Friday, January 9th, 2026 Today, the FBI is freezing out the Minnesota State investigators in the murder of Renee Nicole Good; the shooter has been identified by the Star Tribune as Jonathan Ross; the House has passed a bill extending the ACA subsidies bucking Mike Johnson; Reps Khanna and Massie urge a federal judge to appoint an independent overseer for the Epstein Files release; the House upheld Trump’s vetoes on two bills passed unanimously; Senate Republicans defect and vote with Democrats on a War Powers Resolution blocking further attacks on Venezuela; the Senate voted by unanimous consent to hang the January 6th plaque; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
Friday, January 9th, 2026
Today, the FBI is freezing out the Minnesota State investigators in the murder of Renee Nicole Good; the shooter has been identified by the Star Tribune as Jonathan Ross; the House has passed a bill extending the ACA subsidies bucking Mike Johnson; Reps Khanna and Massie urge a federal judge to appoint an independent overseer for the Epstein Files release; the House upheld Trump’s vetoes on two bills passed unanimously; Senate Republicans defect and vote with Democrats on a War Powers Resolution blocking further attacks on Venezuela; the Senate voted by unanimous consent to hang the January 6th plaque; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
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Stories:
Minn. officials say FBI is freezing state out of probe into ICE shooting | The Washington Post
ICE agent in Minneapolis killing identified as 10-year law enforcement veteran | The Guardian
https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/2009357309429063834
https://khanna.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/khanna.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/khanna-sdny-letter-1-8_0.pdf
House passes bill extending ACA subsidies, bucking GOP leaders | The Washington Post
Senate advances measure to restrict Trump's power to use military force in Venezuela | NBC News
House fails to override Trump vetoes - Live Updates | POLITICO
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msw media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Friday, January 9, 2026. Today, the FBI is freezing out the Minnesota state investigators in the murder of Renee Nicole Goode. The shooter, meanwhile, has been identified by the Star Tribune as Jonathan Ross. The House has passed a bill extending the Affordable Care act subsidies bucking Mike Johnson. Representatives Khanna and Massie are urging a federal judge to appoint a special master to oversee the Epstein files released by the doj. The House upheld Trump's vetoes on two bills passed unanimously. In Congress, Senate Republicans defect and vote with Democrats on a war powers resolution to stop further attacks on Venezuela. And the Senate voted by unanimous consent to hang the January 6th plaque. I'm Alison Gill.
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
Who. Lots of Republicans headed for the door. Defecting.
They really are. But at the same time, some of them are cowards. Like margin. No respect. No, don't be. Oh, I'm done serving. Just speak up. Like, burn this shit down on your way out. What are you doing?
Yeah, and Thom Tillis, I mean, you know, he's been pro the officers who, who protected the Capitol on January 6th, but, like, I'll give him that for sure. Unanimous resolution. Two years after this plaque was supposed to be hung because he's retiring. Okay. Yeah. I mean, maybe not. Maybe he's doing the right thing, but, it just doesn't feel like the right time to me.
I give no benefits of no doubts right now. No benefits of no doubts.
Yeah, I don't blame you. And we do have some breaking news. I wish we had more information on this, Dana, but. According to KATU2ABC in Portland, U.S. customs and Border Protection agents have shot two people in Portland this afternoon. According to the FBI, Portland police say the officers were called to 102nd and Southeast Main street at about 2:30pm where they said they confirmed federal agents were involved in the shooting. The condition of the two people who were shot wasn't immediately known, but Portland City Council President Elena. Let's see. Pel Guine, I hope I'm saying that right. Said that as far as she knows, they're both still alive and in the hospital. As we get more information, we will share it with you. The shooting in Portland, of course, comes a day after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. So that is breaking news right now. It's not going to stop until they're stopped.
No. And it is ramping up. Everyone try. They want people to be reactive. they do. They want every reason to do the Insurrection Act. And it's so hard to tell people, please don't respond. But whatever you can, when you can protest peacefully, try not to escalate.
Definitely respond. Yeah, respond peacefully. I think that, that was something that Tim Walsh said yesterday. On Wednesday, after the shooting, during his press conferences, the police Chief urged people, Mr. Walsh, Governor Waltz said that he would got. He has the National Guard on standby ready to protect the citizens. Right. To peacefully protest. So, yeah, we'll continue to keep an eye on, on these stories. we do have a packed show today. The rest of the news from yesterday. We have all the news from today, plus a discussion with John Fugalang. It is Fugal Sang Fridays here on the Daily Beans. And we have an interview with the amazing Sasha Abramsky about his new book called American Carnage, How Trump, Musk and Doge Bo Butchered the US Government. It's going to be a very fascinating discussion and it's a pretty incredible book. I highly recommend everyone picks one up. So we have so much to get to today. So let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. First up from the Post. Oh, this makes me so mad. This makes my blood boil. Minnesota authorities said Thursday that the FBI, Kash Patel, is taking over the investigation into an immigration officer's deadly shooting of a woman in Minneapolis. I call it murder. And they're freezing them out. The FBI is freezing Minnesota out of the inquiry, blocking them from accessing evidence because of the federal move, quote. It feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome. That's what Governor Tim Walls said. Went on to say. And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment. He added. Authorities initially said the investigation into what happened would be conducted by the bca. The Minneapolis Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, that's a state agency, along with the FBI and the Minneapolis Police Department, described them both as leading the investigation. But, on Thursday morning, the BCA said in a statement it had been told by the FBI that the U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis, quote, had reversed course. The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who prosecuted Derek Chauvin, called the unilateral FBI probe deeply disturbing. Wall. I call it a cover up.
Yeah.
Speaking at a news conference, Tim Wall said Thursday Minnesota must be part of this investigation. The BCA said Thursday it was ready to rejoin the investigation if the FBI reversed course. But Barring that the agency said it expected state officials would eventually gain access to the FBI's investigative records. I just want to let you know here I look up, there is no statute of limitations on state second degree murder charges. Good. So if they have to wait until we have a Democratic president in the White House in 2029 to get access to these, investigative materials, the statute of limitations will not expire on this case.
I hope this guy never sleeps a peaceful m night again in his life.
Exactly. Now, according to Ms. Now, the Hennepin County District Attorney's office said they do have jurisdiction to charge the ICE agent involved in the fatal shooting despite the Supremacy Clause. Right. They were looking into this, Dana, to see if they were even allowed to charge a federal agent because of the Supremacy Clause. They've determined that they are, but they're disappointed that the FBI is failing to cooperate. And it's next to impossible to bring a case without the body, the car, the bullet casings, the fingerprints, everything that the FBI has in its custody. Yeah. Keep in mind, like I said there again, there's no statute of limitations for murder in Minnesota. There's also no statute of limitations for federal murder charges. But justice delayed is justice denied. This is so infuriating and frustrating that Kash Patel and the Trump administration are protecting this murderer.
Yeah, agreed. And this is also a related story from The Guardian. The ICE agent involved in that lethal shooting of 37 year old Renee Nicole Good during that immigration sweep in Minneapolis on Wednesday, they've named him. It's Jonathan David Ross. According to court records that closely match the description of a June 2025 incident involving the agent in Bloomington, Minnesota cited by the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and J.D. vance. Ross is a Minneapolis resident and 10 year veteran of the Special Response Team of ICE's Enforcement and Removal operation. Federal officials have so far refused to identify the officer, though the Minneapolis Star Tribune first identified Ross on Thursday. The Federal Bureau of Investigations also refused on Thursday to involve Minnesota law as we just covered in the investigation of Good's killing, prompting the Governor, Tim Walls to. And I quot say it feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome in this situation.
Yeah. And we, we hammered on this on Wednesday when all the officials were like, we're going to make sure there's a local entity investigating. We have to make sure to preserve the integrity of this case. Basically implying that the f. You can't trust the FBI.
No.
