Hello, and welcome to This Month in the Apocalypse, your podcast for what surely more often feels like the end times. Which is one of— one of my favorite segments that we do on Live Like the world is dying. I'm Inman Narowin, and today I have with me here James and Brooke. How are y'all doing today?
Doing great.
Yeah, I'm staying alive. You know, it is, it's a sweaty one, uh, down here in Southern California. Feels like I'm inside a sock most of the time. It's hot and moist. It's, uh, it's not what we've become accustomed to as desert people.
So, oof.
Yeah, I moved from England. I, uh, I expected better than this. I'm not just talking about the weather, but— We tricked you.
Sorry, not sorry.
Um, well, today, today we have a lot of exciting things to talk about. We have a fun and exciting announcement. We have some nefarious shit that the FBI is up to, which is not a surprise to anyone. Um, we have some stuff about the economy, the Supreme Court, and some uprisings in India. But before we get to all that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Do do do do do do.
The border is not just a wall; it's not just a line on a map. It's a power structure, a system of control. The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the border is tearing it apart. The Ex-Worker Podcast presents No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration Across North America. A serialized audiobook in 11 chapters released every Wednesday. Tune in at crimethink.com/podcast.
And we're back, where during the break we all talked about our various fidget objects and whether they were appropriate or inappropriate. Before we get into this month's apocalyptic events, we have both a sad and an exciting announcement. Brooke, do you want to tell us what we've got cooking here at Live Like the World Is Dying besides the planet, which is getting cooked?
Damn. Yeah. So, well, some other, some other sad news, I guess less sad than the planet dying maybe, is that This Month in the Apocalypse is potentially dying. This may be, this may be our last episode of This Month in the Apocalypse.
But with death comes rebirth.
That's right. Because we, because of you all, our listeners and Patreon supporters, are going to start doing This Week in the Apocalypse. Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew! Insert sound effect.
But is there enough apocalyptic mayhem to happen to talk about every week, Brooke?
Only time will tell, Inman. So we're kind of doing a test run of this thing for the next, like, several months through the end of the year-ish of doing a once-a-week recording. So we're gonna record on Mondays and release on Tuesdays weekly shorter segments, like 30, 45 minutes kind of a thing. And each one's gonna have a different topic. So one week we'll talk about climate, another week we'll talk about the economy, we'll talk about movement. So giving you a bit of news every single week. And again, that's 'cause of our Patreon support that we got a big growth on our Patreon the end of last year. And that has actually stayed with us into this year and allowed us to like, we're covering expenses, we're able to pay hosts a little bit, pay our producer for the podcast and send out like all the cool monthly zines that we do and have discounts for everybody. And we're like, what other cool ways can we grow and expand? Right. with this super awesome gift we've been given by our Patreon supporters. And we want to do some weekly news.
Woo! So now twice a week you can listen to Live Like the World Is Dying, and hopefully it will also give us more opportunities to sprinkle in some nice things.
Yeah. You missed a classic. There was a really good Bruce Springsteen opportunity there that I feel like we let I know, it's literally on my wall. I was going to read it and then the moment passed.
And you get to hear all your favorite familiar voices more often. So instead of a bunch of us once a month, you're going to have a couple of us, a different pairing every week coming in and chatting about exciting stuff and/or the end of the world going on.
Hell yeah. Well, to get into today's apocalyptic mayhem, as I coined it earlier, Would it surprise y'all to learn that the FBI is once again doing absolutely heinous shit?
What? Wow.
But they've been so good.
They've never been good.
I really felt that once we got a podcaster in there, things were gonna turn around. That's what I thought. I'm a little disappointed, guys.
Podcasters, famously great human beings.
Mhm.
No one's ever been corrupted.
Yeah, it's been a net good for humanity.
By being on a podcast. Yeah.
Wait, is Kash Patel a— was Kash Patel a podcaster? Is that—
I think so. Dan Bongino definitely was, right? And he was up in the federal law enforcement apparatus for a while there.
Yeah, okay. Well, I don't actually know if Kash Patel is a podcaster, that is an unchecked statement.
Yeah.
But, y'know, Ronald Reagan was a movie star, y'know, and Donald Trump was a— literally, what the fuck was Donald Trump? I don't actually understand.
It appears that Kash Patel hosted Kash's Corner.
Yep.
Wow.
I just looked that up. Podcast on Spotify.
Yeah. Well, uh, I'm sure that was a heinous podcast, but this is, this is some unfortunately like, uh, not just audio related, um, heinousness, heinousness, heinousness.
Heinosity?
Heinosity. One of those words.
I do not like that at all.
It's kind of like tenacity, but it's heinosity.
Okay.
Heinosity.
Yeah, sure.
Some people are tenacious, and some people are henacious. I'm really selling that this is a real word.
Oh, yeah.
And right now you're being very pun-acious. Wee-oo!
Our hope today is puns will continue to thrive. No, but sorry, the FBI has been doing some shit, as they've always been doing some shit. And— but most recently, I want to talk about door knocks and informants, and kind of like the havoc that they can wreak on a lot of activist movements.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm going to start off by talking about this raid slash door knock that happened in June, which is, I guess, did not happen in July. So I'm sorry that we're talking about it in July, but we didn't talk about it In June, so we gotta talk about it sometime. So on June 17th, the FBI approached an activist who is choosing to only be identified as Doberman in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And this person is, I guess, apparently a very, very well-known activist, so much so that they, like— there was an op-ed about her posted by, like, a Republican far-right troll in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Hmm.
