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It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com, that's SPREAKER. Dot com get paid to talk about the things you love. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Oh, it's it could happen here. And it by goodness, it continues to. I'm Robert Evans. Sophie, my producer, just noted to me that we should probably introduce Shereen Lani Eunice since you've recently joined the team and have been on several episodes and we just kind of rolled with it. Shereen? Wait, what are you? Who are you? Where are you? When are you? Those are a lot of questions I can't answer. Yeah, you are a frequent ghost on guest ghost. Ghost ********. You're a producer with iheart. You're on the show. Ethnically ambiguous. Yeah. With Anna Bosnia. And you are our, our, our bud. I am your bud. Thank you. Yeah. I joined published, recently published poet, a filmmaker, a depressed person. You know, I took all the boxes. Sophie, Bury that body the other year. Yeah, that was between us. Yeah. I don't know why we need to put that on, Mike, between you and Lake Mead. Hmm. OK, well, that everyone's gonna know where their body is, so appreciate that I find it soon anyway. But yeah, I it's really fun to talk to y'all, so it's nice that we can record me doing it now for work. Cool. That's is that a good intro? Yeah, that is a good intro. We're really excited to have sharing on her team. It's something that we've been hoping that would happen for a while now and we're just feel very fortunate to have her voice as part of our as part of our very tight knit group. And you're welcome listeners. *************. I feel very honored to be a part of such a small tight knit group, especially because everyone, I'm not even saying this to fish please, but everyone here is much smarter than me. And so I've been learning a lot and I don't do nearly as much research as y'all do, so I hope to be. The like a. Someone representing the audience that knows nothing. You know what I mean? Like that's my role here is to really give people to let people be seen who have their heads empty like mine. So representation matters. Well, I feel like we had empty headed represented when I joined the team, but fair enough. What are we? What is our? Who are we today? What are we doing today? Where are we today, Chris? You're the President of this episode. Oh no, wait, that's bad. Alright, so I'm gonna. I I think, I think I have to assassinate myself is the way this works. But yeah, we're. Legally, actually, yeah, that that. I think next episode I assassinate myself. This episode I'd get unelected or something. But yeah, we're we're we're talking about sort of. 22 convergent paths of how we got to like the most recent disaster with the most recent. Well this isn't even the most recent disaster anymore, but I how, how, how, how we got to the place where Roe V Wade is about to die and you know, there's two threads and tomorrow we'll be talking about the terrorism but today we'll be talking. I say we mostly shareen, but yeah we're, we're we talking about how the the sort of like half a century long electoral movement that got us to this place. Yeah. It's really interesting because, I mean some of it is self-explanatory and some of it isn't, but I think it's interesting to go back in time and really figure out how we got where we are. So I think it's pretty obvious that like, Republicans use the abortion issue to forge coalitions with like right wing and fundamentalist Christian voters, but Democrats are also using it to attract Women Voters and it seems like neither party will risk modifying. The Richard position that it has for fear of alienating those who the abortion issue has helped attract, because it feels like it's this just we're at a standstill. It's not solvable, but it's actually the when you look at the history, it's pretty, I don't know, it kind of makes sense how we landed here. And every presidential candidate or any candidate in general will present these countries issues with like a sense of urgency, especially this issue. But it really feels like they're just using it to attract voters and then it gets ignored. But how did how did how did abortion become a partisan issue in America? The polarization of the parties on this issue really started in the 1970s and. Party leaders have started moving farther and farther apart on the issue, and a lot of scholars say that this is a combination of like grassroots activism and also establish also just political strategy. So in the 1970s the politicians used on abortion and didn't break down along the party lines. Republican President Gerald Ford, he opposed Roe V Wade, but the first lady was an abortion rights supporter. And then his vice president Rockefeller, he presided over the repeal of abortion restrictions in New York. And in Congress, Republican Republicans voted against abortion about the same rate as Democrats. So there wasn't a huge black and white good evil kind of thing going on. And it started to change in the 70s. So during his presidential campaign in 1972, Nixon began striking out anti abortion position or staking out anti abortion positions as part of a strategy, a strategy to appeal to Catholic voters and other social conservatives. And after he won with the majority of Catholic votes, Republican strategists began using the same tactics and Congress. And they were forging coalitions with evangelical groups around opposition to abortion. And it was really this larger effort to make the Republican Party painted as it's like Pro family to help mobilize like socially conservative voters that really value this idea of this, like traditional and quotes family. So it might have been both grassroots organizing, but I think both of these efforts really focused around this idea of this. Traditional quote UN quote. Like Christian good family. And I think that's still the a lot of the intention today is to really promote that. And why abortion is wrong is because it kind of goes against this idea of what a family should look like or how family should act like in particular how mother should act. So yeah, thoughts? Yeah. I mean like I definitely think we see that. Everywhere that type of propaganda is, you know, they're obviously and then they're in like the like, oh, this is like hidden in type thing. But yeah, I mean Chris has talked about that quite a bit on certain things. So maybe Chris would be best to to deep dive on that a little bit. Yeah. I mean I think there's, there's, there's, there's a couple of things that have been like. Like, they're percolating around this time, too, which is also like, this is this is a period of, like, really intense feminist mobilization. And this is also a period where. You know, the one of the sort of rights driving issues had been integration, like like a proposing integration and like promoting segregation. And by this. They've like. They've basically lost that. And so they need like something, right? And like, that's something winds up being this vision of this sort of like of this, like very specifically white Christian, patriarchal family and and I think it's also interesting that like. You know, if you look at the initial abortion stuff is largely, yeah, it's like, OK if the Republicans are targeting Catholics, right? And the reason we're targeting Catholics because evangelicals in particular, like, haven't quite figured out what they think about this yet. And this kind of like. Family stuff and the I don't know it, it ties into this, this whole sort of this attempt to get evangelicals into politics for the first time or not for the first time, but they've kind of been out of it for a while, like on this sort of. Like, well, the rapture is coming. So, like, what's the point of dealing with, like, this impure, like secular sort of politics thing? And yeah they they get sort of roped back into it by the the the the polarization of abortion and by making. Like? By by by making abortion in the family this incredibly sort of central part of of what the Republican platform is and by sort of like. You know, like attempting to destroy the kind of like. More moderates like Rockefeller, liberal wing of the Republican Party who just like get stomped, don't exist anymore. Yeah, no, that's a good point. And I think it's interesting because I feel like we see a lot of candidates go back and forth on the issues now. But it even started. I mean it's been going on since ever since forever because politics are all scam. But Ronald Reagan really illustrates the shift because when he was a Governor of California in 67, he signed a law that loosened abortion restrictions. But in his 1980? Presidential campaign, he called for the appointment of anti abortion judges. So he's just, I mean just like any political candidate, he's going with the the tides, he's trying to get elected. He's not really. No one has actual morals that they stand on. And only after 1988 does it show that more Democrats than Republicans were supporting access to abortion. Because before then it was pretty, pretty much even if not just a little bit. Yeah, it was mainly honestly split over whether or not you were ******* Catholic, right? Like that was the primary determining factor. