Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton (fighting off an Oasis-induced cold) and Nick Hauselman break down a 6–3 Supreme Court move that lets ICE ramp up racial profiling in Los Angeles and what that signals for Chicago, protest crackdowns, and a country drifting into a “soft civil war.” They dig into reports of banning trans people from buying firearms under the guise of “mental illness,” Cleta Mitchell’s open chatter about using “sovereign emergency powers” to federalize elections, and a Medicare pilot that outsources care decisions to A.I. (what could go wrong!). Plus: Gallup numbers showing Americans actually like immigration and are souring on capitalism, if only Democrats would act accordingly.
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My traveling, my travails, my experiences, my adventures, came home with a cold.
Oh, well, that's probably to be expected.
Although, you know, you don't, you're not on a plane, so that you're supposed to avoid that somehow.
Yeah, but when you're around 10,000 people or tens of thousands of people singing along to the some of the greatest songs ever written, you tend to absorb some things.
So here's what I'll say.
I am so glad to be in my home recording studio.
But guess what else I'm I'm grateful for?
I'm grateful for the mute button because there's gonna be some coughing during this.
All right.
And the people aren't gonna hear it.
How about that?
Well, for what it's worth, I went to a Paul McCartney concert and did not get a cold.
What are we doing here?
I don't know, but maybe comparing.
What are we comparing?
Are you saying that Paul McCartney doesn't bring disease and Oasis does?
I'm saying then maybe this is some weird, you know, thing that led it telling you about Oasis.
I don't know.
This is RFK type medicine.
Yeah, is what's happening right now.
I will not stand for it, everyone.
And I promise you, my my hand is on the mute button.
You are not gonna suffer through this.
But a reminder in order to support us, head over to patreon.com slash muckbreak podcast, become a patron, gain full access to the uh the weekly weekender show on Fridays.
You're listening to the previews.
We need your help, we need your support, particularly in these times.
Patreon.com slash my crack podcast.
Nick, we have I I I don't know how else to describe it, a jam-packed show.
There is so much shit going down that we have to get to.
And we have to start with a Supreme Court ruling completely out of nowhere.
Six three, surprise, surprise, everybody.
Um, the Supreme Court struck down a lower court decision that would stop racial profiling in your neck of the woods in Los Angeles.
The Supreme Court has now ruled that the federal government can more or less harass people if they are Hispanic, if they speak Spanish, if they have certain jobs.
Um, this this for me, Nick, and and we'll get into it more.
This to me is so disgusting and so repellent.
And it's going to be one of those things when we look back on this modern court, we're going to point to it and say, that's incredible institutional racism that got put in place by this court.
And honestly, you know, they they shock me all the time with what they do to the point where you it becomes expected.
This ruling is so disgusting that it's almost hard to sit here and look at it.
Well, let's just be a little bit there, there's a little bit more accuracy, I think, on this one because this is a decision that was made in the district court that is now being appealed.
And this is what the Supreme Court continues to do.
They will simply issue a stay on that until the appeal is heard.
So they get to kick the can down the road, but then you're right, it'll then allows uh ice to unfettered do all sorts all manner of racial profiling.
So even if it does get overturned later, and then the Supreme Court says, okay, that's fine with us, we're not gonna get in the way.
It's like the the the damage has been done, right?
The I I'm walking around LA and I feel the palpable fear in the streets right now.
And if I see someone who resembles what these ice people are searching for based on simply appearance, I I am scared for them.
And I and I almost wonder to the point like, are we even going to see people who look like that walking around the streets in the, you know, at any time of the day or night, because they're you know, more than likely going to be harassed at the at the very least.
And uh this is this is now the level of what we've seen, you know, sanctioned from you know, things like when we had uh Karamatsu versus United States when we had uh uh Japanese internment camps.
No, that's it it's in that same league, is what it is.
And you know, there there are a few things to take from this.
First of all, Brett Kavanaugh, complete nutter asshole, anybody who wants to talk about him being a swing vote or whatever.
He called this common sense.
It's common sense that the federal government and their secret police would stop anybody who appears to be Hispanic, anybody who speaks Spanish, and by the way, anybody who is employed as a day laborer Or works in construction.
So here we have racial profiling on absolute steroids.
They're not even interested in hiding it a little bit.
And to give it a little bit of context of what's going on here, we have to remember there are circles within circles.
First things first, does this illegitimate Supreme Court, does it support Donald Trump being a tinpot dictator?
In some cases, yes.
And in other cases, it wants to go ahead and maintain its own power, right?
When it comes to the Supreme Court's relationship with the lower court, speaking of Brett Kavanaugh, we have seen over and over over the past few weeks, Kavanaugh sending messages and signals to the lower courts, which is we are dominant, we are in charge.
You had better not step out of line.
We are where the buck stops.
And anything that you do outside of that, or if you sort of flex your muscle and show your jurisdiction, will come in and basically slap you down.
And in this case, we have another instance where the Supreme Court is trying to assert its authority over these courts and their decisions.
And it really doesn't matter necessarily what's happening here.
They're not interested in maintaining rights and protections or precedent.
They're not interested in doing the job that they're supposed to do.
And what happens is it's simply a territorial job.
And who suffers?
Regular people who are just trying to live their lives.
And what you said is exactly right, Nick.
We are moving toward a place where in urban areas, and we'll talk more about it in just a minute on that topic, where people of Hispanic origin or immigrants are going to stop feeling safe, living their lives and going out in public because at every corner they could possibly, you know, be disappeared or cuffed and you know, terrible things could happen to them.
And that is the consequence of all of this jostling and all of these sort of uh petty wars that we're dealing with.
Right.
Well, well, very well said.
