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Everybody Look What’s Going Down · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: And to those trying to incite violence against us,
0:08
SPEAKER_00: those trying to foment hatred against us,
0:11
SPEAKER_00: what do you have?
0:13
SPEAKER_00: You have nothing.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: You are nothing.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: You are nothing.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: You can build nothing.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: You can produce nothing.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: You can create nothing.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones who build.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones who create.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones who lift up humanity.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: Those were the dulcet tones of Stephen Miller,
0:58
SPEAKER_02: who is the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.
1:03
It was his Christian nationalist eulogy for Turning Point USA
1:06
CEO Charlie Kirk
1:08
SPEAKER_02: given on September 21st,
1:10
SPEAKER_02: 2025 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale,
1:13
SPEAKER_02: Arizona.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to start with that darkness,
1:17
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
1:18
SPEAKER_02: because things are getting weirder and more awful.
1:23
And today we're going to be talking about Donald Trump's
1:25
invasion of the cities.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: And because of that,
1:29
I chose a title that was taken from Buffalo Springfield's
1:33
iconic 1967 anti-war
1:36
SPEAKER_02: song,
1:36
SPEAKER_02: For What It's Worth.
1:38
So this is the Everybody Look What's Going Down episode of the
1:42
Political Junkie podcast.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm Claire Potter.
1:45
SPEAKER_03: I'm Neil Young.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: And Neil,
1:48
I don't know what I would do without you because the news this
1:52
week is so atrocious
1:54
SPEAKER_02: and weird that I can't wait to talk about it.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: So on Tuesday,
1:58
SPEAKER_02: Pam Bondi,
1:59
SPEAKER_02: who is the Attorney General of the United States,
2:02
SPEAKER_02: otherwise known as Attorney General Barbie,
2:05
SPEAKER_02: testified for almost five hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
2:10
Every time President Donald Trump breaks the law,
2:13
it either goes through her or around her.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: So naturally, Democrats wanted to get inside her head.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: But instead of answering questions,
2:20
SPEAKER_02: she met every inquiry from Democrats with an attack,
2:24
SPEAKER_02: a refusal,
2:25
SPEAKER_02: or a conspiracy theory.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: Republicans, except for North Carolina's Tom Tillis, egged her on.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: This is supposed to be an oversight here.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: Oversight.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: You can attack me after my time is over.
2:40
Oh,
2:40
you've attacked all of us,
2:41
including President Trump for your entire career.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: You can attack me later, and I know you've got plenty of canned attacks.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: We've heard them all day today.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Canned attacks on you?
2:48
SPEAKER_01: No one needs a canned attack on you.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Regular order, Madam Chair.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to speak.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Neal?
2:55
SPEAKER_03: Well, this is why Pam Bondi is in this role.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: This is why Trump sought her out.
3:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is what he loves and the folks around him.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: It feels very much like what Carolyn Levitt does as press secretary.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: Of course,
3:09
for a press secretary to sort of handle questions that way is
3:12
very differently than
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SPEAKER_03: the attorney general to do so when questioned by senators.
3:21
But it's very much in keeping with sort of Bondi and her
3:26
temperament and also the
3:27
SPEAKER_03: temperament that I think Trump draws out of folks around her.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's really kind of astonishing.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: I've never seen an attorney general answer questions with the equivalent,
3:39
SPEAKER_02: I know you are,
3:40
SPEAKER_02: but what am I?
3:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:44
It seemed like every time she was asked a question and senators
3:47
have a tendency to
3:49
ask often very convoluted questions that elicit only one answer
3:53
and then say yes or
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SPEAKER_02: no.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: But she would then respond by attacking them,
4:01
attacks that seem to be more or less drawn from social media or
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from a script that
4:07
SPEAKER_02: the president has written.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: And I do think you're right, Neil, that the president likes to see this.
4:13
But I continue to think that no one can really pull it off but
4:17
Donald Trump.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's right.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
4:20
SPEAKER_03: there's a way in which this act sort of mimics Trump,
4:25
SPEAKER_03: obviously,
4:26
SPEAKER_03: and it's what he likes to see of those around him.
4:30
SPEAKER_03: But no one has the same sort of panache or just, I don't know.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: They just don't sort of get away with it in the way that he does.
4:38
You know,
4:39
there's an interesting profile I just read of Bondi in a New
4:43
Yorker.
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I have no idea if it was last week's New Yorker or three months
4:45
ago because,
4:46
SPEAKER_03: you know,
4:46
SPEAKER_03: I just picked it up off the pile.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: All of mine are in a trash bag somewhere.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: Yes, definitely within the last year.
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SPEAKER_03: It's worth people Googling and reading it.
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SPEAKER_03: sort of a fascinating background.
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SPEAKER_03: I didn't realize her parents were Democrats.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: I believe her dad was like a professor.
5:03
SPEAKER_03: So sort of,
5:04
SPEAKER_03: you know,
5:05
SPEAKER_03: academic,
5:06
SPEAKER_03: you know,
5:07
SPEAKER_03: leftist center folks and that she had this very unpolitical background,
5:11
SPEAKER_03: really.
5:12
But there is this description of folks around her of saying
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that she was the most
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SPEAKER_03: ambitious person they ever came across and that this sort of ambition
5:22
SPEAKER_03: was that she recognized the opportunities that were available to her as a
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SPEAKER_03: Republican and even more so as a Trump Republican.
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Each change she made to herself allowed for her to have this
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really skyrocketing career.
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SPEAKER_03: She really came from obscurity to the top of the heap in quick events.
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But hearing a little bit more about her background and folks'
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descriptions,
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SPEAKER_03: what they think of her psychological temperament,
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SPEAKER_03: I thought was really interesting.
5:55
SPEAKER_03: Also,
5:55
SPEAKER_03: a lot of people,
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SPEAKER_03: a lot of other lawyers don't think she's a very good lawyer,
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SPEAKER_03: which is also- I'm shocked.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, shocking, right?
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SPEAKER_03: Not a constitutional expert, right?
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And that she's made some real errors in her past as a
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prosecutor and other things,
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SPEAKER_03: or just really showed poor legal judgment.
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SPEAKER_03: So all of that, of course, is part of why Trump would love her as well.
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But I also think it might speak to some of the tactics she took
6:29
in the Senate questioning.
6:30
I'm not sure she can really answer all the technical questions
6:34
around the law and
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SPEAKER_03: adherence to the Constitution.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: You know,
6:39
SPEAKER_02: there's this one moment when Adam Schiff is asking her a question and she
6:43
SPEAKER_02: interrupts him by saying,
6:45
SPEAKER_02: did you even go to law school?
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Which is,
6:48
of course,
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the kind of thing someone would say to you on a playground.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to say it.
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SPEAKER_02: I think she's dumb.
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And I feel just a little bit bad saying that about a woman,
6:59
but not really so bad.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: I think the other thing that is
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strikes me about gender in all of this is that kind of
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hectoring,
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nyah,
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nyah,
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nyah thing.
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SPEAKER_02: I think men can do it and get away with it.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think when women do it, it makes them sound silly.
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And maybe that's just some kind of sexism that is buried in my
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soul that I have not
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SPEAKER_02: yet explored.
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But I think it makes them sort of play into certain kinds of
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stereotypes about
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angry women that certainly a lot of democratic women have
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worked hard to avoid.
7:37
You know,
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that when you see someone like Maura Healey or Amy Klobuchar,
7:42
they're very measured.
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SPEAKER_02: They talk slowly.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: They appear to listen.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: They appear to be empathetic.
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SPEAKER_02: And that kind of brittle,
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SPEAKER_02: angry,
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blonde matchstick thing she's got going on really doesn't she
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doesn't come off as
8:01
someone that you feel like you would respect regardless of what
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was coming out of
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SPEAKER_02: her mouth.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: Well,
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SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to comment on that,
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but I do think it sets up our next topic of conversation really
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well when you are
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SPEAKER_03: mentioning angry blonde.
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SPEAKER_03: What was it?
8:16
SPEAKER_03: Matchsticks?
8:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, this is the angry blonde butch bodied.
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SPEAKER_02: Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is at the center of our next item.
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SPEAKER_02: So in a break with her party,
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this Georgia Congresswoman is demanding an extension of
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Obamacare subsidies.
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SPEAKER_02: This is the second thing she's broken with Trump on,
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SPEAKER_02: the other thing being the Epstein files,
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SPEAKER_02: which she is sticking to her guns on the Epstein files,
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SPEAKER_02: and she's got pretty big guns.
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SPEAKER_02: even as Green insists that she doesn't like the program.
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SPEAKER_02: Why?
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SPEAKER_02: Because as she accurately points out,
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SPEAKER_02: insurance premiums will double,
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SPEAKER_02: she said,
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SPEAKER_02: for my kids and for her constituents.