Under Kash Patel. All right, let's shift over to Congress which is back in session this is according to Scott McFarland. The Senate has approved a resolution finally to hang the January 6th plaque honoring police. It'll hang in the U.S. senate with approval of the Republican leader, John Th. Until the architect of the Capitol finds a permanent location. It was kind of a surprise when Tom Tillis got the approval of John Thune to do this. He called for unanimous consent, and he got it. Yeah, it could hang in the third floor visitor area, where rioters marauded on January 6. This is a significant symbolic break by some Republicans from Trump. So Thom Tillis called the January 6th riders thousands of thugs. John Thune agreed to let the January 6th plaque hang in the Senate, despite plaque opposition from Mike Johnson. Thom Tillis took to the Senate floor Thursday, made a motion for unanimous consent to expedite the hanging of the plaque, and the resolution passed without objection. I was surprised.
Yeah, I am, too. More stuff happening, though. More cracks in the dam. Reps. Massie and Khanna have a written letter to Judge Engelmeier about Epstein Files Transparency Act. They said, and I quote, we write jointly as members of the United States House of Representatives who sponsor the Epstein Files Transparency act, and as Amiki Curie, in the above caption manner, we respectfully request permission to file this brief. As Amiki Curie, given our unique expertise as the leads of the Epstein Files Transparency act, we're writing to suggest the appointment of a special master, an independent monitor to compel the Department of Justice to make mandatory productions under the act. Now, as the leads of the Epstein Files Transparency act, we have urgent and grave concerns about DOJ's failure to comply with the act, as well as the department's violations of this court's order. So we're going to keep you posted on how the judge responds to this. But I'm glad that they're doing it and they're not just going, well, there's nothing we can do. Hands are tied.
Yeah, a special master. They're asking the court to do this because the DOJ obviously will not.
Who'd appoint that? Alison? Do you know, like, would we get an unbiased, person in there? Would they be appointed by the Department of Justice?
No, the judge. The court would appoint this there because this is Massie and Connor writing to Judge Engelmeier, asking Judge Engelmeier to appoint. Please appoint the special master. Court appointed special master. Like Barbara Jones, who was the special master in the Tish James Trump fraud case. Also special master in the. Oh, she's. She's been special master in so many Things. The Rudy Giuliani files when his stuff was taken in the after the Russia investigation. She was also, I believe, special master asked to be special master in the classified documents case. But that, you know, Eileen Cannon's special master thing got thrown out the door because the 11th Circuit was like, you're full of shit, lady. We're not doing a special master. But she's been around. I would like for it to be Barbara Jones, retired judge, but it's up to Engelmeier. It's up to the judge, if he decides. It's within the law to appoint a special master to oversee this and an independent monitor to, you know, basically audit what the Department of Justice is doing to make sure they're not wrongfully withholding things that are against the law.
Yeah.
It would be up to the judge to decide who that is.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Yeah, usually they let the parties, you know, hey, the judge would be like, all right, hey, government. And hey, Rep. Massey and Kana, give me a list of your proposed special masters or specials master. I don't know how you pluralize it. But then they. Then he decides.
Got it.
All right, next. This is, breaking from the Post. More than a dozen House Republicans joined every Democrat. Seventeen House Republicans actually joined every Democrat on Thursday to pass a bill to extend enhanced Affordable Care act subsidies for three years. The sharpest rejection by GOP members of the party's leadership yet ever. 17. They only got four to sign the discharge petition. Right. But these, as I said, there has to be a reckoning at some point. These guys have to get reelected and Trump doesn't. So who do you break with Trump, or you break with your constituents to support Trump, who's on his way out the door, hopefully, probably kicking and screaming. Prospects for a passage in the Senate are unclear, though, because that chamber has already blocked similar attempts to extend the subsidies. The lack of action in the House led four House Republicans to join the Democrats in December. As I said, that was the discharge petition brought by leader Hakeem Jeffries. This vote Thursday over the objection of House Republican leaders was a result of that maneuver. The bill passed 230 to 196. Seventeen Republicans ranging from moderates to conservatives, supporting it. And from NBC, more Republican defections. The Senate fired a warning shot at Trump on Thursday. Another one voting to advance a bipartisan resolution to block him from using military force within or against Venezuela unless he gets prior approval from Congress. This vote was 52 to 47. It's a war powers measure. It's A Tim Kaine thing. It came after an unsuccessful plea by Republican leaders to sink it and preserve Trump's authority as he threatens a second wave of attacks on Venezuela. Trump has declared that the US Would run the country temporarily after he ordered a military operation last week to capture and extradite Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Five Republicans joined all 47 Democrats in voting yes on this motion to advance the resolution to the Senate floor. The procedural motion Thursday sets up a full Senate vote on the measure next week. That will also require a simple majority and is expected to pass. It is subject to House approval though, and Trump's signature, making it unlikely to become law. But it definitely sends a significant message to Trump that could impact his foreign policy moves. No, it won't going forward, but it could impact him politically, right? I sure hope so in Venezuela and other countries. And I don't know why they didn't put Greenland in there, right?
That's a good question. All right, this next one's from Politico. The House voted Thursday not to overturn a pair of vetoes President Donald Trump made to legislation on a Colorado water pipeline and a Florida flood control project, despite Congress passing the bills with no objections last month. I'm actually surprised by this and disappointed.
Yeah, well, remember, we were like, do they have enough votes to override the veto? Are they going to cave? Looks like they caved. Yep.
The votes represented the first attempted veto overrides of the Republican controlled House following what were Trump's first vetoes of his second term in office. And while Trump has acknowledged that his vetoes were for political reasons, he fucker said it out loud. Most of the House GOP declined to override him. Now the vote to uphold the veto of a water infrastructure project bill in Colorado, which is currently ensnared in the administration's fight with the state's congressional delegation over cuts to a local climate center, got 248 votes just short of of the 285 2/3 majority needed for the override. Just 35 Republicans joined all 213 Democrats in voting for it. That is a bigger break than I actually thought with this House of Representatives.
Yeah, I didn't. 35 Republicans did vote to override the veto.
Yeah. Now the project sits in the district of Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who also defied Trump and earned the White House's ire by supporting a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill compelling the DOJ to release all of Epstein files. The House also voted 236 to 188 to uphold Trump's veto of legislation that would support the local Miccosukee. I think we got a correction on that. And please send me again another correction if I said that wrong. Miccosukee, tribe, which has been at odds with the White House over the administration's plans to build its Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention Center. The bill was endorsed by Florida's Republican senators and several GOP members of the Florida delegation. In the House, 24 Republicans and all 212 Democrats voted to overturn the veto, with one Republican, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, voting present. You fucking coward. That bill needed 284 votes to override.
yeah, so we're still seeing quite a bit of break in the Republican Party, even though they didn't get the two thirds necessary to override those vetoes. There were a couple dozen Republicans that voted with Democrats to overturn it. But yeah, you voted for it unanimously and now you're against it. That's just weird. All right, everybody, next up, we're going to talk to John Fugelsang for Fugal Saying Friday, followed by Sasha Abramski to discuss his new book, American Carnage. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages.
We'll be right back.
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Thank you, Alison. But let me clarify. You were not just on my show. You were the first live guest we had at Sirius XM Progress Primetime in 2026. And, I can't think of a better way to start this mishigas of a year than with you. So thank you for classing up my show.
Well, thank you very much. Thanks for, having me. I really appreciate it. I love coming on your show. I know Frank Coniff was on after me, and I was like, please tell him. I said he's the best.
he got a big head because of you. I did tell him. And now he thinks he's all special, so watch out. But, yes, and, remember back then, back way back, on Friday, before the anniversary of January 6, before we invaded another country for oil, before we started seeing ice murdering, not just American citizens, but white women in this. Remember. Remember the old times of last Friday?
It's like.
I mean, so let me.
What do you say? How many. What the fucks ago was that?
Yeah. Well, we are officially living in what I call the age of what the fuck? Fatigue. And that's sort of the numbness that comes after outrage, you know, when reality has jumped the shark so many times your brain just sighs and orders another drink or a bong hit. Like when there's so much corruption and lies and violence in this fire hose of criminality. Come at you so fast, your brain's just like, yeah, okay, you want fries with that? Whatever. This is.
What the fuck?
Fatigue. This is how gaslighting works. And, I mean, I guess, Alison, the lesson of this week, being shot by police when you're violently attacking the US Capitol is murder. But if you don't want to let masked government thugs into your car, that means you deserve to be murdered. And the only logic I can follow from this week that I'm trying to share is that, Ashley Babbitt, and Renee Nicole Goode are both dead because of Donald Trump's lies.