And is it fair enough to say that almost everybody in America has under at knows or has heard of at least one or two stories of ice detaining people?
Is that safe to say?
I I mean there are certain areas of the country where it's not necessarily happening, like in smaller towns, but I I have to tell you, like it is everywhere.
All you have to do is open your eyes and listen, and we hear one thing after another about somebody being illegally detained or deported or disappeared.
So yeah, I I think it's becoming uh prevalent to the point of it being really, really disturbing.
Right.
So it doesn't have to happen to anybody that they know or that.
It's just, you know, they've heard of some of these stories.
Because I want to tell you what Kavanaugh said, because you mentioned that he's using common sense as this, you know, rationale for being able to do this.
But he says, if the person, quote, if the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.
Only if the person is illegally in the United States, made the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.
Now, I think you and I both know that we've heard endless stories now of people who are lawfully in this in the country who have spent days, if not weeks being detained uh in all manner of um, you know, on unacceptable conditions.
And so this is a lot like when we heard them make a decision that got rid of um, you know, part of the Bodie Rights Act where they were saying, well, listen, we're done with that.
States aren't gonna, you know, uh disenfranchise people anymore.
We're, you know, we're already, it's 2010, and that doesn't happen anymore.
And of course, it happened the second they were to pass that, uh, they struck down part of that law.
And it's the same thing here where they just they just seem to either have their fingers in their ears or their hands over their eyes, uh, or they're willingly just under, you know, letting, you know, understanding that what's going on can continue, you know, even though what he's describing is simply not the reality.
Yeah, let me take a quick weird turn, but I promise we're coming back to this subject.
So I spent, you know, nearly two decades in higher education in in academia.
And one of the things that I watched during my tenure there was a real struggle over what you would call the canon, right?
Like what books should be read, what authors should be read, what history should be taught.
And the reason that battle happened, Nick, is because so much of what was considered the canon, what you were supposed to know, what you were supposed to be familiar with, was through a white male lens, right?
It was all written by white men, it was all focused on white men, it was focused on the the sort of experience of being white in the world.
When it comes to the idea of quote unquote common sense, all this is is A lens into how these people see the world.
Because here it's completely common sense.
It's the Hispanic people who are in the country illegally.
So why wouldn't you racially profile them?
And we've seen this over the past week or so.
And I don't know if you've seen it or if our listeners have seen it.
There was a terrible crime that was perpetrated where a black man killed a young white woman.
And it has just been the cause de jour among Twitter because it's a white supremacist space.
And what do people keep saying?
Well, obviously it's the black men who are committing the crime.
So we need to focus more on cracking down on black men.
That mode or that lens of what common sense is, and I'm putting heavy scare quotes around it, it is the white gays, right?
It's how white people see the world, particularly if they themselves are white supremacist and racist.
So here it's only common sense if every Hispanic person in Los Angeles gets stopped and searched.
And maybe they lose weeks or months or years of their lives fighting this thing.
But it's common sense because those are the people you should be going after, which is the entire reason, by the way, that in an inherently white supremacist country, you need laws and protections to keep that from happening.
That's why we had civil rights in the first place.
That's why we have these laws.
It's why the Constitution is supposed to work the way it's supposed to work.
And here we have the full dismantling of it and the movement back, which has been the purpose all along of creating that quote unquote common sense, which is the white supremacist and white supremacist patriarchal viewpoint.
That's exactly what's happening here.
Right.
And I also think that it leads to the argument from white people who say it's racist when you see certain laws that are put into place for that to protect people who have been uh, you know, uh uh taken advantage of for all these years in our country.
Um and that that is a sweet siren for a lot of people who might not have even really been in that white supremacy mode at all, but it it could speak to certain people, right?
And it can really kind of get them on board in a really uh in an easy way.
But uh it's just it's just so frustrating because it's um they're being duped.
Uh I I did want to include what Justice Sotomayor responded with in her dissent because it kind of crystallizes what we're talking about as well.
When she said, quote, the government and now the concurrence has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agent satisfaction, as a district's court as a district court found, and the government does not meanfully meaningfully contest.
The uh the present evidence reveals that the operation at large seizures occurred basically solely upon the four enumerated factors, either alone or in combination.
Um, you know, basically they're talking about like, well, we're not gonna do it unless all four of these things uh are are happening.
But we know that's that's not happens.
They're only using one, either like skin color or maybe they speak Spanish, and you know, that's enough.
And that, and no one, there's no pushback to that.
And now we get to go back to lawmakers, like I don't know, what are they called again?
Uh yeah, Democrats uh who are doing nothing to push back at all on what's going on in the world.
Well, it's all a distraction, Nick.
Why would they do anything about it?
I mean, you know, it uh look over here, don't pay attention to that over there.
One last thing on this subject, by the way.
I just want to remind people who are listening to this, you need to get a whole lot more comfortable with looking at the Supreme Court as being illegitimate and not paying attention to them.
This is not a body that is serious.
This is not a body that is actually working within the laws and the institution that supposedly it's supposed to, you know, take care of.
Nick, on the subject of what's happening in Los Angeles, over the past few days, and certainly this has been the drumbeat for a couple of weeks.
It feels increasingly likely that the Trump administration is going to focus on Chicago very, very soon.
The president of the United States of America, Donald Trump posted some AI bullshit that was from Apocalypse Now, which basically declared war on the city of Chicago.
At this point, we are waiting on this collision to happen in uh your former city, and it feels like the tension is growing and growing with every single day.
Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if it got violent uh amongst protesters who seem to be getting a little bit more bold in their um expression.
But that said, uh we're we're seeing that the ICE agents are getting more uh aggressive as well.