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's an interesting thing there too, because a lot of you know, because it's like the anti abortion people see Reagan as like their guy. Then he gets into office and he's like, not as strong on it as they wanted and, well, we'll get into some of what that leads to next episode, but. Yeah, there's. This, this was, I think fundamentally when you're looking at like the anti abortion movement, it's a, it's a Christian nationalist power grab. And at that point they had just figured out the strategy. So it was good enough that they were able to help get Reagan into office, but it was not consolidated enough that Reagan really felt the need to do much more than pay Idlib service, you know? Yeah. Well, just in example, if everyone campaigning on something that they know will get them voted and then kind of ignoring it once they're in office because like, it's served its purpose. I I think there's another interesting thing that's going on here with that too, which is that at this point. So this is this is sort of the the the John of like Jerry Falwell and the majority and. OK. If you want to show me talk about this for a really long time, go listen to my phone on the moonies and how Reverend Moon also was a huge part of this. But there's like this giant shift in like the technology of recruiting voters where this is where you start getting mailing list organizing. This is where you start getting like, you know, enormous list of people to, to call for fundraisers. This is where you start like. You know, this is where you start basically getting like the, the weird Facebook letter, like chainmail things that we have now. But like, they were just like mail people like scare stories about like, here's like an actual baby that Planned Parenthood killed and like that also. That's what I was saying by, like the obvious things propaganda wise. But yeah, I I think that it's also like things on TV, things in movies. Yeah, yeah. They're like. Uh. Yeah, they kind of try to pull at the heartstrings of some invisible heart they think people have. But even, like, like, TV commercials? Yeah, things that like the traditional family that like, yeah, the nuclear white Christian family is like, the default basic family. And anything that strays from that is abnormal. It's still the case now, honestly, I think, like, yeah, calls for diversity or like putting a black friend in the show still, you know what I mean? Like. Yeah. Really? Yeah, I I have. I eventually I will do the entire rant that I have on this. But like, like, this is the thing that, like, this is a powerful enough force that, like, for example, if you look at like every Asian American movie in the US, the the entire plot of every Asian American movie is trying to repair is a family, like in an Asian family trying to become the white Christian nuclear family but having problems with it because they're having family issues that get resolved and having problems with it because they're Chinese. Yeah. And it's like, it's it's this, like, warping sort of like, yeah. Structural basis of society that like it's like a black hole that like it tears the fabric of reality and pulls everything else into it. You know, I I have the same gripe with a lot of there's in general, like movies and TV shows about marginalized people, Middle Eastern people. It always seems like the crux of the problem is cultural and overcoming whatever issue the culture is having to to disrupt this perfect white Christian life that. It's presented as the ideal, but going back to abortion, you sorry, no, don't apologize. I would love to rant about this with you on another episode. You know what won't disrupt? The white Christian hegemonic culture in the United States, capitalism, the products is well, actually, it eventually will, because the nature of extractive capitalism and endless growth will inevitably alter the world in ways that makes the lifestyles that those kind of people harken back to in their propaganda fundamentally untenable and impossible to exist on any kind of scale. But I don't know what my point was here. Here's some. Here's some *******. Oh, we're back. We're back. Let's go to the late 80s, early 90s. So the ladies, so ladies, both Republicans and Democrats. At this point, they were trying to appeal to the Center for a while so they can remain as appealing to voters as possible. Mary Ziegler is a law professor at Florida State University who has studied the history of abortion and the abortion debate. And she wrote in the in the Washington Post that the 1990s, in the early 2000s. For instance, many abortion opponents, they devoted their energy to supporting incremental restrictions like a ban on dilation or extraction, which is a technique for abortions later in pregnancy that opponents call partial birth abortion. And this restriction was eventually passed at the federal level in 2003, and is far less sweeping than the harp heartbeat bills that many Republican voters favor today, which ban abortions, as you know, at six weeks. But Democrats, meanwhile, they were somewhat, like equivocal on the abortion debate during this time period. Bill Clinton. And in his 1992 campaign, he famously said that abortions should be, quote, safe, legal, and rare. Hillary Clinton used the same language. When she was running in 2008. Yeah. Like, would you still show that, too? Yeah. You you really do. It's like, just absolutely cowardly. Yeah. Like, we support it, but also don't. Don't do it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. And obviously, more recently, both sides of the abortion debate, they've come to seek broader change. Among abortion rights supporters, there's been an increasing awareness of reproductive justice, and this term was actually coined in 1994. And it describes an approach focused not just on the legal right to abortion but on safe, affordable access to a range of reproductive healthcare. As well as the ability, the ability to parent children safely. And it was in the 90s that a lot of organizations started to be formed to help support this, to help. Portion rice justice like kind of take form. Sister song, which is the women of color reproductive Dresses Collective, was formed in 1997 and it was by 16 organizations of Women of Color that formed these four mini communities. They were largely made-up of Native American, African American, Latina and Asian American communities and they recognize that we have the right and responsibility to represent ourselves and our communities. And I think this is important to note only because. I don't think women of color get enough credit for really like, leading the. The the fight to get reproductive rights. I feel like a lot of. I mean, I can **** on white feminism all day, trust me. But especially when it comes to this, a lot of white women are like heralded as, like, I don't know these political heroes when really most of the time with most issues when it comes to this women of color in the background doing most of the work. That's another episode, but Sister Song defines reproductive justice. As the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy have children, not have children, and parent the children we do have in safe and sustainable communities. So it puts a lens on the emphasis of affordability of abortions, as well as on the legal status that it needs to have to even be safe and affordable, because the right of abortion means very little that we can't afford health care that we need. And this is something that Kimberly Inez McGuire said she's the executive director of Unite for reproductive gender equity called Urge. This is a rights group focused on young people, so there's a lot of things that like emerged during. This more recent time that came focused on more. The justice aspect versus just the the right to have it because it does, doesn't do much if we have the right, and yet it's still inaccessible. O in the last five years, reproductive justice activists have campaigned to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which was first passed in 1976, and it bars federal funding for most abortions. It restricts Medicaid coverage for abortions, and the amendment makes it difficult for many low income Americans to pay for the procedure. The opponents of the Hyde Amendment have had some successes in in 2017 and 2019, Democrats in Congress introduced the each E ACH Woman Act, which would repeal. Side and allow Medicaid to cover abortions. But Democratic candidates have campaigned to repeal Hyde as well. During her presidential run in 2016, Hillary Clinton called for the repeal of Hyde and the whole Democratic Party followed suit, which is something that would have been unthinkable in the years when her and her husband were calling for abortion to be quote UN quote rare. So things have progressed a little bit again, I think. Unfortunately though, most of it is for following the trends versus actual morals, but that's my opinion. But on hide. It feels like what has changed in the last five years is that a community of people led by young people, women of color, decided that the status quo was not good enough. So again, it's just people. In the background doing most of the work. And at the same time, abortion rights activists have been working to reduce stigma around abortion and to present the procedure as a normal part of medical of medical coverage. In 2017, in response to efforts to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood, activists and ordinary people shared stories of their abortions under the hashtag shout your abortion. So the left party, the Democratic Party, is definitely leaning now, obviously, to be abortion positive, but I also think it's definitely used. As a way to attract voters more than anything else, and. Yeah, I mean with our current President right now, we all know he's. Biden has had a mixed record on abortion, which is like very good, a good representation of just how flip floppy politicians can be. Because when he was in the Senate in 73, he was a 30 year old practicing Catholic who concluded that the Supreme Court went too far on abortion rights in the Roe case. He told an interviewer the following year that a woman shouldn't have the sole right and say to what what should happen to her body. That's a quote, uh, the sole right to say which happened to her body. She doesn't think women should have that. And by the time he left the vice president's mansion in 2017, he was 74 years old. And he argued a far different view, that government doesn't have the right to tell other people that women can't control their body. Which is interesting because he he not only was very vocal about being anti abortion, but like he. Use like in 1981, he crafted the binded amendment to ban the use of foreign aid for biomedical research related to abortion. So he was not only like, vocal about it, he actually tried to. Push it back. And he repeatedly voted for the tide amendment that prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions, including Medicaid, as I said. And both of these policies remain in place today despite efforts by Democrats to end the ban on the use of federal funds. Here's one thought that I have, and again, I I I continue to be an advocate, and don't take this the wrong way. We should learn from the right and how they made the progress they did with abortion. There are lessons there and one of those. Lessons is that. When you make something into the kind of issue that can get a politician elected. They will not actually pursue that issue if it's difficult unless you create true believers and put them into politics, right? Reagan got elected in part on abortion. Reagan didn't really do much about it. It was it was diligent periods of time of not just like putting people in politics who believed in the cause, but also of applying brutal pressure to elected leaders over decades. You didn't confirm or conform and we don't have that kind of time with like let's say climate change. But the same basic tactics need to be followed, which is you need to be vicious when you when your leaders, when the people you elect don't move on these issues. You need to be vicious and like a concerted and organized and like you need to come down on them like the hammer of ******* God, you know like that's that's. You win. But I think that's the biggest difference with the Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats, unfortunately, are