That's not great. Yeah. And so on June 17th, the FBI knocked on her door and they tried to question her about— and this is where it gets already really confusing— the UFC terror plot. Are y'all familiar with the terror plot to attack the big UFC event at the, like, 250 Freedom Birthday whatever thing that Trump hosted at the White House?
Oh, I think I did hear about this. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a little— it's wild. But the connection is that people were arrested and charged in connection with this attack on June 16th.
Yeah.
So it was like June 16th, it's breaking news, and then June 17th, the FBI approaches Doberman about a supposed connection to this plot. The confusing part being that the UFC terror plot is like the— Doberman is kind of being connected with, like, anti-fascist movements. And the UFC terror plot was put on by this chat room, basically, called Vanguard of the Old Republic.
Oh.
And it was a group of people who met on TikTok and then planned an attack on the UFC fight at the White House to do what they hoped would, like, jumpstart a revolution. There are some, like, accelerationists, like, very religious extremist, like, accelerationists.
They seemed kind of— unserious is the wrong word, but, like, it didn't— there did not seem to be a high likelihood that these people would have been able to execute what they were talking about, from what I've seen.
No. Yeah, with some of them really blowing up or lying about, like, military experience. But nonetheless, they did, like, Nonetheless, they did plan an attack in pretty elaborate detail, including the use of drones and explosives, snipers, and kind of like feint attacks.
Wow.
Yeah, they had a whole crazy plan, which also included possibly the need for different tiers within their cell to break other tiers out of prison.
Yeah.
If they were arrested. Yeah, it's— it was a wild plot. And like, including like, it's like these were all people who were like only connected by like essentially meeting on TikTok, like included like a 19-year-old who, whose like parents like, I think like called the police on him after like, uh, being like, yo, we are very worried about you. What are you— we think like a religious group is manipulating our son, basically. Oh.
Yeah.
Which, they are not, like, an actual religious group. They seem to just mostly be, like, internet trolls.
Yeah, it's one of these, like, uh, I dunno, yeah, like, social media, like, I dunno how to describe it. It's almost culty, but it's not a cult, but it became people's whole thing.
Yeah.
Right? Especially for these young folks, and I guess they weren't out and about seeing other people very much, and it really sucked them in there.
Yeah, yeah. Which is a larger thing within our culture is the disenfranchisement of a lot of people to then be very susceptible to falling for shit like this.
Yeah, I think alienation leads to resentment, can lead to this if they feel this is a place that understands and welcomes them.
Yeah, or that really wants to fan some of their— the group held a lot of very extreme religious views, antisemitic views, and What the government is calling anti-government ideology, and which I would call wanting a different government ideology.
Yeah, sure. The Old Republic.
Yeah.
Which republic do we know? Rome?
No, I don't know which republic.
But it's Rome?
Yeah. It was a chatroom name.
Okay.
Anyways, so Doberman. was being asked about a potential connection to this plot, which had just been foiled the day before, and about, like, any potential plans to travel to DC. According to Doberman, they had no fucking clue what they were talking about.
Yeah. Okay.
And they recorded the interaction. That's not— sorry, that's not a direct quote or anything.
That's—
yeah. Doberman recorded the interaction and telling feds to come back with a warrant. Which unfortunately they did.
Oh.
And so then on June 29th, I think, like, probably it was like a few days after this op-ed got posted about this person, the feds raided her home, breaking down her door in the middle of the night, and dragged her out to a cop car in her underwear, handcuffing her and putting her in the car.
Jeez.
Her phone was seized, and she was eventually released. Agents tried to Talked to her while she was in the car. But ultimately that night she is not arrested, nor is she even charged with anything, but she was shown a warrant that was for her communication devices, and her phone was seized as part of it. So after her phone was seized and she was released, like a few days later, the FBI returned her phone and then offered her $100,000 to $200,000 to become a paid snitch Whoa. ...for the feds in Antifa circles. And so we kind of are— it comes full circle back to like, why are these people harassing this person? And it is surely not because of any actual supposed connection with this, the Vanguard of the Old Republic, but is to get an opening to threaten someone and then try to recruit them as a snitch. And this is someone who's, like, a very— who's, like, a fairly prominent organizer in circles in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. So is particular— would have been particularly poised to do this, but absolutely did not do it, which is the important takeaway. Which, it's like, the FBI has been trying to pay people to become informants for a really long time.
Always.
Yeah.
It's like a— it's a big thing. There's a lot of scandals around it. They target a lot of— they target people who are vulnerable. They cited Doberman's financial stress as a reason to do this paid informant program. These programs also usually have like a— It's like things where a lot of times the informants themselves are suggesting plots that people then get arrested for because they're being asked to infiltrate on things where crimes are not actually being committed or talked about being committed. And so they have to kind of invent shit.
Jesus.
Yeah, it's bad. And the amounts— from what I've read, this is also a pretty extreme amount of money to be offered for something like this. And so it's kind of like the amount is kind of staggering, and the implication here being that, like, there's a lot of money putting into, like, new informant programs potentially at a time when there's also, like, a lot of new people joining movements because shit's getting real weird.
Yeah.
