had their paychecks bounce. And the way that it was handled was just rewriting them. Like, it was your responsibility to figure out it had bounced, go to management and ask them to fix it.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Them fixing it was either reissuing you a check or asking you to try cashing it again. Oh my god. There was one paycheck where after it had bounced for me and my partner, they did just tell us to try every day. Cause they couldn't tell us when they would have the funds to pay us, because some money comes in and out every single day. It was a pretty wild situation to be put in. Yeah, like, Jesus Christ, like, just, like, absolute nightmare. Oh my god. So when checks started bouncing, it, it kind of clarified what we could organize around first. Yeah. I mean, if you're not getting paid, you don't have a job to unionize.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's like the most like nothing to lose in a world to win situation you could possibly imagine. Exactly.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  We're getting paid, we're, we're doing real work for fake money. Like, come on. Right. So we kind of settled on that as like our first grievance and demand to organize around is we're demanding guaranteed pay.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Which isn't even, like, it shouldn't be a demand, it's their legal responsibility. So much, it's like, yes, you, you, you must form a union in order to have the right to be paid. Which, I, I, I've, I've, I've been saying this, this kind of joke about what it's like being trans for a while, where it's like, to, to be a trans person in America is to like aspire to the status of a mere proletarian, where you only get regular exploitation. Instead of like, the even Honestly. The even worse shit. You get here, it's like, yeah, we had to form a union so they would like pay us. And it's like, god, like, oh. We just wanted real jobs. Yeah, like, it's like, oh my god, huh.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Going back to when we started talking to the IWW, in those first like initial union-ish meetings, it was still just very few of us and we hadn't put words to it yet. But we kind of realized that we weren't super interested in going the route of the NLRB with a election for a union and then collective bargaining for a contract. We had contracts. We know how RealU writes its contracts. We weren't interested in another one. We wanted the ability to react to changes in the workplace with flexibility, which is what the IWW was offering. They focus on like solidarity, unionism,

• 34:52Speaker 03

  that doesn't use the NLRB, but instead uses worker power via direct action to get management to the table and to meet your demands. Because a lot of this was rushed, we didn't get a chance to really get the terminology and our options. Yeah. But one of the terms they used was involuntary recognition.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  That's fun. We were running underground until we were ready to go public, but we were fine with being a public union. We just didn't need the NLRB's backing. Yeah. We had the worker power in the workplace and we were gonna do direct action to get what we wanted. So yeah, I think the word we were using was involuntary recognition. Yeah, like, I love that. That's great. Right? Yeah. So, going back to March and April, knowing that we weren't interested in contracts and that we were gonna go the route of direct action, we just had to choose a demand to start with. The bouncing paychecks was a pretty easy one. So we started having meetings and talking about what kind of direct action we could do and what kind of escalations we could have if we were organizing around the demand for guaranteed pay.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  And that demand, essentially, we were asking them to resume direct deposit or deliver our next check in the form of guaranteed funds, like cash, money orders, cashier's check, something that won't bounce. Yeah. We wanted our money on the day it was due. Uh huh. Like, I, I also, like, I, I wanna say this too, that like, there, there's like a theory version of this in Capital where Marx talks about how like, labor is the only commodity that you pay for at the end and not at the beginning when you purchase it. Where like every other commodity, you have to like pay for it before you get it. Whereas with, with labor, you pay for it after. But like,

• 36:39Speaker 03

  if you tried this with any other commodity other than labor, this is a crime, right? I mean, it's a crime for labor too. Yeah, it is a crime for labor, but it's like, but it's also like, like, if, if you, if you do this at a grocery store, like, you will be arrested. Yes. And when, when, when a corporation does it, it's like, okay, if, if you want the law to help you for doing, again, the same thing that will get men with guns to take you away at a grocery store, right? You have to form a fucking union and organize. And I don't know, I hate this fucking system. It's, it's so unbelievably exploitative and it's so clear in these sort of moments, like, like who is designed to protect and who is not designed to protect?

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Where like the punishment for the same, literally the same crime is like, one of you gets you arrested and the other one gets you like a union campaign? Yeah. There's also something that I'd like to mention. Yeah. For those who managed to go through this At Master program, one of the things that was supposed to happen was that those employees during their education were supposed to receive stipends to cover their living expenses Yeah. during their schooling, many of whom which were either not working at the time or working at reduced hours.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  And some of them saw stipends or partial stipends. And some of them, from what I understand, received nothing at all. Jesus. But were still working at those reduced hours, trying to support themselves while also going to school. Yeah, which is, again, also, A, I guess like it's a form of wage theft and also, B, it's a thing where like, like, the difference between the bosses making slightly less money that year and a bunch of workers who are like mostly trans and in really horrifying like economic conditions, not having that money is the difference between

• 38:48Speaker 03

  someone like maybe buying, I don't even want to say buying a slightly less like fancy car, because it's not even that much money for them. It's like, I don't know, like they have one day where they don't go to like unbelievably expensive restaurant versus like, can I feed myself at night? Yeah, they get one less personal massage. Yeah. We might end up homeless. Yeah. Yeah, that was part of the situation that was starting to really weigh on me near the end. It's because part of what I had signed up for was agreeing to work part-time and do schooling part-time. And it was supposed to be like anywhere from five to six days a week with the two, which was gonna be a bit much for me. But at some point, they decided they wanted all their workers doing school full-time

• 39:33Speaker 03

  so that they could get through it quicker. But they didn't adjust the stipend they were offering. So you were expected to stretch the same amount of money over time where you weren't getting any income at all. Yeah. And that money was $4,500, which is not enough for the like three months of rent and food and gas. No. Gas, because it's in Centralia. Yeah. So yeah, like I had had multiple conversations with them about it and they would not give me a clear answer on whether we would be able to continue working or if we wouldn't get to work or what we would do about our income situation. And that's the situation that I ended up in was for the last two months of my schooling,

• 40:19Speaker 03

  I had to float myself on very little income because I had only received enough to really cover the first two months of the school. And schooling took like six to nine months if you were part-time. Oh my god. If you were part-time, it took six to nine months. Yeah. Yeah. And, and four months if you were full-time, which I was going full-time. Time.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then also like the, the second thing with that too is just like, it's not only are you like spending time doing training for this job unpaid, like that's also taking in time where you can't work another job to get more income.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Well, if you wanted to work at another job, you had to get their approval.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ. Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  They made it pretty clear. They wanted you committed to Reel You and nothing else.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's cult, it's cult tactics. And then also the classic like wonderful capitalist double freedom where you have freedom from the ability to eat and then the freedom to sell yourself.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  God.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I could always choose to go homeless and hungry.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the law in this makes the deficit equality bans both the rich and the poor from sleeping under a bridge.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we chose our demand and we came up with our plan. We had our actions settled and we had a plan for if management responded, if they didn't, if they escalated. We had our options and we felt secure going in. At that point, like when we first started our actions, we only actually had five workers participating, more that were sympathetic, but all that felt that they weren't in a position to do direct action and lose their job. We saw Vancouver lose their jobs when they took action. We knew it was a very real possibility.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  But we started, I believe on June 29th, we delivered our demand for guaranteed pay to our manager. The IWW calls it a march on the boss.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  It was like less than five minutes total. The five workers presented our demand. We gave two testimonials for like how it's been impacting us directly. And then we left.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  We sent a follow-up email to the owners of the company because we had handed it to the manager. And we're waiting for their response. We put it out there and we just had to wait.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  The next day, the manager caught one of our workers on her own to respond, essentially telling us they could not afford to pay us any other way that they were paying us. They could cut us paper checks on each payday and that was it. That wasn't one of the options we gave them.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I just can't get over the like, yeah, sorry, the only way I could afford to keep running my business is if I'm allowed to not pay you. And that that's an extent you have to accept.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Is if I'm allowed to hand out checks that can't be cashed.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. So when they told us no, we looked at our plan and we took our next action. We submitted a bunch of LNI claims for our checks that had been NSF or insufficient funds. An LNI claim, labor in industries is kind of like the protective body, body for workers in Washington. For each check that we had received that bounced, we had a right to file a workers' rights complaint. The problem with those complaints is that they're not anonymous. Your employer gets told when one is filed, who filed it and why they filed it.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, that wasn't an option until we were all doing it together, unless we wanted to lose our jobs one by one.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  So when they told us no, we started by submitting our LNI claims. It all happened so quick and it was one action after another that it kind of blurs together. So I think we submitted our LNI claims. When we gave them our demand on the 29th, we gave them a deadline for our next payday. So July 3rd is when we were due to get paid again. And we said, by then, you have to agree that you're going to give us guaranteed pay or deliver guaranteed funds.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  The next day they had told us no, and on Friday they delivered paychecks like any other payday.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  They didn't really acknowledge what we had asked. They didn't acknowledge that they weren't meeting our demand. They did not tell us there were any issues with these checks or that they might bounce or that there weren't the funds. They at no point asked anyone to delay cashing their checks because they didn't have the funds. Like that was part of the issue is like, sometimes businesses run into financial issues and you have to deal with it. The way to deal with it is not by giving out bad checks and not telling your workers.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  For people who haven't like thought of this before, there are like actual consequences for attempting to, to cash a check that doesn't cash.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Like that gets taken out on you, the person who's attempting to cash the check, like as well as the, the people upstream who are doing the bad checks, like.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  We actually managed to avoid that at Lakewood for the most part because once checks started bouncing, we were scared of that happening.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  So we started cashing them at Chase, which is who Reel You banks with. You don't have to have an account with Chase to go get your check cashed with them. You just have to pay a $10 fee and have forms of identification. So the people who went to Chase and had their checks bounced there, it never hit their account.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  There were never any fees or any negative marks on our accounts. For the people who couldn't do that.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  There were.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  There were NSF fees. At least one Lakewood employee now has had their account completely shut down for 90 days while it's investigated for fraud.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is terrific because it's like, okay, the people who are committing the fraud are the bosses, but now you don't have a fucking bank account for 90 days, which is just a nightmare.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Part of our hope had been that by cashing them at Chase, Chase would flag the account. Because like their account was with Chase and they were consistently issuing these checks that they couldn't afford to cash. And we were consistently cashing them at Chase who had to acknowledge there weren't the funds there.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, they told us a couple of times that there was just nothing they could do on their end.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Love capitalist class solidarity. Great stuff.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  So we did our demand, we did our LNI claims and then they delivered our paychecks as if nothing had happened.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  So over that weekend, we finalized our plan to stage walkouts. Starting on Monday from 12 to 1, workers would leave Reel You to go to the local Chase and attempt to cash their checks. And we did that until each worker got paid. It normally took like 15, 20 minutes and then we spent the rest of the hour, you know, doing our direct action, not returning to work.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  But when it was one o'clock, we returned to work. We were ready to see our patients. We all messaged our clients the night before if they were affected. And if we had the time, we offered them replacement sessions.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  We did our best to follow the rules as much as we could while breaking them. We were trying to send a message to management. We weren't trying to disrupt patient care.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Every step of the way, we're doing our best to disrupt actual patient care to the least amount possible.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  So that went on for three days. On Monday, none of the checks cleared. On Tuesday, we got six of them. And on Wednesday, we got the last one. I did forget to say, that was when we picked up two more workers. There were a couple of workers who weren't comfortable prior to then taking part in direct action that were ready and did join the walkout with us. Management ignored the walkouts. We got absolutely no response.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  We sent email updates each day, you know, like this many checks cleared, this many didn't, we're going to keep going. At any point, if they had just told us, yes, we'll give you guaranteed pay next payday, we would have stopped.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  They didn't.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  So we got paid on Wednesday. A few days went by when we still weren't hearing from them. So we escalated again. I think after that, we did a sick out. So there was a day where everyone called in sick and most of the workers weren't in the office.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Which is pretty noticeable.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Especially when management doesn't come into the office.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  And all that's left is your newbies.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  We did that. Again, still no response. We sent another follow up email being like, you continue to not meet our demands. We're going to continue to take action. At any point, we will call a ceasefire if you come to the table and either meet our demand or tell us why you can't.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Tell us what your plan is to do to meet it in the future. And they still didn't. So we moved on to what's called a good work strike. Every provider that was taking part, we showed up, we did our jobs, we treated our patients, we cleaned our rooms. We just didn't sign our notes because that meant that management wasn't able to bill for them.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Because if we weren't getting paid.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Neither should they.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a version of the bus strikes where like you just run the buses, but then don't charge anyone.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. That was exactly the line of thinking. Um, there was another group of nurses in a hospital that stopped charting.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  So that patients could be billed, but they kept performing the work.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  That rocks.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  And that's exactly where I got the idea from.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  We had patients that we wanted to take care of.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  But we didn't want to give real you money when they weren't meeting their obligations.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that rocks.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Um, that went on for a few days. And then on our day off, we got a bunch of information. On that Thursday, it was revealed that management had been told Realy was going bankrupt and would be closing probably the 24th.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  So they learned that Thursday and we didn't know what they would tell us, if anything.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  And payday was Friday. So they were either going to meet our demand or not meet it again.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  And so that plus the information we got on Thursday, we decided to do another sick out so that we could reassess. We wanted to see what they were actually gonna do. We wanted to see if the business was gonna be open.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Because there's just red flag after red flag. Some of us are expecting them to close up and run away at any point.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  I mean, they opened on Friday. Checks were delivered. Two of us received fake ones.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the fake checks for a second. Um, what the fuck? I, I can't get over this. What, what?

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Listen.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  We like to joke that whatever you think the worst option is, Realy will choose a worse one.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  So at least two employees, we're certain more, we're just not sure who exactly and how many. But we were given checks that were kind of handwritten. Like, the only things printed on them were like the color that check paper is. And one of the lines on the back where you endorse it, everything else was hand drawn.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  From like who it was made out to, how much it was, the lines those were written on.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  I'm just scared, like.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  It, it sent alarm bells ringing pretty quickly.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  That's like, that's not, that's not even Monopoly money because Monopoly money is printed. This is like.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, no. It was like a crafts project.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like they've invented a form of payment like fakers and company store money. Like, it's unbelievable.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got those and we were pretty suspicious, but we took them to chase anyways. And the teller was like, look, I can't, I can't even cash this to tell you that it's bounced because there's no way for me to verify it's real. The security markings that are supposed to be on the back are not there.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  It's like, sorry, I'm a poor fake teller. It's just like, yeah, sorry. I like can't cash like, like, just like child's drawings of money. This is not an acceptable form of payment.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ. Oh, no.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  They unfortunately couldn't really tell us what to do about it.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  So we had to reach out to our management and ownership to be like, hey, we could not cash our checks. We need real ones issued.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Let us know how you're doing that.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Also, on Friday, we were out of work. We were waiting for news. And I think that's when they sent out the email about the business closing. At like 1:56, workers got an email to their company email.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Christ.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Which meant most of us could not access it because we don't access work emails from home. That's when they sent it out. And like 30 minutes later, they sent out a patient announcement.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  And that's how most of us learned.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  We learned as patients first that Realy was closing in one week.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is just horrifying stuff.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  That was when it really hit me.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  When I opened my patient portal and read the announcement, I felt like I was seeing it, like all my patients were reading it.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  And like I was losing access to needed care out of nowhere.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  It was heartbreaking. It was devastating. Like, there's no words to describe how I felt for all of my patients.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Some of them knew it was coming. Most of them didn't. A lot of them didn't get last sessions. I mean, when we got the notice, we as a union realized that if we worked that last week, whether or not we'd get paid was up in the air.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  I mean, if they chose not to pay us, we would have to go through bankruptcy court.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  And get in line to get paid.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Um, so instead we decided to strike. Um, we spent the last week that Realy was open on the picket line, um, telling patients what was actually happening.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  We weren't boycotting. We weren't asking anyone not to go in and have their last sessions. We were encouraging that. Any of the providers that were left, anyone who had sessions, we wanted them to get them before they couldn't.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  But we also didn't want to provide free labor.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  And it wasn't an easy decision. I mean, it's one that the group had to talk about and go back and forth on. I mean, none of us thought that our last sessions were gonna be our last sessions.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  We all wanted to see our patients one more time. We didn't want our patients' last session to be their last session.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  But we also didn't want to be exploited even further.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  I mean, we made it clear what we were willing to do and we followed through.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I think it's, it's really like the most pure example of just the dilemma that healthcare work and also like nonprofit work and any, anything where you're taking care of people. It's you're put in this dilemma where like the way that exploitation by the bosses works is like they're going to exploit you and pay you less because of your care for the work that you're doing and the people that you're helping. And this is like the most pure like, yeah, the choice you've been given by your bosses is to probably work for free so it's help for community and make these people a little bit more money before they fuck off or go on strike and have to deal with, you know, like have to try to get your patients treatment somehow.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  It's horrifying.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  It's an impossible choice.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  It sucked. None of us wanted it to go that way. It didn't have to be that way. It didn't. And I think it's really unfortunate because multiple steps along the way, they could have scaled back operations to focus on fixing the internal issues with the business.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  It's not like they didn't have people telling them what was happening.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  It's just they chose to stick their head in the sand like an ostrich and keep going.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, and ultimately like you're the people who are paying the price for their mistakes and, you know, their greed and arrogance and malice.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, um, we survived. And I know that a lot of my fellow workers agree with me that this was an experience we would rather have than not have.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  We found a lot of solidarity and community. And, I mean, we've built relationships that are gonna last past this. Um, we're hoping to move on and work together again in something better.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And my, my, my understanding is that the long term goal is to try to set up a co-op to be able to do this without sort of the exploitation of the bosses.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, that is the ideal. I think every union member's dream would be a worker cooperative or somewhere where they have

