Daily Episode 239 - This Week in Fascism #40

0:00Hey, Cory here. We've had an influx of new listeners, and so I just want to make sure that if you are new to the podcast, you don't just jump in and start listening to these daily episodes which we've been doing. Please go back and listen to the first at least eight episodes. So you have an idea of what collapses, what it is that Cory is talking about. Also if you've been with us for a while and you're enjoying the content, please join us on Patreon. We would love to see you there. There's a link, as always, in the description. Hi, it's Brooke DeVard, host of Naked Beauty, and I want to talk about how I upgrade my hosting experience. There's a moment just before guests arrive when my home stops feeling like a series of rooms and it becomes an atmosphere. The light settles, the air shifts, and then the beautiful scent of Jasmine, Rosen, fig, fill the air. It feels warm and considered. That's what Pura does. It turns fragrance into environment. A collection of beautiful, clean fragrances all controlled from your phone. Choose your sense of place at Pura.com. In a world where AI is changing every role and every industry, knowing who actually has

1:03deep expertise matters more than ever. Upwork connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records, so you can hire with confidence. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise, so you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. AI-powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers match to your goals in under 6 hours. No endless searching required. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. This is UPWORK.com. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University, set a course for

2:03change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W. Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting and Walden is here to help you achieve it. Take the first step to make your impact. Visit WaldenU.edu. Walden University set a course for change, certified to operate by chef. It's Friday. You know what that means. We're going to get right to it. And as a matter of fact, today's going to be a little bit shorter than normal, I think I've just got a lot going on today and I'm trying to squeeze this recording in between a bunch of other stuff, so my apologies that it's not as many articles to talk about today. But that is how life goes sometimes and in order to stay consistent in recording daily, sometimes they're going to be shorter. So it was this or don't record it all.

3:04And we can't have that, can we? Let's start with an update quickly on this whole election fiasco stuff. It just keeps going back and forth. Judges ruling and then there's appeals and then judges ruling again and then there's appeals and then judges okay it and then there's appeals and then I'm talking about the USPS Malian ballot shenanigans. This is a big deal. This is not something small. This is how a very large number of Americans vote. And this is Donald Trump attempting to either a take away the ability to vote in that way or be so chaos to make it as much of a excuse my language shit show as possible in this newest ruling by the judge. This is from independent dot code dot UK judge blocks Trump's new USPS rules for mail in ballots with just weeks before the midterm elections time is ticking as election officials fear thousands of eligible voters could be wrongly disenfranchised under the new rules. Basically what this judge said was that it would be virtually impossible for states to

4:07comply with the changes and for that reason they were striking it. I'll let you read the article. If you want to get more details about this there's some history there talking about what we have talked about in previous weeks about the Cummings and goings of this more interestingly I would like to read from slate dot com something titled Trump is about to get the mail ballot chaos he's been looking for. I'm going to read from this a little bit it says the midterms are two months away and President Donald Trump has already accomplished a long sought after goal sewing chaos in mail voting. His executive order that taps the US Postal Service and Homeland Security to nationalize US elections elicited a contentious legal battle that culminated in the Supreme Court intervening last week. The justices ruled that for now the EO could move forward but they did not consider the merits of the case leaving the door wide open for updated lawsuits which is what we've just seen. And like clockwork within days updated litigation was filed and a Massachusetts judge again issued a 14 day restraining order preventing the order from taking effect this dizzying back

5:11and forth puts states in a precarious position up and their mail ballot process to comply with the new federal guidance or simply hold off to prevent unnecessary changes and confusion. States and voting rights groups are still engaged in an active legal battle to prevent Trump's EO from taking effect for now they have secured two weeks of relief after which there's going to be more court action. It is anyone's guess how this will play out though US District Court judge Indira Tawani who issued the injunctions said it's quote a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections now little more than two months away. It then goes to talk about how voting works in the US that elections are controlled by the states not by the federal government and that it's plainly stated that way in the institution the times places in manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. According to a whistleblower report this week USPS is continuing to develop a chaotic new

6:12scheme for deciding whether to send out mail ballots that defaults toward refusing to send large batches of ballots based on finding a single unconfirmed error. This scheme may not yet be an effect but it leaves many states in a sort of limbo including some that are meant to send out ballots as soon as this week to better understand what states are up against it's helpful to break down where things now stand in several key states grouped by mail ballot status. So it talks about three different groups here the first is states that conduct elections entirely or almost entirely by mail those include California Colorado Hawaii Nevada which stopping there for a second you noticing anything here special these are all blue states Oregon Utah okay there's a state that's not blue Vermont Washington state and the district of Columbia fall under this category huge swaths of the resident populations in these states vote by mail much higher than the national average in California our most popular state nearly 81% of eligible voters voted by mail in the 2024 general election.