And this is all also part of this, like, NSPM-7 directive and, like, new ways that we're seeing federal law enforcement kind of go for shit. The kind of terrifying part to me is kind of this, like, smokescreen investigation of the UFC terror plot as an opening to— I'm curious how they actually obtained a warrant, and if it was because they suggested that this person was part of this plot or not, and kind of like a really drastic overreach.
Yeah. I mean, every time a major terrorist attack happens, or a major terrorist attack, like in this case, thankfully doesn't happen, it's used as a way to, like, set the ratchet a little further into what we call civil liberties in the United States, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like, to increase the power of the state and decrease the rights that people have vis-à-vis the state. Like, for most of our adult lives since 2001, this has been happening. In, like, big sweeps, like the Patriot Act, and then in little steps like this, right? Because it is— It's scary to think about somebody blowing up a bunch of people on the White House lawn with a drone and then shooting the people as they run away, right? And that is able to justify doing things which, as you're saying, are in no way related. But in the hours after that, I'm sure, especially before people had read that these folks kind of perhaps were not as much of a serious threat as we would have thought, given what their plans were, you could see how that would be the time to go for that warrant, right? That's going to be the easiest time to persuade a judge.
Totally, totally. And I really love hearing our own, your favorite lawyer's favorite lawyer, quoted in a news article about this.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Which I'm glad James and Brooke immediately knew who I was talking about. So our own Mo had to say about this, they are stress testing the limits of the NSPM-7, both by trying to cast various groups or voluntary associations that are protected by the First Amendment as being Antifa, I say in air quotes as always, or as falling within the ambit of this sort of very broad definition of terrorism. Some other little stuff about similar things, which also to reiterate, Doberman did not cooperate with this and instead went to the media and went to her community, which is exactly the thing that you should do if the FBI does something like this to you, is get a lawyer.
Yeah.
call the National Lawyers Guild, call the hotline where you will likely talk to Mo, and do media if you want to and talk to your community. So also with Delaney Hall, there is this kind of awesome public defender, Benjamin Van Meter, who is lodging a lot of complaints with the FBI over them trying to violate his client's constitutional rights by contacting a lot of people who have been arrested and charged with protesting at Delaney Hall and calling them and asking them to become informants. And the important people— which, like, a staggering number of people who have been arrested at Delaney Hall have been contacted by the FBI and asked to provide information or inform upon the activities of others.
Were they arrested On federal charges, like by feds, or were they arrested by local cops and then contacted by the feds?
I don't know the particulars of that.
Okay. Yeah.
And so the important thing to know, though, is that, like— and what Benjamin Van Meter is sort of alleging is that if you are charged with a crime and the FBI contacts you, especially citing because you were arrested as part of this, Even if it seems like it's part of the investigation of that crime, you are under no obligation to talk to them, and you have the right to legal counsel in that interaction.
Mm-hmm.
Which, people who are already under representation, the lodge of the complaint is that the FBI is attempting to circumvent that by contacting people directly when they should be contacting that person's legal representation. So even if you just have a public defender, if the FBI calls you and is like, we want to talk to you about blah blah blah blah blah, then tell them, talk to my fucking lawyer and leave me alone. Or, you know, something like that that's appropriate. I don't do— And also contact the National Lawyers Guild hotline for national repression, which, again, the federal and local law enforcement are coming to a head with, with the National Lawyers Guild, which I didn't know had such a rich history of being targeted by the federal government as like a Cuban asset.
Of course it does. Of course it's a Cuban asset.
Oh, okay. Sorry. That's news to me. Wow. This is fine. That's fine. Everything's fine.
Everything's great.
Anyway, that's what I have to say about the FBI doing nefarious shit. And remember that they will The way that they target movements is by targeting individuals and getting those individuals who they perceive as being vulnerable and isolated to inform upon the activities of others and build cases. The time— the time to try to not get convicted of a crime is not in the back of a police cruiser. It's not in an interrogation room.
Yeah.
It's in court. So don't talk to them even if they're scary.
Yeah, say nothing except lawyer.
Anyways, Brooks, what's going on with tariffs?
Tariffs. Okay, we've talked about tariffs before. I've talked about tariffs before because I'm an economist and I super fucking nerd out on this stuff. And we remember that when Douchebag took office in the White House, he was, uh, just going on about the joy and beauty of tariffs. He had these like stupid giant charts that he made. Reciprocal tariffs, they were Then the math to do them was dumb. It was like AI did it or something. Anyway, and then he did the— he was like, I'm going to do them. And then he didn't do them. I'm going to do them. He didn't do them. Just a bunch of tacoing. And then finally did impose some tariffs. And then in February, Supreme Court came along and was like, actually, no, you can't impose those tariffs. That's not legal. That's not within your purview. And so then the administration started having to issue refunds.
Oh, wow.
For those tariffs. I don't know if you remember all of this fun drama. So usually some amount of tariffs end up being refunded just like due to miscollection or misapplication of law, whatever. Like it's not unusual to have a couple billion dollars worth of tariffs refunded in a given year. But the tariffs that have been refunded between October and July was something like $81 billion worth. Wow. And most of that coming after the Supreme Court decision because the tariffs were ruled illegal. And so at the time the Supreme Court came out and said that, Trump was like, well, we're going to do tariffs a different way. It's too bad they said we can't do them this way, so we're going to do them another way, and immediately imposed a 10% across-the-board tariff on pretty much everything, which you could only do in very temporary, temporary use, temporary circumstances, which he did. And then last week, so late July here as we're talking about this, finally imposed his new set of so-called permanent tariffs of 10 to 12% on about 80 different, uh, countries. And, um, I'm not familiar with this, the details of this law, but he used something called Section 301 of the Trade Act in order to justify these. It's been mentioned that he, um, he said these are, uh, tariffs on companies that are using, um, unpaid labor, uh, but tariffs include countries like Canada and, uh, other longtime trading partners.