Yeah.
Several hundred Venezuelans are dead because of Donald Trump's lies. I mean, that's the connecting thread between all of these stories.
Yeah. And now the Donald Trump administration is trying to cover up for the murder of Ms. Good by having the FBI refuse to share evidence with the, Minnesota Bureau for Criminal Apprehension, or the bca, which is the local entity that would normally be cooperating with the FBI. and what I would like to know is when the FBI came to the scene and crawled all over it and took all the evidence, what all did they take? What are they not sharing with the bca? Because the BCA is now pulled out of the investigation. But Tim Walsh is upset about this, and I don't know if Keith Ellison is going to try to revive this investigation, but does the FBI have the ballistics, the shell casings, the body, the vehicle? Do they have everything? Like what? What do local authorities have and what does the FBI have? I. I am very interested in what evidence the FBI is withholding from these local investigators in this cover up of murder.
What do I keep saying on your show almost every week? The. The stupid is greater than the sinister. They are dim, shady, as evil as they are, they are more dumb than evil. And there is no way these actions taken by Kash Patel will make the bureau look good in the history books. And while many people made much of the fact that this was four blocks away from where another government agent murdered an American citizen on camera, we learned there that the state of Minnesota will prosecute. And that was the first time, I believe, in American history that a police chief testified against one of his own cops to send Derek Chauvin away, I have no faith in Cash Patel's FBI. They are going to do a cover up. And at this point, they are famous for that. But I do have a lot of faith in our friend Keith Ellison, because this was not a misunderstanding. This was not a tragic mistake. This was not chaos. In a tense moment, this was the inevitable outcome of unleashing these unaccountable, militarized thugs into our cities and telling them they're patriots instead of what they really are. A gang with badges. The lies they've already told, Allison, the lies they've already told have damned this administration, regardless of whatever their cover up is. It's just like the Epstein files. They're the gang that couldn't smear straight. And the COVID up is always worse than the crime, which, you know, Donald Trump's daily makeup proves that. But these lies, she tried to run them over. Like, there's video. The car's idling, the windows down, the vehicle's blocked, and this agent, this masked government thug, trying to get in the car. And Donald Trump is, like, saying that, oh, the agent, he. He was viciously run over, he's in the hospital, and you can watch this guy jogging down the street like he just finished his CrossFit set. I mean, and then, Christy, there's actually.
New body cam evidence from the local police where he says that he's fine. Actually, when they're asked if he's okay.
The lies are, again, so stupid. Kristi Noem calling this woman's actions domestic terrorism. The widow of an Air Force vet, you know, US Citizen, unarmed observer, shot in the face in her car. If that's terrorism, what do we call mask? Federal agents executing people in broad daylight and then lying about it on camera in 2026, we call that law enforcement.
Right. And I think what's, you know, beyond the domestic terrorism claim made by Kristi Noem, she actually claimed that the ICE agents were stuck in some snow and they were out of their vehicle trying to free their vehicle from the snow. And that's when this domestic terrorist drove at them to kill them, and that this agent shot in self defense. Now, I've seen the videos. This agent, first of all, they were not stuck in the snow. They were not trying to free their vehicle from the snow. That's the dumbest lie I've ever heard. But this shooter, Jonathan Ross is his name, by the way. The Star Tribune has identified him as Jonathan Ross, ICE agent. When he fired that first shot, his legs were clear of the front of her, correct?
Correct. Her wheels were turned to get away from the shooter. The shooter's directly behind the guy to the side of the vehicle. And with those wheels turned, there's no way she's a threat to the shooter. You're gonna say she's a terrorist.
And his legs were out from in front of the vehicle, and he almost shot his fellow officer who was reaching in to unlock, to open the door.
Yeah, she's literally trying to get away from the masked men with guns. And they're calling her the terror because they assume that the outrage fatigue will kick in and we won't care. And you know what I mean. Again, four blocks from George Floyd, different agency, same arrogance, same lie, same dead civilian, same grotesque routine. Blame the victim, smear the dead, warn Americans not to believe the video evidence because daddy, government knows best. This is state violence against the population. And honestly, Christy Gnome is making me ashamed to be a racist plastic surgery addict. And I never thought I'd say that. But I have questions for you about this. Dr. Gill, number one, how significant a factor do you consider it to be that the victim here was a white female? I think that there will be accountability because of that factor.
I think it's significant in that. Right, because we have a two tiered system of justice. They're going to have, a harder time going after her character the way that they went after George Floyd's character, irrelevantly, when he was murdered by a government agent, Derek Chauvin. However, I think what really makes the difference in these cases like this is the ninth ICE shooting in the last four months. And the thing I think that makes the difference here may or may be because she's a white female, 37 year old. But also I think it has to do with the quality of the video evidence from bystanders, just like it made a difference in the murder of George Floyd, that very brave bystander who filmed the entire thing. And, you know, I have long said Canada, says, elbows up. I say, cameras out. In America, cameras out. Have a camera with you wherever you go.
Always, always.
And preserve all that evidence. Because I think that the reason that this stayed in the news cycle longer than the other previous eight shootings by ICE is that this video evidence is just so damning. And so I credit the citizens with their, with their phones and their cameras and their video.
Allison, correct me if I'm wrong. you know, I'm just a mookier. Shiny things confuse me. You're the smart one. But I believe is it legal to film law enforcement doing their jobs in all 50 states?
Yes.
Yes, it is. So here we are. My second question is, do you think they're going to cut this guy loose? Because I've long said that Donald Trump doesn't believe in actual loyalty. He believes in obedience. Loyalty goes two ways. And the second that Pete Hegseth is a drag on him. The second that Kash Patel becomes an embarrassment, the second that Kristi Noem or any of these mutts really become a drag, he will cut them loose. And I think we're already seeing them cutting this ICE agent loose to see that. We're seeing current DHS officials coming out and saying that ICE officers are trained never to approach a vehicle from the front, to never shoot at a moving vehicle. That's in their training to only use force if there's an immediate risk of serious injury or death. They're going to cut this guy loose because he might make them look bad. That's how they're going to try to make it go away.
Huh? Huh? Isn't that a little bit of an admission of guilt? I don't see Donald Trump.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is. I see him holding this guy up as having done the right thing.
One bad apple. I don't know. I mean, again, if it's a threat to Trump's convenience, if it's going to make him look bad, but I think they'd rather cut someone loose and say, yeah, he was bad, and he makes the rest of Vice look bad. The one bad apple will do nothing to change the culture, of course, but, if it's a threat to them, they will. Just like this could be the thing that gets Kristi Noem fired before it makes Donald Trump look bad. Because this.
Well, they were already thinking about firing her because she wasn't building concentration camps fast enough. If you recall, they wanted to replace her with Glenn Youngkin.
That's right. this murder will appear in the first paragraph of Kristi Noem's obituary. It doesn't matter what she does for the rest of her life. She can stop having extramarital affairs with Corey Lewandowski at this point. That won't help. This is what she will be known for. And this could be. I mean, she. Look, come January of next year, we should be looking for her to be impeached. And again, I don't think Donald Trump is loyal to anyone. He will cut them loose if they threaten his good time.
Yeah. The other legal aspect of it, though, is to keep this guy on, keep saying that he's innocent and he did nothing wrong. Write up an OLC memo declining to prosecute, which they'll probably screw up as well, in order to prevent a democratically elected president and a democratically nominated Attorney General and FBI director from reopening this case in 2029. Because, as you know, federal murder doesn't have a statute of limitations. So Ellie Mostall was even like, maybe we should slow roll this. Federally speaking, not. Not state speaking, but federally speaking.
It's going to happen. This is going to be Epstein because.
We would like to keep it out of the Supreme Court's hands. Right. Because they might say qualified immunity and the President. Correct.
They're gonna, they're gonna try to do that. Yeah. And again, we'll see what you know, the state Attorney General decides. But this is going to be like the Epstein files. A gut wound that doesn't kill them, but they'll be bleeding from it for years.