And uh I I can't, every day I see more and more clips of just you know, people who are protesting and expressing, you know, you're allowed to curse if you like at somebody uh at a nice agent, and they'll just come right over and just smash them to the ground and that kind of stuff.
Uh that kind of thing leads to a lot more uh when you do it with uh the right, you know, at the right time.
So I wouldn't be surprised if there is some version of a showdown.
Now, knowing how the Chicago PD works, uh, don't expect them to be on any other side but on ICE's side.
Um, and so that's gonna go uh in an interesting way, and it's gonna be rooted in just how many people want to get out there and protest in the streets.
Well, I have a question for you because I feel like you are uniquely suited to talk about this.
You have lived in Los Angeles for a while now, you lived in Chicago beforehand.
I I sense I'm a Midwesterner, I've spent a lot of time in Chicago.
I was actually just in Chicago last week.
I I feel like if this does come to pass, if the Trump administration does send federal agents and troops into Chicago, I have a wild feeling that this is much more of a powder cake situation than Los Angeles.
And I was wondering what your opinion was on that as someone who's uniquely familiar with these places.
Yeah, I mean, we talk about blue cities all the time, and you know, it's not always that clear, you know, with huge cities like Chicago, LA, and New York, you you run the gamut of like the kind of uh political you know alliances people have, right?
It's it's it's kind of not just so simple.
But I will say Chicago, uh, you know, it is a kind of a fiercely democratic town.
Um, and so you will see, and then there's always that chip on the shoulder that people have from Chicago in terms of wanting to stand up for what what you know what's right and what they represent.
So uh I think it is a little bit different because I don't want to take anything away from the protesters who are out there bravely in LA, even to this day.
And there's not a lot of them, but they're out there all night and they're um in the uh in front of the um downtown.
Um, but I I was expect that you'd see uh just more of that, and probably maybe even more uh more willing willing to be uh expressive in their um, you know, in in in in different ways uh to how much they oppose this in in bigger numbers.
And I don't want to take anything away from Angelinos.
I think that they have afforded themselves admirably.
I think the way that Angelinos have shown up to protect their neighbors, you know, their friends, like I think it has been absolutely incredible.
But it feels like as this thing develops and as it escalates, it feels like Chicago is sort of primed for a battle.
You know, it's the characteristics of the city, it's the way that it works.
You brought up the chip on the shoulder.
I I know a lot of Chicagoans, it feels like they're going to be incredibly pissed off.
And also pissed off that the president of the United States of America continually talks about declaring war on them.
And then you have other elements that we've sort of touched on a little bit, but they're really coagulating at this point.
JB Pritzker is not stopping.
Like he is laser focused on this, and he uh quite frankly, I think is affording himself very well.
You also are starting to see a lot of talk coming from Zoran Mamdani, who's showing solidarity with Chicagoans and is also trying to draw some of the ire of Donald Trump at this point.
I kind of feel like there are a lot of combustible elements in this situation.
Right.
And there's also it's been drawn out.
So this is the mistake of the, you know, you want to be tyrannical government.
I think the longer you kind of drag your feet with by doing this, and the the harder it's gonna be as the as the pro uh the the uh energy builds up against this.
I'm trying to remember back in LA when they did this.
I know we had heard about it, and then there then there they were National Guard, which is standing around, you know, not doing anything.
Um, but I don't think it was this long.
And they also they've done it, they've done it in LA.
We now know we've seen that the president was set there.
So there's just a lot more time now for this to build.
And uh, yeah, this could very well be something it could even be the notion of like, you know, in the middle of an ICE raid or whatever, we have citizens who come together, form like a chain with their arms and like do not let them go through.
You know what I mean?
Like some sort of civil protest like that, uh, that doesn't have to be violent uh necessarily on their end.
Um we need more of that.
And in fact, it's inspiring when we've seen some of those where they kind of shout them down and they kind of make them leave, right?
I've seen two or three of those clips.
Um and I think the more of those that happen, the more uh the the less powerful the ice will end up being.
And I and quite frankly, that's what I want to see.
I I I I mean, uh again, Angelinos have shown up.
I think the people in Washington, DC have shown up.
But I do think what you just brought up, like this has This weird tension to it because they've been talking about it for so long.
And it feels like Chicago and New York have both been in the back pocket of this administration consistently that they're going to do this, that we're eventually going to see, you know, troops and agents show up in these cities.
And it's almost been like a taunting threat, right?
And the people who are in these cities, it feels like they are getting very prepped up for it.
And on top of that, I mean, I I'm sorry, but this AI bullshit that Trump shared, it just escalates the situation even further.
Like how much antipathy there is between the president of the United States of America and an American city at this point.
So yeah, I want to see the people out there.
I want to see them, you know, fighting back.
I want to see them standing against this because these are the confrontations that I think are going to define this in the long run.
And it does feel like Chicago is prime for that.
Yeah, I'm looking for the actual thing because you know, it it's basically threatening war, right?
There was the word war on that meme that he released, right?
Um, and certainly when you're talking about apocalypse now, that's what it is.
Oh, yeah, they're talking about the Department of War.
Yeah.
So someone asked him, I don't know if you saw it, like, but you know, basically he spolded the reporter um for asking him about like this impending war, but it's like he he he's like, he's responsible for it.
His rhetoric is responsible for creating this this tension in the situation.
Um, and you know, we over the weekend we hear they're gonna they're trying to change the department to the department of defense to the department of war again.
Um, you know, those words matter, right?
There's a reason why they recognize after the uh right before the cold war started, they wanted to be the Department Department of Defense.
Um, you know, that it's it was a frightening thing to be a thing where you're you're now posturing for war across the country or across the world.