7:18Meanwhile everyone in Colorado votes by mail these states in particular rely on USPS to deliver election mail and they'll face higher than average costs to change their ballot envelopes to conform with the new USPS standards given their volume of mail ballots. Then it talks about a second group states that have already printed their mail ballots North Carolina Massachusetts and Washington state at the least have indicated they've already begun printing the mail ballots if forced to comply with the president's EO they would need to foot the bill for printing all new ballots and for potentially addressing confusion from voters who are seeing a new mail ballot system than they've never seen before. And group three states with decentralized elections Wisconsin New Hampshire Minnesota are among a small group of states with a decentralized election system in which individual cities and towns rather than counties are responsible for administering ballots this hyper local election model results in there being numerous officials who must figure out new rules and regulations oftentimes with pretty limited funds all right so chaos pretty much no matter

8:21what happens because as we get closer and the lawsuits continue states aren't sure what to do and the USPS behind the scenes could pull something even if the answer is no it doesn't mean that they won't try just as we've seen in every other case with Donald Trump and this is the sort of sentiment I've seen in comments on these articles things like and what is the judge actually doing to ensure this gets enforced with a response saying nothing just like time and time again a federal judge says no Trump does it anyway they write a strongly worded letter and he does it anyway he doesn't care and he'll do it anyway and as we saw from this article whistleblowers are already stating that the USPS is doing it anyway let's talk about freedom of speech for a minute over 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives Thursday voted in favor of a measure to strip colleges and universities of federal aid if they are engaged in so called boycotts against Israel the bill led by North Carolina Republican Virginia Fox aims to rewrite the Higher Education Act of

9:251965 to prevent institutions that take part in a non expressive commercial boycott of Israel from receiving federal funding under the original bill the 237 to 169 vote on the House floor meant the legislation known as the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act of 2026 which is highly passed and is now headed for the Senate one commenter here said isn't this a clear cut violation of their first amendment rights at least private universities could claim that under the citizens united ruling they have the same free speech protections as any other corporation at the very least I think it would be fun to watch the Supreme Court twist itself into knots over white churches should be able to make political statements and keep their tax exempt statuses but private universities should not receive the same protections I saw another video today coming out of the UK of a woman protesting against Israel or in support of Palestine her sign simply said I oppose genocide

10:25I support Palestine action now Palestine action is a group it's an organization which the UK has deemed it illegal to show support for that group under some sort of terrorist act speech around the world is being suppressed for the sake of one country how on earth can it be illegal to say I support Palestine and you can go so far as to say she's supporting a terrorist organization but is she or is this organization also being unfairly suppressed I will note that it is also designated a terrorist group in the United States apparently British police have arrested thousands of people for showing public support for the group after the ban took effect the ban has faced shifting legal rules in British courts with the court of appeal upholding the government's prescription as lawful while appeals continue the group is one in which members use direct action they have broken into defense factories they have spray painted on military equipment and damaged

11:27property in order to disrupt business operations this is against companies supplying weapons or military technology to Israel the very interesting area maybe a gray area is it illegal to say something like I support al-Qaeda or I support ISIS at least in the US at least legally in the way that it's supposed to be simply saying that you support even a terrorist organization is generally protected free speech it's illegal if it becomes a direct threat if you're trying to incite imminent violence or if you're providing material support to terrorism but that is not the case in every country the UK being one of them anyway it is a kind of sickening continuation or extension of fascist ideas that you can designate a certain group a terrorist group and start carrying out arrests for people who say they support it but it allows the government or the law to be very picky and choosy about which ones they're arresting about which ones they're designating terrorist groups and it can single out

12:29and target a very specific demographic of people meanwhile Jimmy Kimmel says his interview with James Teleriko won't air on TV after Trump's FCC threatened his show this is not the first time and it won't be the last time the government is attempting to suppress free speech on television and dictate who can interview with whom and where it sucks to see the power grab it sucks to see that it's increasing and that it's functioning more often it's working the way they want it to Trump says you can't post this thing my FCC's coming after you and the organization says yeah you know uh okay you're right we won't post it simply because the government doesn't like it that is frighteningly close to just having state run TV to the government being able to dictate each and everything in every piece of media that we are allowed to hear I'm not here for it right now AI agents are altering the course of business automating processes and streamlining the way we work you can create these agents of change quickly and easily with the

13:32agentic system platform from out systems because out systems is all about outcomes like streamlining the loan process in the financial sector giving insurance brokers a way to grow policy savings and clearing production bottlenecks for a global beer brewery out systems build your agentic future in a world where AI is changing every role in every industry knowing who actually has deep expertise matters more than ever upward connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records so you can hire with confidence upward gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise so you can fill critical skill gaps launch projects faster and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount with business plus you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork AI powered short listing delivers a curated short list of top freelancers match to your goals in under six hours no endless searching required thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly

14:33skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support it's free to sign up and posting a job is easy visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free that is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow that's upwork.com upwork.com all right I spoke a long while ago about a group of people that were designated as terrorists because of their actions at a protest one of those people shot an officer the others did not as a matter of fact one of them says she was in her car a half mile away playing Pokemon when she heard the gunshots she was soon after stopped by police and taken into custody merely for being at the site of a protest where this thing occurred Megan Morris was sentenced to 50 years in prison three of those eight defendants including Morris are trans they were all all eight of them accused of being antifa terrorists and antifa cell operatives Morris and her co-defendants

15:38were eventually sentenced in part for providing material support for terrorists in what the department of justice called the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with antifa a name which refers to a decentralized movement based on militant opposition to fascism Morris was sentenced to 50 years in prison which has caused legal experts concern they noted that her sentence is unusually harsh more than double the longest sentence for a Jan 6 rioter and that it could set a precedent for strict crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly they're trying to make it so that we are all afraid to attend protests to organize them and certainly making it so that people are afraid of any sort of direct action if suddenly any person out of protest can be arrested and accused of supporting antifa or being part of antifa if they can get away with that with these eight individuals and again 50 years in prison sentences that went through that is absolutely horrifying according to the New York Times ice arrests are soaring as people with no criminal

16:41record are increasingly targeted there's a graph here showing the number of people being arrested over time the daily average from January 2025 to today and if you look at January and you look at today the average is about four times as many people being arrested today as then and about double from a year ago not only that the article says a surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of Trump's mass deportation campaign they included people married to US citizens people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke a majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of any crime an analysis of a newly released federal data shows the share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent so more than 96 percent of the people being arrested have had no violent conviction

17:44now some have other convictions there's a chart here that shows the number of people being arrested with no criminal charges versus those with pending charges versus those with other convictions or violent convictions and it has greatly spiked I mean massively spiked over the last two months the number of those being arrested with absolutely no criminal charges to give you sort of an idea on the chart it peaked at around a thousand arrests on the highest day over a thousand arrests of people with no criminal charges there was around 480 people with pending charges that day 450 people with other convictions and just guessing at the number here it's probably 40 or 50 that had violent convictions honestly that's probably at or below just the average if you just nabbed 100 people off the street how many of them would simply have violent convictions just by chance overall immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July

18:44two fatal shootings involving ICE in Texas and Maine which we talked about at the time drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests where are these arrests happening the most there's a map here showing where it's happening it is mostly along the southern border El Paso San Antonio, Texas San Diego Arizona, New Mexico, Houston, LA and Florida though there are some other states where it is happening at a higher rate I don't have it listed here but I saw another article today talking about how a new attempt a new plan would make it so that people who are laid off who are here on a visa would immediately be considered here illegal and could be deported in the past there was some leeway there was some time a grace period for these people to find new jobs or to voluntarily leave or whatever to apply for a new visa now it is you are laid off you are immediately here illegally your visa is revoked Trump's been on a tirade the last few days

19:44just posting an obscene amount of stuff to his truth social and all just filled with AI garbage random awkward shots at his enemies one of those things that he's been pushing for is to rename New Mexico to New America he's just claimed to have done that with Lake Ontario I mean the narcissism is just a sign it is unbelievable he can't change the name of New Mexico without a vote surely he's going to try at the same time he also pledges five thousand dollar Trump dividend is what he's calling it if Republicans hold on to Congress basically what he has told the American people is if Republicans still hold Congress both the House and the Senate after the midterms I will give five thousand dollars to every U.S. adult basically saying that because of our tremendous strength and success economically we can afford it it would be over one point three trillion dollars it would do nothing but increase inflation if you were just to suddenly throw one point three trillion dollars into the

20:46economy give everybody five thousand dollars what do you think the cost of vehicles are going to do the cost of groceries the I mean it's just it's unbelievable but this of course will be just yet another promise that Trump makes that he won't keep just like he was going to be giving two thousand dollars earlier to families that never happened what Trump is saying is if you keep me in power we will add one point three trillion dollars to the deficit and increase inflation lovely all right just in passing a judge reinforces the order halting immediate work on Trump's 250 foot arch we haven't talked about the arch much here you know just another project that Donald Trump is wanting to spend billions of dollars on maybe it's just millions I don't know I haven't looked that much into it because I don't care it is just yet another monument to Trump's narcissism and the problems that this country is facing lastly and you might find this one interesting the constitution doesn't include a right to clean water or accurate information from public officials