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  some form of either ownership or say in the process.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  We would love to create something where our patients and our workers are working in tandem together to create the care that they deserve.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Like you mentioned earlier, there's just such a lack of like standards of care for trans, like gender affirming care. We don't talk to each other enough. We don't value the patient experience enough. We figured out a lot of things in the eighties and didn't bother doing more research.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  We want to do that. We want to fill that hole. Um, and we have a lot of workers that are very committed to that, that are very excited by that opportunity.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  It's, it's a long term goal. In the short term, we are hoping to get more people. Educated like we were promised and back to providing. We're hoping to find new placements for our patients that have like urgent care needs, like people who have surgeries that are coming up.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  We're working on a database of like local electrolysis clinics. Who has availability, who treats what areas and who takes what insurances? So if we have patients that are looking for new places, they can reach out and we can point them somewhere. But we're always looking for more resources too. We're in our information gathering phase. We're trying to resource compile, just get everything we can for our workers. So that we can take those next steps.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  And what's devastating about this all is really you was one of the few places that actually took insurances. Not many electrolysis clinics do, so it can be very difficult for people to find and afford care.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I don't know, like, yeah, that's like another one of the like heart wrenching things about this is like all of the patients whose medical care was ripped away by this. And the fact that it's y'all trying to figure out how to help them and not the bosses is like such an indication of which side people are fundamentally on.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  I mean, how they handled the closure is a pretty clear sign of that, too.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  If you cared about your patients finding new places before their services were disrupted, you would have given them more than one week notice.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  I mean, you require two weeks notice from workers before they leave.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  I think our patients deserve better.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, they absolutely do. And you also deserve better.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  We have better. We've made better. We're gonna create better. But would have been nice to have what we thought we were getting.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Speaking of that, is, are there ways for listeners to reach out and help?

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  So right now we have a link tree. It's a little bit bare bones because this happened so much sooner than it was supposed to.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  There is a GoFundMe that is for worker stability. Not all of us are going to qualify for unemployment. And it's going to be a while before we can find new jobs because

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Electrolysis clinics and being transgender just

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  It's a tough combination.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yep.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  But we also have an email for anyone to reach out to if they have questions for like, if our patients are trying to contact us or if they need somewhere new to go.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  If we have any electrologists in the community that have openings, we would love to know so that we can send people to you.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  Um, if anyone who has knowledge starting cooperatives, that's also a resource we are really interested in. We want to do this right.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  And we want to talk to the people that have experience doing it.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you have anything else that that you want to make sure people know?

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  So there are a couple of different electrology associations that clinics can align themselves with. One of the ones that I'm thinking of is called the American Electrology Association or Electrolysis. And they have a code of ethics and standards that they require the businesses that are partnered with them to adhere to. It's an association that you have to pay a subscription fee to. But in turn, you get resources for your business and are able to have somewhere to reach out to

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  when you have questions about the ethics in your business or how things are being run. I think something really important to note is that Real You was not partnered with any of them.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  And there are electrology conventions that will happen that a whole bunch of different electrologists, surgeons, you know, from different places will get together to discuss the healthcare that they're providing. And it's from my understanding that Real You did not have the best reputation in these circles.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  I mean, the truth is, near the end, Real You was having to form their own education program. They were forming their own school. Because their connection with Zapp Master and with the rest of the electrologist community was just so poor, like they couldn't maintain it.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  But for the patients, finding a clinic that is associated with one of those associations provides them an extra level of protection, especially since Washington State is not licensed for electrolysis. That is a really, really good point. If you are a patient and you've heard what was going on behind the scenes at Real You and you're concerned about continuing your care. One of the ways to protect yourself against the practices that you want to avoid is by finding a clinic that's associated with one of these professional institutions. Correct. Somewhere that has standards you have to meet. Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think, I think that's a good place to end with. You know, the twin promises of workers being able to do their jobs and care for the communities and communities being able to get the care that they need. How? Yeah, this system simply delivers neither of them. The only way out of it is to fight for a better one.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  We're swinging. Well, I can say that.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  I mean, our group is full of fighters. I'm hopeful. I am too. And every step of the way, every action I have taken has been from a love for my patients and the work that I do and intend to continue doing.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I'm pretty excited to close this chapter and start the new one where we can only go up.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah. Thank you to both so much for coming on the show.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us. Hopefully this was exciting as part one.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm happy to. And hopefully we get to talk to y'all again when like the co-op starts. Should be lovely.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Part three will be about our successful co-op beginnings.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Looking forward to it.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

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• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her? I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide.

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Stories of survival.

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  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place. With a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these grave.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  Things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. Never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Listen to what happened to her on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 1:08:52Robert Evans?

  Here's what you missed.

• 1:08:53Speaker 07

  And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power.

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  It's real.

• 1:09:01Speaker 07

  Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests. And they complained about the very thing they were seeing.

• 1:09:07Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

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  I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

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  Roland Martin Unfiltered.

• 1:09:18Speaker 07

  I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein.

• 1:09:28Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 1:09:32Speaker 07

  12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now.

• 1:09:42Speaker 05

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts.

• 1:09:46Robert Evans?

  Or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Anna Alkurd, and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I wanted to talk about Western Sahara and the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. I'm taking this opportunity because Morocco is in the news, specifically for the World Cup. But it's always a good opportunity when Morocco is in the news to bring up this issue and to talk about the ongoing occupation of this territory. Now, Western Sahara, for those who are unfamiliar, is often called Africa's last colony. It's been contested between the Sahrawi indigenous people and the Moroccan government since Spain withdrew from the territory in 1975. Now, Morocco took over most of the territory and fought a war with the Polisario Front, which is a liberation movement that represents the Sahrawi people,

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  backed by other neighbors of Morocco, including Algeria. And it fought a 16-year war for independence before there was a 1991 ceasefire. Now, this ceasefire collapsed in 2020, and there was a UN-promised referendum on self-determination that never happened. So today Morocco controls roughly 80% of the territory, and there's still hundreds of thousands of Sahrawi refugees that remain in refugee camps in Algeria. The United States accepted and recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco signing a peace agreement with Israel. So that happened with the Abraham Accords. Now, recently, through US-led diplomacy, there was a 2025 UN Security Council resolution that pushed for Moroccan autonomy rather than Sahrawi independence

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  as the basis for resolving this conflict. So to talk more about this issue, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get the perspective of a Sahrawi person and someone who is very embedded in the issue and has lived experience. So I spoke today with Mohamed Salem Murad, who is the co-founder of Sahrawi Voice. This is a collective of citizen journalists and filmmakers based in the Western Sahara refugee camps in southwest Algeria. And this collective basically is a way to provide a platform for Sahrawis to share their challenges, experiences, and hopes with an international audience, while equipping Sahrawi youth with the knowledge and tools to advocate effectively for their cause. So I spoke with Mohamed Salem today to get a Sahrawi perspective on things.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Now, there might be some listeners that don't agree with everything that was mentioned, and that's fine. The point of this kind of interview is a type of data. How do people see this issue from this perspective? So without further ado, here is my interview with Mohamed Salem.

• 1:12:26Speaker 03

  Mohamed Salem, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome. Thank you for the invitation. So I'm going to ask a few questions about recent Sahrawi politics and events, starting with the UN resolution that happened in October, Resolution 2797, which basically, for the first time, made Morocco's autonomy the explicit basis for negotiations while kind of ignoring self-determination for the Sahrawi people. A lot of our listeners have never heard of this resolution, but people have called it the biggest shift in the conflict in decades. So can you tell us, from a Sahrawi perspective, what it means that the UN, an international body that once promised Sahrawi self-determination

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  and referendum, starts treating the occupiers' plan as the starting point? So the resolution itself is after they exhausted all the other pressure means, the US, the European Union, and through their own individual country pressure and unconditional support to Morocco, the UN was the last resort. And they want to have a stamp of legality on it. And that's why the instrument uses the UN to... And the reality in the talk now, because we don't have a negotiation yet,

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  we have talks that have been sponsored and actually administered by the US. The UN now is sidelined. And the reason is because the international law is clear and the repeated resolution before this. All of them, they have called and demanded that the final status of the territory should be decided through a referendum. And sometimes the referendum was muted, but always there has to provide for the self-determination for the Sahrawi people.

• 1:14:28Speaker 03

  And even like playing with self-determination for listeners and the referendum itself, it's a huge concession from the Sahrawi side. What in a just world, in ideal world, Morocco would be called to withdraw from Western Sahara, paying a reparation for the Sahrawi. And those are the steps for a just solution for the Sahrawi past. But the Sahrawi were willing to go to the extra mile, and they made the concessions. They accepted the referendum, which is, by the way, we wouldn't tell

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  a huge number of the settlers will be taken apart in that referendum and would not be just the Sahrawi. But even with that, Morocco is still not sure that they will even win the support of their own settlers that they brought with them. So they had to ask the US for the help. And of course, the US is doing this as a reward for Morocco for being a sub-servient state and the watching dog of the European Union for being willing also to go public with their relationship with the Zionist state of Israel. Because for us, we have been seeing this for a long time. Morocco always had those relationships.

• 1:15:53Speaker 03

  It was the price of recognizing the Moroccanity of Western Sahara was the price to go public with those relationships. And that's what they did. Eventually, Morocco is selling themselves to the devils to get support and the recognition for their occupation of Western Sahara. They are accepting the Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. They are sending their money to finance the peace board committee that Trump made. They are sending their troops. They are willing to send them even to fight resistance in Gaza. And they are doing everything.

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  They are building chemicas, drone chemicas factories, Israeli chemicas factories in Morocco. Everything that people couldn't even imagine, now it's a reality. And the price is to win AIPAC and Israel's support and their backing, turning the occupation into a fait accompli. And not just that, but to even use the UN and the international law and also the international body to impose the occupation of the Sahara. But for us, we know that slavery and many other stuff were legal.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  So even if they were to outlaw the self-determination, outlaw our demand for free and independent state, still will not make any difference to us. We are determined to fight for what's ours. And as a Sahrawi, ex-Sahrawi leader who passed away, told Bush, because this is not the first time, maybe this is public, but this is not the first time the US tried to do this during George W. Bush's first term, when the Twin Towers were hit. And the US wanted to just like rush to solve or to just finish all other conflicts everywhere.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  They wanted to resolve the occupation of Western Sahara and asking the Sahrawi to accept the autonomy plan of Morocco and that's it. And he said, like, when the Sahrawi leader was pressed to accept that, he said, we'll not accept it, you know? We are so powerful that you can dictate to people how to live, but you are not powerful enough to dictate to people how to die. So it's the same for us, nothing changed. Morocco has enjoyed the support for a long time from the majority of the country and especially those like called the first world country and few of all that BS. They have always... The support but on the ground, nothing changed.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Of course, made our independence difficult, but we'll never make it impossible. Yeah, the the rights of indigenous people are not determined by international law. Yeah, yeah. And Morocco is asking for support and want to legalize their occupation first from Western Sahara. And they are asking the the wrong people and they are waiting the support from the wrong people. And yeah, there's a teacher and their biggest sponsor are France with all its colonial atrocity in all Africa and other places. And and US. Right. Was a country that was built on genocide of indigenous people. So they are they are they are.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  In the right company. Yeah, yes, yes, exactly. That's what we, yeah. Sahara always say like if someone gives you advice, you have to look at their house and

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  meaning if they are abiding by the advice they are giving you or not. So there, yeah. Yeah. Morocco chose the the right masters and the right sponsors to to to continue its occupation. And yeah, graduate from the occupation university.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  So for our listeners, I want to also kind of specify that this February, after the UN resolution, the US convened secret talks in Madrid between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, and the Polisario, overseen by Trump's Africa advisor. Yeah. Now, it's being negotiated behind closed doors. How are ordinary Sahrawis, especially in the camps? What is their relationship right now to these negotiations and to the Polisario leadership? Yeah. So that's the talk I refer to because a negotiation has to start after you establish a framework for what to negotiate. And until now, that hasn't happened. So there are more accurately should be described as talk, you know, early stages of talk and meetings instead of negotiation.

• 1:20:53Speaker 03

  Because negotiation, then, when you have a framework for for the things that you want to achieve and the demands of two parties. And in this case, we haven't even seen one photo of the two negotiating parties. And that's very obvious because it shows just how different and how how far from each other. And the US came with the misconception that they they think they just like can rush this into solution and be done with it. And when they saw resistance from the from the Sahrawi negotiation team and also for

• 1:21:33Speaker 03

  the record, also Algeria hesitated to accept the imposing of all those solutions in the Sahrawi. They started to reconsider and we have many statements from Musa Bouz, the advisor for North Africa and Middle East, or North Africa, where he's saying this seems to be more difficult than what we early imagined and, you know, starts to reconsider his positions. As as to your question, the Sahrawi in general, the vast majority of the Sahrawi consider the Polisario to be a liberation movement and their representatives. And even if they don't have a post or work in a certain, they consider themselves to be a Polisario member.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  That doesn't mean we agree with all Polisario or we don't have a different opinion about how things should be managed and how the Sahrawi cause should be administrated and how to deal with with many things. That there is a huge and age gap between the the first generation of Polisario, that the vast majority of those are the members now and who are at the top of the leadership are people who started the Polisario. So I was talking about people who have been in the leadership position for 50 years. So of course, there is an obvious need for them to step down and be replaced by younger

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  generations, by people who have the ability, both the physical and the mental, and right judgment of the time and of the means that should be employed to to accelerate the liberation of Western Sahara. We see them, but the negotiation, as you said, it's happening behind closed door. There are no press conferences. We are dependent on a statement from there and there to try to build a bigger picture of what's happening. But the biggest takeaway and the the conclusion from the three rounds that took place so far, two in Washington and one in Madrid, is nothing major is happening, except the

• 1:23:45Speaker 03

  fact that the US is starting to think that it's it's it's more difficult and it's going to take more time than what they initially imagined. So that's the biggest thing, I think, there. And the Morocco, the autonomy plan, they had it in a three pages paper that was their proposal for a solution. And France and US asked them for a more extended version where they have to outline details and they haven't showed or produced anything yet. So that's, I think, their closest ally and supporter and And they're still. Formal colonizer is France is is working closely with them to develop that that proposal. I see.

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  And for for the Sahrawi, that doesn't change a lot because, you know, if you wanted autonomy, would have been better off with with Spain. And why would we like say say no to to Spain only to accept it 50 years later to a craft monarch, you know, and a servant and a puppet to the Zionist standard, France? Yeah. Our occupier is enjoying their support, so nothing new under the sun. I mean, it's it's funny that you you mentioned that the United States and the Africa advisor is starting to recognize it's not as easy. I mean, you know, very surprising that the Trump administration advisors thought it was going to be easier than it is, but obviously not.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:25Speaker 03

  I wanted to ask a question also about kind of daily life right now for Sahrawis. You know, it's been 50 years after the Madrid Accords. You still have Sahrawis under Moroccan control in in the territory. And then there's, of course, the refugee camps in Algeria. Now that the diplomatic horizon seems to be narrowing, what's life like for people who are fighting for Sahrawi independence? So like, human rights defenders, the women, the students, you know, I know they face a lot of repression in Moroccan territory, but maybe you can describe to the listeners, yeah, what the conditions are like. Yeah. I know it's probably not something intended to do, but it's not Moroccan territory. It's Western Sahara territory occupied by Morocco. My mistake, yes, yes, of course.

• 1:26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the situation there is difficult. The the territory, there is a media blockade that's imposed on the territory. So no international observer or journalist are allowed to access the territory and to to see the situation on the ground. The people there are, Morocco is using both the stick and the and the carrot, so trying to buy their illusions to the occupation, try to reward those who are willing to give up their political rights and so giving them housing, putting them on social welfare projects and those kinds of, it's not a lot, but enough to survive on.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  And on the other hand, has jail and oppression and the job, cutting people from their job and making their life as miserable as possible to the to the point either they they renounce their activism or or leave the territory. And in some cases, they are sentenced to life in prison, which has happened to many Sahrawi activists who have a group called the G'day Muzik group, have been in jail since 2010. And yeah, there are, some of them are are serving 30 years, some of them 20, some of them life sentence, and a few of them were released recently.