Much rather her be alive and healthy. But again, we've known they were going to kill American citizens and they'll probably do it again. I mean in one week we got to have the Iraq war and Kent State come back to us.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. But I'm also curious as to your thoughts about. I'm going to look up what the statute of limitations is on state crimes real quick. But while I'm doing that, I'm interested in your thoughts on the confluence of January 6th here. Because if you recall, Republican senators in Congress who participated in the insurrection in the coup on January 6th blocked Joe Biden's appointment of a US Attorney for the District of Columbia. We didn't have a U.S. attorney to investigate January 6th in the District of Columbia until November of 2021, almost a year. And their reason, their stated reason, him and Tuberville and Rick Scott and Ted Cruz, all these assholes. Their reason for blocking these nominations for the Department of Justice was that Merrick Garland was only focused on investigating the rioters of January 6th and not investigating these quote unquote violent rioters of the George Floyd protests. And they said until you start investigating the antifa anarchist Marxist mob that created all these cities on fire in the George Floyd protests, we aren't going to let you have a D.C. u.S. Attorney. And that's the reason that it took so long to get somebody in charge of that office.
I know you're not a fan of critiques of Merrick Garland, but again, there is also the thing that they went after the low level guys, but there was never anything going after the people who paid for the buses like Charlie Kirk. There was never any investigation into who built the gallows. And I'm always going to be of the belief that it was the hearings in the Congress in 2022 that actually led to the Jack Smith indictments. I just wish to God that Merrick Garland, who was a very fine man, had come into office making, this a top priority to make sure they couldn't come back again. The greatest sin lies with Mitch McConnell, who could have had two or three Republican senators come over and made sure in the second impeachment that this guy could never get the office again. But I think Democrats and Republicans alike vastly overestimated the decency of the Republican base after January 6th. I think a lot of people naively thought that beating the shit out of cops on the Capitol steps for a lie would be deal breakers to right wing white people. It wasn't. And pardoning Camp Auschwitz dude was just fine with them.
Well, I will say JP Cooney, who ended up on Jack Smith's team, was investigating the Willard war room before Merrick Garland even arrived. When he tried to read in Merrick Garland, there were a couple of Trump holdovers that barred that from happening, who tried to bury this investigation. And that frustrated Merrick Garland, who then opened a specific investigation into the top of the coup in June of 2021. It was called the Investigations Unit. It was made up of about five people. The, what was the name of the deputy Attorney General? The woman, she actually went in and got a second search warrant to look through Rudy's stuff. It was seized for the Ukraine investigation and she wanted to go through it again to look for January 6th evidence. And she got that and was able to do that as Merrick Garland was getting there. We didn't get that D.C. u.S. Attorney until November. He put Windham in there. He had Merrick Garland couldn't get the FBI to execute his search warrants in 2021. So he had the post office cops and the Inspector general go in and do his search warrants. Seize Scott Perry's phone, for example. Now what he. And I'm with you. What I think what he, failed to do was to just fire all of these people at the FBI that were stonewalling him. It took him till January of 2022 to do that. And that's when the FBI started cooperating. It took him several months to investigate Dan Cuono. It took months to get that other, guy who was the Trump D.C. u.S. Attorney to retire. Instead of just firing them. He wanted to go by the old norms. And that maybe slowed things down by a few months, but for me it's all on John Roberts. This wasn't going to go to trial. Even if fucking Dog the bounty hunter came in and indicted him on day one. You're right, you weren't going to get the Supreme Court allowing this trial to go forward. So.
And the evils of this are, on their own, are so historic, I don't think anyone's ever going to forget it. I mean, people will be studying this. they'll be teaching about this in military schools for many years. This is a parallel reality that GOP has built to excuse violence.
And they put it up on the White House website.
The White House website. Could you. And the lies. The lies they put up that the election was stolen, that Trump supporters were peaceful, that Capitol Police deliberately escalated tensions, that Mike Pence committed, quote, cowardice and sabotage by not violating the Constitution. That last part's incredible. Have you ever heard a confession like that before, Allison, that Mike Pence didn't betray Trump. He betrayed the idea that the vice president is like a king wizard who gets to cancel elections. To me, when they said that, that they listed him as a villain on the government website, legally speaking, sounds like a confession to the whole fake elector scheme. You don't accuse someone of sabotage unless there was a plan they refused to help execute.
Yeah, yeah.
And the lie got promoted. You know, the lie got promoted. I mean, five years later, it's like the real story is that Trump faced zero consequences.
Yeah. And. And that stems from, you, know, nobody facing any consequences in the subprime mortgage crisis, nobody facing any consequences in Iran Contra. Nobody consequences for WMDs. Nobody facing any consequences. Consequences for Watergate. You could take it all the way back to the Confederacy, my friend.
Absolutely. Oh, my favorite. Chuck and Nancy saying, impeachment's off the table in 2006 for the Iraq War. We could do this all night. Exactly. We are really good at letting the bad guys get away with it in the name of bipartisan peace. And that's why I keep saying, man, the Democrats running who promise accountability are going to crush it in the fundraising. I mean, people, Ken Jennings, for God's sakes. Mormon, nice guy. Ken Jennings is demanding accountability on this. And that call is not going to get quieter. And Donald Trump is not going to be able to help these Republicans any more than he helped them in 2018 or 2022. It's going to be a bloodbath. And the Democrats who smell blood in the water are going to be the ones people vote for. We have to keep their feet to the fire to make sure that they don't drop the ball on this, because we should have had a Truth and Reconciliation committee last time. By God, we're getting one this time.
Yeah. Make sure we vote for those who are for it, primaries are starting in a couple months, so it'll be interesting to see where we end up. But, I appreciate, as always, talking to you, my friend. It's always an honor. And I know I'll see, you next week as well. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Everybody needs to tune in to tell me everything on SiriusXM progress channel 127. Again, it's weeknights, 9pm Eastern, 6 Pacific. And of course, you have to, if you have not already buy 7,000.
You have to.
Of Separation of Church and State. Hey, it's a New York Times bestseller. You can get it wherever you get your books.
Thank you. Separation of Church and Hate. You said Separation of Church and State. I think there's already been a book written about that.
Oh, Hate. Separation of Church and Hate. Sorry, it's just so. It's so, I'm so used to saying the separation.
Joe Scarborough said the same thing yesterday. It's a very easy Freudian slip.
Don't put me in the same category as Scarborough, please.
Hey, he's like my TV BFF now. Me and Republican Joe. I mean, by the way, can I just say, this week is so messed up that we're invading other countries for oil based on lies, and we didn't even get to that today. Yeah, like, we didn't even get, like. Trump didn't take out a dictator. He finally became one. He is our hemisphere's Putin, officially, and we now own Venezuela. Boy, can you imagine if they commit troops there for a long time in a place full of, narco terrorists and gangs?
Oh, they'll use the Erik Prince mercenaries like they wanted to do to guard the nuclear reactors that they gave to Saudi, Arabia in the Middle East Marshall Plan. I mean, watch.
I feel like Iraq was Vietnam with camels and Venezuela is going to be Vietnam with the cast of narcos. Like, these guys are so stupid. And with all of this, Donald Trump most likely will not be alive to face the consequences of his actions. And the rest of us are going to be shelling out billions in class action suits for the rest of our lives to his victims.
Well, we'll see if Barron Trump has bone spurs. We'll learn pretty quickly. Thank you, my friend. It's always wonderful to see you. And, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back with Sasha Abramski M. To discuss his new book, American Carnage. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. I'm very honored today to be joined by freelance Journalist and author whose writing has been featured in multiple publications both in the UK and the United States, including the Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, Mother Jones, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, the Guardian. He's currently the Authoritarian Watch weekly columnist for the Nation, and he has a book that's available for pre order today. Comes out in wide release January 20th. It's called American How Trump, Musk, and Doge Butchered the US Government. Please welcome Sasha Abramski. Hi, Sasha, how are you?
I'm good. Really good to be on your show.
It's really, really great to speak to you. And this is such an important book. And I believe it's the first book dedicated to the carnage, as you say in the title, caused by Doge, against the United States government. So what prompted you to write this book?