Uh certainly then it was, and I don't I would argue it's probably even more concerning now uh to have that kind of stance.
And so um, you know, the fact that they're gonna try and turn all this back on our own citizens is just um, you know, the kind of thing that makes you not want to live in this country.
It was always going to happen.
Like as the American empire expanded, we were taking our violence and our force against other people.
And on I and and I'm gonna say something contradictory here, Nick.
And I'm gonna say that this is my job, this is what I do.
I'm actually happy they changed the name from the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
You know why?
Because the Department of Defense was always a smoke screen.
The idea that America was just this benevolent hegemon that was fighting for what was right, we didn't bother anybody, we respected democracy.
That's not what happened.
The change was in part because it was supposed to sort of pit us against the Soviet Union being the aggressor.
And what do we do, Nick?
We went around the world overthrowing governments, we started one war and one campaign after another.
I actually am grateful that Trump and Heg Seth and all of these bastards can't hide it.
They're so insecure and they're so frail that they have to do this.
They have to go ahead and get rid of the smoke screen, and they just want to go full hog.
And when I look at that, I'm like, you know what?
Good.
I'm glad that people can finally see through this thing and not pretend to be this benevolent hegemon anymore.
And I think it actually shows who we are and who we've been.
It's just reached the point where, as you've said multiple times, and I credit you with this.
Like, I I think you said this very early on in the show.
The mask is slipped.
And here there's no need for a mask anymore.
You don't even have to hide it through like clever titles or whatever.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and I think that's what I was always saying.
I was always saying, yeah, they just don't even have to hide it anymore.
You know, and that's been a long time coming.
And it's but it it's like they're getting the more brazen they get with how not they don't how they don't have to hide it, is really what gets to be scary because at some point the myth when the mask completely comes off and you now really see, which I think it's a good point.
Um, you might as well get it get to the point, right?
You know, show us the waters right now.
We're getting to it.
That's that's it.
We're getting to that point.
Uh speaking quickly, by the way, which reminds me, I've been kind of formulating this idea is you know, some version of a soft secession or a soft civil war, where you're gonna have states that have completely opposing laws and they're not gonna function together that way, and you're gonna end up having some version of like, you know, places you don't go uh in the an asymmetrical.
I I would argue, and and this is hard to say, I would argue we're already in a soft civil war.
Okay, like that we've we've already seen sort of the the opening salvos of it.
Again, we're not gonna see people out On a battlefield lining up and doing whatever.
But I think that asymmetrical kind of internal war, I think we're already seeing it.
Yeah.
I mean, look at it this way for all the the entire existence of our country, which, you know, it if the wild west probably defines our country more than anything else, right?
Like the notion of crime, because I, you know, I was in Japan for two weeks, and there's no crime.
And there's safety is, you know, you don't have to worry about ever going in any neighborhood you want and any time.
Uh you can leave something by accident, come back, it's still there.
Um, and the the point being that, like uh, you know, we've had there's areas you cannot go to in certain times of day, perhaps in the America, and we've always had that, right?
Depending on who you are and where you are.
You you there already are off-limits places, right?
That's how the nature of this country is sort of been founded on as well.
So it's not that crazy when you think about it in that respect.
And then, you know, to think about how these other certain issues that were usually just reserved for political stuff that the Republicans like to, you know, like abortion.
They love they loved it as a tool, but now that they actually got it banned, you know, like the that's gonna start the whole process now.
We're talking about with centered on guns and centered on things like that, where people are going to choose to not associate with other parts of the country that that uh aren't like that.
Um, and again, yeah, I it just it the United States will kind of have to change the name of that at some point.
It's uh well, I I mean, unless we turn the ship around, which is uh my hope as always.
Speaking of guns, Nick, um, some really troubling developments.
Following the Minneapolis uh church shooting, the Department of Justice is apparently discussing proposals to ban trans people from purchasing firearms.
Um, this includes the possibility of declaring all trans people mentally ill.
And right now it currently takes a judge order to ban a person from being able to purchase a firearm.
But whether or not this comes to pass or not, whether or not they actually are able to pull this off, the fact that they're having these discussions, I think highlights something very troubling that is brewing right now.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I I was always worried about how easily uh Vivek Ramaswamy was able to gain um, you know, uh agency in that race uh for president.
I think one of the biggest things he was talking about was how trans people are mentally ill.
Like that seemed to resonate, and he said it all the time.
Um, and that's a real that that was my biggest fear about this.
Now, the gun thing, you know, I guess I can be contradictory as like you were before, where I can say, hey, gun control, Jared.
Are they actually getting uh you know you're getting on board gun control here?
But um the idea they're gonna use, you know, some sort of mass shootings by people who are trans is you know, the percentage of instances like of that of that are are just minuscule compared to you know every other kind of mass shooting.
Who commits the most mass shootings, Nick?
You and me.
Well, I mean, I haven't been committing any mass shootings, but you and me white dudes, yeah.
And and our age, you're you're you just entered the prime right now, Derek.
Maybe you're a little old.
Oh, good good lord.
Um, I I will say, in in this instance, um, Nick, studying the history of authoritarianism, the thing that gets me the most is how much it always follows the same tracks.
And eventually what happens with these regimes is they figure out some outgroup, right?
Some group of people that uh are vulnerable that they can go after.
Uh trans people have been, you know, the the choice du jour, so to speak.
Um, and and quite frankly, it's happening in part because the Democratic Party has distanced themselves from trans trans people because they've convinced themselves this is why they lost the 2024 election.
But Nick, in this case, this declaration that they would be mentally ill, it doesn't stop at guns.
It doesn't stop at firearms.