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SPEAKER_02: And she appears to have just discovered this issue.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: But unlike other Republicans,
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she's actually telling the truth about what kind of a disaster
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it will be for all
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SPEAKER_02: Americans if health care cuts are not restored.
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SPEAKER_02: And interestingly, Trump seems to be kind of backing her up on this.
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SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think a lot of things are happening here.
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I mean,
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first,
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we've sort of been tracking this a little bit over the last
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couple of months.
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SPEAKER_03: I mean, she's come up here and there through our conversations.
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And each time it's sort of this point of departure or
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differentiation from sort of
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SPEAKER_03: the absolute uniformity of the Trump GOP these days.
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SPEAKER_03: And like, that's notable, right?
9:37
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
9:39
SPEAKER_03: You know,
9:39
SPEAKER_03: and again,
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I think there's a little bit of like a personal psychology that
9:42
is really at work
9:43
SPEAKER_03: here that like,
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SPEAKER_03: She is a renegade in many different ways,
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even to the extent that she is willing to do what almost no
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other Republican will
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SPEAKER_03: do,
9:52
which is point some sort of difference between their positions
9:59
and what the Trump
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SPEAKER_03: administration is pursuing.
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SPEAKER_03: I think this particular issue is interesting.
10:05
And there's a way in which it seems like Green has found a path
10:11
in which you can
10:12
sort of out-populist this populist president or supposedly
10:17
populist president.
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SPEAKER_03: So I think that's partly what's happening here, too.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: I also think she's running for the presidency in two years.
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And I imagine she's sort of laying a track record here of being
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fully in the Trump
10:30
SPEAKER_03: tank,
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SPEAKER_03: but also showing these important...
10:34
moments of distinction that allow her to run as her own
10:38
individual candidate.
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SPEAKER_03: I mean,
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SPEAKER_03: she's also a huge,
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SPEAKER_03: huge critic of Americans spinning on Israel,
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SPEAKER_03: which is fascinating in itself.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
10:46
SPEAKER_03: To see a quote unquote,
10:47
SPEAKER_03: like far right conservative Republican being so,
10:51
I think we could say anti-Israel on their public and their
10:55
public postings of the
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SPEAKER_03: last couple of months.
10:57
Or at least opposed to American investment in a pro-Israel
11:00
military position.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no.
11:06
And I think it's because actually she sees it very clearly that
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she believes that
11:10
SPEAKER_02: Trump and the Republican Party ran on what we used to call no foreign
11:15
SPEAKER_02: entanglements.
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SPEAKER_02: And that this is the biggest foreign entanglement of them all.
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SPEAKER_02: And so Marjorie Taylor Greene is kind of literal minded.
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And,
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you know,
11:24
she throws me into such a tizzy,
11:27
Neil,
11:27
because it's a lot like Phyllis Schlafly.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: Right.
11:30
Because I actually admire her and I think she's smart and I
11:36
think she's kind of cagey.
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SPEAKER_02: She's obviously a good businesswoman.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
11:40
And then she says something totally wacky,
11:42
like the Jewish space lasers things.
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SPEAKER_02: There's a broad streak of anti-Semitism there.
11:49
SPEAKER_02: And I think we have to think about the
11:51
SPEAKER_02: the anti-Israel stuff in that regard as well.
11:55
But I think she is very canny,
11:57
and I think she has thought hard about her political future.
11:59
She decided not to run for the open Senate seat in Georgia,
12:03
which I think is interesting.
12:05
I would also say that Marjorie Taylor Greene's district is more
12:10
closely tied to the
12:11
SPEAKER_02: federal shutdown than the districts of a great many Republicans.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport
12:19
SPEAKER_02: is a major, major national hub.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: And airports are starting to shut down, delay flights.
12:28
I mean,
12:28
you probably know Burbank Airport had absolutely no air
12:32
controllers yesterday.
12:34
So I think she is accurately looking at the pain her
12:38
constituents are suffering,
12:39
and she wants to get the Democrats back to the table and get
12:42
the Republicans back
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SPEAKER_02: to Washington because actually they all seem to be out of town.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: So speaking of Washington,
12:50
SPEAKER_02: the Supreme Court is back this week,
12:53
SPEAKER_02: aka the Supremes,
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SPEAKER_02: and they heard a case challenging Colorado's ban on conversion therapy.
13:01
This is a case brought by a Christian therapist who says her
13:05
free speech is being
13:06
impinged on by not being able to help young people change their
13:10
sexual or gender
13:12
SPEAKER_02: orientation.
13:13
And I want to just sort of inject in this conversion therapy
13:18
ranges from having a
13:20
conversation with your pastor to hideous camps where children
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are punished and
13:25
SPEAKER_02: tortured and taught to hate themselves.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: So I took a look at the conversion therapy research.
13:33
One summary by Cornell University's public policy portal found
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that out of 47
13:38
SPEAKER_02: studies,
13:40
SPEAKER_02: one showed positive results.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: And those positive results seem to be connected to faith healing,
13:46
SPEAKER_02: like people who came to the altar and then were healed by God of their
13:51
SPEAKER_02: homosexuality.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: The Trevor Project,
13:54
SPEAKER_02: which we've talked about before on the show,
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SPEAKER_02: argues that conversion therapy is,
13:58
SPEAKER_02: quote,
13:58
SPEAKER_02: dangerous and discredited,
14:00
and that these failed theories cost the US economy $9.3 billion
14:06
a year in medical
14:07
SPEAKER_02: costs from children needing more therapy,
14:12
SPEAKER_02: trying to kill themselves,
14:14
SPEAKER_02: and so on,
14:15
SPEAKER_02: drug addiction.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: Another study from UCLA's Williams Institute estimated that LGBTQ people
14:22
SPEAKER_02: Apparently,
14:23
trans people were not part of the study who have undergone
14:26
conversion therapy are
14:27
twice as likely to try to end their lives as people who have
14:31
not undergone the
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SPEAKER_02: therapy.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: So this case is not claiming that conversion therapy works,
14:37
SPEAKER_02: only that it is an infringement of free speech not to allow it.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: Neil, where's this going to go?
14:45
SPEAKER_03: Well,
14:45
the court is going to decide in favor of this plaintiff and
14:49
make it a free speech
14:50
SPEAKER_03: case,
14:50
SPEAKER_03: and that's going to have huge ramifications in many areas,
14:56
SPEAKER_03: legally and politically.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: Colorado is arguing that this is not a free speech issue.
15:02
SPEAKER_03: It's a sort of proper...
15:04
SPEAKER_03: application of regulations over medical,
15:09
SPEAKER_03: over the medical field in the state in ways that they do,
15:13
SPEAKER_03: you know,
15:13
SPEAKER_03: consistent in other ways that they apply regulations.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: But I think,
15:19
SPEAKER_03: you know,
15:20
SPEAKER_03: obviously this court,
15:21
SPEAKER_03: I think,
15:21
SPEAKER_03: has ruled time and time again in favor of,
15:25
SPEAKER_03: and a lot of reporting says that the,
15:27
SPEAKER_03: the
15:28
that this court keeps ruling in favor of religious plaintiffs,
15:32
but it should be made explicit.
15:34
They keep ruling in favor of conservative evangelicals who are
15:37
bringing cases forward.
15:39
SPEAKER_03: And we shouldn't make that synonymous with religion.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: So, yes, so that's what's going to happen.
15:46
They're going to they're going to articulate it through a free
15:49
speech framework.
15:50
SPEAKER_03: I think the votes will be interesting to see here.
15:53
SPEAKER_03: I imagine it's a 6-3 decision, but this has profound implications.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: And I think the sort of
16:06
SPEAKER_03: One of the things that's interesting here,
16:07
SPEAKER_03: too,
16:08
SPEAKER_03: is sort of how the trans issue,
16:10
SPEAKER_03: I think,
16:10
SPEAKER_03: animates this broader sort of attack on LGBTQ rights sort of writ large.
16:18
SPEAKER_03: So I wonder if you have thoughts about that,
16:20
SPEAKER_03: because I imagine like I was thinking if this were put to voters,
16:24
SPEAKER_03: this issue were put to voters,
16:25
SPEAKER_03: I actually think that there might be a case where like voters would maybe
16:32
SPEAKER_03: if they had like an option here,
16:33
SPEAKER_03: they might like break out sort of trans issues from LGB issues,
16:40
SPEAKER_03: if you're following my thinking here.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: But I just wondered if you thought,
16:44
what your thoughts were about sort of the issue of trans rights
16:50
and treatment of
16:51
trans minors as connected to this legal decision and the sort
16:57
of framework of free
16:58
SPEAKER_03: speech.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: Well,
17:00
SPEAKER_02: okay,
17:00
SPEAKER_02: that's an interesting question,
17:01
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
17:02
SPEAKER_02: because on the one hand,
17:05
SPEAKER_02: the trans issue has been highly medicalized.