He's gone woke. Maybe he's talking about stolen land. You know, Canada, there's a lot of unpaid-for land there.
God, that would be a— that would be a wonderful complication for my— for my personal morals. But, um, no, it's just another— he's just using another, uh, a different version of the law to be able to justify being able to, uh, do the tariffs. And then of course has been, you know, immediately sued by a bunch of different companies and so forth, saying that, you know, these are not legal and it's going to go through the process again. And we'll see what all of that happens with that, if there's more refunds, if the Supreme Court has to get involved fucking again. I don't know. But in the meantime, it's still keeping inflation higher than it needs to be. Our inflation is not horrible right now, but it is, it is a little bit higher than you'd kind of ideally want in a good, healthy economy. And, you know, we're not going to see any decrease in prices from businesses anytime soon. Which generally, if they increase prices in response to something, they're super hesitant to ever decrease them because they got away with doing it. So even if the thing that caused them to increase it goes away, they keep them up.
Yeah, the ratchet. Coca-Cola or Pepsi admitted to this after a temporary increase in a material, Like in like 2020 or something. And when asked about it later, they were like, it's never going to be a dollar again. It was about like canned soda or something. They were like, it's never going back. They just said it.
Yep. And there's, I mean, there's decades of like economic data and research to back that up that you can see that that has been the case. But, you know, the companies unfortunately now can sort of use this ongoing You know, tariff uncertainty as justification. Like, okay, well, they went away, but now he's imposed these other ones, or he's threatened to impose these.
You sure, Sue?
We can't lower prices because we don't know what's gonna happen.
And God forbid a company take a hit.
Right?
We'll just have to— yeah, we'll all do our part and we will keep the megacorporations afloat.
Exactly. So—
Together we can.
Oh, God.
That's what I like to say to myself every time I go to the grocery store.
Oh, man. Oh, you know, we're not even gonna talk about stuff going on at the grocery store this week about, like, food poisoning and—
The shit-splosion? I'm working on a shit-splosion episode, let me tell you.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I'm going deep.
I need it.
It's gonna be a nonstop stream of information. Sorry.
Oh, are you going undercover and gonna experience the whole—
Mm-hmm. I will be spraying all the facts. Yeah, no, I'm sniffing around, see what I can find.
The part of the tariffs thing that might be the most annoying for me is just Trump literally coming out and saying, we're doing these tariffs to continue— because I want to accomplish the same goals I've always wanted to accomplish. They're doing the same thing, effectively, as before. So he knows he has to use a different reason for why they impose the tariffs, but he's openly saying he's imposing them because he still wants to accomplish the same things, which don't even make sense.
Yeah, I love it when they do that. When they're like, yeah, the thing that I did was granted legal, illegal. When they're like, the thing that the Supreme Court said was illegal, I'm making an end run around that bad boy. I think it's gonna be fine now, 'cause I have my fingers crossed the whole time. Like, it's, uh, it's, it's great when the government could just be like, we're doing a crime, but we're doing it differently.
Yeah. Uh, anyway, and he's still in the meantime, like, threatening other tariffs on specific countries. Uh, he threatened 100% tariffs on, uh, major European countries last month. Um, he's got a temporary, uh, or he threatened to impose a 25% on Brazil. And just trying to come up with justifications for these, but just taunting everyone with his obsession with tariffs, which it's just terrible. Tariffs are dumb. But anyway, the Supreme Court will save us, right, James? Because the Supreme Court makes nothing but good decisions.
We're going to talk about the Supreme Court, actually. Yeah, that was a fantastic segue. So let's talk about the Supreme Court. Guys, I have some bad news. I don't think the Supreme Court might be the one that saves us. Yeah. Well, maybe. Let's talk about 3 Supreme Court decisions, shall we?
Okay.
So the first one we're going to talk about is actually the day that we're recording, this comes into effect. So this will have come into effect by the time you're hearing this. And that is the ending of the Temporary Protected Status for Syrian and Haitian passport holders. It's very hard to get good information on TPS if you're just, like, getting your news especially online. Like, even I've seen liberal outlets just get shit just straight up wrong about this. TPS is a renewable non-permanent status with no pathway to permanency. And a TPS can last between 6 and 18 months, and it's been— it's renewed— it's now renewed by the DHS Secretary. It was created in 1990, DHS didn't exist then, but now it's renewed by the DHS Secretary. Not all people from a given country that has TPS are covered by the TPS. The TPS. At its core, it's like a way of protecting people who are already in the US when something really bad happens to their country of citizenship, I'll say. It might not be their home country. The United States might be their home country, right? There are people from El Salvador, for example, who have been on TPS since the 1990s, for longer than some of our listeners have been alive. So it's not fair to say their home country, and I don't like it when people say their home country.
Yeah.