There's any number of things that they could do, ways that these outgroups could be mistreated.
And every one of these regimes, it starts in this way.
Like, so for instance, you go back to the Third Reich, like it it does go after Jews, of course, but it starts with, you know, gay people.
It starts with the Roma people, and by the way, mentally, you know, ill people that they determine are mentally ill.
They they throw that around the same way that people use the word terrorist, which eventually allowed them to hospitalize these people, kill these people, take their rights away.
This right here is another one of those steps that you look back over the history of authoritarianism and you start to realize like how these Things come together.
And they start sometimes very small in this way.
But what you just brought up, you you said gun control.
I know that I don't need to say this, but it's also my job to say this.
They don't give a shit actually about the Second Amendment.
They don't actually care that everybody is allowed to buy guns.
What they care about is their ability to buy guns.
What they care about is their ability to use a firearm for whatever purposes they want.
It shows the hypocrisy of all of this because the hypocrisy has always been the point.
And in this case, them even having this conversation, even discussing it, it gives us a glimpse into what it would what they would do if they were allowed to do it, which is fascistic moves against out groups to marginalize them, denaturalize them, take away their rights and their protections, and turn them into basically cannon fodder, uh, a group of people that they can do whatever they want to whenever they want to do it.
Who exactly is they?
Uh, this would be the right wing authoritarians who are currently in control of our government.
Okay.
Um, right, because at some point, the second amendment, you know, they love it, they use it to run on all that stuff, but at some point they're gonna take away everyone's guns, right?
That uh I I would say it would probably, if this goes down towards its logical conclusion, you would probably see somewhere along the lines, the mentally ill thing, they've already telegraphed part of it.
Wokeness is mental illness, the woke mental illness, whatever it is, the woke virus, like eventually they would try and figure out a way to take all political enemies and all sort of dissidents, that they would figure out a way to take guns from them.
But at that point, the right wing supporters, and we're already watching this take place, they're enlarging everything from ice to the apparatus that basically anybody who agrees with them would become part of the in-group and still have their rights in in order to bear firearms.
So eventually it would be everybody who disagrees with them and everybody that they hate.
Right.
Uh, okay.
I mean, I I don't know.
Part I'm envisioning at some point, like they just figure, you know what, to have complete control over everybody, we're gonna just crack down and you know, and and and the military be the only people to have the guns.
Oh, I mean, but the military eventually at some point the entire society becomes militarized.
Uh okay.
So if you join the military or you become part of the military or you become adjacent to the military, they would figure out some way in order to allow their favored groups to continue to purchase these things.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you you've seen these dystopian future movies and stuff like that, and or I think it's probably like this, where their only goal for most common folks is to get off the grid, right?
And not to be monitored, not for the government to know where they are or what they what their information is, right?
Because if they've gotten it, they already have.
And does it feel that far-fetched this point now where we are uh for for that concept to start to prevail?
No, I mean, this is something I've been screaming about for years now, which is we basically live in the biggest surveillance society in the making that we've ever seen.
Like everything from our internet usage to telecommunications, you name it.
Like we're watching that become consolidated into one place.
Or the things that we have looked at, the things we've thought about, the things that we have communicated, they will eventually be used against us, which means that a lot of us are going to have to start moving towards ways that can't be surveilled.
We have to think about our usage.
We have to think about the way we move through the world.
And that is something that we've been taught not to do at this point.
We we're moving all willy-nilly with, you know, basically digital devices that keep track of everything that we do.
Well, let me ask you this, because you know, I mentioned that, you know, part of this country was sort of founded on the notion of like violence, right?
And like this is there, uh, slavery, violence, all these different things.
Uh, but also there was this notion of like sort of libertarianism, like I have control of my own information and knowing, you know, I'm gonna fiercely protect all of that.
But uh, I don't know if that exists anymore.
It feels like there's plenty of people in this country now who are willing to just sort of turn a blind eye, not care about it, allow this to happen.
Uh, and again, this goes back to the opposition on the Democrat side, because there should be uh, this should be a really great way to gain traction when you're out there talking is about how important your personal data is that is being leaked all over the place.
Well, it would be if the Democrats had any desire to talk about any of these things, or to stand up for, you know, trans people who they now see as, you know, politically radioactive.
And what you just brought up, I think you're right about that rugged individualism, Nick, but that comes down to only certain people were allowed to do these things.
That's sort of like my rights, my freedom, all of that, my liberty.
That only had to do with, again, going back to the the beginning of the segment in groups.
Like if you want if you want to hear about rugged individualism and the ability to possess a firearm or to determine your own destiny, go talk to you know an African slave.
Go talk to the Native Americans, go talk to the people who were determined to be outside and dangerous.
And then it was the people in the protective in group who were allowed to do those things.
It just so happens that those things that were, you know, done against like black people who are done against indigenous people.
Like now all of a sudden we're seeing that that sphere of the out group that is starting to grow.
And so, and by the way, you brought up giving these things away.
Nick, I don't, I don't know.
Do you open your iPhone with like your facial ID or with a thumbprint?
I do.
Oh, okay.
Do you use email?
I do.
Did you read any of the agreements that you had to read before you started that email?
Nope.
Did you read any of it on your phone?
Uh nope.
Yep.
So here we are.
We have just been conditioned to just go along with all these things and give away privacy left and right.
It the the unfortunate thing here is that it builds over time.
That's the scary thing is like we have lived lives where we don't have to consider these things.
And now all of a sudden we do.
And by the way, just to bring it back around, fuck these people going after trans people and fuck the people who aren't going to stand up for them.
I find it absolutely um the repellent.
Like the fact that these people are being like put in this group and and even discussions about the rights being taken away, it makes me literally sick.