17:11
And one of the things that anti-trans people argue is this
17:17
isn't a medical issue,
17:18
SPEAKER_02: it's a psychological issue.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: And it should be treated as a psychological issue, implying that
17:24
SPEAKER_02: that because it's a psychological issue, it can be cured.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: And of course, this is an old story about homosexuality as well.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Martin Duberman even wrote a book called Cures,
17:35
in which he and many other people went to psychoanalysts to try
17:40
to be cured of
17:41
SPEAKER_02: being gay.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: I think this also runs into the question of parents' rights.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting that this was not brought as a parents' rights case.
17:51
That parents have a right to seek any treatment for their
17:55
children that they think
17:57
SPEAKER_02: is reasonable,
17:58
SPEAKER_02: because that would exactly contradict the strategy around trans rights,
18:03
SPEAKER_02: right?
18:04
SPEAKER_02: That the bans on transgender therapy say,
18:07
SPEAKER_02: well,
18:08
parents are being fooled or parents are being tricked into
18:11
abusing their children.
18:13
SPEAKER_02: There's this medical industrial complex.
18:16
I think what is most notable about this case for me is its
18:20
similarities to cases
18:22
SPEAKER_02: like the Illinois mail-in voting case that was heard this week.
18:27
SPEAKER_02: And I can't remember the name of that case,
18:29
SPEAKER_02: but it is a candidate who claims that mail-in voting could harm him
18:37
in the upcoming midterm election because it will force him to
18:42
divert campaign
18:43
SPEAKER_02: resources to vote counting,
18:45
SPEAKER_02: to monitoring the vote counting.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: And that case is a case of standing, right?
18:52
So all of these conservative cases are people who seem nice and
18:59
normal with nice,
19:01
SPEAKER_02: normal concerns,
19:03
SPEAKER_02: sort of doing an end around the real issue,
19:06
SPEAKER_02: which is,
19:07
SPEAKER_02: You know,
19:07
the Republican Party doesn't want people to do mail-in voting
19:11
because more people
19:12
SPEAKER_02: will actually vote.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: And when more people vote, they have a tendency to lose.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: Similarly,
19:17
SPEAKER_02: this strikes me a lot like Masterpiece Cake Shop,
19:24
SPEAKER_02: in which the baker was not saying,
19:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to make this cake because I hate lesbian and gay people.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: He was saying, this is my art and I cannot sully my art.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: And therefore, it's a case of freedom of expression.
19:37
So I think a lot of cases are coming up as free speech cases
19:42
that these issues were
19:44
SPEAKER_02: decided at other times as questions of civil rights.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: So they're taking identity out of the question, basically.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
19:55
SPEAKER_03: I know we need to move on,
19:56
but I'm glad you made that point about standing because it's
19:59
also highly relevant
20:00
SPEAKER_03: here because there is a Colorado law in place,
20:03
SPEAKER_03: but it's a law that has actually never even been enforced.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:07
SPEAKER_03: And this person bringing it forward
20:10
SPEAKER_03: is only bringing it forward in a sort of hypothetical.
20:13
My free speech is being abridged because under the law,
20:16
I'm not able to do this.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: But she hasn't actually been stopped from doing it by the state,
20:22
SPEAKER_03: which would create standing here.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: So legal scholars are saying there actually isn't standing here,
20:30
SPEAKER_03: which should be foundational for this case even moving forward,
20:33
SPEAKER_03: let alone reaching the Supreme Court.
20:36
The Supreme Court doesn't seem to care about constitutional
20:40
technicalities like that.
20:41
SPEAKER_03: So here we are.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: I think that's right.
20:45
And I also think what she is appealing to is what is a sort of
20:50
category of free
20:52
SPEAKER_02: speech violation,
20:53
SPEAKER_02: which is what we call chilling speech.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: I saw her interviewed and the interviewer said,
20:59
SPEAKER_02: well,
20:59
SPEAKER_02: have you ever stopped yourself from talking to a client
21:03
And she said,
21:04
well,
21:05
I wouldn't even know because if I did,
21:08
I could lose my license.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: So it's not even on the table.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean, I think this is an interesting issue.
21:15
People suing about things that actually haven't even happened
21:18
yet and that they
21:20
SPEAKER_02: have not been asked to do.
21:22
So we're going to be following that case because it's a really
21:25
important one.
21:26
Colorado has really been out front on legislating the rights of
21:31
LGBT people.
21:33
And so it's no accident that they are ground zero for the
21:37
conservative attack on
21:39
SPEAKER_02: our rights as well.
21:40
I just want to throw one other thing in to Neil to see what you
21:43
think about,
21:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:45
these gay Republicans on which you are an expert seem to
21:50
specialize in a kind of
21:53
SPEAKER_02: don't ask,
21:54
SPEAKER_02: don't tell.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Like we're not really attacking lesbian,
21:59
SPEAKER_02: gay and bisexual people,
22:01
SPEAKER_02: but why would you be in our face about it kind of thing?
22:05
So,
22:06
so they claim to be sort of not attacking,
22:09
but they're withdrawing protections as well.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:13
I think that's sort of,
22:14
there's some interesting similarities there as well.
22:17
I mean,
22:19
you know,
22:20
I guess the question tier two is like,
22:23
how does identity function in all this?
22:25
yeah because i think that that's important especially just to
22:31
go back to this case
22:31
from colorado like in one way the identity is sort of it's not
22:39
explicit but it is
22:40
implicit in the free speech right i as a christian i will have
22:44
these beliefs and
22:44
SPEAKER_03: therefore i'm right i'm um
22:48
my free speech is being infringed upon because I can't fully
22:51
say the things that I want to say.
22:52
But I don't know if that really gets us sort of connected to
22:56
the gay Republicans,
22:57
SPEAKER_03: but I think there's an interesting way that,
23:00
SPEAKER_03: and I can continue to think about this,
23:02
as that identity functions both sort of implicitly and
23:06
explicitly on the right that
23:07
SPEAKER_03: feels different from how it operates on the left.
23:11
And particularly how identity operates implicitly in these free
23:17
or rather I should
23:17
say how free speech allows one to implicitly advance sort of
23:25
identity based
23:26
SPEAKER_03: politics without actually foregrounding the identity itself.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: And,
23:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:33
SPEAKER_02: I want to take this opportunity,
23:34
SPEAKER_02: this is not in our show notes,
23:36
to recommend to everyone a 1999 movie called But I'm a
23:40
Cheerleader with Natasha
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Lyonne and RuPaul is in it.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: And it's about a girl who gets sent to a conversion therapy camp.
23:50
SPEAKER_02: And she's not a lesbian,
23:52
but her mother thinks she's a lesbian and she sends her to this
23:54
camp and she
23:55
SPEAKER_02: becomes a lesbian at the camp.
23:58
This movie was recommended to me by,
24:00
of course,
24:00
Wesleyan students many,
24:01
many years ago.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: It is hilarious.
24:04
And it is actually worth watching because it's a very shrewd
24:08
critique of conversion therapy.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: But you can also laugh at the same time.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: And conversion therapy is, of course, not funny.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: So I want to get to our last news item.
24:19
About which,
24:20
as I think I told you in my email,
24:22
Neil,
24:22
I am just incandescently angry.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Yesterday,
24:27
Rutgers history professor Mark Bray and his family were
24:30
boarding a plane to Spain
24:32
SPEAKER_02: when airline officials stopped them at the gate.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: Their bags were checked.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: They made it through security.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: They get to the gate.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: They put their tickets on the on the little counter and they say,
24:43
SPEAKER_02: no,
24:43
SPEAKER_02: no,
24:44
SPEAKER_02: no,
24:44
SPEAKER_02: your tickets have been canceled.
24:47
Bray is an expert on anti-fascist movements and he and his
24:51
family were going to Spain.
24:52
His wife is also a history professor at Rutgers because they
24:56
were targeted by the
24:58
SPEAKER_02: campus chapter of Turning Point USA and Mark
25:03
SPEAKER_02: himself was targeted as a violent extremist.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: He writes about anti-fascist movements.
25:09
So he writes about Antifa and Turning Point USA accused him of
25:13
actually being part
25:14
SPEAKER_02: of Antifa,
25:15
SPEAKER_02: of funding Antifa.
25:18
And it is true that 50% of his most recent book went to groups
25:23
fighting Antifa.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: fascism, but they are not in fact terrorists.
25:27
This defamation has been amplified on X by influencers like
25:31
Jack Posobiec,
25:32
SPEAKER_02: Andy Ngo,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: and Milo Yiannopoulos.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: As a result, Bray has faced a barrage of death threats.