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  So the situation is is very difficult and very deplorable. And what is makes it even difficult that the Sahrawi there in the occupied territory are out So there are three Moroccan settlers to each Sahrawi. Those are very conservative estimates. It could be more. So anything that's civil disobedience strategy or tactics would be deemed a unsuccessful and would not produce any results. So it's a very difficult situation, but nonetheless, there are still Sahrawi who are standing their ground or are still despite all the repression and

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  all the economic warfare that Morocco is waging against them. And, and even social ostracization to try to even threaten people around you. So if you are an activist, even your father, your people around you, they will be laid from their job just as repercussions for your activism. So they can punish you if, if, if you don't care about your own self, like they punish you through the people in your inner circle and your people close to you. So it's very difficult. And on the other hand, also infrastructure there are, are, are not, are not as fancy as Morocco try to claim there aren't a single university.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  And Morocco is building more of jails and even the prison Sahrawi, they sentenced them and they, when they're serving their sentence, they put them far away to punish their family, to make them pay a lot of money and trouble inside Morocco to be able to visit their loved ones instead of having them close by artist in occupied Western Sahara. So the situation is very difficult, but those who are choosing to stand their ground are, are a reader of history and they are aware of the price that has to be, be paid in order to obtain our freedom and our independence.

• 1:29:41Speaker 03

  And the darker it gets, we know that closer that there will be another morning that's coming behind that. So we have been here way longer before Trump administration and his advisor and we will be here. So it's the Morocco, I think that are, they think this is their golden opportunities and that, that they can use everything, including the international law and international institution and body like the UN to, to impose their occupation on Western Sahara. But again, they are misguided. At the end of the day, they would have to put up the table and try to fight. I think from a Palestinian perspective, like the genocide in Gaza has clarified

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  that the international system is not functioning. So, you know, they're trying to use the international system, countries like Morocco are trying to use the international system for legitimizing control, but the international system itself needs to be restructured. And I do also want to apologize, I meant Moroccan control of the territory. So I sincerely apologize for that. Yes, yes, I know, I know. I also wanted to ask, because we, I mean, we have listeners everywhere, but especially for listeners in the United States, you know, our government here is driving this process. What would you want listeners in the United States to take away from this conversation or to do?

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  But to be honest, I have been to the States one time and I have met many Americans and I am a lead reader of their media and I follow their, their famous podcasts and TV channels and Twitter, you know, discussion. And it's very obvious that Americans, they don't care about what's going on outside of America. They care about the prices of oil, of house prices and their rents and the college fees. And it's okay. I think it's okay to a degree when your country is not involved in maintaining and

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  supporting and that your own taxes are used to maintain and support and finance genocide and other military occupation, other worse, then you have the, the, the luxury of ignoring what's outside. But when it's not, you can just like put your, your, your head in the ground and imagine, I'm just going to care about what's happening here domestically and foreign policy or what's happening there is far away there, but I don't care. So I would like them to inform themselves about Western Sahara, understand that they have to push their governments and frontally to the Western Sahara.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  At least we don't have a politician in the United States who thinks that the, the, the occupation of Western Sahara will accelerate the arrival of the Messiah and that it's far away. It has nothing to do with the ideology, with the religion believed, with anything like that. And it would be easier supposedly and it would be less hesitant politician to take the right stand and the right position if enough people know their, and they have a responsibility to learn and to understand and that their money and their politician

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  and their foreign policy are taking tools on people past, present and the future in a very practical way. And they don't have the luxury to, to be ignorant or to be, to have the apathy they have to just not care about what's going on. They should care because their money, their political support and their country's resources are used against many other people. And then anything happens, we have, we have the, the Americans acting like we don't know what's happening, why the rest of the world hates you. People hate you for the million of the things that your, your government and your silence has done and has cast everywhere else.

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  So they have to learn, they have a responsibility, they have to speak to their local politician and their, their representative in Congress and Senate and ask them to just to do the basic thing, which is to follow the international law and stop supporting Morocco militarily and politically and emboldening them to, to, to continue their occupation and prolonging the suffering of the Sahrawi people. That's the very bare minimum.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  Well, thank you so much on that note. I will link Sahrawi Voice in the show notes. Yeah, I think that people can, can learn more about the work that Your Collective does and thank you for making the time. Thank you for the invitation. It was an honor. Thank you. Take care. Take care.

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• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  I'm Melissa Jelton and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her? I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide.

• 1:36:14Speaker 03

  She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Stories of survival.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  The only difference between me and her frankly was a little bit of luck because by all rights I should be dead.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

• 1:36:48Speaker 04

  She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:37:07Speaker 05

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 1:37:11Robert Evans?

  Here's what you missed.

• 1:37:12Speaker 07

  And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power.

• 1:37:20Speaker 05

  It's real.

• 1:37:20Speaker 07

  Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

• 1:37:27Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

• 1:37:27Speaker 07

  I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

• 1:37:36Robert Evans?

  Roland Martin Unfiltered.

• 1:37:37Speaker 07

  I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein.

• 1:37:47Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 1:37:51Speaker 07

  12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground, going hard in the south now.

• 1:38:01Speaker 05

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

• 1:38:05Robert Evans?

  or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  Picture going to the grocery store a few years from now. You push your cart, grab your staples, scan and head out the door. Not much to it. But unlocking your car, you hear a faint buzzing sound. Looking around, you don't see anything, yet it gets louder. Then you look up. A drone shoots out toward the street where you spot a man running down the sidewalk with a full backpack. They both slip out of view behind some overgrown hedges. Then come the sirens. As you drive away, you see multiple cops on top of a man, one pulling objects out of his backpack, tags still dangling off, a shoplifter. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Kevin Foster, an independent journalist and your host for this two-part series on retail crime, ICE, and some deeply concerning policy making its way through Congress.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  And this image of a shoplifter, it isn't really from the future. In late June of this year, police in Redmond, Washington used the drone to track down

• 1:39:04Speaker 04

  Down an alleged shoplifter who had left a store. If you live in a major city, you've probably already witnessed the bolstering of security in retail stores. The ungodly number of items locked up behind glass, security guards, lock cameras in the parking lot. This is an industry in its own right, commonly referred to as loss prevention, and it surged after the pandemic. The National Retail Federation, or NRF for short, who I'll be talking a lot about today, puts on a yearly conference known as NRF Protect, where they bring together all the loss prevention slash asset protection bigwigs to show off new tech and security strategies. Here's a clip of a senior product manager for Amazon at the 2026 event. Pardon the awful corporate background music.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  I gotta say, the most unique thing that I saw in the expo hall was the robot. Seen it on TV, and you know, this was the first time I saw it in person. I was like, whoa, this thing's actually real.

• 1:39:56Speaker 04

  To paint you a picture, the video features retail lobbyists, tech giants, and police investigators. They show off drones, cameras, people aiming guns, others shooting some type of paintballs at hanging targets, and of course, multiple robots, including one that looks like a mini tank called Romeo, but spelled like roaming around. Don't worry, though, this quote "physical AI on patrol" can only go 10 miles per hour, and it has a big LED smile across the front. If you haven't got the drift, NRF Protect is like a National Rifle Association convention, but for people obsessed with supply chains and storefront scanners. While our little tank Romeo likely invokes the strongest image of a sci-fi dystopia, it's probably the least of our worries.

• 1:40:40Speaker 04

  An October 2024 article in Loss Prevention Magazine states that multiple top 10 retailers rely on facial recognition for loss prevention, many working with FaceFirst, a company that provides AI facial recognition tech with the goal of preventing retail crime. In July of this year, Mission Local reported on grocery outlets in the Bay Area using facial recognition tech from the AI company Safer. Worried about your privacy? Well, Safer's president says that your photo is immediately deleted if it doesn't match a watch list of shoplifters. However, stores can manually create their own watch list and pool data with other retailers. Surely, nothing could go wrong there. Even excluding AI, retail stores have become a massive surveillance black box.

• 1:41:25Speaker 04

  Your photo is taken as you go in and out, video cameras are at checkout, they note the time you come in, they know what days you shop, what you're buying, they know who you are. Retailers will justify this invasion of our privacy through AI, robots, and large-scale data collection as necessary for marketing and to protect their capital and employees. Still, I wouldn't blame you for worrying about where that data is going. After all, if police investigators are already attending NRF conventions and the retailers are happy to work with them, why not other law enforcement? Why not ICE? As it turns out, Congress is having similar thoughts. The House of Representatives just pushed a bill forward that could give ICE access to this massive surveillance dragnet, and there's a bipartisan effort in the Senate

• 1:42:09Speaker 04

  to include it in the National Defense Authorization Act. Why would they do this? To answer that question, we need to look at a recently hyped phenomenon known as organized retail crime. You may have heard the term organized retail crime in the past few years, probably on the news or from a politician hinting at a hidden crisis in our stores. A basic Google Trends report shows use of the term is up 200% in the past five years versus the five years before. Organized retail crime, sometimes referred to as just ORC, is defined by the FBI as the "large-scale theft of retail merchandise with the intent to resell the stolen items for financial gain." If you've seen the movie I Love Boosters, that's a good satirical example, although

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  the definition is actually quite vague, which can cause a lot of problems. The outlet Retail Dive says the definition is "neither legal nor precise, contributing to uneven reporting on the part of store workers, loss prevention staff, and police," which results in it often being lumped in with more banal forms of theft, such as shoplifting. And this begs the question, is organized retail crime actually a thing? It is, but the threat to businesses, prices, and even national security have largely been blown out of proportion. To get a sense of those proportions, here's Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley at a Senate hearing on organized retail theft. He's the chief sponsor of the bill I mentioned earlier, known as the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA for short.

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  The reality is, some of the worst criminal organizations, including cartels, terrorists, and human traffickers, use this type of crime funding their misdeeds or launder ill-gotten proceeds. Side note, after hearing how this guy talks, I had to look up how old he is. He's 92 fucking years old. This old bat that was born in the Great Depression is probably being lobbied till his heart fails. And we're going to get into the issues with painting this all as a national security crisis later, but speaking of lobbying, the notoriety of organized retail crime is

• 1:44:17Speaker 04

  due in no small part to the National Retail Federation, the host of the aforementioned Loss Prevention Conference, and the largest retail lobbying group in the nation. The NRF has spent about $50 million on lobbying since just 2020, according to Open Secrets, and they've been the driving force behind the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which passed the House of Representatives on May 12th with bipartisan support, including 144 Democrats, and it may well get lumped in with our defense spending this year. CORCA has a slew of problems, but the general picture is a prosecution and police crackdown around this idea of organized crime in the retail theft world. Despite what the NRF would like you to believe, there doesn't appear to be an organized retail

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  theft crisis in the US, or really even a shoplifting crisis in general. With the exception of some large cities, particularly New York City, shoplifting in 2023 was actually lower than pre-pandemic levels, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. In 2022, the Council found retail shrink, the term for lost merchandise from theft or operational errors, was about 1.6%, the same as in 2019, according to the NRF's own data. Before we get too deep, I think it's worth noting measures of shrink are also somewhat imprecise, and a lot of the accessible data surrounding all of this comes directly from the retail lobby, who have an incentive to make problems look worse to justify security,

• 1:45:45Speaker 04

  policing, price increases, and cutting corners in inventory management. As you'll see, they have some credibility issues as well. You know who else may or may not have credibility issues? The products and services that support this podcast.

• 1:46:10Speaker 04

  And we're back. In October of 2023, the NRF claimed to Congress that organized retail crime accounted for nearly half of the $94.5 billion in shrink in 2021. In reality, Retail Dive found that organized theft accounted for about 5% of shrink, meaning the NRF was off by a literal order of magnitude. How did they arrive at such a conclusion? Well, they essentially just took some guy's word for it, specifically Ben Dugan, the former president of the Coalition of Law Enforcement in Retail, a nonprofit whose website currently features a giant low-resolution banner saying "Vegas, baby, the nation's largest ORC investigative conference."

• 1:46:54Speaker 04

  An NRF spokesperson specifically said their 50% claim was an inference made by an analyst based on Dugan's congressional testimony, not actual statistics or data. The NRF retracted the claim about two months later, but the damage was already done. According to the Vera Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group and think tank focused on criminal justice reform, the NRF leveraged its inaccurate data point in a press release, testified to it in congressional hearings, and even spoke about it at a press conference with Senator Grassley. The figure, of course, stirred panic across the country, fueled by viral social media videos showing high-profile thefts and retail companies pushing the narrative that they are under attack.

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  In some cases, retailers either closed or threatened to close stores. For example, in San Francisco in 2021, Walgreens blamed organized retail crime for the anticipated closure of five locations. The closures made it into the national spotlight, but in reality, the locations faced less than two reported shoplifting incidents per month, on average, over the previous five years. Target had a similar story in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, blaming retail theft for store closures when nearby locations actually had higher incidences of shoplifting. What actually happened to these stores? My best guess is the shift to online shopping during the pandemic drove down the sales of many brick-and-mortar locations, but rather than project something that could lower their

• 1:48:22Speaker 04

  stock valuation, retailers blamed it on organized theft. Many took up controversial practices, such as locking up merchandise, which decreased sales and customer satisfaction. Even Walgreens' chief financial officer, James Cahill, would later say they "cried too much." About shoplifting when the issue was really overblown. But even with a lack of evidence, the NRF and Senator Grassley refused to back down from their messaging and legislation, and in a lot of ways, it worked. Let me play you a clip of Gavin Newsom at a press conference in 2024 signing legislation intended to combat organized retail crime. Here, he's surrounded by a number of elected officials, law enforcement leaders, and representatives of retail associations.

• 1:49:07Speaker 04

  The issue of organized retail theft, the issue of serial theft, the issue that is front and center in the consciousness of so many Californians. You see it online, social media, you see it on the nightly news. This is the real deal. Grocers and the retailers understand that. After the NRF retracted its inflated claim nearly a year prior, organized retail crime was still making headlines and considered a very serious issue. Serious enough that Newsom included $374 million in his 2024 budget proposal to combat retail theft. In that bill, which he happened to sign atop a table covered in orange Home Depot buckets,

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  it stiffened both enforcement and penalties for retail crime. It allowed for the aggregation of theft value from different shoplifting incidents, meaning the value of items can be added up to turn what would be minor charges into grand theft. It also allows police to arrest shoplifters solely based on a witness's sworn statement or video footage of a crime. Again, surely nothing could go wrong with that. But the crackdown didn't stop there. In the 2024 general election, California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 36, which made key changes to how thefts are prosecuted. To Newsom's credit, he did not support the proposition. Prior to Prop 36, thefts of items worth less than $950 were considered misdemeanors.

• 1:50:34Speaker 04

  But now, if the individual has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes, such as shoplifting, it could be considered a felony with a sentence of up to three years in jail or prison. San Diego's district attorney, Summer Stephan, really hyped up Prop 36 as an advancement in fighting organized retail crime. She actually went on the NRF's podcast to talk about this. Yes, they have a podcast. It's called Retail Gets Real. It's bad. Don't check it out. But here she is with the host having a little laugh about locking people up.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  So, we used to have people with like 24 theft cases. They're all misdemeanors. Some thieves bring a calculator and they're just under $950. Literally, it's madness, right?

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  Is that a gun or a calculator? I'm not sure. What? Yeah, let's joke about mistaking someone for being armed in a store. It's not like that's ever gone poorly before. Anyways, what's missing from the analysis here is how these laws harm people who aren't necessarily the intended target. A particularly striking example of how this could really fuck someone's life up comes from Pennsylvania. In 2021, Joseph Soboluski reportedly misunderstood a discount at an Exxon gas station and accidentally underpaid 43 cents for a bottle of Mountain Dew. Soboluski had two theft charges in the past 10 years, one for a tank of gas and another for a pair of shoes. After the Mountain Dew incident, state police arrested him on a felony charge because of

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  a three-strikes law in Pennsylvania, similar to what could happen with Prop 36. A judge ordered Soboluski be held on a $50,000 cash-only bond, and he faced up to seven years in prison. Fortunately, his public defender successfully argued for his release after seven days, and prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charge. But it's easy to see how this could go wrong for another individual, particularly minorities who face disproportionate punishment in our legal system. This style of legislation intended to target retail crime spread like wildfire across the country. According to the text of the 2025 Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, more than 30

• 1:52:46Speaker 04

  state laws have been enacted since 2022 to address organized theft. The common theme: stricter penalties and policing. Here's how New York Governor Kathy Hochul put it in her 2024 State of the State address.