I I I mean, I agree.
I mean, this is like the boogeyman for them, and it's such a small fraction of our society as it is anyway, of people who just want to live just like everybody else in this country should be allowed to live.
And just like the libertarian notion I'm talking about, that that this notion that everyone should be free to live how they want to live in pursuit of happiness, uh, used to be on the agenda of like ultra-right wing people, uh, but but it would never really was the case, right?
There were certain people that right-wing libertarians wanted to have their rights protected.
That that's the point in all of this.
There's a reason they're okay with the the burgeoning police state.
Like, even as someone who listens to almost every broadcast that Alex Jones does, watching him try and twist himself into knots in order to, you know, stand by the burgeoning police state.
Well, what has he done his entire career?
He's talked about the coming police state.
Turns out he didn't care about the police state when it comes to you know, black and brown and and gay and trans people.
He only cared about it when it came to white men.
Well, do yourself or don't do yourself a favor.
Don't ever look at the comments on Twitter when they report things like what you mentioned that there's a woman murdered on a train, uh, and all those kind of things, because you really get uh you get a glimpse into you know, it's probably bots for the most part, but you know, every so often you'll stumble upon a human, and you can really get a sense of what uh what that mindset is, and it's ugly.
It is most certainly ugly.
Speaking of ugly, Nick, uh, a lot of stories and a lot of stuff coming out recently.
Um, the one of Trump's sort of allies in the 2020 election overthrow plot, lawyer Cleta Mitchell has been speaking pretty openly about the possibility that Trump will quote use sovereign emergency powers in the upcoming elections in order to federalize the uh the congressional midterms and also the presidential election in a few years.
Nick, for me, this is kind of what I expected to happen anyway.
I've been telling people that eventually at some point or another he was going to try and get his hands on this, but to hear Mitchell say it so openly for me was incredibly chilling.
You know what this means?
This means that Mike Lindell was the smartest guy in the room.
He was the guy.
I I will never say that.
He's the architect, he was the guy.
He had this plan the whole time.
And everyone wants to laugh him off, and whenever he was in the white oh, poor Mike Lindell.
I don't think Mike Lindell had anything figured out.
Hillow guy uh had understood this, and who we are.
Yeah, this is an awful situation.
And this goes again in the category again uh of the last segment talking about uh trans gun rights being taken away.
These discussions, like Mitchell saying this, Trump talking about it, he can't shut his mouth, he always sort of telegraphs what's going on.
I want people to understand.
I don't know that this is going to happen, but I do know that these conversations are taking place, and I know that they've been taking place for a while.
And Why?
Because there's so much money and so much uh influence and and power that travels in these circuits in these think tanks, these institutes in these meeting rooms.
And what do they care about, Nick?
They care about testing the limits of liberal democracy in order to break it.
So to hear this out loud from somebody who is in that orbit, one of those allies from back in 2020, it makes it abundantly clear, like that isn't just conjecture.
These are discussions that are happening that are attempting to go ahead and overthrow liberal democracy as we know it.
Right.
But but it's always going to be couched in some sort of terms that make it seem very reasonable.
Absolutely.
You know, and we've heard uh Trump this yeah over the weekend defend somebody and with no doubt in my mind would would have pardoned this person had he been able to uh in Colorado, the election official who had gone to prison for violating the law so completely it was the most open and shut case we're ever going to see in terms of opening up machines and letting randos come in there and check it out.
Um, you know, he he would definitely have her pardon in a second.
And you know, that's another it's all you know, it's it's remarkable how how many different knives they're gonna be throwing in all this and all different directions to figure to make this thing work and get it all muddled.
And so this is one of the ways without question, probably the most visible and most uh maybe the most effective if you want to take over a country.
But uh have no doubt that they're going to do all manner of things and push every manner of uh of button to try and get uh the outcome they want when it doesn't come out what they want.
And um it it's you know it's gonna be frightening when um there isn't any pushback or any other way or any other mechanism to combat that.
Let me ask you two things here.
I'm I'm just gonna give you two parallel conjectures.
Are you ready?
If Barack Obama, let's go back to God, I don't know, Nick.
Let's go back to 2014.
Barack Obama is sitting in the Oval Office.
Somebody from that sort of sphere of like liberal think tanks and institutes or whatever, they bring him a report and it says you have emergency powers that would allow you to take over federal elections.
What would Barack Obama say to that person?
Well, well, don't forget Barack Obama was a professor.
Do you know what the subject he was professor of?
Constitutional law.
That's right.
So uh I think he would be like, get the fuck out of here.
Get the fuck out of the White House, right?
So if somebody brought Donald Trump, and by the way, they wouldn't bring him a dossier because he wouldn't read it.
Maybe they'd put it in front of him or whatever, and he'd say, What's this say?
And they would say, This is a plan that would allow you total control over US elections.
What would he say?
Oh, he'd be like, awesome.
Thank you.
That's why thank you for doing what I asked you to do.
Great.
Let's do it.
And that is the difference here.
We need to understand that these people, if they figure out a means to do something, they will do it.
That's it.
And so to know that these plans are being put together, what that means for me, what that means for you, what that means to our listeners, and again, we have plenty of people who listen to this who uh work in democratic lawmakers' offices.
We've got plenty of people who listen to this who work in the think tanks and the institutes and strategy places.
Now is the time to start preparing for this.
Because while you're doing other things, they are doing this.
This isn't conjecture.
It's not hypothesis.
This is what is happening behind the scenes.
And any time that some asshole like Mitchell goes out and says this, or Donald Trump opens his dumb trap and he tells us what's going on, Nick, that's a gift to us.