So if you're in the US when they declare a TPS, you can apply, get granted a work permit, and the longest that you will have TPS is 18 months. And then 2 months before it runs out, DHS has to decide if they're going to reauthorize it or not. So you don't— that's really— 18 months is not a long time, right? You're trying to get a job. Well, I don't know where I'm going to be at in 16 months when they decide to renew it or not, right? And as I say, that is the longest, right? You could have even a 6-month. It doesn't offer a pathway to permanency, right? So you are constantly on that roller coaster. It's miserable. The only way for people to do it, to become citizens, to get permanency, would be to leave and come back on another status. You can read, uh, listen to my, my coverage of the Darién Gap that I did in late 2024 to hear about the Venezuelan TPS, right? Uh, and what then—
Mm-hmm.
Here's some more from people who have experienced TPS and lawyers who have worked with people on TPS. It's not the same as lawful admission into the country. That's another thing. There's a case called Sanchez versus Mayorkas about this. Another frequent claim that we hear that it's wrong is that the Haitian TPS pertains to the 2010 earthquake. People remember the 2010 earthquake and the devastating consequences in Haiti. That's not true. Pertains to the 2021 killing of Jovenel Moïse and the subsequent violence, right, which has been ongoing ever since. People will Probably remember that killing. It was a wild one. Assassination. Amusingly, I wrote an op-ed on Biden's hypocrisy on Haitian migration for NBC.
Oh, wow.
When such things were possible to do.
I forget how famous you are, James. Oh my goodness. NBC.
NBC, National Broadcasting Corporation, I think. I don't actually know what it stands for, you know? But like, back in the day, you could say mean things about Uncle Joe other than about his age. That door closed on me, and so now I'm doing podcasts. I say this because Biden was extraordinarily—I struggle to believe that this is not straight-up racist—the way that they treated Haitian people and Haitian migrants. Like there's this tweet that I cite all the time. It's Biden effectively—they translate it into Creole, right? But it's Biden saying, "Don't come," and the Haitian—the United States Embassy in Haiti put out. Mayorkas, at the time of the announcement of the TPS, said, "Those who attempt to travel to the United States." States after this announcement will not be eligible for TPS and may be repatriated. So that is what the Trump administration wanted to take away. And the case specifically challenged whether they could take it away without going through an interagency review, because they didn't do that for the Haitian TPS. The court heard that argument, and what they effectively said— they didn't say that, like, Noam, and then obviously Markwayne Mullin, once Noam left, followed the law. They said that there is not a standing to challenge whether they followed the law.
Oh.
Which is a really worrying— they're basically saying, like, you can't come in here and say they did this wrong. It's up to them how they do this. They can do this how they like. Another challenge that they heard, right, was that the, the Haiti decision in particular was motivated by race. I'm just going to quote from the opinion here. Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago. And the statements cited by Mayo respondents— Mayo, that's the name of the case, right? Especially those concerning Haiti and Haitian migrants to this country exemplify this development. But whatever one think— may think of the cited statements, they're insufficient to show the termination of Haiti's TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people. Ironically, both Doe and Mayo respondents identify a strong race-neutral explanation of these official statements: the present administration's general stance on immigration and its obvious antipathy toward past administrations' TPS policies. So what they're saying is they hate all migrants, not just Black migrants. You can make that case, but they accused Haitian people of eating dogs and cats not very long ago, right?
Yeah.
Like, some of us can remember, like, I don't think any serious person looks at the accusations which were made about Haitian people, uh, at the time of the presidential debates and thought, that shit's not racist.
Yeah.
But there's just no way. It's not good. And this TPS will be expiring today. So that means that these people— and like, I cannot overemphasize the risk that these people will be at, the risk to these people's well-being, I guess, being sent back to these places, right? To both places, because they will be perceived as wealthy American people because they've lived in the United States for so long.
Oh.
And that will put them at risk of all kinds of extortion, crime, etc., right? Even though they may be leaving with nothing. And have very little to go back to. Yeah, that is bad. Here is another bad thing. This case is called Mullen versus Alotrolado. Alotrolado, friends of mine. I've interviewed them a bunch of times. They they were out there with us in outdoor detention when really very few people were good folks. So this this case pertains to asylum, and it pertains to the fact that anyone who is. in or arrives in the USA may apply for asylum. CBP can inspect people on their way in, right? In practice, it is about metering, which is— metering is limiting—
Yeah.
So yeah, I think, are most people familiar with metering? Should I explain? Like, it's stopping the amount of people coming to the USA so they can apply, right? It's like physically restricting the people who can apply from inside the United States. Now, the Ninth Circuit had previously held that someone who encounters US border officials could apply for asylum. In practice, then, the difference is being inside the United States territory, let's say, because you entered between ports of entry, i.e., you didn't go through the little gate where they check all your passports, right? You went through the mountain, through the desert, through the river. Or being in the port of entry, but not in the United States, right? To read from the opinion, right, quote, an alien standing in Mexico does not arrive in the United States. An alien arrives in the United States only when he crosses the border. This is— okay, that sounds very clear-cut, right? They're making it like you're not in America, you can't apply for asylum. asylum in America. This is really obvious. If that were the case, these ports of entry would be like invading Mexico, right? Because yes, they are correct. You are not in the United States until you pass the border. However, there are armed United States officials in these places. It's not like you're in Mexico either. It is not that kind of a binary, right?
Right.