So, back in January, I, was writing for the Nation. I write for them all the time. And I always, sort of scouting around for new stories that are going to have a long, profound impact. And in January, when Trump came in and Elon Musk was appointed to head Doge, it became abundantly clear to me that we were going to see an assault on government that was both different from any other assault we'd seen on the civil service. And it was going to have absolutely vast impacts for the federal workers themselves, for their families, and for millions of Americans who on a daily basis depend on government services functioning properly. And so I started scouting around, I started doing articles for the Nation. I started finding people who were being directly impacted by these cuts. And a few weeks in, I realized that there was way more than an article's worth of material, that I was just getting these extraordinary stories of the way that Doge was operating. People who would tell me, I had this job lined up. I'd spent months and months, doing all the paperwork. The job was finally approved. I moved all the way across country, and I get an email saying, as of 5 o' clock this afternoon, your job is terminated. And then I was speaking to other people who said, well, I've worked for years and years with these departments. I'd always had good performance reviews. And suddenly I get an email from a Doge appointee saying, you're being fired for poor performance. And that's a sort of scarlet letter. What that means is you're never going to work for the federal government again, because anyone who wants to hire you is going to see on your federal record, fired for poor performance. And the stories that I was hearing, scientists who'd worked for years and years on important scientific Projects and all their data was being scrapped. IRS workers who were working as telephone operators, interfacing with the public, suddenly put on furlough. They were being paid, but they were being told, you can't work, you can't do anything. So the taxpayers were wasting all of that money paying people to sit on their hands. And meanwhile, services were getting shoddier and shoddier and shoddier. And these stories just overwhelmed me. I mean, the stories of heartbreak, the stories of people who lost access to their healthcare, health care, the stories of people who couldn't pay their mortgages, just the way that they were being treated. It was the way that Donald Trump treated his contractors when he built hotels and then said, I'm going to stiff you. I'm not going to pay you, because I can, because I'm powerful. And it's the way that Elon Musk treated people when he bought Twitter, and he literally drove people to leave their work by making their workplace deliberately unendurable. That shouldn't be how the federal government operates, but it is what's going on in 2025. And that, to me, was a huge story worth telling. So that's the genesis of this book, American Carnage.
Yeah. And there's so many things I want to unpack there. And I want to start with the most recent thing that you said, making people's jobs deliberately unendurable. I noticed this with a lot of federal, workers who reached out to me, and I'm so glad you put this all in a book. Is with the return to office order. Right. There are a lot of people, generally Republicans, who believe in working in the office, probably because they're really rich benefactors, are the leaseholders in these major office spaces. But it seems to me that they returned them all to work, all these remote workers, some of them who had reasonable accommodations to work remotely, some of them who worked remotely to save the government money, because the government actually functions as a steward of taxpayer dollars to save itself money. And we'll get to that in a second. But they seem to return them to offices. Horrible, moldy old offices with no air conditioning and parking. I, know some people who worked at the Department of Veterans affairs had to pay for a shuttle to get to the building to entice people to quit, to say, this is horrible. These are awful working conditions. And to try and to get people to quit because they know they couldn't lawfully fire them, at least not with the civil service reforms that we've had in this country. And this has been a dream for Donald Trump since his first administration, but he ran up against the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. So talk a little bit more about this return to office order and trying to make these jobs, as you said, deliberately unendurable. Yeah.
So there are lots of really bad players in the Trump administration. He surrounded himself with some of the nastiest human beings in America. One of those people is a guy called Russell Vogt, who is one of the great ideologues of the sort of Trump movement. And Vogt is one of the architects of Project 2025. And he's been anti government for his entire career, but not just sort of mildly anti government. He's got a real personal animus against individuals who dare to work for the public sector. And in the run up to the election, he was recorded telling a group in a private meeting that his aim was to deliberately, quote, unquote, put federal workers into trauma so that every day when they went to work, their life would be so miserable that they would flee the public sector and never again want to work for government. And Vote is now the head of the Office of Management of Budget. He's basically the guy in charge of all the big personnel decisions across a federal bureaucracy that has about 2 million workers, or did before 300,000 of them were fired or forced to leave. And Vote set in motion this process to make the trauma a reality. And Elon Musk was the sort of willing handmaiden to that dystopian dream. So people were ordered to go back into work, but then they go back and they find they didn't have desks, or they find that they had to share an office with 20 other people, even though they were doing confidential work, like they were working for the VA and dealing with private medical records. they were told they couldn't spend more than a dollar a day on their work credit cards. Well, that's ludicrous. I mean, completely ludicrous. You can't book travel. You can't even get on a subway with a dollar a day. It was designed to make their working conditions unendurable. And then Musk piled on the humiliation rituals. And your audience probably remembers this ludicrous order that every week they would have to respond to an email saying, what are the five things you did that justify you being kept in federal employment? Now, this is make worker the worst kind of order. But what made it even worse was people were being put on furlough. they were being put on administrative leave. They were being told, you're not allowed to go into the office, you're literally locked out of your workspace. You're not allowed to work. We can't fire you because there are certain protections. But we're going to mandate that in order for you to receive your salary, you are not allowed to work. But then they would get this email saying, you have to tell me five things you did to justify your continued employment. So this is absurd. If you're working for usaid, you've been told you can't do any work to save starving children abroad or to distribute vaccines that, prevent people getting diseases like polio. You have to sit on your hands. But then to keep getting your paycheck, you have to explain why you've done work that is valuable. Well, this meets no rational criteria at all. It's just part of the whole process of putting people into trauma, of deliberately humiliating them, of subjecting them to these rituals designed to make them feel ridiculous. And the result was very clear. I was speaking to federal workers, and I'm sure you were, too, who were on antidepressants. I was speaking to federal workers who'd had to be put on powerful drugs that are usually used for treating veterans with ptsd. I mean, that's extraordinary that hundreds of thousands of American workers who were working not to become millionaires. Because most workers, despite the conservative narrative, most workers who work in the public sector work for below market rate. They're lower middle class. They're not the wealthy elite. That's Elon Musk and his henchmen. But the people who were being punished were people who were earning 60 or $70,000 a year. And then we're being put into trauma for having the temerity to want to work in the public sector. And those are the stories that I tell. I have 11 workers. They're from eight different agencies. They're spread all across the country. I didn't just want to focus on D.C. i had people in the West Coast. I have people in the South. I have people in the Midwest. I do have some people in D.C. but all of them shared that commonality that every day in January, February, March, April, May, June, which was when I was following them, every day that they went to work was a day that they were being put into trauma by their employer, the U.S. government.
Yeah. And, I'm not sure if you knew or not, but I am a former federal worker.
I didn't.
I was pushed out during the first administration when it was much harder. Russ Vogt was there, and I think he learned a lot of Lessons about how to get around a lot of the roadblocks. The way that they removed me was that they moved my job across the country to entice me to, to quit my job knowing that I couldn't move across the country. Other things went on too. They investigated my podcast and they, you know, refused my reasonable accommodation request. But it was, it was harrowing and now it's on steroids in the second administration as your book cleanly and plainly lays out with specifically the individuals that you spoke to for this book. But let's talk about the money piece because Doge was supposed to come in and save money. But these elites, as you, you know, as you pointed out so astutely, don't understand the role of the federal worker. They don't understand that our role is to be a steward for the taxpayer dollar and save money. My job, ah, in the federal government was to ensure that the Department of Defense paid the Department of Veterans affairs for our healthcare services that we provided to active duty service members. And I saved the taxpayers myself alone about $80 million a year. And so to think that you could get rid of 300,000 plus stewards of the taxpayer dollar and somehow save money is very short sighted and uninformed. So talk a little bit about what you found about what Doge said they were going to do and what they, it actually ended up costing more money after firing all these.