25:40
And what's interesting is he actually was also targeted at
25:44
Dartmouth when he taught
25:45
SPEAKER_02: at Dartmouth in 2017,
25:47
SPEAKER_02: when he spoke out against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: So he's been on the radar of the extremist right for a long time,
25:55
SPEAKER_02: but he now appears to really be in fear for his and his family's life.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Rutgers has told him he can teach
26:03
online if he wants to go to Spain,
26:06
which is their idea of dealing with it.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm just enraged.
26:12
So while I sit here and sputter,
26:13
Neil,
26:14
why don't you respond to this for our listeners?
26:16
SPEAKER_03: I am too.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: And I feel like I say this every week about something.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: This is terrifying.
26:22
But to have your family at the airport about to board a flight
26:28
and then this to happen,
26:31
SPEAKER_03: Freedom of movement is fundamental to freedom itself.
26:37
And you keep hearing these scary stories about people coming
26:41
back into the country,
26:44
SPEAKER_03: including US citizens being
26:47
going through some really rough experiences with border agents
26:51
and customs as they
26:52
SPEAKER_03: come in,
26:52
SPEAKER_03: that's scary in itself.
26:54
Also this idea that you can't leave the country,
26:56
that this person can't,
26:59
this is terrifying.
27:00
SPEAKER_03: Also,
27:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm shocked,
27:02
SPEAKER_03: Claire,
27:02
SPEAKER_03: that Turning Point USA,
27:04
the defenders of free speech have ruined this man's life and
27:08
worse because of
27:10
SPEAKER_03: things he's written and said.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: I am shocked too.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: Shocked.
27:15
SPEAKER_02: Shocked that there's gambling in this establishment.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
27:18
and I'm actually really shocked that Rutgers University cannot
27:23
pivot from the
27:25
conversation about anti-Semitic violence and anti-Semitic
27:29
language and intimidation
27:31
SPEAKER_02: on campus to a left-wing professor
27:36
who is exactly being targeted by the same people who claim that
27:42
Rutgers has not
27:43
SPEAKER_02: dealt with anti-Semitism.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I'm outraged by something else.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: And here I am speaking to our fellow historians.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: Neil and I are no longer employed by universities.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: So I feel free to say this.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: Guys,
27:58
SPEAKER_02: when you're talking on social media,
28:00
you don't need to give me an opinion of Mark Bray's work before
28:05
you say that you
28:06
SPEAKER_02: respect his right to free expression.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: That is just fucking bullshit.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: And I'm seeing all these posts up saying,
28:13
SPEAKER_02: well,
28:13
SPEAKER_02: I don't really agree with Mark's politics,
28:16
SPEAKER_02: but I do defend his right.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, good for you.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what is wrong with these people?
28:22
I cannot stand when that's done in general in the much milder
28:28
circumstances.
28:29
SPEAKER_03: In a case like this, what in the world are you doing making that point?
28:33
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's a colleague, guys.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: He's a person.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: He's a person with children and a wife who is also an esteemed scholar.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: And it's just horrifying.
28:48
You know,
28:48
I feel like people are still not getting it about the Trump
28:54
administration.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
28:55
SPEAKER_02: when you listen to Stephen Miller in our opening clip saying,
29:00
SPEAKER_02: you are nothing,
29:01
SPEAKER_02: you are nothing.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are people who compare that to Goebbels.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: Fine, you can do that.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: He actually bears a striking resemblance to Joseph Goebbels,
29:13
SPEAKER_02: except Joseph Goebbels had more hair.
29:16
But actually,
29:17
I would compare it to Ku Klux Klan rallies,
29:21
to Father Coughlin.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you don't have to go to Nazi Germany
29:27
SPEAKER_02: to find a comparison for this stuff.
29:29
It is a revival of the worst aspects of American history and
29:35
the worst repression
29:36
SPEAKER_02: of speech that the United States has seen.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: And the absolute dehumanization of people,
29:44
SPEAKER_03: which is becoming more and more out there in the discourse of the Trump
29:50
SPEAKER_03: administration and
29:52
It's important that that's happening because it's fundamental
29:55
to the project that
29:57
SPEAKER_03: they're seeking to carry out.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:59
Now I'm happy to say that the AAUP AFT chapter at Rutgers is
30:05
strongly supporting Mark Bray.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: I'm very glad to hear that.
30:09
SPEAKER_02: I contacted a bunch of friends at Rutgers and they really didn't,
30:14
SPEAKER_02: they sort of spoke on background,
30:16
but a lot of them admitted they didn't really know what was
30:18
going on either.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think Rutgers should just be ashamed of itself.
30:24
You know,
30:24
they've given this couple the opportunity to teach online,
30:27
send them on paid leave.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, they are traumatized.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Don't say get on a plane.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: And by the time you get to Madrid,
30:35
we hope you can get a good Internet connection so that you can
30:39
meet with your
30:40
SPEAKER_02: students.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just just nuts.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what's wrong with universities.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: All right.
30:45
I want to take a little break right now to say you can buy Mark
30:48
Bray's book.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: I've included a link on the show notes at bookshop.org.
30:54
I did visit all of the online book buying sites and it's
30:58
backordered,
30:59
which means.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, getting in the New York Times means the guy is selling books.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: So good.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm really glad to hear that.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: And half of that money is going to Antifa.
31:09
But I also want to ask our listeners to consider subscribing to
31:13
Political Junkie.
31:15
It's paid subscribers that support this broadcast and all the
31:19
other work we do on
31:20
SPEAKER_02: Political Junkie.
31:21
So you can go to clairepotter.substack.com and subscribe for
31:27
only $5 a month or $50 a year.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: And if you subscribe for $50 a year, you can get Neil's book.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: You can get my book.
31:36
And actually,
31:37
for a limited time,
31:39
I'll even send you Mark Bray's book if you want.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: What a deal.
31:43
Okay.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a deal.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: So,
31:45
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
31:46
SPEAKER_02: let's get to our focus,
31:47
SPEAKER_02: which is Donald Trump's war on American cities,
31:51
something that has been orchestrated and strategized by the
31:55
very Stephen Miller
31:56
SPEAKER_02: that we began the show with.
32:00
I've put a timeline of the troop deployments that began in June
32:04
with Washington,
32:05
SPEAKER_02: D.C.,
32:07
SPEAKER_02: then went to Los Angeles in August and Memphis in October.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to go back to that.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: It is shocking how long that timeline is.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: It is also true that federal troops are now in Chicago.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: Where do we even begin?
32:24
I guess we should begin with the most recent deployment,
32:27
which is in Chicago,
32:28
Neil.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: What's your take on how Chicago's handling it?
32:36
Well,
32:37
you know,
32:37
I think you have the governor here and both the mayor saying
32:42
SPEAKER_03: opposing this,
32:43
saying that I think they're really obviously seizing the moment
32:48
to be both leaders
32:49
SPEAKER_03: and to sort of push back on the politics of this.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: Also, the people are out in the streets protesting.
32:57
SPEAKER_03: Thousands and thousands were out last night, I saw on the news.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: And that's
33:03
important um you know it's like i think this is maybe a point
33:08
we'll get to but
33:09
might as well say it now like if you look at the laws and the
33:12
history around this
33:14
that's relevant i mean all of this is supposed to be used in
33:18
extreme circumstances
33:20
SPEAKER_03: rarely if it's ever used
33:22
And the fact that this is being done everywhere and that this
33:25
president wants to do
33:27
SPEAKER_03: it,
33:27
that it's just sort of deploying willy nilly to every
33:29
Democratic led city,
33:31
SPEAKER_03: as he continues to say aloud,
33:33
SPEAKER_03: gives a lie to it all and exposes just the improperness of it,
33:38
SPEAKER_03: let alone the real authoritarian threat of it.
33:42
And I think that that's important sort of opening framing of
33:46
this conversation is
33:47
SPEAKER_03: like,
33:47
SPEAKER_03: this is not an extreme circumstances.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: A lot of places,
33:51
the deployment of the troops is therefore generating some sort
33:55
of response that
33:56
SPEAKER_03: then they can say,
33:57
SPEAKER_03: oh,
33:57
SPEAKER_03: see,
33:58
SPEAKER_03: it's justified.
33:59
But all of this is like pretext or just creating conditions
34:02
because they want to
34:03
SPEAKER_03: and they believe it.
34:04
And it plays well on television or at least on their television
34:07
sets and within
34:08
SPEAKER_03: their media circles.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's happening differently, different places.