We should be incredibly grateful that these people can't shut up and they tell us what they're doing.
It is a sign and a signal that we need to pay attention to this and take it seriously.
And after all these years, we can't let something like this go.
We have to be prepared for it.
Oh, I agree.
Now, I I'm really willing to say it, someone like George W. Bush would have said, Oh, I agree.
Now, interesting.
I I might even be willing to say that Ronald Reagan would be like, get out of my office.
I don't know.
I, you know, now that I think about George W. Bush, they certainly had a great time overturning it in the Supreme Court and possibly stealing Ohio.
Yeah, all right.
Fair enough.
Because I'm, you know, the whole predicate of this was that like the people who are gonna make it that far into the Oval Office are people who wouldn't do this in theory.
Well, and by the way, Ronald Ronald Reagan uh kept American hostages in Iran and basically committed treason in order to become president of the United States of America.
So I'm gonna I will push back a little bit on that.
Uh You know, but by the way, it's interesting.
It really is.
Um, you know, because it just wasn't done like, you know, it wasn't done up until now, right?
I mean, it's I guess as far as we know, uh, I mean, not even Nixon tried to screw out the elections.
Listen, listen, if if Richard Nixon was enjoying his cottage cheese, pineapple, and milk dinner, and somebody brought him that dossier, I think he'd take a look at it.
Yeah, with a double of scotch uh on the side.
Um, you think you take a look at it?
All right, maybe, I don't know.
Anyhow, but uh the fact that we had sort of yeah, relied, just like the thing with our personal data, you know, even though it was ripe to be picked by anybody out there, um it, you know, that there was sort of safeguards, and there was at least publicly facing some there was some reasonable expectation that it wasn't gonna be out there.
And you know, we we didn't have mad like I'm I'm just waiting for the day when we have millions upon millions of people.
I mean, we probably do right now who have like identity theft going on.
I still I don't think it's millions and millions yet, but like there's no reason why we'll get to that point after Doge did what they did.
Um, and so uh at any rate, it it the public version of what we're seeing now just seems so uh mass backwards from what was presented to us, which at the very least gave us this fake notion of democracy, which believe it or not, is something it's kind of important, right?
No, no, the fake version of democracy certainly sustained for a long time, even while a lot of this bullshit was going on behind the scenes.
It is the escalation of it to the point where I don't think Trump would hesitate to do any of this.
Not for a moment.
Uh, by the way, speaking of uh horseshit that is troubling, uh, the Trump administration is about to pilot a program in six states: Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.
Their stated claim is to eliminate wasteful, inappropriate services within uh the institution of Medicare.
But basically, Nick, what that comes down to, speaking of Barack Hussein Obama II, it is going to ration Medicare treatment.
And guess what, Nick?
Guess what, everybody listening?
They're gonna use AI to go through and figure out what procedures are necessary.
It's incredible how this stuff comes full circle, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
Well, this was tailor-made for Jared Sexton right now.
That this story.
Um, yeah, as soon as I saw the AI, I'm like, yeah, okay, we're gonna talk about it.
Um, you know, it's amazing how, you know, uh, we we all want universal health care, at least there's a certain part, and we understand how much better it would make the country, and yet they just continually make they're trying to make all these different things into private insurance.
That's that's sort of what they're doing.
That's what because it's what private health insurance does right now, right?
They continue to ration care, trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of everybody they can and make people's lives miserable.
Um, the news flash here, and it's not news, is that government is not a business, and you can't run it like a business, and you shouldn't ever consider that like a business.
And anybody who wants to run like that uh should be uh escorted out of the building.
Um and so uh yeah, without question, let's you know, this this tug of war between you know the the commercialization or the capitalization of health insurance uh is clearly being won by the capitalists.
Oh, absolutely.
I I want to make this abundantly clear, Nick.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
Three of the biggest achievements in the United States of America in the 20th century.
If we don't stop these assholes, they're gonna be gone.
That's it.
There's no other way to put this.
And to watch Medicare, which is again a crowning achievement, what an amazing thing that was created to get to the point where they're now going to ration care.
And and to go back to what you were saying, they're always going to put it under the heading of doing something like saving money, even though Doge, I mean, God knows how much money they wasted in that regard, all these programs, how much money they waste.
What it comes down to, and and the AI thing is just the cherry on top.
We don't even need to talk about that.
Of course, AI is being brought into this.
It is what it is.
Nick, when Obamacare, when the Affordable Care Act was being brought out, the emergence of the Tea Party in that time period, it was the idea of socialism was going to come in, communism was going to come in.
Obama was going to be a despot.
And what what was the thing we kept hearing is that they were going to ration care, right?
Eventually there's no way for them to do it, and eventually they're gonna have to do it.
Just a reminder the right wing always tells you what it is that they would do if they had the power to do it.
Their conspiracy theories Are projections and confessions.
They were always going to try and move towards a place where Medicare would cover less people and less procedures.
Now they're figuring out how to do it.
And now that we're watching that take place, this story is actually massive.
This is actually like a the basically every story that we've talked about today on its own in a regular time period would be a five alarm fire.
It'd be it should be talked about consistently.
This isn't getting talked about enough.
The fact that like one of our major programs that is supposed to help people, that is one of the like it was actually a benefit of being like, you know, the quote unquote greatest country in the history of the world.
They're being dismantled, and it starts this way.
You ration care and then you ration down expectations, and then eventually you don't need it because people come not to expect it anymore.
And eventually what happens is you erase it completely and you move towards basically a social Darwinism again, which is what these people are interested in.
Right.
And that's the minute Trump got into office, they were trying to dismantle uh Obamacare too.