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  Let's back our businesses, back our businesses and the workers with the full force of the law, and punish those who think they can break the rules with impunity.

• 1:53:10Speaker 04

  After all, policing and aggressive enforcement are the American way to deal with crime, rather than, I don't know, addressing the root causes, notably poverty and inequality. The pervasive "tough-on-crime" mentality doesn't have much evidence backing it up, but of course, there is a wealth of research indicating flaws. For one, enforcement is heavily racialized, with Black and Brown people facing retail theft charges at significantly higher rates than whites. The very institute also highlights how increasing sentences as a deterrent doesn't actually work. A 2018 article from Pew Research says states can safely raise their value threshold for what counts as a felony theft without risking more crime.

• 1:53:51Speaker 04

  The 30 states that did so between 2000 and 2012 saw no meaningful increase in property crime or larceny rates. In South Carolina, Pew found that when they doubled the felony threshold from $1,000 to $2,000 in 2010, property crime continued to fall by 15% in the next three years. Pew also found that the value of stolen goods remained steady, and when adjusted for inflation, the median value actually decreased. In essence, the state-level push for these three-strikes shoplifting laws and the aggregation of theft value won't meaningfully decrease crime. Rather, it will result in more people, particularly minorities, being locked up for longer sentences

• 1:54:33Speaker 04

  than being saddled with felony convictions that hurt their ability to get a job and obtain housing, ultimately increasing the likelihood of committing crimes in the future. The nonprofit think tank Prison Policy Initiative estimates $27.7 billion in annual direct costs of incarceration on individuals and families across the US. Families pay in on bail, legal fees, civil asset forfeiture, commissary for loved ones, and more, often going straight to private prison operators. This also doesn't begin to factor in the impacts on children and local communities. The cost of incarceration on the state also needs to be factored in. The California Legislative Analyst Office estimates the annual cost of incarcerating

• 1:55:17Speaker 04

  one person in state prison at $127,788. With massive spending to bolster retail theft enforcement, this could create a compounding problem costing hundreds of millions. In July of 2025, DA Stephan wrote in congressional testimony supporting CORCA that her office had prosecuted over 218 cases of organized retail crime in just two years. She says these cases involved theft losses of more than $2.6 million. Putting this into perspective, if even half of those prosecutions resulted in one-year sentences in California state prisons, you're looking at an estimate of nearly $14 million

• 1:55:58Speaker 04

  in incarceration costs, over five times the reported theft value. But these thoughts don't really seem to cross the mind of people like DA Stephan or our pals at the NRF.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  This is an argument that drives me crazy. You know, the idea that they're stealing because they can't afford the food to put on the table to feed their children.

• 1:56:17Speaker 03

  This is their sole job, is to rip off your business. That's their job. That's how they wake up in the morning. And so, we didn't want them to wake up as comfortably as they did before.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  With their calculator.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:56:31Speaker 04

  They paint this image of people almost getting off on doing crime, rather than any number of more charitable explanations. At face value, it may just sound like typical high-minded BS from an aggressive DA and lobbyist, but obviously, when you think about the position of power someone like Stephan is in, it's pretty sickening. In another section of the NRF podcast episode, they discuss people switching from drug dealing to selling stolen merchandise because of lower penalties, generally glossing over the circumstances that might lead an individual into crime. Stephan even mentions the need to go after, quote, "frontline boosters," the people who are being hired to go into stores and steal, who she admits are often homeless or poor. It's honestly mad. ...addening to listening to this, so that's the last quote I'm gonna bring

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  from that. Anyways, here's some ads.

• 1:57:29Speaker 04

  So in the next episode, we're gonna dive into the specifics of the CORCA bill and how ICE has become a key player. But for now, I want to end on a note that ties together some of the broader consequences of all this retail theft propaganda. Lobbyists for the bill have a common refrain, quote, "Organized retail crime is not a victimless crime," unquote. I think the same goes for their lobbying. CORCA hasn't even passed the Senate, yet there may already be some downstream tragedies because of the intensified rhetoric around retail crime. In recent years and months, there have been a number of high-profile killings of individuals accused of shoplifting by both shop owners and police. In June of this year, police shot and killed Cohen Wiley, a one-year-old

• 1:58:12Speaker 04

  boy, while responding to a shoplifting call in Senatobia, Mississippi, over allegedly stolen diapers. Police also shot his mother while her friend was driving their car. Authorities claim they tried to stop the vehicle, but the driver nearly hit an officer, a story we've unfortunately become far too familiar with at this point. Wiley's mother disputes that the diapers were even stolen in the first place and denies that her friend drove towards the officers. Obviously, it didn't matter to the trigger-happy cops on the scene, who never should have pointed firearms at the vehicle in the first place. Other similar cases include the killing of Banco Brown, a black 24-year-old

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  trans organizer in San Francisco by a Walgreens security guard, and the killing of black 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack Belton by a shop owner in South Carolina. In Brown's case, San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, who ran on a tough-on-crime agenda, did not pursue charges against security guard Michael Earl Wayne Anthony, saying he acted in self-defense based on video footage. The video shows Brown and Anthony fighting, as Brown apparently tried to leave the Walgreens without paying. They grapple on the ground for a minute, then Anthony releases Brown but follows him to the door. Brown stops just outside the store, possibly talking back to the guard, then the guard

• 1:59:33Speaker 04

  pulls his gun and shoots Brown as he turns to run. Brown was unarmed, and in interviews following the shooting, Anthony repeatedly misgendered him. For Carmack Belton, his killer, shop owner Chike Rick Chow, faced trial for murder but was found not guilty. Thing is, Carmack Belton never actually stole anything, not even the water bottles Chow wrongly accused him of. Prosecutors say Chow chased the teenager 130 yards outside the store before shooting him in the back. Prosecutors acknowledged that Carmack Belton had a pistol, but said that it fell on the ground in the chase. It seems, based on the reporting, that the only person who claims to have seen the pistol

• 2:00:14Speaker 04

  or had it pointed at him was Chow's son. I think all this just goes to show where we place property, even just a few water bottles, snacks, or diapers, relative to human life, especially those in black communities. There's a very clear irony that may reflect the types of enforcement we could see from CORCA: tough-on-crime for the marginalized, not for those pulling the trigger. There's no easy way to determine whether political statements about retail crime have an effect on police or shop owners, but it's not hard to imagine how a constant bombardment of propaganda could embolden someone to take matters into their own hands. The retail companies are complicit in this. Somehow,

• 2:00:55Speaker 04

  they've managed to turn a manufactured story into a national security crisis, where states grant hundreds of millions of dollars to protect corporations. Retailers blame consumers when they fail to hit desired profits, then they raise prices. When that fails, they demonize the poor and rattle on about crime. Then they pilfer our general funds and team up with the police to crack down. It's never enough. Now they've sucked in the federal government, and we could be on the verge of the next upgrade to ICE terror, but that'll have to wait for the next episode. We'll see you tomorrow.

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  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her?, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival.

• 2:02:28Speaker 05

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 2:02:35Speaker 03

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

• 2:02:54Speaker 04

  She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 2:03:06Speaker 03

  Listen to What Happened to Her? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

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  Here's what you missed.

• 2:03:17Speaker 07

  And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power.

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  It's real.

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  Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests, and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

• 2:03:32Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

• 2:03:33Speaker 07

  I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

• 2:03:41Robert Evans?

  Roland Martin Unfiltered.

• 2:03:43Speaker 07

  I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein.

• 2:03:53Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 2:03:56Speaker 07

  12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground, going hard in the South now.

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  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

• 2:04:11Robert Evans?

  or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:04:18Speaker 04

  Welcome back to It Could Happen Here and our Retail Thunderdome. I'm Kevin Foster, and today we're continuing our dive into organized retail crime. In the last episode, I went over the multi-year propaganda campaign waged by the retail lobby to make organized retail crime into a national crisis, requiring stricter policing and penalties, and investment from all levels of government. I recommend listening to that episode before this one, but in short, huge swaths of politicians bought right in, spending hundreds of millions at the behest of retail giants, despite a serious lack of evidence. I also touched on the advancements in surveillance at retail stores. Whether we see a rollout of AI-powered

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  robots in the coming years may not matter so much, as many industry leaders are already implementing facial recognition technology and creating watch lists under the guise of loss prevention. And this surveillance dragnet is a key element in the rising concern around the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, which passed the House of Representatives in May with resounding bipartisan support. In all likelihood, CORCA will be signed into law, and today's episode is about why that is very bad, and how it's going to impact the American public, notably immigrants. Let's get right into it. The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act has remained in circulation for years, but

• 2:05:40Speaker 04

  to get it over the finish line, the retail lobby and supporters of the legislation ultimately found a new boogeyman: cargo theft. And this is how they've managed to turn a manufactured retail theft story into a national security problem that demands intervention by the Department of Homeland Security. In a nutshell, the cargo theft narrative has striking similarities to organized retail crime. The American Transportation Research Institute says there's between $1.8 billion and $6.5 billion in yearly losses because of cargo theft, but this includes indirect costs, a measure of cost across the entire supply chain. In terms of the

• 2:06:20Speaker 04

  actual value of goods, Cargonet, a nationally coordinated database, placed total cargo theft losses at $725 million across the US and Canada in 2025. Despite total physical losses being under $1 billion, there have been more attempts to dramatically inflate the numbers. Phil Brink, the "head of fraud media and education" at FreightWaves, a trucking, logistics, and news company, estimated the total losses could actually be closer to $60 billion because of under-reporting of theft. No clear evidence is provided to back up this assertion, other than unnamed experts. If this sounds familiar, it's almost the

• 2:07:02Speaker 04

  exact same story as the National Retail Federation's fraudulent organized retail crime numbers, where they inflated their

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  Stats by an order of magnitude, mostly based on vibes. And while cargo theft did spike in 2023, a funny little side note is that AI integration into logistics might be a big part of the problem. Reporting in the news outlet, The Lever indicates that instead of modern day highway robberies, cargo theft is beginning to look more like people simply impersonating trucking companies than fooling faulty new AI logistics systems. And once they're cleared by the AI, they can essentially just pick up the cargo and roll off. So between retail crime and cargo theft, we're essentially operating under two manufactured crises. And yet, here's the language in the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.

• 2:07:50Speaker 02

  "Organized theft groups impact the national security of the United States through financing transnational criminal activity and providing profit and proceeds supporting larger criminal goals of the criminal organizations." In other words, retail crime is now a national security threat, and it demands the influence of Homeland Security and ICE. Specifically, CORCA calls for the establishment of a coordination center to combat organized retail and supply chain crime. The DHS secretary will establish the center, and it will be run by an individual chosen by the Director of ICE. Fantastic. In essence, this coordination center will be the hub for federal law enforcement activity

• 2:08:32Speaker 02

  and connections between the national and local level and the public and private sector. Obviously, ICE deepening its involvement in our day to day lives is something to be concerned about, but here's where it gets really crazy. The bill states, "In general, subject to the approval of the Director of the Center, information that would otherwise be subject to the limitation on the disclosure of confidential information set forth in Section 1905 of Title 18 United States Code may be shared if such disclosure is operationally necessary." Putting the legalese aside, what this means in practice is that ICE can access confidential and proprietary data from retailers, and because "operationally necessary" is an extremely

• 2:09:17Speaker 02

  broad undefined term, ICE is essentially given full discretion over what data they can collect. If anyone questions them, they'll likely just say, "We need to play it safe because organized retail crime is a matter of national security that could finance drug and weapons trafficking harming Americans." So that retail surveillance dragnet I mentioned in part one, the AI facial recognition, the robots, the customer profiles, they say can be leveraged to boost customer loyalty. ICE could potentially leverage that data in its immigration crackdown. Imagine a world where ICE knows who is going to which stores and when. No need for scanning license plates on the streets anymore. Now they can just look up your customer profile and head over to Walmart when you're doing

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  your biweekly grocery run. Given what we've seen in the past year and a half, ICE will likely try to leverage this heavily. They already have facial recognition technology like the mobile Fortify app, which, according to Vanderbilt University School of Law, is connected to a database of over 200 million images. The ACLU of Wisconsin states that you may already be in this database as it's connected to other databases containing federal biometric systems, passport and visa records, and state driver's license photos. A depressing little side note, some of this may have been preventable. For example, in Oregon, the state police are being sued for sharing data with ICE, even though they and our governor were warned by Congress members to close certain loopholes

• 2:10:47Speaker 02

  that gave ICE access to DMV records. Now, obviously, grocery stores present a significant vulnerability to maintaining our privacy due to basic human needs. Nothing is clearly stopping ICE from running face scans out of retail stores and creating a new front for their anti-immigrant crackdown. And there's already a blueprint for this. The ACLU published an article in January this year about Wegmans using facial recognition and sharing data on "persons of interest" with law enforcement on a "case by case" basis. It's unclear how or if retail stores will challenge ICE's access in any way. As of now, many have been fully on board with the organized retail theft hype train.

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  On the other hand, on May 11th of this year, a coalition of 40 civil rights organizations, including the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, sent a letter to Congress urging the House not to pass CORCA, highlighting how it would massively expand DHS's role and authority in domestic law enforcement. And the issues don't end there. They also pointed out how CORCA gives DHS influence over local and state law enforcement through the ability to expand certain grant requirements. In effect, this coalition sees a pathway for DHS to push jurisdictions toward more intrusive data collection and surveillance, especially if that jurisdiction is receiving federal grants.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  Additionally, the coalition noted how the sunset provision for the CORCA Coordination Center "includes no requirement to dismantle data sharing systems, delete collected information, or reverse any entrenched surveillance practices." So these practices could very well be here to stay without some sort of intervention down the line. Good luck to us trying to get that. I think, as James put it in a conversation we had, it's like trying to convince a bunch of the HOA moms that we need to be softer on retail crime. It just doesn't really seem like it's going to happen. And unfortunately, this coalition letter largely fell on deaf ears with only 59 Democrats and one Republican voting against CORCA in the House.

• 2:12:58Speaker 02

  I've spoken with many people about this, and there's often this question of, like, do they know? And I'd argue it's their job to know. And this bill is pretty cut and dried power expansion for ICE. It's kind of hard to tell how they wouldn't have seen this coming, especially with progressive groups warning them about it. And by now, this coalition has grown to over 120 organizations urging the Senate not to pass CORCA. In spite of this, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin have teamed up to add CORCA as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027. This would essentially just mean entrenching this into our defense policy, and if that

• 2:13:41Speaker 02

  happens, which seems somewhat likely, I suspect it's curtains and CORCA is going through. I highly doubt that the Democrats are going to hold the line on the NDAA for something they clearly either don't care about or don't seem to understand. But what they might care about are the products and services that support this podcast.

• 2:14:10Speaker 02

  And we're back, and I'm imagining this is starting to sound pretty frightening, and it is. To cool the temperature a bit, it's important to consider ICE's capacity for enforcement. They've had ways of accessing various surveillance tools for quite some time now. To some extent, they likely could have done some of this stuff with lock cameras or other automated license plate readers. But I think the threat in retail comes more from the pre-existing infrastructure and the fact that this bill seems to give ICE sweeping access to confidential and proprietary information. Still, there are strategies for resisting this. I won't lie, many of them are time intensive and require consistent community effort, but that's the world we're in.

• 2:14:51Speaker 02

  For example, in Hillsborough, Oregon, just west of Portland, local mutual aid groups began delivering groceries to immigrant families who were afraid to go outside in the middle of Operation Black Rose, which was the massive ICE surge last fall and winter. In Los Angeles last summer, similar groups set up community defense corners outside Home Depot parking lots in an attempt to protect day laborers from ICE raids. These usually manifested as just pop-up tents with community members, water, and snacks. Certainly didn't stop everything, but I know one group in Pasadena that was allegedly the last Home Depot in LA to be raided, and they had a consistent community effort for months. In terms of shopping, avoiding loyalty programs may end up being necessary, as this is one

• 2:15:36Speaker 02

  of the ways that we hand over a lot of our data to stores. But shopping locally or at stores that collect less data will probably be the best bet. So CORCA clearly has a number of ways that it could be abused by ICE, but to get the full extent of what we're dealing with, I got in contact with Laura Conover, who is the district attorney in Pima County, Arizona, which contains Tucson and borders the Mexican state of Sonora. Contrary to DA Stephan featured in the first episode, Conover has actually been an outspoken opponent of CORCA. In particular, she has tied CORCA to the Lake and Riley Act, saying Congress is just compounding mistakes it already made. The Lake and Riley Act became law on January 29th, 2025, passing Congress again with a

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  substantial amount of bipartisan support, greater than 60% in both chambers. It's a particularly abhorrent piece of legislation as it "requires DHS to detain certain non-US nationals who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury to another person." Notice how it says arrested, not charged, not convicted, but simply detained for one of the crimes listed, even if the individual didn't actually do anything wrong. The law also allows states to sue the federal government for alleged failures in immigration enforcement,

• 2:17:03Speaker 02

  meaning the federal government can effectively be held liable for a number of things, such as if an undocumented immigrant causes harm to state residents, including financial harm greater than $100. It's tough to say the extent to which this could be applied, but the through line between this and Corka is pretty clear. ICE could monitor retail locations for thefts and shoplifting through Corka. Then they're essentially liable if they don't seek to detain someone who has stolen more than $100 of worth of merchandise. Conover has specific examples of the ways in which the Lake and Riley Act is burdening local jurisdictions, destroying due process protections, and ultimately, how Corka will very likely make this worse.