34:13
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
34:14
SPEAKER_02: for example,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: in Washington,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: DC,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: when they deployed federal troops,
34:19
SPEAKER_02: initially there was a big sweep of homeless people.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: You'll see this in the show notes,
34:24
SPEAKER_02: listeners,
34:24
but apparently a lot of those homeless people have ended up in
34:28
tent encampments
34:29
SPEAKER_02: like in Maryland and Virginia.
34:32
They just sort of swept them up and took them out of the city
34:36
and dropped them,
34:37
which I would
34:38
Like to just say this is just a Trump thing,
34:40
but it really isn't just a Trump thing.
34:43
SPEAKER_02: Rudolph Giuliani did that in the 1990s.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Michael Bloomberg did that in the early 20th century.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: I remember this happening in New York.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: And generally it coincided with something happening like a convention,
34:56
SPEAKER_02: something that was bringing a lot of people to the city.
34:58
But they would just go through and they would put people on
35:00
buses and they would
35:01
SPEAKER_02: drive them to Coney Island and dump them.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: And it would then take a while for people to get back to Manhattan.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: So this is a really old school tactic.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: What it does, of course, is destabilize people even more.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: It breaks up their communities.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: They lose documents.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: They lose money.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: But what is most striking to me about the Washington, D.C.,
35:25
so-called crackdown,
35:27
is that apparently these troops have very little to do now.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: They have been seen gardening.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: They have been seen spreading mulch.
35:36
A reporter recently saw some troops gathering up balls that
35:41
Little League baseball
35:42
SPEAKER_02: players were hitting.
35:44
I can't imagine that American soldiers really feel that their
35:49
time is being well spent.
35:51
SPEAKER_03: Right.
35:52
SPEAKER_03: I'm interested,
35:52
and I think there's been some reporting on this about the sort
35:55
of resentments
35:56
building among such folks to be taken away from your family and
36:00
to be doing this
36:02
SPEAKER_03: type of stuff that is sort of embarrassing and demeaning.
36:06
SPEAKER_03: And again, sort of gives a lie to it.
36:09
SPEAKER_03: I think most military folks are not
36:13
SPEAKER_03: do not want to be used in this way,
36:16
SPEAKER_03: even if they might agree with a lot of Trump or even this effort.
36:22
SPEAKER_03: But if the effort doesn't really match,
36:24
if the sort of mission doesn't meet or the message doesn't meet
36:28
the mission or
36:28
SPEAKER_03: whatever I'm trying to say here,
36:30
if they're not doing what they've been told that the whole
36:33
reason they're here for,
36:35
I would imagine there would be a sort of growing sense of
36:38
resentment at this.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: Well, there certainly is.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: And let's be clear, these are not regular troops.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Trump has talked about sending,
36:48
SPEAKER_02: you know,
36:49
SPEAKER_02: the 82nd Airborne and all kinds of elite units,
36:52
SPEAKER_02: which I think probably the brass must be just like freaking out.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
36:59
you just don't send the 82nd Airborne to spread mulch on
37:03
people's gardens or even,
37:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
37:05
SPEAKER_02: go and defend a federal building in Portland.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: But
37:09
SPEAKER_02: National Guard troops are people who have regular jobs and real lives.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: They don't live on military bases.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: Their families don't have a support network as regular troops do.
37:21
There's a whole set of social services that are set up to
37:25
support the families of
37:27
SPEAKER_02: service members during deployments.
37:29
These are people with jobs and actually they don't get paid as
37:33
much when they're on
37:35
SPEAKER_02: National Guard duty as they do
37:38
at their regular jobs and employers are encouraged to sort of
37:44
top up the amount of
37:45
SPEAKER_02: money they make,
37:46
SPEAKER_02: but a lot of employers don't.
37:48
And employment has really changed since the National Guard was
37:53
set up in this way.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: So there are people who are suffering financially,
37:57
they're away from their families and they're doing ridiculous
38:01
things for what is a
38:03
SPEAKER_02: blatantly political purpose.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: Now, let's get back to Chicago.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: And people in Chicago, we are so proud of you.
38:10
Good for you for getting out last night,
38:12
for marching peacefully,
38:14
for supporting each other.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: And then there's some really bad stuff that's been happening.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: Trump has suggested that J.B.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: Pritzker,
38:22
SPEAKER_02: the governor of Illinois,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: who I think is kick-ass and we need to talk about him as a presidential
38:27
SPEAKER_02: candidate...
38:28
SPEAKER_02: And Brandon Johnson,
38:29
SPEAKER_02: the mayor of Chicago,
38:31
who was probably struggling as much as every mayor of Chicago
38:34
does and is now sort
38:36
SPEAKER_02: of a shining star,
38:38
SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump wants to have them arrested and taken to jail.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: J.B.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: Pritzker said, come and get me, motherfucker.
38:46
SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, yeah, you know, do it.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: Go arrest a sitting governor and see how that works.
38:55
SPEAKER_02: But then we're also seeing things like at the,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: I think,
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Broadview ICE facility in Chicago,
39:03
a group of pastors were praying outside the facility and ICE
39:08
agents shot at them.
39:11
SPEAKER_02: One Presbyterian pastor was hit in the head with a pepper ball.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: There's a gruesome picture of him just flying backwards.
39:21
SPEAKER_02: He's suing.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: He's suing under the First Amendment, speaking of the First Amendment.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: So this is ugly and violent, Neil, right?
39:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not just foul balls and mulch.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is ugly and violent.
39:33
SPEAKER_03: And it's the start of a lot more ugliness and a lot more violence.
39:38
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
39:38
SPEAKER_03: with the Pritzker thing,
39:39
SPEAKER_03: it sort of makes me think Pritzker certainly had a pretty big name,
39:44
SPEAKER_03: pretty decent national recognition before this happened.
39:48
But similarly to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago
39:51
with Gavin Newsom,
39:52
there's something that Trump does in his attacks on these folks
39:56
that actually
39:57
escalates them to an even bigger prominence than they could
40:00
have gotten on their
40:01
SPEAKER_03: own.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
40:02
SPEAKER_03: They must be like,
40:03
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
40:03
SPEAKER_03: I don't think especially Pritzker does not want this to happen at all,
40:07
SPEAKER_03: period.
40:08
SPEAKER_03: And also in it happening,
40:11
SPEAKER_03: it is only making him more well-known,
40:14
giving him a bigger platform and a platform upon which he
40:17
should do something
40:18
SPEAKER_03: really important on behalf of his state and his citizens.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: But like,
40:22
it's just sort of bizarre that Trump seems to actually elevate
40:27
these folks as he
40:29
SPEAKER_03: hones in on them.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: I think that's absolutely right.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: Somebody wrote,
40:33
SPEAKER_02: I think it was in CNN the other day,
40:35
SPEAKER_02: that one of the newsletters that I get from them said if J.B.
40:41
Pritzker were not defending his state from Trump,
40:44
he'd have to be going to fish fries in Iowa.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: But you're right about the name recognition.
40:52
Let's go back to the history of this kind of thing,
40:55
Neil,
40:55
which is our happy place.
40:58
The United States has a very bad recent history with deploying
41:01
the National Guard
41:02
SPEAKER_02: against protesters.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: On May 4th,
41:05
SPEAKER_02: 1970,
41:05
SPEAKER_02: four students were killed during an anti-war protest at Ohio's Kent State
41:10
SPEAKER_02: University.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: It was a terrible...
41:14
SPEAKER_02: public relations thing for the Nixit administration.
41:19
SPEAKER_02: It made the brutality that the administration was willing to go to.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: They were white students.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Less than two weeks later in Mississippi,
41:27
two black students were killed and eight were wounded when
41:30
white police officers,
41:32
SPEAKER_02: not National Guard this time,
41:33
fired into a crowd of protesters at the historically black
41:37
Jackson State University.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: So there is a history of this kind of escalation turning really bad.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: It's probably not an accident that after 1970, Nixon decided to begin to
41:54
SPEAKER_02: pull troops back and go almost exclusively to an air war in Vietnam.
41:59
Um,
42:00
and then moved to a lottery system in which people were not
42:04
automatically drafted.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: They didn't have to stay in school to not be drafted.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: You just sort of went if your number came up.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: Um,
42:12
SPEAKER_02: But Trump is also claiming authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807,
42:18
SPEAKER_02: which was modified,
42:20
SPEAKER_02: and you alluded to this earlier,
42:22
in 1861 and 1871 to allow deployment of National Guard troops
42:28
against the will of
42:29
SPEAKER_02: the state governor.
42:31
Talk to us a little bit about the original Insurrection Act of
42:35
1807,
42:35
if you can,
42:36
Neil.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: I know we're both 20th century folks.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: I know.
42:38
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, Lord, this is back to Oral's.
42:41
But this act early in the 19th century empowered the president
42:46
to deploy U.S.