The border is a thing that exists because people make it exist. It is not a— it's not a physical and immutable thing. And so the idea that you're in Mexico, that's not the experience you would have, right? Everyone's speaking English, there are American flags everywhere, you see American cops with guns. You're not really in Mexico at that point. But the Supreme Court has effectively blessed this practice, saying that only those who have stepped into the United States and arrived in the United States are eligible, as opposed to those who arrived at the border. So it's We're talking about law words.
Because they're trying to create, like, an impossible— it's like an impossible situation to happen or something.
Yeah, well, effectively—
Yeah, or like a catch-22. You know, you can't do this without doing this thing, but you can't do this thing either, so.
Yeah, exactly. Like, Stephen Miller effectively said that asylum was shut down, which the court specifically said, quote, last, respondents argument the government might someday prevent all potential arriving asylum applicants from reaching the point where they could file an application addresses a hypothetical future policy, not the rescinded metering policy at issue, which merely delayed entry to improve conditions at certain ports of entry. The hypothetical is what they are going to do. And Stephen Miller has, like, you know, it's like Babe Ruth pointing to the edge of the baseball field and then smacking the baseball there, and people going, oh, that's a hypothetical. What it does is it creates an incentive to go between the ports of entry, right? To go across the desert, to go through the mountains, to go through the river, because doing that You arrive in the United States. This is a bipartisan thing. Trump wanted metering. Biden absolutely did metering with CBP One, right? That application. The MPP that we saw under Trump, the Migrant Protection Protocol, didn't protect migrants. It's a misleading name. Every single time they've done this, people enter between ports of entry, and what we see is that more people die. With the wall construction the way it is, people are going to have to go into really remote places. And that will increase the likelihood of people dying crossing the border. Because people are not, like, coming here 'cause they think it's chill. Like, they're coming here because their lives are in danger where they're at. And so they will do things that endanger their lives to get here, because that is their only hope of safety. Many of them are not safe in Mexico. All right, the last one. This is something approaching good news, I guess, which is that children born in the United States will be citizens of the United States for the time being. They were split on this, 6-3 held. That Trump's attempt to remove citizenship by executive order was illegal, and 5-4 that it was unconstitutional. The floater here was Gorsuch— no, Kavanaugh, sorry, it was Kavanaugh. Gorsuch was on a different sick one. Kavanaugh said Congress could amend or pass a law or enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens. However, Gorsuch kind of flipped in the other direction. He seems in the camp that children of undocumented people living in the United States are incontrovertibly citizens. He said, quote, what matters isn't whether a child's parents are citizens. What matters is whether they, and by law their child at birth, have made this place their home and are thus, quote, domiciled within the United States. So what he's saying there is that non-residents' children might be able to be excluded, but that the undocumented people who live here, their children are incontrovertibly citizens. And that is what the Trump administration is going after here, right? Right. Deep dive a little tiny bit. Let's just read the text from the 14th Amendment to the old United States Constitution, shall we? All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Pretty straightforward shit. The little area where the Trump administration thought it could stick in its crowbar wedge is subject to the jurisdiction thereof. So the case that pertains to this, and the case that they pretty much upheld, was the Wong Kim Ark case. It concerned a family from China. I believe they were working in the culinary industry and their child. In that case, the ruling said, quote, a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent who at the time of his birth are subjects of the Emperor of China but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying— they're carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. It's worth noting that like when the Wong Kim Ark case happened, there was anti-migrant hysteria like there is now. This is a time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, right? Like explicitly racist immigration policies. The Wong case was pretty clear. The 14th Amendment was declaratory of the common law understanding of citizenship. There are some exemptions, right? Mostly children of diplomats. There's just one for children born on foreign ships, and also enemies during a hostile occupation of part of our territory. There has been an attempt to mobilize that last one against migrants as well, like migrants are invading and therefore occupying and therefore subject to that. That's not what that's about.
Right.
That's about if Mexico decides to push things back to an 1840 situation and invades the United States. States with his whole-ass army, and they have some children while they're doing it. A lot of the dissent here focused on the concept of domicile and on the English common law understanding of jus soli, which is the basis— like, English law is the basis for United States law, right?
Yeah.
They're part of the same legal tradition. It is very clear that the 14th Amendment— it's pretty straightforward about this, right? Another objection I saw from people who don't understand how things work is some of the speeches made by some of the authors of the 14th Amendment. And I just want to be super clear that that shit doesn't matter at all. Because—
Yes.
No one ratified, like, all the vibes associated with this dude, right? Like, the 14th Amendment is a codified piece of text. It is a text that was ratified, not the vibes with the guy who wrote the text. I didn't fucking go to school here. I didn't watch the thing where the bill sings a song.
But you've seen it since, right? You have seen it. This is important.
I've been subjected to it. Yeah, but my students will show it to me in a dramatic reversal of the usual order of people watching the Bill singing the song when I'm talking about America stuff. Yeah, it appears that a large number of people operating on x.com also have not watched the Bill sung a song, or perhaps were unable to comprehend the song that the Bill sung. But the thing there is that the bill is a bill, right? Like, it's got stuff written on it. It's not the associated vibes. Like, in a codified constitution, you have words, and it is the words that matter, not the other words that some people were saying while they were discussing whether or not these specific words should be added to the constitution. Welcome to anarchist constitutional law. Some people are really fucking braindead about this shit.