far more cowardly in voicing what they want, even even now. Biden is pro abortion, quote UN quote. But he hasn't even said the word abortion out loud ever. He's. Statement in a tweet that there's a website, there's a there's a website that is called has Biden said abortion yet and there's just a big no on it right now, obviously, but. He has like cast this evolution of his views as a like, like wrestling with his teaching of his faith or whatever. But it's obviously more it reflects a political calculation more than his views of ******* religion. And in 2015 for example, he said I'm prepared to accept that at the moment of that the at the moment of conception there's human life and being, but I'm not prepared to say that to other God fearing, non God fearing people. They have a different view. Does that mean he's like, because he's a coward? Nothing the **** does that? He's a coward. Joseph robinette? ************* Biden. What? Yeah. Christing **** does that mean? Yeah. He also has quote has been quoted to say that this issue is the. Like the most difficult thing he's had to wrestle with as a Catholic kind of thing, he's definitely made it this like thing he needs to overcome or whatever the **** like it's a religion, right? Sure, it's a religion and your religion has been at the very least. What I'll say about the Catholics is they did not adopt this as like a a venal political strategy, which the evangelical right did like they've been. The Catholic Church has been consistent on this for a minute now. So I get why somebody who is legitimately a believing. Catholic would have to struggle with this, but the way you what what you what you say if you're actually not like a *******. If you're not being a ******* goober about it, what you say is, hey, uh, this is tough for me because of my faith. But this is the United States of America, and my faith does not dictate what other people get to do. And so I support the right to access to abortion. That's what you said. Please, can you do that? To bring that up, because I just think the Democratic Party has conducted themselves in a really cowardly way when it comes to stuff like this versus Republicans are so outright, even like volatility, trying to tell you how they feel. But yeah, that's that. Where where do we go from here? I don't know. Yeah, the world is the world. It certainly is, Shereen, and we'll be, we'll be back tomorrow, Chris. What's our focus tomorrow? Tomorrow we're going to look at the other side of how they got abortion other than like sort of running it as an electoral issue, which is they did a. In amount of terrorism that is so large that like most of the people talking about the terrorism, missed most of the terrorism. Yeah, it takes a minute to list Speaking of terrorism. That's the end of the news ads. Ohh ads. I I know I just wanted to say there is post roll ads, but if you're listening to them. That's a choice plus, hey, we always support people making the choice to listen to our wonderful advertisers like the Washington State Highway Patrol and lately Taser. And yeah, they've been running. Look, we did, we don't approve that. We're getting them removed. But it is funny. Can I get a Taser first or not? Is that not what that is? I mean, Shereen, we can expense you a Taser. Oh, ****. Great. I'll, I'll send the list of what I want. Perfect. OK, bye. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter. Bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly gambling problem call 188853230. 500 You love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler. Three reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps. Knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also have been on The Amazing Race twice and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to. Guest. It it it it happened here. The thing that happened here was an anti abortion terrorism high and Christopher Wong. I'm posting this. We're doing this really speedy with me, Shereen Robert Garrison and Sophie. Hi. Yeah, hi. Don't feel too speedy, take. I mean, this is an important issue, yeah? We're going through the interest. We can get to the. We can get to the content faster, get to the meat. Yeah, let's get to the ******* meat. Let's get to the sandwich portion of the I don't know what I'm doing. You're making talk about terrorism. We're talking about terrorism, Sophie. Your favorite thing? Ohd first save the day. O OK, if we've talked about sort of abortion as a as a legal issue. But running parallel to the sort of legal electoral campaign against abortion was a wave a a systemic campaign of terror that ranged forever from, you know, sort of individual personal humiliation and terrorization of individual women seeking abortion to, like, nail bombs and blowing abortion providers heads off with shotguns. Yeah, so it it's it's actually bad, obviously, but I think there's a tendency among people who look at anti abortion violence is sort of like isolated from its historical context. Which is that OK, the American right has always ruled by terror from, like, literally as early as extermination campaigns against indigenous people who like whose land they stole to, you know, the sort of horrific psychological abuse and violence inflicted against slaves on their implantation, who there's an entire history of, like, denying abortion people to slaves for. Numerous reasons. So you know, there's no reason really to expect that anti abortion militants like wouldn't be violent. And I I think it's worth noting that that the tactics of of the sort of militant wing of the anti abortion movement which are things like arson bombings and assassination are these, these are the key tactics of the of of the the segregationist movement when they are funding against integration. And you know, low and behold, I'd like as as abortion becomes the political glue for the right after they sort of. OK, well, they they sort of lose the fight over integration. They they lose, they lose the ability to legally say like that you can't do integration. But a lot of the sort of de facto segregation like still exists. But yeah, like as I do that like you still see. You know you you you see a new generation of sort of right wing militants, like taking the tactics of the old right wing militants and using them to kill people. Which is. Yeah, yeah. For the for the record, yes. That is our official position. Yeah. Wow. We're taking a bold stance here, radicals. So I think we should start with someone who was not killing people because I I think it's it's useful to see the sort of like the arc of of how this movement goes. O John O'Keefe was a a Catholic antiwar protester. He he his thing was OK, so he's anti abortion, right, but he wants to fuse like the anti nuclear anti war movements with the anti abortion movement sort of in in the wake of Roe V Wade. And this doesn't work because the anti war and the antinuclear movements are. Like, driven by leftists and feminists and they're like, no, like, **** ***. Like we're not going to like we want people to have abortions. O. You know, but but he he he still is like dead set that there should be this sort of like direct action against abortion clinics. And he he managed to convince this, convinced this like Quaker peace activist named Charles Fager to like teach the anti abortion movement the sort of like techniques of like the civil rights movement and do like nonviolent civil disobedience. And so people like, like in the in the early 70s, like, as azro like is happening, people start like chaining themselves to abortion clinics. And you know, like, I think this is if if you've been around the left long enough, like these are tactics I think you'd recognize, but these, this, these are very, very different campaigns. Then you're sort of like chaining yourself to a tree like the. And the biggest difference is like the extent to which the focus is just purely on terrorizing people. So I'm going to read a quote of, like, what these protests actually look like from the book living in the crosshairs, the untold stories of anti abortion terrorism. The protesters stand at the entrance to the clinic's parking lot and badger the patients. When they come in, they get screamed at the protesters write down their license plates. They send them cards. They make phone calls to their homes. Protesters also swarm clinics and harass the people who work there. Those window blinds, Christina, who's at works at a clinic, explained while pointing at the huge windows that surround the conference table. In one of her clients, you pull them down. You can look through them and you could find the protesters at the windows looking in. And Krista, who's the person who's talking about this? Like she describes? Like. The the the like these protesters would walk up to her and like say her kids names you know and in order to get like the the the the doctor into this clinic who's doing the abortions like they have to smuggle him in like that he he can't park in the parking lot because the abortion like protesters will get to him so they have to they have to like smuggle him in in in Chris's car. And like even then people follow them constantly like the the doctors and nurses have to like change their roots to work everyday. They have these like decoys they have to use like yeah and for the record. We've gotten reports from folks who work for abortion access organizations saying they are now in multiple states using drones to follow people as they leave the choices that they're on their license plate numbers. Yeah, that God. That makes sense, but it yeah. Like these people like Krista the, the, the the person I was talking about. Like she she had to transfer her kids to a private school that, like, knew what her job was so that her kids wouldn't get harassed and like, well, we'll come back to this sort of, quote UN quote, nonviolent stuff later. But like, even even in, it's sort of like nonviolent phase, this is a terror campaign. Like the the the the goal of this is to terrorize everyone involved. Like stalking them by intimidating them, by harassing them to get them to not do abortions anymore. Yeah. Making patients or people that want abortions too afraid to get them and people that provide them too afraid to provide them. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and but you know, this doesn't really work. In the 70s and by the time you shoot the 80s, it starts to get really violent. In in 1982 there's this guy named Donnie Ben Don, Benny Anderson and his two nephews Matt and Wayne Moore carry out the the, the first anti abortion, the first action of this, this right wing anti abortion. And also they're like really anti Gaelic. They that they have a thing later on where they like they have this giant celebration for like the Saudis beheading 2 gay dudes or three gay dudes. What, like they're they're horrible. Yeah, this network is called the Army of God. And these guys? Yeah, they're that sounds familiar. Actually, in some ways, like there were very sort of quintessentially modern terrorist organization in that, like, they don't, they don't have, like, a command structure. It's not Even so much essentialized cells. It's just like people just sort of can freely affiliate to it and, like, use this name to carry out attacks. And the first one of these is it's it's this guy Donnie Betty Anderson. He kidnaps Dr Hector Zevallos and his wife Jean and originally like the their plan is to kill them Don Betty Anderson, like. He. But what he writes about it is that he has been talking to God and he's been talking to Archangel Archangel Michael and they have commanded him to go and kill this person. College. And eventually, like negotiators fortunately were able to, like, talk them down and. Like the the doctor makes this, like this tells them like, yeah, no, no, I'm not going to do abortions anymore, that they let them go. But yeah, I think like it is important to note that like. Among people who are like this ********. And. And this isn't, you know, and I said, like, there are people, a lot of people who are more moderate than this. Like, the the whole sort of talking to God. Thing like that is not uncommon. No, that is, like, very common. No. These are all people who in their churches will, like, say a bunch of gibberish words and tell everyone each other that they're speaking in, like the secret language of God that God has, like, speak into their brains, speaking in tongues. Yes. Yeah. So like, yeah, like and I think, I think like there's some tendency to like. Like, I've seen, I've seen people try to write this off as people who are mentally ill and was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. These are these are just they're not mentally ill. They just believe in a different world than you do. Yeah. And they're willing to use violence to make their world real. Yeah. Yeah. And the the letter that they write I like while you're holding people captive says, quote. Those who truly love God would kill the baby killers. And it turned out later that they've been funding their activities by robbing abortion clinics. And actually that's the thing that doesn't that I don't think I've ever seen any of the like. Like I don't think it doesn't get included in like the list of terrorist things people do against abortion clinic, but they get robbed a lot. Like there's like a lot of these militants are just robbing abortion clinics to to fund their stuff. And and this is again like the thing you have to keep in mind when you're trying to like if you literally believe the things that these people literally believe, this is the only moral thing to do. Yeah, if there if there were just try and like get in their heads. If there were an organization literally murdering babies. Every single day. This would be the right thing to do. That's like you you have to actually like, they're not crazy. They fundamentally exist in a world that is as different from from the one you live in as the world in a ******* marvel comic. Like, it's it's it's just another reality that they exist within. Yeah. And like you, you get sort of like, you get like, like, I don't know, you called like people who are trying to play the centrist angle who are like, oh, like people on the left don't understand that. It's like, it's not about autonomy. And they literally believe they're killing babies. It's like, that doesn't like aid. No. But like, yeah, like, yeah, the fact that they literally believe that abortion is killing children, the only thing that does is make them more fanatical and more militants. And it's like, yeah, like, I used to sort of believe, like, I used to believe that, like, oh, like, people don't understand. They really think they're killing babies. Thing. And then I went to college and I, like, read it, started reading the history of genocides, and I started reading about like, what how how common it is for people who commit genocides to literally believe that if they don't do the genocide, that the people, their genocide are going to kill them. And it was like. Oh. Oh no, no, that that actually, that just makes you more likely to do violence like it's. And, yeah, you know this. This goes exactly how you expect. In fact, and this is one of the other things that they're very effective about, which is each attack like radicalizes more people to start doing attacks. So Remember Remember John O'Keefe, the guy who was doing the nonviolent stuff? Like, he starts questioning whether nonviolence is like the right tactic, and he never like. Bombs anything. But he, like stops condemning violence in public. And this, this goes really, really, really badly really quickly. The Army of God publishes this like, it's initially a very clandestine thing, but they publish this manual about how to attack abortion clinics, but has stuff from like, like pouring concrete, overheating pipes, how to make bombs. They have this thing that the anti abortion people do a lot, which is pouring bucolic acid, which smells like. It it it it is the thing that makes vomit smell bad. Like you you can. You can smell like 2 parts per 10 million. Like of this thing. Like in in a room and they'll take, like a syringe. No. Inject it into a facility and like, like, one drop of this stuff is enough that, like, you can smell it, like months later. There's no way to, like, easily clean it. And eventually, like, they're pouring gallons of this stuff, like into abortion clinics, into the ventilation system. Yeah, yeah, it's there are more than 100 of these attacks to date, too. Like, it's they they've done this a lot. Yeah. By 1984, this whole thing goes into OverDrive. I'm going to read a quote from from the book Armed for Life, the Army of God and Anti Abortion. There in the United States. The National Abortion Federation identifies 30 incidents of arson or bombing in 1984, exceeding the previous seven years combined. The series of bombings included, but was not limited to, the offices of the National Abortion Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington DC, as well as abortion clinics in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. The signature of the Army of God was also found at a subsequent clinic bombing in Sartosa, Florida. One of the other things that they do that is that is great is so they have they have a declaration of war that the Army of God sends. They also like. Like, specifically send a death threat to Harry Blackmun, who is the Blackman was who was the guy who wrote the Supreme Court Justice who wrote Roe V Wade. Which is like, you know, this is a fun thing if you've been like the whole discourse cycle, but, oh, we shouldn't produce at these houses like, yeah, man, a terrorist group like threatened to kill the Jesus who wrote this thing, like. And and that guy. The the guy who wrote that eventually carried out like this enormous bombing campaign where he started strapping like 20 pound like liquid propane tanks to gunpowder bombs and blowing up clinics with them. And this stuff spreads are spreads like wildfire. People start using the army of God's bomb recipes to attack clinics in other ways. Like, yeah, we've talked about sort of. Like the other campaign stuff that they use. And and this this starts to like a lot of the people who wind up in the full on terrorism stuff were like people who used to be like nonviolent protesters, so. Shelly Shelly Shannon, who who had previously been like a nonviolent protester, like goes violent in 1992 and starts doing these like butyric acid attacks and then she graduates to arson. She attacks 7 clinics, offices and health centers. And these aren't like when I say attack like this isn't like they threw a ball top at it, like she is making napalm. And like detonating napalm bombs like in inside of these clinics. It is. Do they even care if people are inside or they? So it's weird. Initially they they're they're targeting empty buildings, but they're like, they're like working themselves up to it. And like they they start to be they, they they could read this in the writing, like they they're working themselves out to a point where they're like, well, OK, if there was a person in this building, we don't really care. And yeah, yeah. And but 1992, the Army of God, like specifically in it, in its manual, like as justification for killing people. And lo and behold, one year later after this is one of the strategies they use. They have what? What was their justification? I they're killing is like they're killing babies and they have a bunch of Bible verses that they cite, and they're now we can kill people because they're killing babies. Wow. It's great. It's. Truly. Like in writing. Too horrifying. Wow. OK, yeah, and like, like, literally the next year in 1993. There's all these. They start doing this thing where they put wanted posters with like an abortion doctor's name in them. Like, like, literally like stuff out of like a like A battled W movie. They'll have like their name and like where they live and like the fact that they're a doctor and say they kill babies. And I, so, you know, in, in, in, in, in in 1993, these posters go up for this doctor named Doctor, David Gunn. And I, he's one day walking back to his car when he gets shot three times in the back by Michael Griffin. And he he dies and he he is the first. David Gunn is the first Bush provider to be killed and he is not going to be the last. Not the last. Yeah. So this immediately and the moment someone does it, it like it opens the floodgates and suddenly everyone is doing it. And so, you know, this makes people like Shelly Shannon, who we talked about like setting off napalm bombs, who until this point. Only like bombed anti buildings like she starts like considering killing people and a few months later she shoots Doctor George Tiller. And if you're thinking to yourself, hold on. Wait. I thought Doctor George Tiller was killed in 2009 and not 1993. You are right. Shelley's assassination attempt, like she shot him like in both arms, but he survived to be murdered a decade and 1/2 later. Meanwhile, there's this guy named Paul Hill who's just like a like abortion clinic, like protester, right? He he emerges and like the national media scene because he's he's like the he's like the guy who will go on TV and defend Michael Griffin killing, killing a doctor. And they just let him do this? She does the whole ******* talk show circuits. They just let him do this to defend, yeah, on live TV he he's on all of the mainstream networks to defend killing abortion doctors. And he does it again with Shelly Shannon's attempt to kill George Tiller. And a year later, Paul Hill walked up to Doctor Joe Britton Britton and blew his