42:48
military and also to federalize National Guard units of
42:52
individual states in
42:53
SPEAKER_03: specific circumstances.
42:55
SPEAKER_03: And those circumstances are things like suppression of civil disorder,
42:59
SPEAKER_03: of insurrection and of armed rebellion against the federal government.
43:03
SPEAKER_03: And I think,
43:03
SPEAKER_03: again,
43:03
SPEAKER_03: this ties back to what was said a little bit before,
43:06
SPEAKER_03: like of extreme circumstances used sparingly.
43:12
SPEAKER_03: And I think,
43:13
SPEAKER_03: again,
43:13
SPEAKER_03: just I mean,
43:14
SPEAKER_03: I already made this point,
43:15
SPEAKER_03: but I think it's worth saying,
43:16
SPEAKER_03: again,
43:16
SPEAKER_03: to deploy federal troops or not federal troops,
43:19
but to deploy a National Guard in all these different cities is
43:23
to show that this
43:24
SPEAKER_03: isn't about
43:25
SPEAKER_03: those things that are outlined in the Insurrection Act,
43:28
but it's just this gross abuse of authority here to do what
43:36
they want for political
43:37
SPEAKER_03: purposes.
43:38
SPEAKER_03: But by doing it,
43:41
they might be actually creating some of their circumstances or
43:44
the appearance of
43:45
some of the circumstances as outlined here in the Insurrection
43:49
Act that then allow
43:50
SPEAKER_03: them to justify it.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: But this is so...
43:54
That's awkward to put it mildly,
43:57
let alone just a complete misabuse of power.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, and let's talk about what's going on in 1807.
44:04
On the one hand,
44:06
you have a recent history of the Whiskey Rebellion,
44:10
right?
44:10
That the United States government is trying to collect taxes
44:14
and Americans don't
44:15
want to pay those taxes or certain kinds of Americans don't
44:18
want to pay those
44:18
SPEAKER_02: taxes.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: So there is an insurrectionary spirit.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: Among white people.
44:25
We then have Native Americans who are have not been pushed that
44:32
far back into the interior.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
44:34
SPEAKER_02: really,
44:34
SPEAKER_02: you've got,
44:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
44:37
SPEAKER_02: white people who are moving into Ohio,
44:39
SPEAKER_02: who are moving into Georgia and so on and so forth.
44:41
SPEAKER_02: But there's a question of Indians mobilizing against Indians.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: And then in 1807,
44:48
what we're seeing is the states that become the Confederacy
44:53
hardening their laws
44:55
SPEAKER_02: around slavery and making slavery a permanent condition.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: So I would argue,
45:00
SPEAKER_02: and we would have to get a real expert on the show to talk about this,
45:04
SPEAKER_02: but that in 1807,
45:05
SPEAKER_02: the Insurrection Act is being
45:09
particularly welcomed by slave states in which white people are
45:15
very much in the
45:16
minority and growing more and more and more concerned about
45:21
being murdered by
45:23
SPEAKER_02: enslaved people.
45:24
Wasn't it Martha Washington who was absolutely positive she was
45:28
going to be
45:28
SPEAKER_02: poisoned by her slaves?
45:32
SPEAKER_03: She was probably one of several who.
45:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
45:37
SPEAKER_02: So,
45:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
45:38
SPEAKER_02: this has a specifically racial history as much as anything else,
45:45
SPEAKER_02: and also a populist history of pushing back against populism.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, it's modified in 1861, duh, the Civil War.
45:54
And in 1871,
45:57
when the United States government is in the midst of enforcing
46:02
reconstruction.
46:03
So the extension of the Insurrection Act in 1871 is part of
46:09
what the southern
46:11
SPEAKER_02: states that are being readmitted to the Union are
46:14
SPEAKER_02: begin to call the force acts.
46:17
So they're being forced by federal troops that are stationed
46:21
there to allow Black
46:24
SPEAKER_02: people to be full citizens.
46:28
But there are other restraints on the president being able to
46:32
deploy troops against
46:33
SPEAKER_02: American citizens.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: And one of them that we're hearing a lot about,
46:36
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
46:36
SPEAKER_02: is Article I,
46:37
SPEAKER_02: Section 8 of the Constitution.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk to our listeners about that a little bit?
46:43
SPEAKER_02: Again, we're back to your orals.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about it.
46:50
SPEAKER_02: Because I've been reading the Constitution lately.
46:53
OK,
46:53
so Article One,
46:54
Section Eight gives Congress broad powers over the military.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: All right.
46:58
So it's a separation of powers clause in the Constitution,
47:03
as well as to call forth the militia.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: OK, so.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: We also have another act passed in 1878, the Posse Comitatus Act.
47:15
SPEAKER_02: And this is a really significant year for such a law to be passed.
47:20
It says you cannot use federal troops in states without the
47:24
permission of the governors.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: Why?
47:26
SPEAKER_02: Because in 1877, the federal government agrees
47:30
SPEAKER_02: to withdraw its troops from enforcing reconstruction in the South.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: But these are laws that actually have resonance today.
47:40
SPEAKER_02: And let's return to what is being wrangled about in the courts now.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: California has filed suit.
47:54
SPEAKER_02: Oregon has filed suit.
47:57
SPEAKER_02: Illinois has filed suit.
48:00
And part of what they're suing over is their own National Guard
48:04
units being
48:05
SPEAKER_02: federalized against their will.
48:07
SPEAKER_02: But also Trump has said, well, OK, keep your damn National Guard.
48:11
SPEAKER_02: We'll just send the Texas National Guard to your states.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: What's the resonance of that, Neil?
48:18
SPEAKER_03: Well,
48:19
SPEAKER_03: I think that,
48:19
SPEAKER_03: first of all,
48:20
SPEAKER_03: all these folks are trying to get temporary restraining orders.
48:23
SPEAKER_03: And I think it's on one hand, it's a smart legal response to this.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: That's a smart strategy on the part of the governors.
48:32
SPEAKER_03: But Trump can just keep moving around here.
48:35
SPEAKER_03: And I think it also just underscores the politics of this all.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: Texas might say, oh, take ours.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: So I think that that's at work, too.
48:45
SPEAKER_03: But I think just like tying back to that history that you spoke of,
48:48
SPEAKER_03: both in,
48:49
SPEAKER_03: you know,
48:50
SPEAKER_03: in the article of the Constitution,
48:52
SPEAKER_03: but particularly in the 1878 Posi Comitatus Act,
48:58
SPEAKER_03: say that three times quickly.
49:01
the history of white supremacy as tied to these particular
49:06
legal developments and
49:07
to the act or the use of troops in this way is just really
49:12
important historically,
49:13
SPEAKER_03: but also seems to have a real resonance with this.
49:16
And the ways that Trump and Miller are speaking explicitly and
49:21
implicitly about
49:23
SPEAKER_03: these cities and all the ways that they are.
49:28
SPEAKER_03: So I just think that that history
49:31
is not just a story of the past that is relevant to our present
49:38
circumstance,
49:39
SPEAKER_03: but is actually deeply resonant in what is happening right now.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: I agree with you.
49:45
And I think one of the things that I've come to realize during
49:48
this period is as a
49:50
SPEAKER_02: nation,
49:51
SPEAKER_02: we are long overdue for a conversation about our National Guard,
49:55
because most of the time what the National Guard does is show
50:00
up to help during a
50:02
SPEAKER_02: natural disaster of some kind.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, they can come and put up a pontoon bridge lickety split.
50:08
when one goes down in a flood or a bridge collapses,
50:11
or they can come and help rescue people.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: You know, they have a specific set of skills.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: Those skills do not include policing.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: They do not include enforcing the law.
50:23
And one of the things that's actually kind of complicated here
50:26
is that there are
50:28
SPEAKER_02: laws about who can enforce the law,
50:30
SPEAKER_02: right?
50:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, back in 1934,
50:35
a bill had to be passed in Congress to allow the FBI to carry
50:40
weapons and do
50:41
SPEAKER_02: investigations in individual states.
50:43
SPEAKER_02: And when they did those investigations before that bill was passed,
50:46
SPEAKER_02: they had to take local police along with them,
50:48
which was kind of tricky because the local police were often
50:51
involved with the
50:51
SPEAKER_02: criminal gangs as well.
50:53
SPEAKER_02: But the FBI could not carry guns in those situations.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: And of course,
50:57
that changed after a bunch of federal agents were killed at the
51:01
Kansas City train
51:02
SPEAKER_02: station.
51:03
SPEAKER_02: But
51:04
SPEAKER_02: Military cannot enforce the law.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, they don't know the law.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: And it really,
51:13
SPEAKER_02: in some ways,
51:14
SPEAKER_02: is dismissive of the kind of training local police do in crowd control,
51:21
SPEAKER_02: de-escalation,
51:23
SPEAKER_02: and their knowledge of what is legal and what is not legal.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
51:27
SPEAKER_03: and I think that it's demeaning,
51:29
SPEAKER_03: it's not in keeping with their training,
51:33
SPEAKER_03: their purpose,
51:34
SPEAKER_03: their mission.