• 2:17:46Speaker 02

  For example, it was Conover's job to prosecute the case of Jessica Corales Duarte, who entered the US when she was two years old with her mother, who had fled domestic abuse in Mexico and obtained legal status through the Violence Against Women Act. Corales Duarte became a DACA recipient, and she's now 32 or 33, based on the articles that I read, and she has two children. But in the past year, she was arrested and charged with shoplifting and theft, and her DACA status has been terminated. She allegedly stole up to $5,700 in perfume from an Ulta Beauty location over three days, which put her over the felony theft threshold, though this number is disputed by her defense. She had no prior criminal record, and Conover said, based on a taped confession,

• 2:18:31Speaker 02

  she likely would have qualified for a program where she could pay restitution and get back on her feet. Then ICE came in. They detained Corales Duarte as she was leaving her home for her waitressing job. The ensuing months were a disaster. ICE held her at the Eloy Detention Center about an hour from Tucson and blocked her from attending many of the court dates for her shoplifting case, according to an article in the Tucson Spotlight. Here's DA Conover on the situation. So, for example, in our case, the result was just defendants disappearing into federal custody and before any normal process. So you've got a victim who's now totally out of luck

• 2:19:17Speaker 02

  for any kind of restoration, be that through probation or through restitution, which is important. You know, so victims' rights are violated. The defendant, obviously, like gets no due process. You know, in our experience, they hardly had any contact with their attorney, and their attorney was just rendered totally ineffective in the local court. So it confounds the entire normal criminal justice process. It's like the opposite of collaboration. So not only are Corales Duarte's rights violated on multiple levels, but it also actually hurts the property owner, because they won't receive restitution if someone is deported. It's not clear whether Corales Duarte

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  was involved in some sort of organized retail theft operation, but I want to stress again that the people in such a situation, who actually do the stealing, commonly referred to as boosters, are often poor, homeless, or struggling in some way themselves. Many of you probably already know this, but undocumented people commit less crime overall than American citizens. An analysis by the National Institute of Justice using data from Texas between 2012 and 2018 found that undocumented immigrants had offending rates less than half of that of US-born citizens. This is in spite of the fact that the US makes it much harder for undocumented people to obtain good-paying jobs, which can drive people into poverty and therefore crime. And for all of this, Conover informed me

• 2:20:46Speaker 02

  that Corales Duarte appears to be in process for deportation away from her children. There are just more effective and humane ways to deal with this, like the diversion programs mentioned, which don't need to involve the federal government. But instead, we're just giving more power to ICE. With Lake and Riley and with Corka, you're talking about such a street-level local issue, where we have local police and prosecutors whose entire purpose is to prosecute local crime. And to just give some random federal agency authority over that, sweeping new authority of that, just doesn't make any sense operationally.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Not to mention, the particular agency is one in which there's bipartisan concern about how recklessly they're being managed. On the note of recklessness, with the expansion of ICE's surveillance network comes greater concern over warrantless enforcement, constitutional violations, and technological mistakes. The podcast Reveal reported a case of ICE scanning the face of a 23-year-old US citizen purely on suspicion. And according to Innovation Law Lab, the same seems to have happened to a woman in Oregon, where ICE used a Palantir-developed platform called Elite, which, without a warrant, essentially geofences an area and creates targets with a, quote, "immigration nexus", unquote.

• 2:22:13Speaker 02

  In this case, the mobile Fortify app returned two different incorrect names and images for the same woman. Still, ICE has told lawmakers it's a definitive measure of immigration status that effectively supersedes other evidence of citizenship, such as a birth certificate. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has also reported that facial recognition tech is less accurate on women than men, black people, and other individuals with darker skin. This all gets much worse when you're not in a controlled environment, where you can get a well-lit, straight-on shot of someone's face with no obstruction, certainly something that isn't going to happen under the floodlights of a grocery store entryway. So again, I can't really say to what extent ICE

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  will actually integrate all of these technologies or what capacity they'll have for enforcement, but it seems like the worst-case scenario could be a warrantless surveillance frenzy, where they couldn't care less if they're detaining the right people. I say "the right people" as in the individuals that they're actually targeting, and I don't actually believe there is a right person to be detained. It's all bullshit. But as Corka also calls for local and federal collaboration, cops could very easily worsen this problem, and ICE can leverage the Lake and Riley Act to ramp up deportations. It's not good. But anyways, here's some ads.

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  And we're back. To round out this two-parter, I'd like to connect some of the dots from the first episode to Corka. To do so, I've chatted with James about a concept known as moral turpitude. Moral turpitude is a vaguely-defined concept, and there's lots of nebulous legal language surrounding it. But in essence, it's a crime that is considered morally offensive, and it's important to immigration law. Notably included in this definition is larceny or theft, and a conviction for one of these crimes can render an immigrant either inadmissible or deportable. Here's some of the conversation that James and I had.

• 2:24:21Speaker 04

  Inadmissibility could be important for someone who is inside the United States. Let's say they, they call it EWE, entered without inspection. That means coming into the United States not through a port of entry, right? Let's say they went over the wall, under the wall, around the wall, through the river, through the desert, through the mountains, right? There are many ways that people could enter without inspection. They could then be found inadmissible long after entering the United States, because they hadn't been admitted, right? They just came in. Just imagine, like, you want to go Disneyland. It's prohibitively expensive, so you climb over the fence. You were not admitted to Disneyland.

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:58Speaker 04

  Right? So if Disneyland found you, they would kick you out.

• 2:25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  The issue here, let's say if someone has been in the United States for a number of years, but they are undocumented. If they are found guilty of a crime, including moral turpitude, or convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude, and the offense carries a maximum sentence of one year or more, and the person committed the offense within five years after the date of admission, they are then deportable. Now, if they EWE, if they entered without inspection, there are other reasons they could be deportable, right?

• 2:25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:34Speaker 04

  But... Did say somebody has a visa. The same is true with inadmissibility, right? So we recently had a Supreme Court ruling about admissibility with regards to permanent residence, which kind of brings them closer in line to visa holders. But admissibility doesn't just mean them giving you the visa. It could also, for example, impact you if you went somewhere else and returned to the United States, right? So a crime involving moral turpitude could then render you inadmissible. So you could be detained or not admitted to the United States when you came back. It's also important, I guess, to note that some diversion programs, state diversion

• 2:26:14Speaker 04

  programs, don't count as a conviction in terms of federal immigration law if a guilty plea is not entered. So if somebody who could previously have got into a diversion program ends up not in a diversion program, in addition to Corka, right? We have all these state sentencing enhancements. Yeah. That we see in California, right? If that person ends up with a conviction, instead of being put in a diversion program without entering a plea, that is a night and day difference in immigration terms, right? It's black and white. One is a conviction for what is probably a crime involving moral turpitude, because larceny is a crime involving moral turpitude. And I think that's what this generally falls under, right? Yeah. Again, not a lawyer.

• 2:26:59Speaker 04

  But like, if that is the case, one of these sentencing enhancements at a state level results in somebody now having, for federal immigration terms, a conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, they are now inadmissible. And in a single conviction, as I said before, can make a noncitizen deportable if it has a possible sentence of a year or more, which these sentencing enhancements make a lot more likely, right? Yeah. And good luck, I guess, trying to find some way of getting that conviction overturned. Or like, you know, now you're fighting against all this lobbying that retailers are doing, right? And all this propaganda that has been put out there that is going to make it harder

• 2:27:41Speaker 04

  and harder for people to avoid those convictions in the first place and then to get them overturned. Yeah. I don't want to get like too doom and gloom about it, but like, do you worry that there's just a combination of factors here that could massively worsen things with the level? Yeah. Yeah, like every time we make a new law, we're giving a new powers at a state, right? And every single law is backed up by violence. Doesn't matter if it's a parking ticket or murder, right? The state can lock you up, beat you up, or shoot you up. That is the basis on which all laws rest, right? Yeah, so you don't pay a parking ticket, then you don't go to court. Eventually someone's going to turn up at your door and it's going to be a person with a gun, right? Like, that is the, uh, the structure on which the state exists, to use like the crass

• 2:28:26Speaker 04

  verbarian definition of the state, I guess. This is a big one, right? We are handing a bunch of tools here to an entity which is tearing families apart, which is ripping children from parents, which is taking grandmothers away from their grandchildren, right? Yeah. I mean, what do you, maybe this isn't for the episode, but like, what do you think people should do? Yeah, like, the answer to this is the same as the answer to everything. It's stronger communities, like, uh, people steal things because they need to meet their material needs. I'm sure some people also enjoy stealing stuff, right? That's a thing that exists, but a vast majority of theft is happening because people are not meeting their material needs.

• 2:29:09Speaker 04

  We need to work out a way to meet each other's material needs. And like, I was in Minneapolis in January, right? Yeah. Very hard for me to be hungry in Minneapolis in January. Like, I'm vegan, I'm annoying to feed, right? But the people would constantly bring me fucking food and hot tea and like, that's not that be all, end all, but gets us a long way there. Like, if your neighbors aren't hungry, and I guess to know if your neighbors are hungry, you have to know who your neighbors are, right? So like, start by knocking on someone's door, you know? Start by, hey, your truck's not working, let's work it out. I bet I can find a YouTube video we can watch, and if you have a bunch of sockets, let's see if we can fix it.

• 2:29:53Speaker 04

  So I know the ending of this is sort of bleak, but I just want to be honest with you about the possibilities. If ISIS to take Corka as far as they can, as DA Conover told me, you give them an inch and they take a mile, then this will get very bad. Surveillance capitalism isn't going to draw a line at immigrants, but that doesn't really matter either way. Clearly, the Democratic Party, given their votes, support is not going to stop this. As James said, it's going to come down to community. So go find your co-op grocery store, get to know your neighbors' faces before ICE gets to know your face at the grocery store. Thanks for listening.

• 2:30:38Robert Evans?

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• 2:31:09Speaker 03

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival.

• 2:31:29Speaker 05

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 2:31:36Speaker 03

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her.

• 2:31:52Speaker 04

  No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 2:32:07Speaker 03

  Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:32:14Speaker 05

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 2:32:17Robert Evans?

  Here's what you missed.

• 2:32:18Speaker 07

  And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power.

• 2:32:26Speaker 05

  It's real.

• 2:32:27Speaker 07

  Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests, and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

• 2:32:33Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

• 2:32:34Speaker 07

  I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

• 2:32:42Robert Evans?

  Roland Martin Unfiltered.

• 2:32:43Speaker 07

  I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein.

• 2:32:54Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 2:32:57Speaker 07

  12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now.

• 2:33:07Speaker 05

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

• 2:33:12Robert Evans?

  or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:33:18Speaker 05

  There were some strange looking people at the RNC. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Robert Evans and Mia Wong, with a special segment later on by James Stout, who is on the ground in Spokane. This episode, we're covering the week of July 29th to August 5th. And let's actually start with James reporting from the wildfires in Spokane.

• 2:33:51Speaker 04

  Hi, everyone. It's James. I'm in Washington State this week covering the fires here. I will cover fire more in depth on my new show, Natural Courses, which you will soon be able to download wherever quality podcasts given away for free. But I want to catch everyone up on the fires here, as I know a lot of folks prefer to consume their news this way and might otherwise not be aware of what's going on. So on the 1st of August, the National Weather Service in eastern Washington and in Idaho issued a PDS, a particularly dangerous situation notice. Fires were already burning across much of the state and across much of the Pacific Northwest, including on the land of the Colville tribes and the Spokane tribe. On Saturday, three fires struck near the north part of the city of Spokane.

• 2:34:35Speaker 04

  The PDS doubtless helped some folks prepare. Other folks, I'm sure, will have missed it entirely. Very quickly, people went from nothing to level three go now warnings. This was somewhat compounded by things like a large travel volleyball tournament happening in an area which got a level three go now warning. What that means, if you're not familiar, there are three levels of warnings when you are evacuated for a fire, and the level three is the most severe one, that being like, you have to leave your home right now. Several people have related to me, and I want to caveat here that I'm not being critical of the response, which has actually been very good. I'm giving information because more people are going to find themselves in this situation in the future.

• 2:35:16Speaker 04

  And I think it's important that people understand that the level three warning that buzzed on people's phones to the emergency alert came not very long before they saw fires and even structures on fire in their neighborhood, right? I think people sometimes think that like, someone will come and tell you when it's your time to leave. And that's not always going to be possible, right? And again, I'm not conveying that to say that like, the response here was poor. I'm conveying that to say that people need to understand this, because we're all going to have to live with fire in the West, because there has always been fire here. The climate is changing, and we are pushing our homes further and further into the wildland urban interface. And that is where this fire began, right?

• 2:35:59Speaker 04

  On Saturday, the state was a tinderbox, and it was these neighborhoods along the wildland urban interface that caught the brunt of these fast-moving fires that found a plentiful source of fuel and were pushed along by the wind. Currently, about a third of the 200,000 people who live here in Spokane have been placed under evacuations orders, and the community is obviously feeling the weight of that, along with the hundreds of people who lost their homes and all their possessions here. Notable points of the evacuations included buses evacuating people from old folks homes and a VA hospital was also evacuated by buses. And of course, many people left their homes in their cars with their possessions, their pets, their families, et cetera. And of course, that resulted in very slow moving traffic. Nonetheless, from what I heard this morning, seems everyone evacuated in time, at least to save themselves.

• 2:36:44Speaker 04

  I know many people will be dealing with tragedies, right? They've lost their homes, people will have lost pets, people will have lost things that are incredibly important to them, right? I spoke to people out on the Colville Tribe Reservation who were saying they had lost homes that their father, mother, grandparents built with their hands, right? These intergenerational homes that had gone. That is absolutely tragic. I want to give an update that I got this morning from the Public Information Officer of the IMT that's managing this fire. So we'll drop that in right now. My name's Tom Stokesbury. I'm the Lead Public Information Officer for California Interagency Incident Management Team Seven. So, right now, there's three fires that make up the Spokane area fires.

• 2:37:28Speaker 04

  That's going to be the Fairview Fire, the Old Trails Fire, and the Autumn Lane Fire. Currently, all totaled in the acres is 10,540. But over the last 24 hours, our firefighters have made tremendous progress in putting control lines in around the entire perimeter of all three fires. Now, that doesn't mean the fire is contained or controlled, we just have those management and control lines there. Still have an active firefight, still have active flames in the interior. To the point, on the Old Trails and Fairview Fire, we actually had a spot outside the line on each one of those that went to about an acre, acre and a half. But we had the resources in the right place and they were able to pick those up at about one acre each.

• 2:38:10Speaker 04

  So that just kind of proves that there's still active heat, hotspots in this interior. And that's why we have engines in all three of these fires, still protecting the structures that have not been impacted yet. Because any kind of wind can throw embers. And right now, the receptive fuels in this area, and by fuels, I mean the vegetation that is so dry, right? Your grass, your brush, it's very receptive to those embers. Proof being is the two spot fires. But we have 1,300 firefighters here, we're expected to be over 2,000 by the end of the week. I also asked about the number of structures impacted and when people here can expect to return home, and here's what Tom said. Right now, we're well over 700 structures that have been impacted. We do have damage assessment personnel ordered and en route.

• 2:38:55Speaker 04

  It's my understanding they'll be showing up today and we'll have them on the ground tomorrow. So we're going to start to get a more accurate number of what those impacted structures look like versus, you know, a total loss to just an impacted structure. And those structures include not only people's personal homes, but garages, outbuildings, sheds. But we're going to get a better accurate number on those over these next few days. Trying to get these communities back to where we can get them repopulated. But in addition to that, there's a tremendous amount of hazmat in there. We're talking burned solar panels, we're talking LPG, possible gas leaks, the building materials from homes that have been burnt, the stuff that's inside those homes. There is a lot of hazmat. So we have to ensure the public is going to be safe before we repopulate and let them back in there.

• 2:39:38Speaker 04

  Because our ultimate goal is life first, then property. And that life is not just firefighters, it's the public safety too. While I was at the Firebase Camp, I also ran into local community members and businesses who were helping out. People were constantly dropping off food and snacks and supplies. Here's one local business owner who explained his efforts to me.