21:47according to a new court ruling this was from Bloomberg law it says the decision affirms the dismissal of a lawsuit over alleged led contaminated drinking water in Jackson Mississippi the full U.S. court of appeals for the fifth circuit found that the lawsuit from the Jackson residents alleged violations of due process rights not granted by the constitution in a majority opinion by judge Kurt Engelhart the appeals court said there was no historical basis to find such rights fall under that clause the constitution does not provide redress for every government wrongdoing Engelhart said Engelhart a Donald Trump appointees said the residents have other options like pursuing tort claims electing officials who will better manage the water system and petitioning representatives for other solutions residents of the city have claimed that officials deliberately allowed led to contaminate the drinking water harming those who drink it Jackson has denied those allegations Engelhart said while the residents raised a right to bodily integrity that right applies in instances like sexual assault by a police officer and forced medication of prisoners

22:48mismanagement of a water system he said is wholly different and while the Supreme Court has found some due process rights to fall under the common law right to inform to consent Engelhart said those cases don't include a right to accurate information from public officials he said that even if residents had established a violation of due process rights the city officials would still be granted qualified immunity from the claims because no clearly established right was violated you got to love the precedence that these types of cases set are you angry yet i am angry these episodes leave me angry i've often wondered and considered whether or not it's right to say that people should understand collapse right it people are always asking this idea of like is it right to tell other people that collapse is happening is it right to pull people's heads out of the sand i have long held that i do not talk about this stuff to people who don't want to hear it it's a voluntary podcast you definitely do not have to be here but i am becoming more and more of the opinion that

23:49people need to understand this stuff what we're talking about here on Fridays is obviously very related to collapse politics play a massive part in the process what i talk about the rest of the week is also massively important and it's the part that people don't pay as close attention to they don't want to hear about whether it's because they don't understand it or because they simply don't want to understand it politics is flashy and fun and you get to have arguments with your neighbors about it and you get to feel superior because your politics is good and if your politics would just succeed then the world would be a better place and everything would be fine but really understanding this really grasping what's happening with politics is understanding what's happening behind the scenes and people need to know about it because i know that people are angry about politics and they should be but if people are as angry as they should be about politics they should also be angry about everything that's happening behind the scenes that's ripping their world out from underneath them people should know about what's happening to their ecosystems to their biodiversity to their climate to their resources and they should know their part in it and they should know our

24:52part in it as humans because knowing all that is being able to accept what it's going to require to make things better somebody who refuses to know is someone that can continue to leave the status quo in place and the status quo just isn't going to cut it i will never force this information on anyone but if you feel that there are people in your life who are ready to hear and accept the way the world is and maybe are driven to try and make a change i hope you'll direct them here to this podcast and to many others there's so much good information out there have them listen to the first episodes way back when starting in 2020 have them reach out and email me with questions thoughts concerns arguments i hope that we are able to have conversations with people that we love not bringing this stuff up doesn't have to be that you're rubbing this in people's faces i will never say that but if somebody asks a question or says something hyper relevant to the topic i hope we're not super shying away from it i hope we can find a way to tactfully address the issues with

25:54people to give them a chance to see it because people are starting to see it and the more that people see it and the quicker they see it the more they realize what power we have as a group the more hope there is for any sort of change for harm reduction for pain mitigation moving forward we're headed at a fast clip rights are being taken away a i surveillance is increasing rapidly power is being consolidated money is being consolidated into the hands of a few if we're going to collapse can we do it not into a dystopia it doesn't even need to be a utopia i just don't want to go down in the worst version of humanity in the worst version of society possible and it's going to take more people realizing it more people waking up to it and more people willing to take action for there to be any hope of change in the future okay i've spoken enough i appreciate you all we'll see you next week right now a i agents are altering the course of business automating processes and streamlining

26:57the way we work you can create these agents of change quickly and easily with the agentic system platform from out systems because out systems is all about outcomes like streamlining the loan process in the financial sector giving insurance brokers a way to grow policy savings and clearing bottle next for a global beer brewer out systems build your agentic future hello i'm monica rinagal host of the nutrition diva podcast summer is here and with it the hot and sticky weather a morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize and plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance that's where liquid iv comes in it's science backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone whether you're exercising playing outside or simply surviving a summer heatwave it's an easy way to stay hydrated shop now at liquid iv dot com liquid iv hydration that goes wherever life takes you colon cancer is on the rise it's the second deadliest cancer and the number one

28:01cancer killer of people under 50 in the u.s yet it remains one of the most preventable cancers if you're 45 or older and at average risk it's time to talk about screening cologuard plus is a non-invasive at home collection kit that requires no prep can be completed in about 15 minutes and is 95% effective if you've been putting it off you're not alone but timely screening matters let's talk about what isn't talked about talk to your provider or request cologuard plus online are ex only hey cori here if you are listening to the back catalog of breaking down collapse thank you those episodes are so vital they're so important but also wanted to let you know that I am now doing daily episodes yes that's right here on the podcast daily episodes so if you are enjoying the back catalog great please also feel free to zoom forward to the most recent episodes catch us daily they are quick little episodes and I think you'll enjoy them thanks