head off with a shotgun, wounds his wife, turns around and then killed an abortion like clinic escort named James Barrett. Like they had this guy on TV ******* every night saying that he that, like calling for the saying they're killing abortion doctors is justified and that he ******* killed he blew an abortion. Doctors head off for the shotgun the next year. Well, and yet I don't think I'm I'm. What's exciting is that I'm sure that when there are more attacks by pro-choice oriented people, at no point will anyone get brought on TV network to say anything but but ask that cops get more money to crack down on them. Yeah, it's like the just the media asymmetry here is awful. We're gonna talk about this more in a bit, because it gets even worse. So that that same year, in 1994, there's a gunman named John Sculley, the third who. Walks into a building and murders Shannon Lowney, who is a social worker in antiabortion. Like she's an anti abortion and anti child abuse advocate who's working at Planned Parenthood, and he just walks in and shoots her. She shoots at a bunch of the doctors and the patients and luckily they all survive. But then he goes to another clinic and he kills social worker Leanne Nichols, who was like, working at the front desk there, and he's eventually arrested. He gets away with both of these ones, but then he he goes and tries to shoot up a third clinic, and that one finally. Like he gets arrested for, but like, and the other things like the third clinic that he shoots at, like that's a clinic that already had already been bombed. This is a clinic. There been protests for years. And he's, you know, he goes there and he shoots at these, at these people and he kills two more people. And yeah, and it's, you know, they just like keep doing this. And one of the sort of incredibly grotesque things is that like, OK, so the, the, the, the, the Army of God has this, they have a website, right, and their website has these, these things they call like the prisoners of Christ. Who are like people, who are like, it's like prisoners of conscience, but like Christ who they like, celebrate and like raise funds for. And one of the ways they do this is they have this thing called the White Rose banquet, which is like. One of the most offensive names I've ever seen for an organization that's it's named after the White Rose Society, which is just like Christian anti Nazi, like nonviolent resistance group who's like leaders were all killed by Hitler for opposing Hitler. And they their thing is like, well, OK, so the abortion is the is the new Holocaust. And so, you know, they have this banquet that's like in support of these terrorists and they at, at the first one of these 1996, they released this thing called the Nuremberg File Project. Which was dislike. It was this archive of like abortion providers. It has like their names, has their adjectives, it has photos, it has their phone numbers. They they target like they it's not just like doctors, right. They target clinic staff, they target security guards, target anyone who's who's around there that they have like these like lists of different categories of people. So for example, if you're still alive, your name will be in like bolded black. If you've been wounded, your name will be grayed, like grayed out. And then if you die, there's like if if you get killed or you die, there's a strike through through it. So this is this is a kill list. They've assembled, and this is just like going around the Internet. There's enormous numbers of people who like providers, who are who are put on this. And they also like the the the, the White Rose society. Like at this banquet, they start putting out wanted posters with like $1000 rewards for closing a clinic and $500.00 for like convincing a doctor to stop giving abortions. And because these people are just like, like, I cannot emphasize this enough. Like literal monsters, in 1988, they auction off the gun that Shelly Shannon used to kill George Tiller. Well, that's like a fundraising thing. So yeah, and there's a number of things you think about that. One of that is one of them is the fact that the local Police Department absolutely had to be involved in that because normally murder weapons don't go back to anyone that they're destroyed. Which means the police were like, yeah, we absolutely want you guys to be able to auction this gun. Wow, very cool stuff. The fear tactics, they would like, of course they would work if your if your name is on this list and you have a family and you. You know what I mean? Like. God, I mean it's it's I, I will say there is an interesting thing with this. We're like a lot of some of a lot of people who like. Get targeted by this stuff like it just ****** them off and they get even more committed to it, which is like incredibly rad but also like Jesus Christ, they just they have these abortion provider kill lists and people on this list get killed and it's and encouraged. Like these people are encouraging to kill them and like they do this in the open. Like there are like literally like Christian radio stations will like they they will be, they'll do this thing where like they'll they'll they'll start listing like, like, like by name and the addresses of like where the abortion providers near them are and then start talking about the biblical verses that justify. Telling them and then they will literally say on the radio, go kill this person and they could just do this. But no one stopped them ever. They just got away with this. But for decades and decades. So what one of the other? I I I think this bombing is famous, but I don't think the reason why it it happened is famous. So there's a guy named Eric Rudolph. Ohh, yeah. Was was wondering when you were going to talk about Rudolph. Yeah. Yeah. So that's right now. So. So Eric Rudolph is most famous for nail bombing the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He sure did. Yeah. He put hundreds of people. He interviewed people. He kills people and killed one. Yeah. It was former special forces guy, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he says that his commander. And the 327th? Aerosol Regiment taught him how to make bombs like out of, out of, like scrap stuff. So he like. Yeah, so, so, OK, so he does in 1996, he doesn't get caught, right? This this this guy, this guy detonated a nail bomb at the ******* Olympics. And then and then a year later, oh, don't worry, we're going to, we're going to a year later this twice last year, the next year he, he, he sets off a bunch of bombs at it. He sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic and this is like he this is this is a double tap bomb. There is a, there is a bomb in a trash can behind that that's designed to kill the first responders. This is your 7 people and injured 7 and it kills the police officer. Actually, it does. It does. But yeah, it kills the police officer. Yeah. And then like the next one he he he bombs in Atlanta nightclub and wounds 6 people. Sorry. Specifically, this is twice a gay bar. Yeah, he bombed. He bombed. Yeah, I bought. He bombs a gay bar. There that one she also like in the adjacent parking lot because again, he was trying to kill the first responders that the the police find a bomb and diffuse it before he can go off. And again, they still don't get this guy that I'm not, not, not until 2003. The the next year he bombs another abortion clinic with a nail bomb, and this kind of just got time. He kills a security guard named Robert Sanderson and, like, permanently injures a nurse named Emily Lyons, who was like Emily Lyons, who was he was left like, half blind and, like, permanently maimed by the fact that, again, he set off a ******* nail bomb. And he he was not caught. He he was not. He was not caught for a while. Yeah. And I want to stop here and talk about, like, how the bombing stuff is carried in the media, right as best I could tell. And I I went and looked for this. No anarchist has killed someone with a bomb in the US for 100 years. Like, Karl Marx was closer to seeing the moon landing than a baby born today is of seeing an anarchist kill someone in the US with a bomb. And yet anarchism everywhere is so constantly associated with bombings. Meanwhile the anti abortion freaks ******* they bombed the 96 Olympics with a nail bomb and he on. When he was in his trial he released a manifesto talking about how deadly force is justified against people who operate abortion clinics. He talks, he talks about a whole, whole bunch of like a whole bunch of anti-gay stuff, a whole bunch of anti abortion stuff. Like and he's like, he's given them like like on his trial, just used to like read his manifesto. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty wild. Which are all the pro-life activists when it comes to taking life. That's interesting. Well but I mean, but that's that's the thing though. They're all they're all in favor of of like they they see it. Yeah. They're arguing that it's self-defense for its defense of these these these babies. I'm not the most well defensive those who can't defend themselves exactly what they'll talk about. Yeah, it is entirely within them. The moral universe within they operate. It's it is entirely consistent. It's one of those things whenever like liberals will be like why don't they? Do this or why don't you do that? That's not pro-life. And it's like, well, because the word doesn't mean the same thing to you, but it does to that well. And and the guys doing this terrible, like you will occasionally you'll get some, I mean, some of the pro-life people oppose this because I think it's bad optics, right? But apparently it's not bad optics because again, like, who are the people who get ******* remembered as bombers? Like, and I want to, I want to read a quote from, from the FBI. This is, this is, this is from from the book arm for life in in 1984, the year with the highest abortion clinic bombings to date. FBI Director William Webster went on television and informed the public quote bombing a bank or a post office as terrorism bombing an abortion clinic is not an act of terrorism because the objective is social, is social and anti abortion violence and I don't believe it currently meets our definition of terrorism. But Reagan's called Reagan called the anti abortion nonsense. It's worse. OK, Reagan called called the bombings the abortion clinic bombings quote anarchist activities. Like? *******. They're blowing up abortion clinics and we're still getting ******* blamed for it. Like, Jesus Christ. I don't know a lot about anything, so this is a lot of this is used to me, which is wild that I'm hearing about a lot of this for the first time. How have I not learn how? How am I not know about this? They bombed the Olympics and no one talks about it. I just think I was just losing my mind the whole. And, like, it's it's bad and it's it's still happening. It's not. It's just like three people were killed and nine people were injured in attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado back in 2015. There's been over, uh, at least at least at least 11 murders tied to anti abortion. Like like action, I guess. 