• 2:40:00Speaker 05

  So my name is Tim Codzy, I'm with JK Boots. I'm one of the owners with my brother and dad.

• 2:40:06Speaker 04

  I asked him what him and his company were doing to support the community.

• 2:40:09Speaker 05

  On Wednesday, August 5th, we're doing something called Home Front Day. We're going to donate 100% of all the profits of that day to the Spokane residents who lost their homes. So they could do that, they could participate, just go on our website and just do something, just get something, and that'll go to those people. The other things you can do is, you can come here and you can offer to drop off, you know, again, drinks, wipes, essentials, you can look on Facebook, they've posted those things. The other big thing is just, there's other funds that are set up that have like meal trains and, because there's about 60,000 people that are still not able to go back to their homes.

• 2:40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. What's happening in Spokane is tragic, and it is going to impact this community for years to come. It will take a very long time for rebuilding to happen, and probably even longer for people to heal emotionally. I want to make sure that we do not overlook the several large ongoing fires that are impacting the indigenous communities around the city though. Because as resources shift to the fires that burn the city, these communities will see fewer resources, and indeed, they already have seen fewer resources. I spent the last couple of days visiting the Colville Tribe's reservations, Spokane Tribe reservations. Today, I spoke to folks who had cut their own fire lines around their homes and communities who were prepared to fight the fire.

• 2:41:23Speaker 04

  And indigenous people here have lived with fire for thousands of years, right? They have a deep understanding of fire. And people there had decided to stay and to defend their communities, even in areas that were impacted by Level 3 evacuations. Not everybody, right? Some people who were more vulnerable, some people who were not able to participate in that response, or didn't feel safe doing so, left and the folks stayed. As resources continue to be diverted to fight these fires in Spokane, and as news coverage will continue to centre on the city, folks who lost their homes out in these tribal communities will also need help, and it might be harder for them to find it. Some of these people are still in their homes. Just today, I spoke to several people who are determined to do their hardest to save

• 2:42:07Speaker 04

  their homes and hoping that the wind doesn't pick up. They're cutting their own fire lines, in several cases, forestry and mining workers, as well as tribal community members who were on contract fire crews, have been using their machinery and their skills to clear space and create better fire breaks around their communities. It's a really tragic and difficult situation, especially when combined with this reporting that I will link to of Red Cross volunteers making racist remarks at shelters that made indigenous folks feel unwelcome there. I don't think I need to repeat those, but I will link to the story if you'd like to read it. It is also, of course, amazing to see the strength and resilience of communities coming together to take care of one another in these tragic situations. I particularly want to highlight the work of the River Warriors Society.

• 2:42:51Speaker 04

  I spent today with them moving supplies from one reservation to another. I will include a link to the Spokane Tribal Network, which people can use if they'd like to donate to support that mutual aid work. They're really doing excellent work, they're getting people what they need, they're filling those gaps, they're moving more quickly than big organisations or big government things can. Even tribal governments will require paperwork, whereas what they're doing is literally standing at gas stations, using cards to pay for people's gas, so they can get where they need to go, right? Getting people hotel rooms, getting people food, getting people the things they need to get through this and to begin healing. Today, I helped load hundreds of pounds of pet food and animal food into a trailer, for

• 2:43:34Speaker 04

  instance, so that people who need to feed their animals don't have to drive for hours away from their homes, right? When the risk of fire is high and they want to stay home and do what they can to protect their homes. They're really doing excellent work, and I would encourage you to support them if you have the resources. I will have more on this when I get home. Currently really tired, smell like a campfire, and I am in the bathroom of a motel because it's the only quiet place I could find. If you'd like to donate, I would suggest the Spokane Tribal Network, and I will include their web address, it's SpokaneTribalNetwork.org, not hard to find. I will also include the Inovia Foundation webpage for donation to folks in Spokane and their ongoing recovery. And yeah, I'll have more on this soon.

• 2:44:19Speaker 04

  Hey everyone, it's James again. Just a little pick up here that I wanted to add. Someone has been arrested for arson in connection with the Autumn Trails Fire. I want to remind everyone that an arrest is not a conviction. There were three fires that impacted Spokane, and that fire needs more than ignition, right? To spread in the way that it did here, it needs fuel, crucially, in this example. And that fuel was already there, right? That's why I wanted to highlight the PDS that was issued on the 1st of August. Now, I also want to address these conspiracy theories, right? The most common conspiracy theory seems to be that this was an attempt by big data

• 2:45:02Speaker 04

  centre companies to clear a block of land in order to have a place where they could put a data centre. I can tell you that I've spent the last two days driving hundreds of miles around Eastern Washington. There is plenty of land where you could put a data centre here without burning down a neighbourhood. Data centres are bad, they are destroying so many beautiful places and so many wonderful things. It doesn't mean that they are comic book evil all the time. I think we need to inject a little rational thought here. We don't have any evidence that it was a data centre, right? If we did, then people would be presenting it, but the data centre hypothesis seems

• 2:45:47Speaker 04

  to rest on people want to build a data centre near here, therefore burn down neighbourhoods. Or the relatively common and frequently recurrent 15-minute cities conspiracy theory, which suggests that rather than 15-minute cities being an aspirational goal for urban planning and a framework around which you consider permitting, building, and potentially growing our cities, they are some kind of George Soros mandated dictat that is now being enforced by burning people's neighbourhoods down in suburban areas again. No evidence to support that other than this wasn't a city that, you know, the 15-minute city people consider to be a 15-minute city.

• 2:46:29Speaker 04

  I want to address these things because they come up every single time there's a fire. And I think we need, and we're going to talk about this more in my show, Natural Causes, which you can hear from 17th of August, wherever good podcasts are given away for free, there are going to be fires in this ecosystem forever. There have been fires since there have been plants to burn. Lightning started fires before people ever did. But the people who have been here for tens of thousands of years have lived alongside fire for all that time. We can't entirely suppress fire and remove it from our landscape. This landscape needs fire and it evolved, co-evolved with fire. But there are ways that we can prevent fire from doing what happened today, but they

• 2:47:12Speaker 04

  require a lot of effort, they require a lot of resources, and they require some rethinking of how we live alongside fire. That's something I'd like to approach later in more detail, but I guess I just wanted to address these conspiracy theories because I see more and more of them. Also want to point out that there is no meaningful restitution, no pay extracted from one person if that person did start the fire. Healing doesn't come from punishing someone, it comes from helping someone. And in this situation, there are hundreds of families who lost their homes, both on the Colville Tribe's Reservation, the Spokane Tribe Reservation, and here in Spokane City. I think the focus should be on how to help those people and how to help them heal,

• 2:47:54Speaker 04

  rather than blaming one person who may have started this fire, who may not, right? We haven't got a conviction yet, but either way, I want people to, uh, to remember that this is about a lot more than one person.

• 2:48:09Speaker 02

  Thank you, James. In other news, on Monday, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking New York's ban on ICE agents wearing masks. New York State is suing to shut down Calshi for operating as an unregulated sports betting platform that offers illegal underage gambling. The state is also seeking $36 billion in penalties. And this lawsuit comes after a district court ruled against Calshi in their bid to protect itself from the enforcement of New York's gambling laws. Prior to this lawsuit from the state, Calshi attempted to bribe Governor Kathy Hochul by offering $10 billion in tax revenue over five years.

• 2:48:54Speaker 02

  The governor responded on X, the everything app, quote, "Calshi can promise 100% of its revenue. You can't buy yourself an exemption from New York law. If an illegal bookie offers the state a share of their profits, we'll still shut them down." Unquote. In response to a lawsuit from Trump accusing Capital One of unlawfully closing his bank accounts for political reasons, Capital One has revealed in court filings that the Trump Organization bank accounts were closed in 2021 for, quote unquote, "anti-money laundering reasons." Following, quote, "months of analysis and careful review by the bank's money laundering team." A few months prior to the closure of Trump's accounts, Capital One had to pay a $390 million

• 2:49:38Speaker 02

  penalty to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for not enforcing an effective anti-money laundering program. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch's Senate confirmation hearing is coming up, but last week, President Trump said he would keep Blanch on as acting attorney general if Blanch doesn't get confirmed and just try to nominate him again after the midterms. The US Attorney has dropped charges against three people who were accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The motion to dismiss the felony charge against the former Olympic athlete claims that it wasn't until after he was indicted that the Department of Interior gave evidence over

• 2:50:21Speaker 02

  to prosecutors that, quote, "damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in July 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with America 250 Celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026." The motion also states, quote, "is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the reflecting pool to vandalism." Unquote. Of course, Trump was not too happy about this, turning to Truth Social to say, "I disagree 100% with Janine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the reflecting pool. I don't know what she was thinking. To me, it was a pure case of vandalism."

• 2:51:06Speaker 02

  In all caps. "That includes the grass, which had a big 8647 emblazoned in giant letters on it." Oh, my God. "And many other elements of the surrounding area." Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. "There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by vandals." President DJT. The president later said that Pirro, quote unquote, "folded like an umbrella," and, quote, "frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious." Unquote. There was some speculation that he might fire the US Attorney. That has not happened as of yet, but who knows? You know, it's, it's the Trump administration.

• 2:51:49Speaker 02

  Things could have changed by the time we finish recording this. Yeah. There's like a 30% chance things will have changed by the time we finish recording this. Obviously, it's good that these charges were dropped. It was very clear that the damage to the reflecting pool was not done by vandals. No, and that fucking late, middle-aged former Olympian bending briefly down to touch the water did not cause 150-foot cut in the fucking-- In the center of the pool. Absolutely not. Uh. God. Ohio House Rep Max Miller, who is accused of abuse and breaking his two-year-old daughter's collarbone, which we covered last week, posted a video this week addressing the allegations

• 2:52:31Speaker 02

  made by his ex-wife, saying, quote, "If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?" Unquote. The next day, Trump was questioned about Miller and said this.

• 2:52:43Speaker 05

  It's a very sad thing. I know Max, he's, uh, he's a good person. I mean, I always said he was a very good person, and I'm going to let the families figure that out. You know, those families, uh, I know they're working on it. It's a very sad thing, especially when you know somebody so well to be going through that, when it's accusations, and I'm going to let them figure that out.

• 2:53:07Speaker 02

  On Tuesday, it was announced the House Ethics Committee would open investigation after Miller himself requested a probe into the allegations. Let's go to an ad break and then return to talk about the primary elections in Michigan and Missouri. Yeah.

• 2:53:36Speaker 02

  Okay, we are back. This past Tuesday, left-wing populist candidate Abdul El-Sayed beat corporate-backed and AIPAC-backed candidate Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. In the week prior to the election, polling showed El-Sayed pulling way ahead by double digits, but come election night, he won by just 1 point, 48.5% to Stevens, 47.5%. Very close race. Great. The more traditional progressive candidate, Mallory McMorro, who suspended her campaign months ago, got 4% of the vote, over 60,000 votes.

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  El-Sayed ended up winning by just 15,000 votes. But the fact that Tuesday wasn't a total blowout for El-Sayed should not take away from the magnitude of this victory. Haley Stevens had nearly $70 million of outside spending helping her in this race, about half of which came from AIPAC. El-Sayed was outspent 11 to 1. For the past month, pro-Stevens ads have completely dominated the airwaves. Jesus, I didn't know it was that big a discrepancy in funding. That's crazy. It's brutal. This is the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in history. AIPAC and dark money really rallied for Stevens, especially in this past month. Whoops.

• 2:55:01Speaker 02

  Some of those ads and mailers just completely blanketing Michigan falsely implied that Stevens was endorsed by Barack Obama, which some voters cited as their reason for supporting Stevens. Other ads tried to smear Abdul as a sexist podcast bro for comments critical of Michelle Obama and Gretchen Whitmer's politics. Stevens received the endorsement of Michigan's sitting governor, Gretchen Whitmer, as well as multiple Democratic establishment figures, Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, as well as the Michigan Democratic Party Black and Jewish caucuses. Israel and Palestine became a central issue in this race. In the last two debates, Abdul hit Stevens again and again over AIPAC and corporate funding.

• 2:55:45Speaker 02

  In the final debate, even the moderator questioned Stevens on whether her AIPAC funding would influence how she votes in Congress. Also, in that last debate, Stevens lied on stage about taking money from utility companies. In an interview just a week before the election, Stevens addressed the attacks over dark money funding. Quote, "It seems like we got the campaign finance zoomies." Jesus Christ. "We've got to be really honest here. Who's benefiting from this level of infighting? It's the Republicans who already have all their dark money all lined up and ready to go." Unquote. Let's take a listen to what those campaign finance zoomies can buy you in the Senate. Israel comes to me in my dreams.

• 2:56:30Speaker 02

  I see Israel's future, and I know that Israel will continue to exist for the Jewish people. Just the zoomies. It's fine, everyone. It's the zoomies. God. Jesus Christ. I will not, I will not stop playing that clip because it's one of the craziest things to have a then-sitting congressperson say. Yeah. Now, Haley Stevens tried to attack Abdul for having a super PAC of his own primarily funded by his father-in-law, who, who did donate $300,000 to the PAC, which was the highest individual contribution. You know, $300,000 from his father-in-law versus $70 million of outside spending. Jesus Christ.

• 2:57:14Speaker 02

  Not, not a very compelling argument, but that, that was, that was one of the main things that Stevens tried to hit Abdul. During the last two debates, when he brought up the massive amount of AIPAC spending backing her campaign. Abdul has worked in public health since 2015. And for Senate, he ran on Medicare for All and abolishing medical debt, which he did for 300,000 residents of Wayne County in 2024 as Director of the County Health Department. His platform also includes repealing Medicaid cuts from Trump's quote unquote "beautiful" bill, codifying reproductive rights and protecting gender-affirming care. His quote unquote "money out of politics" plank includes getting rid of Citizens United to stop dark money PACs, ending partisan gerrymandering, supporting Supreme Court

• 2:57:56Speaker 02

  reform, getting rid of the filibuster, abolishing ICE, and that, quote, "ICE funds should be repurposed to build out the legal infrastructure of courts to create a clear pathway to citizenship for those who are stuck in limbo in our current system," unquote. Abdul supports Ukraine and opposes, quote, "the illegal and unjustifiable war in Iran." He also opposes, quote, "direct blank check funding to foreign militaries, including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others," unquote. And he supports an immediate arms embargo on Israel and rejects, quote, "the false differentiation between offensive and defensive weapons," unquote, which is a reference to the Iron Dome.

• 2:58:38Speaker 02

  His "money in your pocket" platform includes an anti-monopoly FTC, trade agreements negotiated with unions, restoring funding to the NIH, opposing private school vouchers, tying increases in the defense budget to an equal increase in education funding, taxing capital gains over $1 million at the same rate as ordinary income, closing loopholes used by the ultra wealthy, raising the marginal tax rate on earnings over $1 million, and a billionaire tax. He also supports a cost of living exemption on federal taxes up to $50,000 and closing the Social Security payroll tax cap. For housing, his platform aims to streamline local regulations to make it easier to build

• 2:59:20Speaker 02

  while banning large corporations that speculate on housing stock from owning homes and supporting legislation to ban algorithmic rental price fixing software. El-Sayed supports regulating AI companies, creating an independent technical agency with real enforcement power for AI, which he cites the FDA as an example, but having basically an FDA-type organization to regulate and handle AI. He also is in support of federal zoning guidelines and legislation to protect communities from the consequences of data centers. In a primary debate, El-Sayed said that data center projects must meet the following terms, quote, "all union labor, no raising our utility rates, increasing our utility reliability,

• 3:00:03Speaker 02

  not touching our water, and there's got to be a community benefits agreement that's negotiated in good faith with all the money put into escrow," unquote. El-Sayed is not a DSA candidate. He does not call himself a socialist, but he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and campaigned with Hasan Piker. He's also been backed by the UAW, National Nurses United, the Working Families Party, Jewish Voice for Peace, and If Not Now. A few days before the primary, but after polling indicated that Abdul would likely be the nominee, incumbent Republican Senator Mike Rogers released an AI-generated ad depicting Abdul as a communist Trojan horse. Let's take a listen.

• 3:00:47Speaker 02

  They'll never see us coming. They really think we're just Democrats. God. Jesus Christ. Every AI ad I hear Jeff Goldblum's fucking voice say, "You were so obsessed with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think, you know, should we? Is this a good idea? Is this ad going to work?" So basically, this ad has a Trojan horse rolling into Michigan with a large banner reading "Definitely Not Communism." Inside the horse, Abdul is dressed as Odysseus from the Nolan movie, along with Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Saurav Mamdani. Text at the end reads, "Don't let communism into Michigan.