That's a great question because Doge's whole thing was we are the private sector, we are the tech bros. We are the titans of industry who know how to do everything more efficiently. Well a, that's nonsense because a lot of those industries are totally inefficient and bloated. If you look at Elon Musk personally, he has got a deal with Tesla that guarantees him hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. It makes him more wealthy than most countries on earth. It certainly makes him more wealthy than the federal government. Elon Musk, out of his personal wealth, could pay the entire federal workforce and all of their benefits for an entire year and still be left with $100 billion. I mean, that's completely ridiculous. So first of all, the premise that someone like Elon Musk could come in and genuinely find efficiencies is a nonsense. But the second thing is the people Musk hired were not government experts. They were tech bros fresh out of college. Some of them were still teenagers. They didn't know how constitutional government worked. They probably had no idea of the requirements that if something is legally funded by Congress, Only Congress can defund it. They didn't understand the hiring and firing processes, but they did understand how to hack the government. So they basically came in and they literally hacked the financial and the information pipelines of government. And they broke down all the barriers that are there to protect privacy and to protect private information. And they basically bulldozed their way into very secretive computer systems that hold the government systems together. And they went in and they started getting lists of all the people they could potentially fire, not because they were doing jobs that weren't important, but because they were new employees. And new employees have less legal protection. So instead of having to wait months before firing and instead of having to fire for due course, if you find a new employee, they're on probation. So you can just say, hey, your job's done. And so they found all these new employees, including tens of thousands of military veterans who were transitioning to civilian life and civilian employment, but thus were judged to be newbies. And they sent them these letters saying, your services are no longer required. But they didn't really do it properly. I mean, you know, there's a hot. It's not really any way to do it properly, but they did it particularly improperly. So they sent out these basically bulk mail letters to hundreds of people in each department saying, you're being fired because of poor performance. Well, that's illegal. You can't make up a claim of poor performance if there is no reason for making that claim. But they were firing hundreds of people on these nebulous claims. And they were quite literally, in some instances, having U.S. marshals frog march them out of the building, make them hand in their government id. They were frozen out of their government email accounts, and at the end of the workday, they were literally thrown out of the building that they worked in. Well, again, you don't deal with any human being that way. I mean, you know, I could teach an elementary school kid that that's not a respectful way to treat another human being. You certainly don't treat US Government employees that way who are trying to preserve public health, trying to preserve the public environment, trying to get good, reliable data on the job market. All that stuff that we don't think about on a daily basis, but that's pretty vital to the functioning of civil society. If you just randomly kick people out to make up a quota, which is what they were doing, you don't make government more efficient. Quite the reverse. You make government simply grind to a halt. And things that used to get done don't get done. Phone calls that used to be answered are left unanswered. Emails that used to be dealt with are left undealt with workplace safety issues are no longer investigated. Corruption is no longer investigated because the DOJ fired most of its anti corruption team. None of that stuff saves the taxpayer money. Quite the reverse. It cost the taxpayer money because it creates a whole bunch of bottlenecks that didn't used to be there. So let's get rid of this complete pretense that this was about saving the taxpayer dollars. This was not. This was. And this is an ideological project designed to shred not all parts of government, but certain parts. So if you're Donald Trump and you're Russell Vogt and you're Vance and you're Stephen Miller, you're going to defund anything to do with the environment, anything to do with social justice, anything to do with public health, anything to do with diversity, anything to do with overseas aid, including programs that keep children from starving to death in poorer countries. You're going to scrap all of that? What you're not going to scrap is the security apparatus. We saw this in Minneapolis this week, the shooting of an unarmed protester, by ice. Well, ICE is operating now with a budget which has the scale of an army. It's got a budget bigger than the armies of almost every country on earth. Well, if you empower the security apparatuses like that, you are going to fundamentally change the structure of civil society. So let nobody think that when we fire or drive out of the public sector 300,000 workers, we're doing it for a cost saving. We're not. We are taking money away from things to do with economic justice or racial justice or environmental protection or public health. And we are giving that money to an expanded national security state. And that is what Trumpism represents in 2025 and into 2026.
Yeah, and aside from the, you know, the security state and the moving of dollars to the security state, the secret police, for all intents and purposes, and into the coffers of the rich by way of tax cuts, quote, unquote in your research, what do you also find at the core of this? Because, like you said, I think it's moving toward privatization and putting the money in the private sector as opposed to the government sector. Because as just a small example from the Department of Veterans affairs, when we send veterans out into the community for community care, those Doctors can charge 115% of Medicare rates. The health outcomes are worse because they aren't equipped to deal with veteran healthcare issues like the VA is. And the wait times are actually longer. It's worse service, it's worse healthcare, and it's more money. And then you have third party and fourth party administrators who adjudicate the claims like they do in Medicare. That adds money to the private sector. So I was kind of always under the impression that this was not just a move toward a police state, but also a move toward privatization of government functions so that those dollars can end up in the inefficient hands of the private sector.
This idea of privatization, I mean, this is absolutely the case. Look, if you shred the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the way that Doge people plan to do, you make it, impossible to do weather prediction models. Well, this country needs weather prediction models. We need it to keep flights in the air, we need it for farmers, we need it for fire control. Somebody's going to do it. So, rationally, who's going to take over if you shred that kind of agency? The person who's best in place to take over is Elon Musk, because Musk runs a huge fleet of low flying satellites. So if you're trying to understand what's going on, part of it is government. Just the Trump administration just doesn't like certain parts of the government, and it's going to use any and every nefarious measure to break those parts of the government down. But the other part of it is the government is basically shedding obligations that it's picked up over the last hundred years, essentially, and devolving them over into the private sector. And that's a power grab. What it means is that Elon Musk, especially Musk, but not just him, Peter Thiel, the other sort of horsemen of this technological apocalypse, they are collecting vast amounts of data, and that's part of the Doge project. If you look at what Doge was doing, it was vacuuming up data from every government database, from healthcare databases, so security databases, Treasury Department databases, Customs and Border Patrol. If you look at all of the agencies that accumulate huge amounts of information about you, me and everybody else who lives in this country, all of that information was supposed to be carefully compartmentalized, and it wasn't. Doge came in, they broke down all of those dividers, and they scooped up an absolutely vast trove of information. If you want to think of it as a sort of vast identity theft left. That's what Doge was doing. They weren't doing it just out of the goodness or badness of their heart. They had a very specific intent, which is that he who controls information in the digital age accumulates a vast amount of power. And Musk knows how to wield power. Peter Thiel knows how to wield power. It's how they've made a huge fortune over the last 30 years as they've developed their technology companies. Part of the Doge project has always been the accumulation of data that was held by the public sector and the giving it away to the private sector. And that's a fundamental reimagining of how government operates. What it's basically saying is we as the government are not going to do this stuff anymore, but we are going to give technology companies a, ah, huge access to our data. So they can do it, but they can do it at a profit. It's turning basic government services into a for profit model. And at the end of the day, you, me and everybody else who pays taxes in this country, we're going to lose out because we're going to still pay those taxes, but we're going to get worse public services and then we're going to be asked to pay on top of that for things that we used to get as part of our social compact with the government.
Yeah. And something that I just, I'm still trying to wrap my head around is all the propriety information from competitors that Elon Musk now has in his hands because of being able to, to raid all of this government information. Just that alone, what that must be worth to these tech, these tech bros, as you say. It's just absolutely fascinating book. I'm so glad that you are giving a voice to federal workers in the federal government. There's a massive smear campaign to paint our federal workforce as lazy hangers, on who do nothing, and are just awful people. And so, so I'm so very glad that we have this book out there in the world that tells their stories and amplifies their voices and also digs into exactly what the motives behind these oligarchs are when they dismantle things like USAID and pepfar, which is part of that, and things that will result in loss of life at large scales probably that we haven't seen in a very long time. So I appreciate you putting this together.
And I mean just, just jumping in there, that's worth talking about. When we look at what happened when Trump decided that USAID would be in his crosshairs and Elon Musk decided that he was going to literally dismantle usaid. He said he would feed it into the wood chipper and he did. He destroyed the entire infrastructure of usaid. He destroyed all of the overseas contracts that have distributed medication and, vaccines and worked on experimental drugs and distributed anti starvation interventions. Well, the consequences of that there are mathematical modelers at Boston University and a few other places who've been charting it. The number of excess deaths that we're now seeing globally because of this is hundreds of thousands a month. The estimates over the next decade are, millions and millions of people. Well, we're talking about a scale of death at holocaust levels, and I don't use that word lightly, but we are talking about a scale of death that is being deliberately imposed on the world by American policy that will result in millions and millions and millions of people, a disproportionate number of them, children, dying over the next decades. Well, that's being done in our name. That's being done in the name of every American, whether we voted or not. We live in a democracy where the government claims or we live in a pseudo democracy now, but where the government claims to be acting on behalf of us, the American people. And Trump's PR release is always about, we're doing this to strengthen and protect the American people. Well, not in my name. Don't you dare say that you're cutting basic government services, including overseas aid that we know will result in millions of people dying. Don't you dare say you're doing that in my name, because you are not. And you're not doing it in names of any of the federal workers who I talk to who have dedicated their lives to making people's lives better and who have now been kicked to the curb because of this ideological agenda.