2026 attempted murders, at least 42 bombings, 200 arsons, and then thousands and thousands of more like assaults and random incidents. We should also point out here when we're talking about the murder cows, the murder count is is lower than it actually is because the murder count doesn't count the people who like the American like, specifically the Americans who went to Canada to shoot abortion doctors. And the Americans who went to Australia to shoot abortion doctors, both of which happened, and threats against abortion providers have increased exponentially. Yeah, just since 22, just since 2010. Like, they have more than quadrupled like it is. It's constant. It's been escalating at such A at such a rate that every year's data is insufficient for talking about the current period. Like it's it's you can't, you can't even talk about it because all of the data is so inaccurate now. That's how fast this stuff. Accelerating and and like there's a few other things that like we should mention. We talk about statistics. One of the reason is the reason the death toll is like quote UN quote only 11 is because our bomb making is really hard and a lot of these bombs don't go off. So for example, in Canada, a worker at a clinic discovered a bomb with two pounds of nails in it. That quote had a destructive capability of 100 feet. And and and and also like I I should put this out like OK so like they they they there's a lot of abortion doctors who are killed like outside of their clinics. But also there's a guy named James Kopp who who shot he shot like 4 doctors and he shot them like in their homes like with with with with an SKS like in their homes through their windows. And he he killed Doctor Barrett slipping in in in in the 90s and like and you know and like. It like they they keep doing stuff like this like in 2001. I don't know if. I wonder how many people actually remember this. There there was this huge anthrax scare. What wasn't answer like people were like there were attacks. People were like mailing people letters with anthrax in it. Yeah. And so right as this is happening, a guy named Clay Wagner, Sense 800 letter signed by the Army of God with fake anthrax to Planned Parenthood clinics in 17 States and these anthrax packets, like it's not just like flour, right? These anti packets have BT in it, which is a pesticide that is so similar to anthrax that the packages tested tested positive. And so all of these people, these eight, like 800 clinics who opened these letters, I thought they were going to die because they opened, they opened a letter, there was white powder in it. It said it was anthrax, and then it tested positive for anthrax. And like, to this day, a bunch of abortion clinics like, have like, like when they're they're like when they open their mail, they have, they have like a special room that is like sealed off so that if they open the mail and they open a chemical weapon, only the person reading the mail will die well. Great. That's the sign of a good system, yeah, yeah. They also a lot of Planned Parenthood's have something kind of similar set up with the receptionist, where the basically the way it's set up is that if there's a mass shooter, the receptionist can like, seal off everyone but them. Yeah, like it's like a thing that you know you're getting into if you're in a plant, if you, if you're in that gig is like, someone might come in and I might have to die to try and stop them from getting to everyone else. It's it's bad. I mean, just just from 2019 to 2020, there was 125% increase in reports of assaults and batteries inside and outside clinics. There was double the amount of death threats from 2019 to 2020. And things have not gotten better since 2020. So we're just waiting for all that new data to come in because, oh boy, yeah. And I think. There's another thing when you need to keep in mind with this data is that there's so much stuff doesn't get reported. All of those numbers are low. Every single one of them is normally low. And there there is a bunch of other stuff that these people do that just never gets talked about. Well, OK, so before we get to that, I I do want to talk about the the most famous abortion provider who got murdered, which is Doctor George Tiller who is. Like a a genuinely, incredibly heroic figure. Who? Keep doing it after the first time you were shot, like you would be a hero if you did it up until you got shot. Yeah. But to keep going after you like he got shot. His at his clinic got bombed. There was an entire. I yeah. He was cleaning up on what was the other one. Yeah, he he he was he was one of the he he was. I think he was actually. I don't know if it was that anthrax threat or like a different anthrax threat, but like people people like he kept getting anthrax threats that there was this thing called Operation Rescue, which is I guess they're still version of this. But there are these like they, they do these like giant, like nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns were like thousands of people will, will, will will show up to a place and they'll like chain themselves the buildings and they prevent anyone from getting in and they're like terrorize everyone around there. And his office is one of the is one of the ones that was targeted 1991, which is like in there. Like they had this big campaign called Operation Rescue. It was targeting like him specifically. And there is one fun story in this, which is they tried this in Minneapolis 1993, but they got their ***** kicked by a bunch of anarchists and had their all run away. Which was extremely funny. But yeah, like the other thing that that's important with, with Teller specifically is the extent to which the right wing media is like. Like culpable in this? Like tiller. Like Bill O'Reilly specifically, is is constantly yelling about Tiller. He calls Tiller the baby killer. He accuses him of running a quote a operating a death mill, executing babies about to be born and destroying fetuses for just about any reason right up until birth date. He one of his rants, he he literally says like right before. Well, not right. Like pretty close to when Hillary gets assassinated. Quote if I could get my hands on Tiller, well, you know, can't be vigilantes can't do that. It's just a figure of speech, but despicable. Oh my God, it doesn't get worse. Does it get worse? No. So he's just like, this is just like the **** that that he's that that he's being subjected to by the media. And then, oh lo and behold, he gets murdered. You know what doesn't? Uh, I don't know. I have nothing to say. You know what doesn't do a coordinated, you know, Terry? Dope. Here's what I'll say. You know, it would be dope if when somebody came to shoot George Tiller, that person had gotten shot repeatedly. That would have been cool. That would have been neat, but anyway, here's adds and we're back with more horrifying stuff. Yeah. So there's a lot of focus. I think, you know, there's been a lot of media coverage recently about this just because, like, you know, as as a reaction to the incredibly bad faith, like, oh, look at the sanctity of of of people protesting at the Supreme Court. It's like they blew people's heads off with shotguns. But, you know, and that's good. And I'm really glad there's, there's more media reporting about this. But I, I want to talk about, you know, there's there's an incredible focus here on the shootings and bombings and, like, there's good reason for that. But I want to talk about some other **** that the force. Thematics do, because it's horrifying. It doesn't get talked enough about enough. So one of the people who gets interviewed in, in living in the crosshairs, which is a great book, by the way. It's it's about, I mean, OK, I don't agree with all of its policy recommendations, but it's a book like interviewing like abortion providers about their experiences. One of the people they interview is this guy named Rodney Smith who's an abortion Dr and I'm just going to read the stuff that they do to this guy because it's. OK, so protesters show up to his son's wedding. They they burn his house and his farm down. They burn 17 horses to death. They killed their dog, their cat, and all of their possessions. Wow. Yeah. This is from the book. Really in the crosshairs. Help kill babies. Can you tell me that? The cats and, yeah, we will imagine. Imagine if an anarchist group did this. Yeah. Everyone would lose their mind. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Yeah. I'm gonna read a quote about this from this book. Some someone mailed a letter postmarked the morning of the fire, justifying killing the animals. Rodney's farm because Rodney quote murdered little children. However, the letter was untraceable. Wow. They do this **** all the ******* time and it never gets reported. Because the reason never gets reported is because when, when, when, when when this does the city comes to investigate. They ******* destroyed the entire scene of the crime. They destroyed the entire scene of the crime so thoroughly that when the fire Marshall showed up the day after they they they tried to arrest. They tried to arrest Vodny Smith Smith for evidence tampering because I thought that he had done it. Great. That that makes sense. Wow. Let list, lest you think this is the end of the shift that, that, that, that, that this guy goes through. Right. Like they when they find out he's like, going to like a conference or like they find out he's staying in a hotel, that they do these campaigns where, like, they'll do these mass Collins to the hotel saying, hey, there's this person here. Yeah. And if you don't kick them out, like we're going to protest all your branches, he gets kicked out of hotels. She gets attacked by an anti abortion protester in the chambers of the Supreme Court. Like that Supreme Court, the big one. How did they even get in the two the chambers of the Supreme Court? He was just one of it was one of the people who were showing up at this thing and the the guy like throws him out of his chair, grabs him, throws him out of his chair, picks up the chair and starts beating the **** out of him with his own chair. In this is in the chambers of the Supreme Court, they beat an abortion Dr with his own chair. And you know so Ruddy had had security with him. Right because I you know it it yeah. When you're abortion Dr and and people are this targeted at you. Yeah. You you have security so you don't get attack like this. But the the the courts wouldn't let him like bring his private security