• 3:01:31Speaker 02

  Mike Rogers for US Senate." I think Mike Rogers should keep releasing ads just like this, nothing else. I wanted him just to keep releasing these ads. I think that'll be great. Yeah. Rogers did release a statement after Abdul's victory, quote, "I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11," unquote. Abdul has never said that, obviously. And I also think that this is a example of just the sheer level of racism that has defined this campaign. And we also saw versions of this with Mamdani, but like, just the unhinged amount of Islamophobia

• 3:02:15Speaker 02

  that has been leveled against Said is really, really disturbing. It's gonna get worse. Yeah, it's gonna get so much worse, yeah. But it's also like, this is an example of Islamophobia from the Republicans, but the Democrats have been doing it too. And it's extremely bleak, the extent to which this is just a thing you can do running a political campaign. Yeah. It's interesting, because it isn't entirely, at least lately, to their benefit either. Like, it recently really screwed them over in another Michigan race, right? Like, Michigan's 8th district, the Republican primary between Thomas J. Smith, Amir Hassan, and Al Limo. Thomas Smith took ahead, even though he had, like, suspended his campaign previously, like, more than a month ago.

• 3:02:58Speaker 02

  Amir Hassan had been endorsed by Trump and is not a Muslim, but has a name that kind of sounds like he would be, like, to a racist. Yeah. And so, like, it'd be, that's the suspicion as to why Hassan did not do better against someone who was not actively running. Yeah, was not campaigning. A lot of anger on Truth Social by MAGA people who thought that Trump had endorsed a Muslim. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, I mean, like, the level of bigotry is off the chart. It's interesting that it doesn't seem to, or at least in this case, it torpedoed a Republican but not a Democrat, which I do think is kind of fun. But yeah, the overall trend is very much not fun. On a similar sort of note, last week, the Michigan State AG Dana Nessel announced

• 3:03:43Speaker 02

  at an ADL quote unquote "anti-Semitism" roundtable that she would not be attending the Michigan nominating convention for their Democratic nominee over fears of being booed for working with Trump and Cash Patel's FBI to indict pro-Palestine student protesters in June.

• 3:04:02Speaker 05

  I'm not going to be attending the nominating convention for the Michigan Democratic Party in August. And that is because I don't feel safe going. I feel like my presence is not going to be welcome. I don't want to get chased around. I don't want to get harassed. I don't want to get yelled at, screamed at, and I don't want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I'm saying. And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen, because it's been happening to me.

• 3:04:32Speaker 02

  Get fucked. Fuck you. Yeah, which, which, good, like, you are, you are, by definition, a collaborator for having participated in this. That is, like, the absolute bare minimum of accountability that you should be facing is, is that you should be booed every single place you go to. Her office has tried for years to go after pro-Palestine protesters and has been forced to, to drop charges because her office was specifically discriminatory. And she only got her way via teaming up with the Trump admin and Cash Patel's FBI to go after student protesters. This is something she's been trying to do for literal years and has been unable to because her, her office is too racist. Yeah.

• 3:05:15Speaker 02

  And again, also, like, student protesters were horribly brutalized by the police repeatedly, as I think most people who listen to this remember to some extent, but yeah. Also in Michigan, DSA-endorsed Rashida Tlaib handily won her reelection in the District 12 primary with 74% of the vote. Also, in Michigan, left-wing populist and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, William Lawrence, won the Democratic primary for House District 7 with about 56,000 votes. Two more kind of moderate candidates each got 35,000 votes. So there is a sort of moderate split here.

• 3:05:56Speaker 02

  Lawrence will now be facing the Republican incumbent Tom Barrett, who won by just four points in 2024, is 226,000 votes to 209,000 votes. So this could end up being a close race, really depends on voter turnout. Yeah. Now, Lawrence is a member of DSA, but is not DSA-endorsed, though he does have the endorsement of Sanders, El-Sayed, Rashida Tlaib, Rokana, the Nurses Union, Working Families Party, and Track AIPAC. Quick update here, Lawrence went on CNN Wednesday night to clarify that while he used to be a member of DSA, he let his membership lapse last month. In the weeks before the election, Lawrence was attacked by the Democratic establishment

• 3:06:41Speaker 02

  and the Congressional Black Caucus for being quote unquote "racist" because of a quote from a podcast conversation on Black liberation and Black anti-war activism with an activist named Huri Peterson-Smith. I'll read the full quote here that was clipped and spread around mainly by HuffPost, quote, "The extent to which the older generation of Black political leadership are such a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power through their role as this kind of traditionalist establishmentist pillar of the Democratic Party, it's a big problem. It's a big problem for left politics in this country, and it gets us every single time. It really defangs the white left and puts us in impossible positions, really," unquote.

• 3:07:25Speaker 02

  William Lawrence told HuffPost, quote, "I have tremendous respect for Black community leaders who have been at the forefront of the fight for freedom for centuries. This was in the context of a wide-ranging conversation with a guest on the show about racial dynamics in progressive politics. I regret how this specific point was expressed," unquote. And yes, absolutely, there is no reason to say "the white left" there specifically. This harms the entire left. There's really no reason to say that this is part of a larger conversation in this podcast he was having about racial dynamics in, like, left-wing spaces, but I think that is a bad thing to say. Lawrence added to his statement online, quote, "The way I made this point was clumsy, and I regret my choice of words.

• 3:08:10Speaker 02

  I understand the potential impact when received out of context. The way the story is being reported does not reflect my beliefs. National elected leaders across race, ethnicity, age, and gender have been supporters of unnecessary US wars. This poses a challenge to the anti-war movement. Americans of all races and ages..." Must work together to advance peace. Until we do, our resources will go to funding war and genocide abroad rather than investing in affordable housing and healthcare or closing the racial wealth gap, unquote. DSA candidate Donovan McKinney beat Democratic incumbent Sri Tanadar by almost 4%, about 4,000 votes in House District 13, another close race.

• 3:08:53Speaker 02

  It was looking like Sri might pull ahead earlier in the night, but Donovan did end up winning and will now likely become another DSA congressman. Tanadar was backed by AIPAC, Hakeem Jeffries, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the center-left New Democrat Coalition. But it's not all wins in Michigan. Kyle Blomquist, another DSA candidate for Congress in Michigan House District 1, lost to moderate Haley Barr, who will now face the Republican incumbent in the general. And DSA endorsed Asha Farouki, lost to pro-Israel Democrat Jeffrey Moss for Haley Stevens' House seat.

• 3:09:36Speaker 02

  So those are the two main losses for DSA last Tuesday, both US House seats in Michigan. Though I think it is interesting to note that Detroit is now the only major city in the country to be fully represented in the US House by DSA candidates. And two DSA candidates for the Michigan State House also won their primaries. In Missouri, Cori Bush lost her comeback bid to incumbent Wesley Bell, who was backed by AIPAC and was also really, really outspent. And the Kansas City DSA-endorsed candidate Harzal Gray lost his primary for House District

• 3:10:17Speaker 02

  4 by just under 2,000 votes, a very close race. So lots of wins, some losses, but even just El Said winning is probably the biggest blow to AIPAC that we've seen yet. Like I said, this is the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in history in a state with open primaries, where tens of millions of dollars in ad spending can go really far in rural areas and with older, low-info voters. A left-wing Muslim candidate overcoming both AIPAC and the Democratic establishment in a swing state is a massive victory. I have one final little election update for the gubernatorial race in Ohio. Oh, God.

• 3:11:00Speaker 02

  Because in late July, Republican nominee for governor Vivek Ramaswamy spoke, or tried to speak, at the Young Americans for Liberty National Convention, an annual Ron Paul-esque convention for young libertarian conservatives at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ramaswamy's speaking block was for 30 minutes. He lasted 14 before being booed offstage. Let's take a listen.

• 3:11:27Speaker 04

  The truth of the matter is, you know, no matter what happens in whichever direction we go, people of my generation have already made it, we're gonna be fine. It's gonna be your generation that has to face the problem. You're a political creep and you need to give up on this, Adam, man.

• 3:11:48Speaker 02

  Seems like it's going great. So there are two cuts in that clip, but all that audio is from the last, like, two minutes of his speech. Ramaswamy was also booed as he first went on to stage. Great sign, great sign. And throughout the 14 minutes, he was heckled over Israel, H1B visas, data centers, energy prices, and his comments about how "the socialist government sees your home as a wealth asset," to which people in the crowd responded, "We can't afford a home." Great. Also, isn't the whole premise of our economy that your home is like a wealth asset, right? Yeah. No, that's socialism, Robert. Doesn't everyone who owns a home see their home that way? Isn't that like how all of the US economy is predicated on?

• 3:12:32Speaker 02

  I cannot emphasize this enough. Literally, this distinction between your house as a wealth asset and your house and you living in it, this is chapter one of capitalism. Yeah, that's a wild statement. It's literally. Well, exactly, that is communism. That is, I think that that is exactly Ramaswamy's point. Throughout this 14-minute speech, he tried to say that, like, the true divide in this country isn't Democrats versus Republicans, but winners versus whiners. So why would you be a whiner and complain about all these things when you could just win? And this actually mirrors one of Haley Stevens' kind of late campaign tactics, to refer to people to her left as being part of the quote-unquote complaining class.

• 3:13:17Speaker 02

  Any, like, DSA, any kind of socialist person is part of the complaining class. Anyone talking about, you know, AIPAC, Israel, they're just complaining. Did not work out for Stevens, as we know, and this might not work out for Ramaswamy either. Last month, the Cook Political Report switched the Ohio gubernatorial race from lean's Republican to toss-up. And the latest New York Times/Siena poll from late July has the race in a tie.

• 3:13:45Speaker 03

  All I have to add is that it's funny.

• 3:13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is funny.

• 3:13:49Speaker 03

  And I picture him walking around the RNC like once a month. He looked like a sad little guy.

• 3:13:57Speaker 02

  Not that little, his hair was very tall.

• 3:13:59Speaker 03

  His hair was very tall, his veneers were.

• 3:14:03Speaker 02

  Very bright.

• 3:14:04Speaker 03

  Were veneering.

• 3:14:05Speaker 02

  In the presidential race, you know, me and Robert were talking about how much, you know, Ramaswamy was trying to go after the sort of, like, like, griper type of young conservative, right? That that was kind of what his, like, affect, that's a lot of stuff he was talking about, seemed to be rooted in. And at this, you know, young conservative convention, he was, like, loudly rejected, right? This is the type of person that he's, like, trying the most to appeal to in some ways, or at least used to. This was also the case when he was doing campaign events with Charlie Kirk, one of which I went to in Georgia before the presidential election. But he was definitely trying to go after this sort of, like, young male Republican and, like, get, make sure you mobilize them to the polls. Like, that could be the thing that tips over the race, is, like, getting, like, young Republican males.

• 3:14:50Speaker 02

  And at least for the gubernatorial race, his strategy of, like, you know, it's up to you to fix everything, actually, millennials are gonna be fine, don't complain too much, might not actually help mobilize young voters in support of his campaign. So we will see how that goes come November. Let's pivot to ads and then return for some prediction market and tariff news, two great tastes that go great together.

• 3:15:31Speaker 02

  And we're back. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about the munitions crisis. I've reported several times on the growing munitions crisis that the US military faces, not just, but largely as a result of our war of choice with Iran. Advanced munitions, though, like 155-millimeter artillery rounds, have been stretched past the point of sustainability for years now, since the expansion of Russia's war with Ukraine. And so defense officials have spent much of the last four years scrambling to increase production of a number of different rounds. And there were a bunch of articles in, like, the spring, early summer of 2025 that the Trump industry crowed over about how they'd finally met their goal of quadrupling production of 155-millimeter rounds.

• 3:16:11Speaker 02

  And a major part of this was the construction and opening in mid-2025 of a fully-operated 155-millimeter artillery shell factory in Mesquite, Texas. The factory was named Union Technologies. So that's all what the administration reported last year, right? I want to quote now from an article the Global Tactical Analysis Center put out in February of 2026. "The US military is facing a significant crisis as production of 155-millimeter artillery rounds at the Mesquite factory has severely lagged. This shortfall raises alarms not only for domestic military readiness, but also for ongoing foreign military sales that depend on timely delivery of munitions. Army acquisition czar Bryn Ingraham expressed explicit dissatisfaction with the facility's performance during a recent congressional hearings, indicating that immediate investments

• 3:16:55Speaker 02

  are necessary to correct course and avoid further delays. The logistical and technical challenges at the Mesquite factory may involve outdated machinery or insufficient workforce levels to meet production quotas. Current estimates suggest a 25% lag in output compared to contractual obligations." And that sounds bad in and of itself, that's not accurate. The lag is a lot more than 25%. Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. The DoD Office of the Inspector General went out to, like, look into what's going on with this plant and why isn't shell production up to where the administration said it would be. They spent several months investigating and put together a report that was published in mid-July of 2026. Here's a summary from TWZ.com. "Despite receiving close to $500 million from the US Army funded through supplemental

• 3:17:38Speaker 02

  spending bills from fiscal years 2022 and 2023, general dynamics, ordinance, and tactical systems failed to make a single subcomponent needed to produce the badly needed shells as of last March. Without the 30,000 additional projectile metal parts anticipated from the Mesquite facility, the Army will be unable to reach its monthly capacity goal of 100,155-millimeter artillery rounds," the report concluded. "As of March 2026, officials have not developed a plan to produce the additional rounds that are supposed to be produced at the Mesquite factory." So this means that the US is producing somewhere between, like, a third and a half of the goal the Trump administration claimed they'd already reached. That's a little hard for me to tell. I've heard as low as, like, 36,000 and as high as, like, 70,000 shells a month that we're making, both of which are shorter than where we're supposed to be.

• 3:18:20Speaker 02

  And for an idea of how much of a problem this is, Ukraine, when things are at a fever pitch, can fire up to 8,000 shells per day, which means they're shooting enough over there to account for a year of US shell production in two weeks. And as a result of this discrepancy, the US has seen its stockpile of 155-millimeter shells reduced by 3.6 million rounds over the last several years." So I was curious as to what had gone so wrong that these fuckers haven't been able to make a single solitary component, not fucking one. And it turns out this happened because the whole plot to have this Mesquite factory, you know, close the gap in production, was based on a hope and a prayer, specifically a hope that the very old machines in the

• 3:19:02Speaker 02

  factory would be able to produce modern quality weapons. The IG's report called this "a high-risk production line," which is not the kind of production line you want for artillery shells. Per an article in Task and Purpose, "Rather than build new machines for the Mesquite plant," the IG said, "the Army allowed General Dynamics to convert machines used for M107 shells, an older 155mm round that the M795, which we use now, replaced. The M795 can fire about 6 kilometers further than the M107, carrying a far more powerful explosive charge. But the decision to try it, the untested production program," the IG said, "proved fateful. Army officials believe the Mesquite facility was a 'high-risk, high-reward opportunity,' the IG said. The service accepted risks associated with the contractor's plan to

• 3:19:44Speaker 02

  purchase and adapt M107 metal part production equipment. But the new production lines were never able to produce acceptable M795 parts using the reworked equipment, and the Army ordered the plant to stop work completely and stop spending money in August 2025, just months after the Trump administration claimed we were up to 100,000 shells a month, and that orders held through at least April of 2026." So, we have no idea what's going to happen ultimately to this Mesquite factory, but I should note here that our munitions woes go even deeper than a lack of howitzer fuel. Earlier this year, Reuters reporters Aaron Bonko, Mike Stone, and Jonathan Landley published an exclusive article titled "US Has Used Virtually All of Its Long-Range Precision Missiles During Iran War," sources say. Citing three people familiar with the

• 3:20:29Speaker 02

  data, the article claims that the US has used "virtually all of our Army tactical missile systems and precision strike missiles." The Army tactical missile systems are like the older missiles we were using, the precision strike missiles are the new ones, these are our main surface-to-surface weapons. And it gets worse, to continue with another quote from that Reuters piece. "Military leaders have for weeks warned the president that stockpiles of defensive weapons, including Patriot interceptors, which are effective against ballistic missiles, were dwindling," said two of the sources. Last week, several media outlets reported Trump had decided not to launch another massive offensive inside Iran, in part because his military advisers had warned about the US stockpile. A US official disputed those accounts, saying Trump chose not to move forward with another attack because of pressure from Gulf states.

• 3:21:11Speaker 02

  Now, based on the most up-to-date info we have, at least 65% of our Patriot interceptors have been used since February, and THAAD stockpiles are down by at least 38%. We've also used about half, if not more than half, of our Tomahawk stockpile. None of these weapons can be replaced at rates that are even close to the rate we are burning them. And these are also the weapon systems that we would rely on most in the event of a conflict with Russia, China, or any other major power, which is why so many people in the defense industry are freaking out to the degree that Trump has had to pull back on some of his plans, because they are telling him, "Hey, man, if we get into some serious shit and not this fuckery you're doing in the Gulf, we're screwed." Yeah. "We can't make more of these."