Yeah, I agree. And it's devastating and it's going to be felt for years to come. You know, we're talking about how there's a mass retirement right now, at least before Donald Trump took over, mass retirement happening in air traffic control because of the mass firing that happened in the Reagan administration. And so we're going to again, once we hopefully win back the White House, put the government back together in 30 years, we're going to see, we're going to have a mass retirement problem because we aren't going to be able to stagger the federal workforce as they come in. So the implications of this are going to be felt for at least a generation, probably two.
Again, just adding on this, you're absolutely right that if we can rebuild it, we're going to have this problem because we're not going to be able to stagger the hires. So we'll hire a Whole bunch at once. They'll retire at the same time. But the other problem is we're going to find it extraordinarily difficult to attract talent in the first place, because look at all these people. Highly talented scientists, highly talented statisticians, highly talented, financial analysts, highly talented, DOJ investigators who have been treated in the most shabby way imaginable. And those are very skilled men and women. And they're going to find jobs elsewhere in the private sector, in universities. Many of them are going to find jobs in the state government, in places like California and New York, which are hiring on. And many will find governments jobs overseas because there are overseas companies and overseas governments desperate to attract American talent that's fleeing what's going on at the moment. Well, none of those people are going to be readily returnable to the public sector. That's talent. That's gone. When you treat people that badly, when you make it clear they're that unwanted in the federal public workspace, it's going to be a huge, mountainous effort to get them to return. And that, I think, is the biggest problem, that we are basically shabbifying government. I may have made that word up, but you know what I mean. We're making government look and act in a much more shabby way than it did before Trump began this insane project.
Yeah, I can confirm. I can confirm that I did not want to go back to work for the Department of Veterans affairs and the Biden administration, because I, first of all, was just so disillusioned by what had happened. But also, you don't know who's gonna be in the White House every four years. That's a global issue right now. Everyone's like, well, we'll get a Democrat in and everything will be back to normal. But when you are overseas and you see that America has the capability of electing someone like Trump every other term, the future is no longer secure.
This is it.
And I got friends all over the world. And after Trump was elected the first time, there was a sort of universal shudder of horror. But there was also this sense, well, maybe it was a mistake. Maybe sort of America slept, walked into this and didn't quite know what it was doing. But look what happened. Trump lost the election on January 6, 2021. After losing the election, he inspired an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power. It was one of the darkest, most shameful, most dangerous moments in American history. Yeah, Trump literally inspired a mob to go into the Capitol, and that mob tried to hunt down the leadership of Congress and the Vice President of the United States, with the intent of hanging them. Now, I know this is the week of the fifth anniversary, and the White House has put out this extraordinarily Orwellian rewrite of what happened on January 6. But the truth is clear. On January 6, the President of the United States incited a rebellion to stop the peaceful transfer of power because he had lost an election and refused to accept it. And how did America respond? We turned around and we voted him back into office. So it's very hard for someone who's looking at it, from overseas to say, ah, that was just a mistake. We got over Trumpism because we did this twice as a country. So this isn't an aberration. This is fundamentally where America's at in the 2000s. And it's a shameful place to be for a great democracy, for a country which has had this extraordinary history of innovation, of welcoming, for a country that has had a national symbol of the Statue of Liberty for more than 100 years, to be in a place where we would elect people with overtly fascist white supremacist ideology is completely extraordinary to me. And I think it's extraordinary to much of the rest of the world as they look at what's happening.
Yeah, it's disheartening, to say the least. On a scale that I can't even. We're out of superlatives. I am out of adjectives. Sasha, to describe, Describe how I feel about all this and what we've seen over the past eight years. But thank you so much again for giving voices to the federal government workers, for writing this book. It is available for pre order now. It's out in wide release on January 20th. It's called American How Trump, Musk and doge butchered the U.S. government. And, it's by Sasha Abramsky. I really, really appreciate your time today. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share with the Daily Beans listeners before we say goodbye?
Yeah, I think the last thought is, look, we are in an extraordinarily dark moment, but there is always room for change. And the last thing I'd like to leave is, you know, it's very easy to feel disempowered by everything that's going on and the speed at which things are being wrecked. But never, ever forget that there are more of us than them and that authoritarians flourish when they convince people to essentially sit the fight out. But if you get active, if you protest, if you say, this isn't how I want my government to Run. This isn't how I want my public sector workers to be treated. There is power in numbers. And so my final thought is it's too easy to be disheartened in this moment and it's too important. We can't afford to just sit this one out. We have to have to work out a better way forward for this country.
Hear, hear. I think we are going to see a lot of protests given what just happened in Minneapolis. And as the mayor, Mayor Fry said, do not take the bait. They want us to become violent so that they can impose martial law, invoke the Insurrection act, do everything Stephen Miller dreams of. So protest peacefully and be out there in numbers too big to ignore. Right. Thank you so much for joining us today. Once again, everyone, the book is called American Carnage. You can pick it up and pre order. Now available release January 20th. As you know, I like to go to my local independent bookstore, order 10 copies, put them in my holiday season gift closet. It's never too early to start shopping for the holidays. Put them out in your little libraries, your little free libraries around your neighborhood and make sure that we get the word out to support these federal government workers and to make sure that their stories are told. Thank you so much, Sasha Abramsky, for joining us. Thank you, everyone. Stick around. We'll be right back with the good news, everybody. Welcome back. It's time for the good news. Who likes good news?
Everyone?
Then good news, everyone.
We really need your good news stories this week. Any small thing that's happened or big thing, could be Yesterday, could be 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, anything at all, send it to us. any great story that you like to tell when you're among friends. Friends. We would love to retell it here if it puts a smile on our faces. We also love shout outs to loved ones, small businesses, great activism. You're seeing great protests and some protest signs that you love. we also love shout outs to government programs. Self shout outs are really important. We love to hear about what you're doing and what you're making and creating and all you got to do to get your good news read on the air or your good trouble suggestion. Also send us your good trouble suggestions is just pay your pod pet tariff, which means attach a photo of your pet. We'd love to guess the breeds in your shelter pup. We're not very good at it, but we'd love to try anyway. If you don't have a pet, send an adoptable pet in your area. If you don't have that really just grab a random animal photo off the Internet. That works. Bird watching photos, which could be bird watching or you flipping the bird to Donald Trump properties. Or if you have family pictures, baby pictures. let's see. Awkward. Family photos are always fun, but mostly, you know, any photo is going to do as long as it brings a smile to our face. It can be even the stuff that you're doing to, to make the time pass while we're. While we try to fight to get through this. Things that make you happy, things you're making and creating. Maybe you're growing something in your garden or raising chickens or maybe knitting or crocheting. Whatever it is, send it to us.
Maybe you're raising chickens to learn how to crochet and knit. We don't know.
Yeah, like Joyce Vance does that. Yeah, you could be in that group. So send it to us. Dailybeanspod.com click on Contact and please enjoy Moxie Design Studios. My best friend ever in the whole world has revamped our entire Daily beans podcast website, DailyBeansPod.com. let us know what you think. All right, first up is your good trouble, and you're good trouble. Today, quote, an unprecedented amount of our taxpayer dollars gets funneled to U.S. immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE and U.S. customs and Border Protection CBP to carry out Trump's anti immigrant agenda. Congress must act. The ACLU has a tool on their website that will help you create and send your customizable message to your appropriate senators or representatives. This is to get them stop funding ice. They can do this unilaterally.
Great.