Obamacare should go down as four or five in the top 20th percentury in my mind, because the idea that you could stop uh uh insurance companies from denying coverage, it was huge.
That that was the biggest part of it.
And of course, was there things that needed to be fixed?
Yeah, and that should have been the process from the day one.
Uh fuck Joel Eberman.
But um the other part of that is is that they're they're dismantling it and they're getting people to cheer for this without ever having anything else that was better.
The improvements that we needed to see that would have made the Affordable Care Act even better and more beneficial to people, uh never brought up, never consider uh considered.
It was simply we must get rid of this and we're gonna lead people out on the lurch, leave people out to to go bankrupt uh you know for the rest of their lives based on medical bills.
Um it it that was what was so astounding to about all this, and no one on the right really seemed to care or notice, or it didn't matter to them that there was no alternative or no nothing.
It was simply we're removing it.
Yeah, no, the entire point is to get rid of any assistance whatsoever and create a society where you don't expect anything.
And we're well on the road towards that.
We have gotten to the point we don't expect the government to help us.
We don't expect to get a fair shake, we don't expect any of this.
And on that note, the the last piece of today, Nick, we have to talk about a Gallup poll that got released.
And and in this, speaking of like shaking confidence, lots of incredible numbers on this one.
Uh, first of all, Gallup has showed 70% of Americans see immigration as a positive part of the United States of America.
You are seeing new highs in support for socialism and also anti-capitalist sentiment.
Donald Trump's approval rating has fallen depending upon where you look between 37 and 38%.
These are some incredible numbers for a variety of reasons.
What was your reaction seeing these statistics?
Yeah, again, not surprising, maybe even encouraging that there's a tide here that may be turning.
Uh, you know, and then his his approval number on immigration is also underwater as well, which is supposed to be his strongest suit, right?
And so again, the only thing that makes me concerned about all of this is that they don't seem to be reacting at all.
They don't seem to care about what people think about these uh about these um platforms.
And it and if that's the case, is it because they already have in place ways to control the election anyway, where they don't have to be beholden to popular opinion, which used to be an important part of their shaping their agenda.
Yeah, fascists aren't interested in popularity.
And they're not quite they're quite frankly, they're not very interested in winning elections.
If they're able to do away with them, they will.
And I I want to point out a couple of highlights here.
First things first.
70% of Americans see immigration as a positive thing in the United States of America.
Nick, I'm shocked because I thought that Kamala Harris and the Democrats had to become anti-immigration and tougher on immigration than Donald Trump in order to win the 2024 election.
It's almost like that was horse shit from the very beginning by a bunch of moderate strategists who are much more interested in serving their corporate benefactors than they were in winning an election.
And I I'm shocked because I thought that opinions were static and that you couldn't change them.
And here we are.
We've seen all this cruelty and all of these disappearances, all of these fascistic tendencies, and people are like, you know what?
Actually, this is good, and we need to stop doing this, which tells me shockingly enough, and I scream this in every strategy meeting I've ever taken place in with Democrats.
It's your fucking job to change people's opinions.
That's your job.
It's not to chase people, it's to have principles and to bring people over to them.
Also, I I find this very encouraging.
The new highs for socialism.
Thank God.
Because people look around, they see capitalism, they say, this doesn't work.
It doesn't work for me.
It doesn't work for the people I know.
This is failing.
And this brings it back to this point.
You just brought up something very important, which is they're not acting like, you know, elections matter because they're not interested in having elections.
We are still in a very small period before authoritarianism takes full hold.
Like there is still time to galvanize people.
And Nick, one of the greatest myths of the 21st century is that we are so divided as a country.
No, we're not.
On the major issues of the time, like there is consensus that ranges anywhere from 60 to 80% on every major divisive topic.
The only reason we don't talk about that is because the Democratic Party continues to push away from that consensus and fight the Republicans over who can be the best Republicans with the happiest face.
What is true here, and what we continue to see is that there is a large, large majority of the American people who are desperate for some type of representation.
They're not getting it.
They're getting the exact opposite in every way, shape, and form.
They're unhappy.
They don't want this, they want something different, and they are desperately waiting on somebody to speak to that something different.
I mean, listen, it's possible that um that 70% number is only at this high because of what we've seen the last eight or nine months.
Um maybe not have been that high in November when people were voting.
But the point still stands is now is the time either way to start to capitalize on that and and focus on what's going on.
And meanwhile, like, you know, border crossings are up again uh across the board, depending on who you want to, whose numbers you want to believe.
And that's the other issue now, is that the numbers that we're seeing across the board are like we we had another terrible jobs report, and now they're saying, oh, it really is a lie.
Like, you know, they they got rid of the person that was in charge.
And and and like at some point they're gonna run out of bullets in that chamber in my mind of like the reality-bending lies are trying to change everyone's opinion on.
So that should be a good thing for the Democrats to seize on if they ever figure that out.
If they ever figure it out.
And you know what it depends on, Nick?
Them wanting to figure it out.
That's the major thing, wanting to actually realize that they've been on the wrong path for a very long time.
And by the way, all of these issues, Nick, it's an easy platform.
The things that we've been talking about today, the Supreme Court needs reformed, right?
Uh, places like Chicago should not be occupied.
We shouldn't have federal troops taking over cities.
The idea that like we are going to create out groups and take away their rights, that's horseshit.
The idea that we should have free and fair elections, of course that's going to win.
Medicare getting taken away.
Like, my God, these are easy wins.
And we need a party that isn't going to say, oh, it's a distraction from this.
Oh, it's a distraction from this.
There is an obvious route to political victory and political change.
You just have to find the people who are willing to voice it and fight for it.
That's it.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for this episode of the Mutt Craig Podcast.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
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