51:36
SPEAKER_03: But I think it also underscores a broader project here,
51:41
SPEAKER_03: which is to undermine institutions,
51:43
SPEAKER_03: which is what the Trump administration wants to do in general.
51:46
SPEAKER_03: And partly you do that by like,
51:48
SPEAKER_03: taking away their funding and,
51:50
SPEAKER_03: you know,
51:51
SPEAKER_03: and just closing them,
51:53
SPEAKER_03: but also by scrambling the work that they do,
51:57
SPEAKER_03: sort of blurring the lines here.
51:58
SPEAKER_03: And,
51:59
SPEAKER_03: you know,
51:59
SPEAKER_03: I think in terms of the National Guard,
52:01
SPEAKER_03: like those moments you pointed to,
52:03
SPEAKER_03: like Kent State and Jackson State,
52:04
SPEAKER_03: like,
52:06
SPEAKER_03: you know,
52:06
SPEAKER_03: in part,
52:06
you could say those events transpired because they were out of
52:09
their depths of what
52:11
SPEAKER_02: Right.
52:11
SPEAKER_03: They should be right.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: Like it wasn't a time where they were bringing sandbags into.
52:15
And I don't say that dismissively or demeaningly like that is a
52:18
huge service that I
52:20
SPEAKER_03: do in those like natural disaster moments.
52:23
SPEAKER_03: But I think a lot of these really moments that have been
52:27
SPEAKER_03: you know,
52:29
really sort of turning points in American history or these
52:32
really sort of awful,
52:33
SPEAKER_03: horrific moments are when they've been,
52:36
SPEAKER_03: you know,
52:36
moments where like they're out of their depth and sort of
52:39
escalation of events
52:42
SPEAKER_03: produces really disastrous and consequential results.
52:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you're right.
52:47
SPEAKER_02: And,
52:48
SPEAKER_02: you know,
52:48
when I said earlier that we are overdue for a conversation
52:52
about the National Guard
52:53
SPEAKER_02: in the United States,
52:54
SPEAKER_02: obviously the Guard exists as a resource,
52:58
SPEAKER_02: as do the reserves,
52:59
SPEAKER_02: for a
53:01
SPEAKER_02: a war that suddenly comes along that people need to be mobilized for.
53:04
And I'm thinking about 9-11,
53:06
but I'm also thinking about the first Gulf War.
53:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
53:09
SPEAKER_02: I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania then,
53:12
and a lot of kids served in the National Guard and the reserves
53:16
as a way of paying
53:17
SPEAKER_02: for college.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: And it was a particular demographic that went to Penn.
53:21
SPEAKER_02: It's different from other Ivy League schools in that way.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: And kids just disappeared.
53:28
SPEAKER_02: You know,
53:28
SPEAKER_02: and in the second Gulf War,
53:31
I read a story about a whole unit of National Guardsmen who
53:36
were anthropology
53:37
SPEAKER_02: graduate students at the University of Florida,
53:39
SPEAKER_02: and they were suddenly mobilized.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
53:41
SPEAKER_02: these are people studying for their PhDs in anthropology,
53:43
SPEAKER_02: and suddenly they're off on a,
53:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
53:45
SPEAKER_02: one-year mobilization.
53:47
But one of the features of war making in the United States has
53:52
been really the United States...
53:56
fighting wars that are beyond their capacity and using the
53:59
national guard to do
54:00
that um in in the second gulf war they were mobilizing coast
54:05
guard as combat troops
54:06
i mean it was it was really kind of appalling so i think the
54:10
conversation we need
54:11
to have at some calmer moment is what does it mean to actually
54:15
abuse the resource
54:18
SPEAKER_02: of the national guard and
54:20
What do we have to do to cultivate a respect for what they can
54:25
and cannot do?
54:28
SPEAKER_02: So I don't want to leave this conversation quite yet,
54:31
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
54:31
because I want to point out that Chicago is a very symbolic
54:36
place to have this
54:38
SPEAKER_02: fight.
54:39
SPEAKER_02: When I say Chicago and demonstrations, what do you think of?
54:43
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think of the Democratic Convention of 1964?
54:47
SPEAKER_03: 68, 68.
54:47
SPEAKER_03: Hubert Humphrey, people having their heads split outside the, yeah.
54:59
SPEAKER_02: Horrifying.
55:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
55:02
SPEAKER_03: That's an important sort of historical marker here to think about.
55:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
55:08
SPEAKER_03: Because I think that looms large,
55:10
at least in a lot of older Americans' imagination about sort of
55:15
protests in this
55:15
SPEAKER_03: country,
55:16
SPEAKER_03: but also the particularities of like Chicago itself.
55:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:21
SPEAKER_03: Go ahead.
55:21
Well,
55:22
and what a lot of people don't think about is what a Mexican
55:24
city Chicago is.
55:26
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: This this operation,
55:29
SPEAKER_02: which ICE calls Operation Midway Blitz,
55:33
SPEAKER_02: which is targeting agents to Chicago.
55:37
SPEAKER_02: It's about 30 percent.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: Chicago is about 30 percent Latino.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: And of those residents,
55:43
about 74 percent are of Mexican heritage or one in five
55:48
residents of Chicagoland.
55:50
And Chicagoland is both the city itself and what they call the
55:54
collar county's.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: around the city.
55:58
SPEAKER_02: President Trump has called for Pritzker and Brandon Johnson to be jailed,
56:03
SPEAKER_02: of course,
56:05
SPEAKER_02: but there's a specific reason why he's there,
56:07
SPEAKER_02: which is the city is so Latino and it is so Mexican.
56:11
SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things we have to think about,
56:14
SPEAKER_02: I think,
56:16
SPEAKER_02: is the extent to which all of this is just a pretext for accelerating
56:22
the immigration arrests and deportations that Trump has
56:26
promised his base.
56:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
56:28
SPEAKER_03: I will also say to add to that,
56:29
Chicago looms really large and conservative media as like the
56:34
worst specter of like
56:35
SPEAKER_03: a city.
56:36
Like Fox News is constantly doing stories about I'm putting
56:40
quotes around these
56:41
SPEAKER_03: things,
56:42
SPEAKER_03: the lawlessness and on and on.
56:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
56:44
SPEAKER_03: And the violence of Chicago.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: I remember I had a
56:48
friend there's quotes around that word as well um who posted i
56:52
don't know several
56:53
years ago on facebook that they had had to go on a work trip to
56:57
chicago and they
56:57
were stunned when they got there to discover it was such a
57:01
beautiful city um
57:03
because of course they were just like consuming a media diet
57:05
that was telling them
57:06
SPEAKER_03: constantly that it was just the
57:09
SPEAKER_03: just the worst place and most dangerous and violent place imaginable.
57:12
So I think it's like all of those things are at work here and
57:19
why Trump has a sort
57:20
SPEAKER_03: of particular obsession with it.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:24
SPEAKER_02: All right,
57:25
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
57:25
SPEAKER_02: to be continued,
57:27
SPEAKER_02: because this seems to be continuing,
57:29
SPEAKER_02: even though,
57:30
SPEAKER_02: as you said earlier,
57:31
SPEAKER_02: there are a number of injunctions won by a Trump appointed judge.
57:36
and appointed actually quite recently,
57:38
who has said,
57:39
no,
57:39
this is all absolutely illegal.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: But let's turn to what we want to go viral this week.
57:44
SPEAKER_02: What do you want to go viral this week?
57:47
Once again,
57:47
in happier news,
57:48
I wanna share with you a new book that's just come out.
57:50
SPEAKER_03: It's literally coming out this week as y'all are getting this,
57:54
SPEAKER_03: called Unchanged Trebles,
57:57
SPEAKER_03: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity.
58:01
It is written by my good friend and also my writing
58:05
accountability partner,
58:07
Rebecca Peoples.
58:08
Rebecca and I were many years ago office mates when we taught
58:11
in the Princeton writing program.
58:14
And I left academia and she climbed the administration ranks at
58:18
Princeton.
58:18
SPEAKER_03: And it's like a big deal dean, but trained as a sociologist.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: And her boy,
58:25
SPEAKER_03: her young son,
58:26
SPEAKER_03: who's now in college,
58:28
SPEAKER_03: when he was like 11 or 12,
58:29
SPEAKER_03: he joined a boy choir in the Philadelphia area.
58:33
SPEAKER_03: And
58:34
SPEAKER_03: It just sort of turned on her sociologist brain and lens.