So we'll have a link in the show notes to that tool for. On the ACLU website, so you can click there and get started.
All right, thanks so much, Allison. This is from Amy Pronoun. She and her. Hi, ladies. Like so many of us, I was heartbroken and traumatized to see the news out of Minneapolis on Wednesday. On your show yesterday, you mentioned whether or not Ms. Good was a U.S. citizen shouldn't matter. And that's absolutely right. We have a justice system. Law enforcement should never be judge, jury and executioner. But recognizing that Ms. Good was a citizen is important in this context because it demonstrates that ICE never had jurisdiction to do anything with her to begin with. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are not the police. If ICE had reasonable suspicion that she was here illegally, then they should have conducted a Kavanaugh stop initially. Instead, many agents just drove on by her. Also, fuck Kavanaugh stops. no probable cause that she broke any immigration laws. Which is why they didn't stop her to begin with. This murderer had his hand on his weapon when he approached her car. Despite having no jurisdiction to do anything concerning a traffic stop with someone that they have no reason to suspect broke any immigration laws. This is what happens when you have a ginormous budget and hire poorly trained thin skinned white man babies who can't control their emotions. I can't wait for the Nuremberg type trials. Fuck these people. Although I previously submitted photos of my dog's beans and donut, I now submit my late dog Barnabas for my pet tariff. He was found in a box in a dumpster. Somehow someone threw him away. What the fuck is wrong with people? And we adopted him in spite of something he went through. He was a loving, funny and obedient dog and reminded me every day to have hope and faith in humanity. Good boy, Barney. And by the way, he was.
Ah.
Is that a lasso Apso?
Looks like a Pekingese. but that's. I don't think that's looking at the redaction bar. I think that's too long a word to fit under there. But I could. You know, maybe I'm wrong. My eyes are not the what they used to be. But he's adorable. Let's see what we got. He's a Pekingese cutie. I had a Pekingese, so I'm very familiar with these little guy. He was well behaved, huh? Boy, I had my Pekingese was not well behaved. And thank you for that, Amy. I do want to remind everybody that it is actually legal for ICE to stop a US citizen if they have probable cause to believe they are obstructing their shit. Whatever they're doing, they actually have really broad authority to do that. this was still illegal. He still murdered her. He didn't have authority to shoot her in the face three times and pretend like his life was in danger because it was not.
Not.
But you know, because I asked about this too, I felt the same exact way. But some, a few experts who study immigration law, who work in immigration support systems say actually I, they. They can do. Do a stop. Yeah, it's, it's. That's why Trump is using them and not the regular cops because they have fewer restrictions. But anyway, I totally know what you're saying though, because she wasn't obstructing anything. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Anyway, they totally murdered her. Thank you for that submission. Next, up from Jim. Good morning. I'm afraid this falls under the whatever it is category. I'm responding to this morning's program regarding the murder of Renee Nicole Good. In it, you mentioned Governor Walz's plea to not take the bait of the regime and dhs because that will allow them to invoke martial law. I am of the firm belief that whether we take the bait or not, this goddamn fascist regime of treasonous bastards are going to find an excuse to create one that will result in martial law being imposed upon us. I agree, Jim. It's been the plan and the goal since the inception of Project 2025 to eliminate the Constitution and subjugate the country to martial law and authoritarian rule of an oligarch class. So what's the difference if we take the bait or not? Fuck these fascist bastards. I'm 79 and I've been through the fight for civil rights, women's rights, Vietnam War, Watergate. The list of Republican fuckery is endless. I'm not seeing the end of my time here without another fight. I don't need bait. These fuckers want an excuse. I'm all in favor of giving them one and giving them a, result they're not going to like. I've been a pacifist for decades, but my inner rage is pulling me away from that belief. I'm sick of watching our country become something I could and would have never imagined again. This is just me trying to express my anger in the least aggressive way I can. I thank you for giving me this opportunity. And I thank you for the courageous and brilliant work you do every day to speak the truth to those of us who seek it. I will never give up fighting in any way I can for the ideals of this country, that I was taught to have believed in all my life. Thank you again. P.S. not exactly a typical pod tax, but this beautiful sculpture helps remind me of the goodness of which humans are capable. The Veiled Virgin by Straza. Yeah. This is an incredible piece of work, by the way.
It's extraordinary.
What a brilliant masterpiece from Marble Jim. Thank you so much for that. And I just kind of want to clarify. what I think Tim Waltz means by don't take the bait is. He means don't break windows and loot and assault people and be violent and light fires, things like that. Yeah, he's. He's not saying to not show up in massive numbers and peacefully protest, which is what I espouse as our rights. That's our. It's our protected First Amendment right.
Absolutely. Thanks, A.G. this next one's from Anonymous. no pronouns given. Minnesota has the best Sign language. Yes.
Did you see her? When did you see her? When Jacob Fry said get the out of. Out of Minneapolis.
So good. She brought us through the pandemic. I saw this picture of her using the best sign of the mayor's speech on Wednesday. Yep. No mistake of what was being said about the ice shooting in Minneapolis. My pet tax, Ms. Louise Mayhem. She lives up to her last name.
Oh, my God, look at her.
She's adorable. Oh, my God, it's so good. It's so good. Look at this photo of this sign language interpreter.
Yep, that was.
That almost looks like Leah. If Leah DeLaria was a sign language interpreter, that actually looks like that's who that is.
Yeah. The passion that their interpreter has is just amazing. Yeah. So well done, Minnesota. Next up from Laura. No pronouns. Hi, Lagunati. As a Minneapolis resident, I woke up this morning to listen to today's podcast. One thing I wanted to add is that ICE showed up multiple schools and tackled employees in front of children as they were leaving.
Jesus Christ.
CMPR is reporting. In addition, Congresswoman Presley made a, motion to investigate yesterday's shooting and it was voted down. I'm hoping that Renee Goode's death was not in vain and this sparks a full on revolution. And her name can reside in the history books. But in the meantime, we are sad, angry, and scared.
Yeah.
Thanks for being there for me this morning. It was a hard day. My derpy dog and sweet little kitty are providing me with comfort and care. Picture attached. I'm sure you can guess his breed. It's pretty obvious. Thanks for keeping us sane. There is no breed given, but I'm gonna go with a golden retriever.
Sure looks like one.
And a beautiful calico. And Laura, I can't even like, I, know how I felt these last couple days. I can't even imagine being a resident in Minneapolis. I have so many good friends there that are just beside themselves.
Yeah, all, right. This is from Sarah, pronounced she and her. You asked for photos to make you smile. So I present to you our basset hounds. Pictured our Lucy, the gentlest spirit you'll ever meet. And Finn, a damn psycho and home destroyer. But at least he's really cute. We listen to the beans together every morning after school drop. And I truly don't think I'd survive these times without you. Sending you gratitude, love and sloppy dog kisses from Iowa. Sarah, Lucy and Finn.
Look at the sploot and then look at the ear sploot.
They're so cute. Finn. Finn.
Finn.
Finn.
Finn.
Finn. Come here.
Finn. Lucy. Lucy, I'm home. Come here, Lucy. Hi, babies. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks again so much to John Fugelsang for joining us today and Sasha Abramski and his incredible book. Make sure you get it. It's called American Carnage. Comes out on my birthday, January 20th. That should be your birthday present to me is to buy his book for yourself. I have a copy. You do not need to send me one. But just thank you all so much for your good news. Please continue to send it in. I hope everybody has a restful weekend. Andy and I'll be in your ears on Sunday for Unjustified. I'll be on the Midas Touch Network with Katie Fang. I have some very, exclusive breaking news, from, a credible source and a whistleblower about the Epstein files. I'm going to reveal that on Sunday at noon on the Midas Touch Network as well.
All right, wonderful. Thanks Alison, for all your. All your work, all your work work.
You too, my friend. Thank you for being there. just seriously thank you for being there. And everybody will be back in your ears on Monday. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health and take care of your family. I've been ag.
I've been dg.
And them's the Beans. The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Allison Gill with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg. Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarlane with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studio. Music for the Daily Beans is written and performed by they Might Be Giants and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Media Network, a collection of creator owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice. For more information, please Visit mswmedia.com msw media.