I have a really weird... tie-in, uh, to this, which is, um, thankfully the US Constitution is not like a D&D rulebook where you have rules as written versus rules as intended, or also the rule of cool, which is vibes.
We are moving closer to the rule of cool, unfortunately, uh, but in, in this instance, um, Oh, I'm penning again. Sorry, everyone. Move back to my hammer. The yeah, in this instance, right? We this was the most potentially devastating. Not that the like the other two will be will be devastating, but like the one that would have impacted the most people would be this, right? I spoke about this like even two years ago. I remember on an episode of another podcast I do where we talked about the things that potentially Trump could do, and this like. subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Like, that particular part of that particular amendment has been like a— people on VDARE have been excited about those particular words for a long time. But I'm somewhat glad that we now have a Supreme Court ruling where even the Supreme Court was like, no, you're being silly. So, yeah, that's some semi-good news.
All right. I have some full good news. Full good news, right? I mean, it starts with— In this economy. Do you know what that's worth? Um, it starts with, you know, uh, not good news, but then becomes, becomes good news. And, uh, and shout out to people, the young people in India. India has a national medical exam, kind of like the, the MCATs that we do here in the US. If you want to get into medical school, you've got to take it. And, uh, happened in early May, something like 2.2 million, um, young Indians took the exam, and then it was found out that some of the test questions had been leaked online. And so the national government decided to invalidate all the test results for all of those people who had taken the test in early May and then schedule another date to take the examination. And this was really devastating for a lot of people. It's— people study years for this test. They'll get private tutors. Like, it's an opportunity for families to potentially get out of poverty.
Right.
If you can get into medical school, school. It's a really important thing. So to invalidate the test results is kind of devastating for people. And something like 20, at least 20 Indian youth committed suicide over the—
Oh my God.
Yeah. The invalidation of these test results. Yeah. So awful shit. And the young people are saying, hey, should we all be punished because because some people had the leaked information, like, totally valid stuff. Anyway, the Chief Justice of India referred to unemployed young people as cockroaches recently.
Oh, God.
Oh, cool.
Yeah. That's always a good sign, right? It's never happened in human history before and led to bad stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. And so one particular person, a graduate student, picked that up and decided to call themselves the Cockroach Party.
Hell yeah.
Yeah. And start protesting against You know, what the government had done here. They were super upset about it.
I love that name. And if I can digress for one moment about another cool name, the student group featured in Les Misérables, the Friends of the ABC or the ABC Café, they have also a really wacky and cool name, which is that they, like, had, like, ABC. They were really into literature. Literacy and education as students themselves and making that more accessible. But when you say ABC in French, it sounds like abécé, which means the abased.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah. And so that's what they called their movement, the Friends of the Abécés.
Hell yeah. I love it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you know, anytime you take an insult and you turn it into your rallying cry, it's just— there's a whole fuck yeah that goes along with that. So So they're, um, and the, and the, the Cockroach Party's Instagram page now has like 25 million followers or something like that. And the, and the people that are protesting are, uh, very happily taking up this name to use for it. Anyway, they, uh, they, they took to the streets to, to protest, to march, to speak out, and just, and social media, and to put pressure on, on Modi, the ruler of India, to, um, fire his, um, education minister, which just, uh, this last weekend, uh, a week ago-ish as this recording comes out, uh, the, the education minister resigned, and there have been 6 or 7 weeks of protests going on on that. Yeah, so, um, the, the youth did a good thing. And I say youth, and I know that like Gen Z can be up to age like 25-ish. I don't mean to, um, diminish anybody by, by saying the youth.
I just still wish I was a youth. Like, diminishing, it's great.
We're millennials, we're the olds. Yeah, the olds at this point. So like, hell yes, Anyway, Modi has promised to look into the leaks of the information that caused the initial invalidation of the test. They weren't going to do anything about that. They were just like, ah, invalidate the test, take it again, and they weren't going to do any further looking, but they are now. So that, in addition to the education minister resigning, great stuff. So protesting works. Go out there and do it. Yay!
That's especially boss in India, where Modi has effectively just not conceded anything to anyone. For a long-ass time.
Yeah, yeah. Not— sorry, not ever, but yeah, exactly. I don't know a lot about Indian politics to like get into that, but I knew that was kind of a thing, but I didn't want to overstep myself there. Yeah.
Hell yeah. Well, that about brings us to the end of our apocalyptic mayhem, as I'm going to continue to call it. Y'all got any hopeful little nuggets for the end of our episode about things we Things people can actually look forward to. I was gonna say look forward to, but then that sounded sarcastic, in the month of August.
If you're listening to this on Friday, the day it comes out, you can look forward to listening to Inman and I on Tuesday talk about the week of the apocalypse.
Because this is the death of This Month in the Apocalypse, but don't worry, everything Everything dies, baby. That's a fact. But everything that dies someday might come back. This is our Bruce Springsteen reference for the day. And it will come back every week.
We're giving this one a Viking funeral. We're putting it on a boat. We're lighting it on fire. Do they push it out into the ocean, or do they do it on the land when they do that?
Well, is it the ocean or like a fjord or something?
Yeah, probably.
Some body, whatever the local body of water is.
Yeah, don't be doing it, uh, Anywhere else now because you'll start a fire and we have enough of those already.