inside and the rationalization was he had been assured that quote nothing ever happens in the Supreme Court. Think about this right? You cannot find a news article about this, right? A guy got beat up by these people in the Supreme Court. If literally anyone who was not a ******* forced birth anti abortion fanatic did this, there would have been a new cycle that would have lasted until the ******* end of time. There were a bit of a movie and three shows made about it. Yeah, and there's just nothing. I like that is wild. Like that is really showing like, these things don't get these things aren't big problems, right? Because they they they aren't challenging to any kind of power structure, so they're allowed to happen because they're just reinforcing things. They're not actually challenging things. But still, it's very brazen. When you're killing like 17 horses and going into the Supreme Court to beat someone with a chair, you would think that someone would say something. And I've never heard of this before. Yeah, me either. Like this guy, this guy right up your alley. Gary. I know this is like, this is the thing. The thing I want to emphasize about this is the things they did to one guy, right? Yeah, one doctor. This is happening like, this is right like like this stuff, this kind of stuff is happening to people every ******* day across the country and there is nothing. There is Jack ****. You might maybe see a report in the local papers, like maybe it it is a, it is a, it is a just an incredible campaign of terror. But this guy is like, he is staggeringly based. He hit this quote from that book again. Rodney is used to this type of verbal abuse and sometimes reacts in kind when a priest. Ultimate murderer, Rodney responded by calling the priest a child molester. When the protest, the protesters told Rodney they were praying for him. He responded. No, you're praying upon us. There's a difference. So he rules and he likes. So he he'd been a Doctor Who like did other stuff and when the abortion people, I think it was after they burned his house down, he was like, no, **** you, I'm only gonna do abortions now. Well, geez, I staggeringly based. Wow. Like, yeah, which I guess also like, this is this is a thing that, like, so, like, obviously like, I don't think any leftist has ever ******* lit people's horses on fire. Not that I know of generally. Generally they would have more of an instinct to free the horses. Yeah, like that. Just you have to, you have to be like genuinely monstrous to to light horses on fire. Like they scream. Like horses scream. Like when you left them on fire. I mean, and and and cats and dogs. Incredible. Like animal abuse and animal murder by itself is like pretty, pretty despicable. And there's. Just justifying it by saying it's because they were on the property of someone who helps gives abortions as while some wild thinking none of those words are in the Bible, actually there is there. There is a lot of animal murder in the Bible, never mind. You kill a lot of people and animals. Yeah. OK well yeah. But but but but I mean I I will say that there is a thing that can happen where if if like sometimes targeted protests on a person just like makes them reinforce like dig into their beliefs and that sometimes and and and I and I think like here I think like there's a lot of people who are. Just stunningly brave who go through this **** and just still keep doing it because, like, this is something that they believe in. And and, you know, and those aren't even like that. Extreme examples of, like, the kind of stuff that happens again. We've talked about, like, again, nail bombs, right, like people getting their heads blown off with shotguns. There's there is a systemic campaign of terror that is felt incredibly acutely by the people who need these services, who need to get abortions, who need to get reproductive health care, and is felt by the providers of that. Health care and nobody else in society sees about it or talks about it. And they have, you know, OK, so the, the. I'm gonna read another quote from living in the crosshairs about the tactics that these groups use because they have, they have so many things. These tactics include bombings, arson, anthrax scares, and mass blockades. Extremists have also thrown butyric acid into clinics, glued clinic locks shut, locked themselves to clinic property using items such as bicycle locks or chains, drilled holes into clinic roofs so that clinics flood invaded, invaded clinics, vandalized clinics, made threatening phone calls, tried to persuade patients to go to fake clinics, which we've talked about that in our episode on crisis pregnancy centers. But those that is also like part of the systemic campaign of terror is deceiving. Humiliating people into not getting abortions. They they they put spikes on driveways. They they they'll they'll still stand one of them. This is a very common thing, is they'll stand on stand outside of abortion clinics, talking about how they're gonna make bombs and like the chemicals that they're mixing. And, yeah, they'll lay down on sidewalks in front of buildings. They will they will jump on people's cars. They will camp out in front of clinics for like multiple days, stretches the that they send decoy patients, like, into the clinic to disrupt it. It's just so much. Yeah. And like, like, the brazenness with like, again, like, yeah, the if there are things on there like, OK, like, OK, so like I I I don't wanna like, make this point too much because like, yeah, you can get away with a lot of stuff, right? Even if the state is hunting for you, there's a lot of stuff that you could do that you can get away with. But like. The level of stuff they've been able to get away with, like the fact that they've been able to literally on the air say that you should murder a specific abortion. Dr Mentioned them by name. And the fact that I know people who have had the FBI show up to their doors because of jokes they made on Twitter. It is. It is ******* appalling. Yeah, yeah, because I mean it. They're not. They they don't. The the law doesn't exist, the law doesn't matter. It's all about who's actually challenging systems of power. And the police are like, again, this is one of those they they they literally do cross burnings. Like, ******* like they literally do cancel ******* cross burning. So I I I can once again go back to the old Rage Against the machine. Classic. Some of those who work forces are the same, who burn crosses because it is literally the same people the cops will cooperate with them like. There's the other thing that you a lot is they'll just like shoot bullets through the windows of clinics. Yeah, that is super constantly and they never get caught. No one, no one cares. That is very common. Yeah, and like a fire bombs happened to this day. One of the incidents they talked about in that book was. So they like this. This is stuff that happened at like 1 clinic. They they they they set the clinics fence on fire in the middle of the night. They plugged the downspouts on like the roof after like a giant snowstorm so that like when when the snow melted the water like poured into this hole they drilled it flooded the entire clinic. They had another one where they drilled holes in the ceiling of the clinic and ran a garden hose through it and flooded the entire building. And yeah, again, like none of this stuff ever makes the news like, like, well, you and you, you compare, you compare the reaction to this to like how they react to the Animal Liberation Front, right. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That that caused there was like there were like there, there, there, there are, there are like like law enforcement, like techniques. There are law enforcement organizations that exist today specifically to stop people like that exist today specifically because of this campaign to stop the Animal Liberation Front for freeing animals like. These people. And you and I should say this, like, also, like, there's this whole push to like, oh, we need to call these people terrorists. And like, yeah, like, Bill Clinton called these people terrorists and, like, what happened? Nothing. Like they, they they they they got one law that was like, fine, that was like, that was that was about trying to keep people from protesting grass out of clinic that got shot down by the Supreme Court. Because again, we live in in a society that is constantly moving towards the Acritic fascism. If you torch construction sites or sedans or people wanting to destroy sections of forest, then you're then you're a terrorist. If you send out mail bombs and to kill a whole bunch of horses, you're just. You're just some some dudes, I guess. Yeah. And one of the things is incredibly frustrating about the story is there will be people who are being stalked, right, or that they're being harassed like that they're being intimidated. These people keep showing up. They'll call the FBI and the FBI will go, yeah, we don't care. And then the next day they'll get shot by the same person. This happens multiple times with multiple and like both like we talked about this with the person you killed killer. A lot of the people who do these anti abortion murders, like we're just irregular anti abortion prisoners and protesters and everything happens a lot is like. People will go to jail for an abortion bombing. They'll come out and do it again. And it's like, you know, one of the one of the really scary things about this as well I know this is, this has been stated before. This isn't by any means a new, a new, a new thought or framing. But with all of the laws getting enacted around the whole, like Bounty hunter side of things for like how there's going to be, you know, citizens being deputized to track down both abortion providers, people who sought out abortion, it's giving all of this strain of thought like this whole. All of this driving ideology, it's deputizing it and it's giving it actual legal backing. So it's no longer just ignored by law enforcement. It is now being encouraged by local governments. And all of these, all of these same motivations are now like, you could get rewarded for doing this and oh boy, will people seize on that opportunity. Yeah. And and I think that there's a thing we can talk about with with fascism here where it's like, OK, so like what what is fascism? And if you're looking at like one of the one of the things that like if you, if you're using like a strict classical definition of fascism is the integration of of of like parties, sort of like party paramilitary forces into the state. And this is what we're looking at is we're looking at these people who have been ******* bombing abortion clinics for 50 years, like starting to do this stuff and and and I think like I'm going to read another passage about the kinds of stuff