58:40
And she became fascinated with this world and the sort of
58:42
particular way that boy
58:44
SPEAKER_03: choirs allowed her to think about masculinity and gender and boyhood and
58:50
SPEAKER_03: adolescence in a time in which so many of those things were really at the
58:55
SPEAKER_03: forefront.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:56
um larger public conversation so it's this wonderful book it's
59:00
really really
59:01
beautiful it's fascinating i mean i didn't know really anything
59:04
about boy choirs
59:05
until you know i started being i was her writing accountability
59:09
partner on this and
59:10
you know she read every chapter of my book and i read every
59:12
chapter of hers in
59:13
every draft phase it was so we were sort of intimately
59:17
connected to these both of
59:18
SPEAKER_03: our books as we were as we were writing them
59:21
SPEAKER_03: But I just love learning about this world of boy choirs.
59:25
SPEAKER_03: There's obviously a huge,
59:26
SPEAKER_03: long tradition that's like,
59:28
SPEAKER_03: you know,
59:28
tied to Europe that she covers and it's sort of particular
59:32
history in the US is
59:33
SPEAKER_03: really interesting.
59:34
SPEAKER_03: And then there's all this fascinating stuff with like,
59:38
the sort of science of the voice and of adolescent development
59:43
and what all that
59:44
allows boys to achieve at this very particular moment in their
59:50
development when
59:50
SPEAKER_03: they can hit these high notes and then what changes.
59:54
SPEAKER_03: And so that's fascinating in itself.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: But I think there's something really interesting,
59:59
SPEAKER_03: sort of the broader point she makes,
1:00:00
the bigger argument is about like the nature of like these
1:00:04
single sex spaces in a
1:00:06
moment in which like so much of gender and masculinity and
1:00:11
boyhood is being really
1:00:13
SPEAKER_03: debated.
1:00:13
And like she makes this argument that like we need more of
1:00:16
these types of places like that.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_03: It can't just be like fraternities.
1:00:21
and high pressure sports teams where boys are in these all boys
1:00:31
spaces that we need
1:00:33
SPEAKER_03: actually a much broader.
1:00:34
We need more sort of institutions and organizations that permit
1:00:39
men to young boys to experience
1:00:42
SPEAKER_03: different and expansive notions of masculinity.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_03: And I just I think that's a really,
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: really interesting and important argument for the moment that we're in.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_02: It really is because,
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: of course,
1:00:55
what the MAGA Republicans are trying to do is narrow the idea
1:00:59
of what masculinity
1:01:00
SPEAKER_02: can be and narrow what kinds of art boys are supposed to like.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: Like they're really into the Romans now.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_02: And it's all about warrior culture and so on and so forth.
1:01:11
And so the narrowing of masculine possibility is really
1:01:16
accelerating right now in
1:01:17
SPEAKER_02: some very dangerous ways.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_02: Sounds wonderful, Neil.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_03: Let me show one more thing for those of you who watch us.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_03: It has this absolutely beautiful cover.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_03: I love this cover.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_03: It's so cool.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_03: So again,
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: the book is Unchanged Troubles,
1:01:33
What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity by my
1:01:37
good friend,
1:01:37
SPEAKER_03: Rebecca Peoples.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: Like everything else you recommend, I always buy it.
1:01:43
I'll include a link to it,
1:01:44
listeners,
1:01:45
and all of Neil's recommendations are good.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_02: So mine is a little bit shorter.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_02: I'd like you to read about Sam Turblanche.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_02: A Columbia University student who became ill,
1:01:58
twice sought treatment in an Upper West Side Mount Sinai
1:02:01
Hospital emergency room,
1:02:03
SPEAKER_02: was sent home twice back to his dormitory,
1:02:06
SPEAKER_02: and then he died in his dorm room.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_02: Reporter Lisa Miller's deeply reported story is just a virus.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_02: The ER told him days later he was dead.
1:02:19
And it's a story about Sam and the terrible tragedy of a young
1:02:24
man's death from
1:02:27
SPEAKER_02: what seemed like just an ordinary illness.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he'd go into a soccer game.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_02: He felt kind of crummy.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_02: He went to bed.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_02: His girlfriend brought him soup and so on.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_02: And then when he got sick,
1:02:36
he went to the ER and they gave him a lot of tests and they
1:02:40
gave him fluid and they
1:02:41
SPEAKER_02: sent him home with Tylenol.
1:02:42
And then he got sicker and he came back and they gave him more
1:02:46
fluids and they sent
1:02:47
SPEAKER_02: him home with more Tylenol.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_02: And on the one hand, it's a story about unnecessary death.
1:02:54
These are upper middle class people who were just gobsmacked
1:02:57
that this could happen.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_02: And then on the other hand,
1:03:00
it's really about a fraying urban medical system and the
1:03:04
consequences of forcing
1:03:06
overburdened emergency rooms to take responsibility for routine
1:03:10
medical care.
1:03:12
And for those of you who don't live in New York,
1:03:14
you may not know that this is happening,
1:03:16
but
1:03:17
SPEAKER_02: They have closed hospital after hospital after hospital in New York.
1:03:21
And often part of the deal of closing that hospital is to
1:03:24
establish a free standing
1:03:26
SPEAKER_02: emergency room.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_02: We have one in Greenwich Village
1:03:31
SPEAKER_02: that's near where St.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_02: Vincent's Hospital used to be.
1:03:34
And you can go in there and they treat you like an emergency
1:03:38
room treats you.
1:03:39
And that sometimes involves sending you to the real hospital
1:03:43
where you then sit in
1:03:43
SPEAKER_02: the hall for three days before you actually get a room.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_02: And very often it involves sending you home.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_02: So as you know,
1:03:52
SPEAKER_02: Neil,
1:03:52
I'm writing this book about Susan Brownmiller and a couple of
1:03:55
summers ago,
1:03:55
SPEAKER_02: she got a cut on her leg that became more and more infected.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_02: Her friends kept taking her to the emergency room.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_02: The emergency room would put a dressing on it and send her home.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_02: By the time I got back from vacation,
1:04:09
SPEAKER_02: it looked awful.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: it was,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: it was green and,
1:04:13
SPEAKER_02: and she had to have surgery,
1:04:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:04:15
and it turned out of course that she had a blocked artery and
1:04:19
there wasn't getting
1:04:21
SPEAKER_02: any oxygen to the site.
1:04:23
And my point is that the people who populate emergency rooms
1:04:29
who are largely
1:04:31
SPEAKER_02: residents,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: they are largely medical students.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_02: There's an overworked attending there who's on the clock and
1:04:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, they are overburdened.
1:04:42
They cannot actually do the work sometimes of even doing a
1:04:47
simple diagnosis.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:04:49
it was clear this young man was not getting better and yet his
1:04:53
chart kept sort of
1:04:55
SPEAKER_02: saying,
1:04:55
SPEAKER_02: well,
1:04:55
SPEAKER_02: he's got a virus.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_02: There's really nothing we can do for a virus.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_02: Just go home and let it burn itself out.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, and of course he got sepsis.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_02: from having the virus too long and he died.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_02: So I think on the one hand,
1:05:08
it's just a sad story about what sounds like a terrific kid who
1:05:13
shouldn't have
1:05:14
SPEAKER_02: died.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_02: But on the other hand, you know, really,
1:05:18
Sam is the canary in the coal mine of a much larger medical
1:05:22
system that is on the
1:05:24
brink and is going to be driven over the brink by the kinds of
1:05:28
cuts that have been
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: planned by the Trump administration.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_02: So the story is just a virus.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: The ER told him days later, he was dead.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_02: It's in the New York times.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_02: There'll be a link to it.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_02: Um,
1:05:40
SPEAKER_02: Mine is not anywhere near as cheerful as yours, Neil.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_02: I should have let you go second.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_02: But maybe next week we'll do something a little more cheerful.
1:05:50
I mean,
1:05:51
I'm sure the top headlines of next week are only going to be
1:05:54
good news stories.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: You betcha.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe we're just going to have to choose something.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we'll have to go back to the women in the Trump administration,
1:06:00
SPEAKER_02: which,
1:06:00
SPEAKER_02: as you know,
1:06:01
SPEAKER_02: I have been wanting to make our news focus for some time.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_02: But until then, Neil, be well.
1:06:08
SPEAKER_03: You too.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
1:06:15
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1:06:17
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1:06:19
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1:06:20
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1:06:22
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1:06:29
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1:06:46
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1:06:49
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1:06:50
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1:06:51
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1:06:53
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1:06:53
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1:06:54
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1:06:55
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1:06:56
SPEAKER_02: Today's theme is Revenant by Michael Berguglio.
1:06:59
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1:07:02
SPEAKER_02: That's all for now.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_02: See you next time.