Yeah, that's true. A thing that we did not talk about today, but just like, I don't know, wildfire season is bad, has been bad. It's bad here and it's really bad in Europe right now.
Yeah, shout out to our European friends. We know you're suffering. We see you.
Take care of each other.
Yeah, and steer clear of the terrifying thing I didn't know exists, which is the Wildfire thunderstorm that creates thunderstorms from wildfires that then start more wildfires.
Mm-hmm.
And I feel like it should have a better name for how terrifying it is. My hopeful nugget is remember that if repression happens, which it is happening, that the best thing that you can do is dig into your community because they got you. We got each other. The feds are— they're lying to you.
100%.
If you enjoyed this podcast, then consider supporting it. And also consider doing things to make your community more resilient to the pesky— those pesky feds. I say as if they're like a mosquito or something. Also, if you liked it, you can support it, and you can support it by telling people about it, by liking and subscribing if that's a thing. I don't really know how you like or subscribe to any of these things, but you can like it in your heart, and you can subscribe to the idea that community matters. Look at me, I'm a professional podcaster. I can do segues.
Nailed it.
You can also support it by supporting Our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can support Strangers by signing up for our Patreon, which as we've said, this is an entirely listener-supported podcast. And if you want to continue to see us expand and do more things, then consider signing up for our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness, where for a variety of tiers of support, you can get access to a lot of different things like—
Yeah.
cool digital content or discounts on physical things that we put out like books or zines or merch. I think we're gonna have some cool new merch soon. You can also get a cool zine mailed to you anywhere in the world every month. And my personal plug is go check out the July feature, which may or may not be up by the time this episode comes out, but it is written by me and it is Brokeback Mount Doom. A short play that is exactly what you think it is about.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, and we have a cool audio feature recorded by the original cast of the play that was performed for our community. You can also sign up for our acknowledgments tier where we will shout out a thing of your choosing, whether it's you, a cool pet, a friend, a rad organization, or a theoretical or fictional concept. And then we have a new tier as well. Brooke, do you want to tell listeners about our new tier of support on Patreon?
Yeah, we've got the Friends of Strangers box. So it's $40 a month, and once per quarter you get mailed a box of all of our newest published materials and some of our merch. merch, depending on what we got available. When you sign up, you immediately get sent a t-shirt. And then, and then those boxes once a quarter, the next one's coming up August 1st. So if you're listening to this on Friday, and you sign up on Friday, you can have the very first Friends of Strangers box. And as of this recording, no one has signed up yet. That's my fault, because I haven't promoted it until this very second. So you might be the only one getting the very first box. That could be a very exclusive special, and it's gonna have a copy of Uprising, a couple of our new zines, and a bunch of stickers. I'm not even sure what else we've got in there, but we've got some sweet shit to put in it. Uh, the next one after that will be November 1st, and we'll have a few more zines to go in that, as well as another new book and definitely a piece of our rad new merch. So check out that new support tier.
Which will of course also give you access to the shout-a-thing-out And we want to thank these wonderful people, fictional concepts, or animals. And we especially want to thank— so this first little bit of names is from our Kickstarter for The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice by Margaret Killjoy. And that— those shoutouts are coming to an end. But if you would like us to continue to shout these things out, then consider signing up for our Acknowledgement tier or the Friends of Strangers tier.
Yeah.
Thank you, Cool Zone Media. Again, not an official sponsor, but I'm glad that someone wanted us to shout them out. Thank you, Be Kind and Talk to Strangers, N.A., Ulixie and Alder, Tikvah's Favorite Stick, The Waterfront Project, Nico, The Chaos Initiative, Groot the Dog, The Black Trowel Collective, Dolly Parton and Edgar Allan Poe, Accordions, The Experimental Farm Network, Arguing About What to Shout Out, Tenebrous Press, Potatoes, Staying Hydrated brought to you by Hannah, Simone Weil, and everyone else who supported the Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice Kickstarter. And now for our just regular Patreon acknowledgment tier folks. Thank you, Bunny Bionics. Thank you, Bike Smut Film and Performance. Thank you, Patrick Harnett Marshall. May you rest in peace and in power. Thank you, all wiener dogs everywhere. The first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis. The Kiwanis Socialists. The Athens People's Assembly of Athens, Georgia. Mr. Kraft, your Canadian friend. Mark, Tiny Nonsense. Sarah, A Future for Abby. The Canadian Socialist Rifle Association.
Hoon Hee. Max.
Lancaster Chooses Love. Karen, the Astoria Food Pantry. The Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island. Feral in West Virginia.
Blink Cat.
The Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, Shulva, Jenny and Phoebe the cats, Jason, Aiden, and Yuki the dog, Alexander Gopal, Sunshine, Opticuna, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Julia, Appalachian Liberation Library, Lord Harken, I'm Used to the Old Order, Baby Acab and her 3 great pups, Ephemeral, Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Boldfield, Allie, Popperuna, Milica, Theo, SJ Page, The Pocono Pink Pistols, Nicole and Tikva the dog, David, Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Carson, Dana, Chelsea, Amber, Toki, Red, the concept that we will outlive them, Kirk, Micaiah, Chris, the incredible Ren Arai, Micah, and the immortal Haas the dog. Thanks so much. We've been able to do so much because of y'all. Anyways, we hope everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on in the world, and we will see you In a few days, which I guess is also next week, but is also only in a few days!
Woo-hoo!
Wee-hoo!