• 3:21:53Speaker 02

  So anyway, the reason I keep beating the drum on like, the ammo shortage, is because I'm certain that in history books in the future, there are going to be pages written about this before whatever fucking disaster comes our way next. So that's cool. Keep your eye on that. The other thing you should keep your eye on is that we have now added a new kind of gambling market to our gambling on things that are not traditional gambling industry, which is, I guess, the only growth industry in the country, aside from data centers? There's now a bunch of different services that are letting people gamble specifically on wildfires, and where they hit and how much damage they do. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, yeah. And I want to quote from an article in Oregon Live. "As Oregon surpassed

• 3:22:35Speaker 02

  its wildfire acreage record over the weekend with more than 2 million acres burnt, Oregon lawmakers also raised a new wildfire concern Monday as prediction markets continue to allow people to place bets on wildfires, saying it could lead to more human-caused fires. In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, Senator Jeff Merkley led lawmakers from other wildfire-stricken states and Senator Ron Wyden in urging the agency to crack down on wildfire-related contracts. The group warned that the markets could create financial incentives for arson." And that's the big deal, is that like, if you're letting people gamble on this shit, firefighters might be incentivized to fuck with stuff, regular people could be incentivized to fuck with stuff. We've seen this happen already. Like, I reported a couple months

• 3:23:16Speaker 02

  ago about that Israeli journalist who like, posted a video of a missile failing to get intercepted, and like, hitting into some trees, and he started getting death threats because people were gambling on like, how, whether or not it would be intercepted, and his reporting was inconvenient to them. Shit's gotta be happening like that with fires, in addition to people trying to start them, if this is allowed to go, right? Polymarket lets people bet on not just wildfires, but a variety of natural disasters. People can choose yes or no on as to whether or not they think a Category 5 hurricane is going to hit the United States, or like, a volcano is going to erupt. It's just a really bleak thing. And there's, one of the things that I read recently is there's a, there's even a new market focused specifically on gambling on California wildfires called Wildfire,

• 3:24:00Speaker 02

  W-Y-L-D-F-Y-R-E. Jesus Christ. The company tagline is, "You can't predict wildfire, but you can trade on it." And I want to quote from High Country News, and an investigation into this company. "Currently, Wildfire users can only simulate trading, but according to the site, the ability to bet with real money is coming soon." Oh, gosh. "The platform purports to be the first prediction market of its kind, pricing county and city wildfire risk in real time. California burns every year, and it's getting worse. The question is an if, it's when and where," the site reads. Wildfire frames its platform as providing a public good. Wildfire turns collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting, one trade at a time," the site reads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my god. "But entities with a real need for wildfire forecasting, including federal and state

• 3:24:45Speaker 02

  firefighting agencies, say they aren't interested in prediction market data. The Forest Service does not use information from prediction markets for wildfire forecasts." No. Why? I don't even need to go, it's useless. It's useless, and everyone's saying this is an idiot and a liar. It's insane. This, this whole thing, it's like, we can chart like, the world's collective knowledge, because money- No, people are fucking morons. Money is, you know, speaks, speaks more truthfully than just words. It's just complete, complete nonsense. No. People are gonna burn down their own neighborhoods to get rich. Yeah. I mean, if you look at like, how much prediction markets have been wrong about a sequence of like, high-profile elections just in the past year, shows that this is not useful or reliable data. There is no, you know, hidden truth that prediction markets

• 3:25:25Speaker 02

  can, can, can find through the, the quote-unquote wisdom of crowds, and like, this, this specific thing on these wildfires, it's like a two-pronged issue. One, a kind of evil, right, to just, you know, win money based on the deaths of- Oh, yeah. -however many people in natural disasters. The destruction of their lives, everything they've built, the fear, and, yeah. So like, you know, like, death markets is like, one, one aspect. The other, you know, aspect is if, if someone has a lot of money riding on a certain wildfire hitting a certain location, then yeah, there is financial incentive to maybe cause a fire to hit a certain location. Or try to pay someone else to, yeah. There's like, that aspect as well. It's evil for so many reasons. Obviously should be illegal. Like, it's insane.

• 3:26:10Speaker 02

  At least should be hanging these people. I mean, uh... I, I remember when arguing over whether the market is an information processor that like, like, as you're saying, like, has like, all of this collective intelligence from market signals, and it's like, the most efficient information processor, versus arguing that it's a gambling den. Like, that used to be an academic debate, and now it's just like, "Oh, no, we're doing this on fires." And it's just, god, every, every, everything that was once metaphor is now literal, and all of the metaphors suck. Yeah, this is pretty fucked up. I, I know that this was a, this was a concern that was talked about with like, the LA fires last year or two years ago, because I know there was Polymarket or Kalshi betting on those, and that, that created like, a little

• 3:26:54Speaker 02

  mini news cycle of like, talking about this maybe being a problem, but like, the scale in which this is like, accelerated is crazy. Again, I used to do, like, sports gambling ads, because I don't have a problem with gambling, like, ethically. Same way I don't have a problem with liquor and whatnot. And then, it just became very clear before too mu- oh, wait, no, this isn't, your father's gambling. This isn't going to fucking, like, things are well beyond heading to Vegas for like, a weekend, or playing cards online with your friends. This is turned into like, everything? Like, this is the, the omni culture? It's almost the only recreational activity a lot of Americans have anymore? Yeah. I'm gonna be honest, I didn't see that happening. That, that took me by surprise. No, I, I used to have a lot more kind of libertarian-y views on gambling.

• 3:27:39Speaker 02

  Sure. And now I am firmly in favor of, of like, harsh state intervention- Yeah. -into basically all forms of digital gambling. Yeah, I think you should be able to like, go to a casino and gamble, but I don't think you should be able to do it on your phone. Like, I, I've turned around on that. No. Yeah. And, you know, and you can, you can look at, there's, there's a whole bunch of data on like, when, when sports gambling gets legalized in a state, like, the bankruptcy rate increases, it's, it's a catastrophe. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's already devoured sports, and it's now just devouring everything that's left of our society until something changes. Literally everything else. Yeah, it's like- What if you copied that model for literally any event happening in the world? Anyway. Well, at least the economy at large is doing fine, right, me?

• 3:28:22Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, boy. Yeah, so let's, let's, let's check in- Yeah. -with our dear friend, and by dear friend, I mean, I don't know if he's an enemy of the show yet, but- Recurring character on the show. Yeah, we're recurring character on the show Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Waish, who had a press conference to address the fact that in the face of, you know, rising inflation, everyone was expecting there to be some kind of interest rate increase, and he didn't do one. And well, I mean, the Federal Reserve Board didn't vote for one. And he had a press conference that was so disastrous, it triggered a giant sell

• 3:29:01Speaker 02

  off of US bonds, which is not good. I'm going to read this, this piece from John Cassidy, who wrote an article in The New Yorker about it, because I think it captures the reactions to this. Quote, "The sell-off, quote, "looks very much like a loss of confidence trade, one market analyst told The Financial Times. Another commenter, Dario Perkins, an economist at the research firm TS Lombard, compared Waish's press conference to Donald Trump's announcement last year of his Liberation Day tariffs, and to the disastrous UK mini-budget that cost trust her job as Prime Minister in 2022, describing them all as occasions,

• 3:29:41Speaker 02

  quote, "where you suddenly realize global policymakers are totally out of their depth and don't know what they're doing. Even some ex-Fed officials, who tend to be more guarded in their public comments, voiced concerns." In an interview with Bloomberg, James Bullard, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, described Waish's press conference as, quote, "a little bit rocky," and the bond markets' reaction as, quote, "nerve-wracking for a central banker." I don't know, it sounds fine to me.

• 3:30:10Speaker 05

  Now, "a little bit rocky" might seem a little timid to you, but for these people, that's like an insane thing to say.

• 3:30:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, for, for a Federal Reserve banker, that is the equivalent of just nine-alarm fire. I'm going to read this one, last part of it. Loretta Mester, who headed the Cleveland Fed from 2014 to 2024, told The Wall Street Journal, quote, "I want to feel comfortable, but the Fed knows what it is doing. I don't think it's sustainable, what he's doing, in terms of not saying anything." So, this press conference went so badly that the current analysis, from basically the day this happened until now, the analysis has been that actually, no, the Fed is going to be forced to raise interest rates just to make the markets take, like Waish as a guy running the central bank seriously? Oh, God.

• 3:31:02Speaker 02

  Economists at Bank of America labeled this a, quote, "central bank inflation credibility shock," a term I have never seen before. So, okay, what did Waish actually say in this press conference that was this bad? Well, here, here's Jackson Ba at Fortune, quote, "He has vowed, quote, 'regime change,' end quote, at the Fed by rolling back so-called forward guidance on where rates are headed and offered no such clues on Wednesday, even talking around no-brainer questions on how to bring down inflation." So, what does that actually mean? The Fed usually gives markets some indication of what they're going to

• 3:31:47Speaker 02

  do with interest rates at their next meeting, the set interest rates. And you do this because you want to give people in the market an opportunity to plan around what the Fed is probably going to be doing. Waish thinks this is a bad idea. That is very weird. I don't think anyone has agreed with him that not talking to, like, the markets about what you're, about what the Fed is going to do, I don't think anyone has agreed with him since at least like the 80s, that, that the Fed should just make his decisions in secret and not tell anyone. But that's not even the weirdest part of this. The weirdest part is that he's not just refusing to explain what the Fed is going to do in the future. He is refusing to explain what the Fed is doing right now. And that is really, really

• 3:32:30Speaker 02

  weird. People just asked him point blank, like, hey, why did you not raise interest rates? And he just would not give an answer. And that is the thing that has been making it seem like he has no idea what's going on. Now, it's possible that this is pure incompetence. I think that's probably part of it. Like, it being incompetence is kind of bolstered by the Fed's next move, which was to do basically a, I don't know if bailout's quite the right term, but basically to pump a bunch of money into the yen to maintain the value of Japan, or to increase and maintain the value of Japan's currency. Now, this is also a kind of cataclysmic thing. The US hasn't done this for Japan since, I think literally it was

• 3:33:14Speaker 02

  the Reverse Plaza Accords in, in the late 1980s, as a way to like stave off the, the just complete ruin of the Asian markets during the Asian market collapse. So, so this in and of itself is remarkable. The US hasn't done this since almost every economy in Southeast Asia was imploding during, during the end of the 90s. But the, the weirdest part is that instead of doing this by just selling dollars, right, he did it by selling euros, which is baffling. I have no idea why he did it. No one I've read seems to have any idea why he did this with euros instead of dollars. Everyone is just extremely confused. So, it's actually very funny, because the thing I'm about to talk about next was brought up as the most important thing the Fed had done during his tenure, and then

• 3:33:59Speaker 02

  this happened a few days later. So, everyone is just completely baffled by what he's doing. None of it makes any sense. And it, it not only doesn't make any sense, it's actively undermining itself, because a lot of the things that he's doing, you know, this yen purchase is supposed to be about restoring confidence in, in the Japanese markets, but then the US is doing some weird stuff, and now everyone's going, what on earth is going on? The last thing I want to talk about with the Fed specifically is, because I, I think I kind of understand what he's doing, at, at least with the interest rates, and why he's not talking about it. In order to get to this, we need to turn to some reporting from The New York Times, which reports that Waish is trying to reduce the number of meetings that the Fed has to decide interest rates. This is also really weird. The number of

• 3:34:44Speaker 02

  meetings to decide interest rates hasn't changed since the 80s. So, okay, why, why is he trying to eliminate, why is he trying to eliminate these meetings? And when you put it all together, the reason why he doesn't want to say what the Fed is going to do in the future, and he wants to have less meetings, is that there is a Fed meeting in September, right before the midterms. And if he raises interest rates, which is exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump wants, right before the midterms, and this is one of John Cassidy's interpretations, if he does this, he could get fired by Trump. So, he doesn't want to raise interest rates right before the midterms. So, he's taking a stance of not saying anything

• 3:35:25Speaker 02

  to the media, and then potentially even cancelling this September meeting, in order to not have to do this. So, that's great. I think it's an argument as to whether the US Federal Reserve is the single most important institution for all of global capitalism. I don't know if you can win the argument that it's the single most important one, but it's one of the most important institutions, and it is apparently being run by a guy who is making economic decisions with the entire global economy, based on him trying not to get fired. So, this can only go great.

• 3:35:54Speaker 05

  One of the silliest things about that, that purchase of yen was the photos leaked from the meeting with the notepad, being like, "Oh, God, to do, colon, buy 10 billion US dollars worth of yen."

• 3:36:07Speaker 02

  Remarkably similar to my shopping list the other day when I went to Albertson's.

• 3:36:10Speaker 05

  That's what concerns me, is I feel like you shouldn't be able to remember to buy

• 3:36:16Speaker 02

  10 billion yen?

• 3:36:17Speaker 05

  10 billion US dollars worth of yen.

• 3:36:20Speaker 02

  Is there not a better method to make sure that happens in the US government? I, I cannot emphasize this enough. The last time we did something like this with Japanese currency, it has an actual name. It's called the Reverse Plaza Accords. It was a transformational milestone moment in what the American economy was going to be, because that was the moment the US abandoned having a manufacturing economy. Like, that's the kind of decision that is being made here, and it's being written on a notepad. Like, it's just-

• 3:36:48Speaker 05

  Just, just throw that thing on a notepad. I'll do that later this afternoon.

• 3:36:52Speaker 02

  I admit, I, I thought Waish, because Waish had been, like, with, with the Federal Reserve Bank before, I thought he was going to be like, slightly more competent than this. But this entire, this entire week has raised, just raised what I think the odds are of the Federal Reserve completely screwing things up and blowing up the entire global economy significantly? Because if, if this is the kind of shit that you're doing, like, a couple of months into being in office, we are in for a long eight years. Assuming, I guess he doesn't like purged by Trump.

• 3:37:22Speaker 05

  Posting a picture of Jerome Powell, hurts like shit, just want him back.

• 3:37:26Speaker 02

  God. Finally, I want to conclude on some tariff talk.

• 3:37:35Speaker 05

  Song. Sorry, we forgot to put the song in the last episode.

• 3:37:54Speaker 02

  They won't forgive you.

• 3:37:55Speaker 05

  My bad.

• 3:37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're do, we're fixing it, we're fixing it. On Monday, half of the states in the Union, that is 25 total states, sued the Trump administration over the regime's tariff policies. What is bleak here is that because of the speed that the courts move at, and because of the speed that these Attorney Generals are moving at, these lawsuits are coming in an entire tariff cycle behind. Yeah. So, these lawsuits are over the administration's Section 301 tariffs, which were the forced labor 10 to 12% tariffs on basically all US imports, that are supposed to be about forced labor. And as, as I mentioned before, this is an entire cycle of tariffs behind where the Trump administration actually is now, which is his even more illegal usage

• 3:38:38Speaker 02

  of Smoot-Hawley tariffs against Canada. We are still awaiting the lawsuit about that one, because they just haven't gotten there yet. So, it's fun in real time to get to see the stuff I said last time I was talking about tariffs, about how Trump is just going to be able to keep using this tariff justification, because it just takes time for stuff to get to the court, where we're seeing that here. I mean, I guess the Section 301 tariffs don't have a deadline, but who knows how long it's going to take to get rid of those ones, or if, if you could see a scenario where those tariffs are irrelevant, as we saw with the tariffs that he imposed earlier this year, that were nominally about like the US having a balance of payments crisis, where there were lawsuits about it, but the lawsuits

• 3:39:19Speaker 02

  don't matter, because the authorization expired. But probably, we're going to see a similar thing like that, where these tariffs are kind of irrelevant by the time this winds through the courts. So, amazing political system we've set up here.

• 3:39:30Speaker 05

  Well, that does it for us today at It Could Happen Here. James sent over two donation links for the Spokane wildfires. Both should be at the top of the episode sources in the description. The first one is SpokaneTribalNetwork.org. The second link is too long to fully read, but it's for the Spokane Complex Wildfire Response Fund. I can't read out the whole URL, but it should be at the top of the sources in the description.

• 3:40:00Speaker 02

  We the news reported.

• 3:40:02Speaker 05

  We reported the news.

• 3:40:03Speaker 02

  We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

• 3:40:35Speaker 03

  I'm Melissa Jelton, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So, don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

• 3:41:15Speaker 05

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 3:41:19Robert Evans?

  Here's what you missed.

• 3:41:20Speaker 07

  People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes.

• 3:41:25Speaker 05

  It's real.

• 3:41:26Speaker 07

  This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency.

• 3:41:31Robert Evans?

  It's raw.

• 3:41:32Speaker 07

  White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade.

• 3:41:35Robert Evans?

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 3:41:39Speaker 05

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.