they do to individual. People. Because like I, I think, you know, I mean, I keep going back to just like, here's the the high level terror that they're doing, but like, yeah, like the individual people. After being verbally targeted at our clinic for years, protesters started harassing Tammy Madison through various written communications. First, the protesters distributed Flyers throughout Tammy's neighborhood, including one at Tammy's door. The flyer listed Tammy's address, the make and model of Tammy's car, and listed a telephone number reported to be Tammy's number. Then the protesters appeared at her home with science as playing her name. That said, she kills babies and hires the baby killers. When they were outside Tammy's house, they handed out Flyers about her to anyone walking by. They they do things like that they use like licenses, for example, because you have to get licenses right to to to provide abortions to be a doctor and so the use of licenses to find personal information about people, these the people out there are like. I mean their right wing is right, so they're they're really racist. They like they they love screaming Jew doctor at people because, yeah, like they they racial slurs they they constantly out people like the nail bomb guy also attacked a gay bars. Yeah. There's a lot of crossover in terms of who they want to attack. Yeah, and like they do constant death threats. There's also a thing I want to talk a bit about, which is like these malicious legal lawsuits. So one of the ways that people go after like clanks is that that they're constantly, these clinics are like constantly under legal. There people are constantly suing them. People, people are suing them just to find out personal information about them because the court will give, will give you information they get. They have like these vacant, like fake case inspectors who will come in in order to infiltrate the things like they have. There's legal, enormous legal pressure from the state itself, which is often trying to destroy these clinics. They'll pass laws specifically to make it to the clinics can't operate in various ways like people who are just like. District attorneys will will do investigations into them over and over again. They also they go after like the the kids of providers constantly. I read a story from this book that again like no one ever talks about like. They they kidnapped this this provider's child like her, like 12 year old child. Like at a clinic and like tried to indoctrinate them and then eventually gave them back after a few hours. But like again, like, well, they they kidnapped a child. Of one of the people who works at these things and there no one even talks about it like there's never there's never anything. I just, I don't know like I I just like the the more you go into this is like the more stuff that you see that like. Like they they target people's parents to like, show up at like the nursing homes of, like the parents of like of these doctors, like the target their neighbors. They go after the donors to the clinics a lot. Like they'll they'll send them pictures of like, bullets and knives. One of the things they do often is that those burn down completely the wrong clinic. So there's been a lot of cases where they just say they attack the click next to it because they're not. Yeah, and goggling the stuff they've got, yes. Yeah, I I wanna, I wanna end on this guy named John Brockhoff who he bombs 3 abortion clinics over 2 decades. Like he's one of the guys who they sent to prison and then he came out and they bombed another abortion clinic and I want to read this quote from him. My orders to Vietnam didn't suddenly materialize. Unexpectedly, I volunteered to go because I saw the South Vietnamese people were being threatened by a communist takeover, and I figured if they were willing to fight for freedom, they deserve to be free and deserved help too, he goes on to point out. In January of 73, I had just returned from voluntary participation in a bombing campaign in support of the liberty of people 8000 miles away. So I hope you will believe I will. I would not have turned my back on my own people, American babies. My own people, American babies, if you had asked for my help and bombing an abortion, abortion area in this country, even in 73 and especially since it was not mere liberty but very but their very lives at stake, I would have gone with you. So this guy's literally saying he's still fighting the Vietnam War, but he's doing it to bomb abortion clinics, and he went to Vietnam. He wanted to kill communists, and this guy was at the Capitol on January 6th. That that sounds about right. So yeah, like like one of yeah, we're we're like the moment we are at now is this sort of detrius of. Like every crime the US has ever committed, is just rolling back and. You know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're seeing all of these people who, yeah, fought in Vietnam and came back home and, like, killed a bunch of people who did abortions and did a bunch of bombings. And now that, you know, and they they they they tried, they just tried to do a coup. They're probably going to get away with like an action, like a legal coup pretty soon because they've now seized control of the court system and it's like, well. They've done this is how they really they they do a really effective combination of violent direct action and legal challenges. They're their actions able to be so successful one because, like the tactics they choose cause material damage and material change, but also obviously like they're not getting like investigated the same way anyone else would, right? Because like they they are, they are capable of doing this effective action because they don't face. Any any similar level of oppression to any other group that would that would be doing this, especially if they're on the left. So like it's it's it's. It's always useful to look at the tactics of your enemy and how they and how they do certain things, but you can always have to realize like this is the same thing with January 6th it was a whole bunch of people in black bloc storming that the response from the cops would have been very different initially and continue along throughout the whole day and the subsequent investigations. So, yeah, always good to look into tactics, but the, the response from the government's always going to differ depending on who's doing the actual challenging. Yeah. And I think I said two things about this. One, like there are things you can learn from how to write operates. You can't carbon copy their tactics and try to do them from the left because it just won't work because the start, the structural conditions for the left are just different. But the second thing is also that like it, it is simultaneously true that the level of repression against leftist is higher than it is against right wingers. And also that's true. And it's also true that you can do stuff and like people have and yeah, like none of the change revenge people have gotten caught yet, so. Like, you know we will, we will see, yeah maybe times up so comes out and be like, well we'll we'll see like in general, right. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when movements are centralized. But yeah, I mean, wow, they sure get they should get to get away with a whole bunch of stuff you can be doing like pretty public vomiting incidents for almost a decade and not get caught. If you just have to bomb the Olympics and not get caught for like 7 years, yeah, wild. And I'm also just assuming the vast majority of these guys are white and so they're not. Yeah. So it's it's also that and also the fact that this didn't happen like. A long time ago, it's still happening. And that's crazy that we still don't hear about it. Like, yeah, like we talked about, we talked about on this show, like a few weeks ago, like, like people, people, people did another abortion clinic on fire. Like, that happens still and will continue to happen and people continue to not care about it because it doesn't threaten anyone in power until the media doesn't care. And it's been happening long enough that there's this sense of, like, normalization around it. It's not seen as radical. It's seen as, oh, obviously some people think that's justified. It's not. It's not surprising. And that normalization allows way more people to both feel capable of doing something. And it when it happens, there's not this big of a fuss. I I do think it's also true though. Like I think there are a lot of people, like I think most people don't. Know that this happens like I I think, I think there, there, there's an extent to which. The level of violence has been totally invisible lized sure. And, you know, I mean, everything about this, again, is the reason that they're working like this is because this this is a completely minoritarian position, right? Like, they they don't actually have that many numerical supporters. It's just that. They're able to sort of, I mean, you know, they, they, they they have enough people to wage a systemic campaign of terror and because of that they're able to inflict their sort of, they're able to inflict their, their fascism onto the rest of the population. That's a good welding sigh. That was a good ending. Sigh. Yeah. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter. Bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly gambling problem call 188853230. 500 You love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler. Three reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country, opened for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. Unfortunately, some of these recordings haven't got the best sound quality. We were walking around the butterfly center. We tried our best to block the wind, but some of it's pretty blown out and we still wanted you to hear them, so we've included them, but apologies for that. The sound quality isn't what it could be. There was a time when you could have been forgiven for believing that American fascism had been thoroughly beaten back, marginalized, and damaged beyond the capacity for reconstitution. Only the very foolish and dishonest believe that today, every time the far right has taken a serious beating in this country, they've had a place to retreat to a sanctuary, to reorganize, recoup, and surge out again towards the halls of power. That sanctuary is the US Mexico border. There's a song I quite admire by the drive by truckers named after a young Mexican man, Ramon Casiano, in 1931. After the kind of stupid altercation young men have been having since time immemorial, Ramone was murdered by another kid named Harlan Carter. Harlan was convicted of murder and then LED off by another judge. Due to a procedural issue with his case, it hardly needs to be said that Harlan was White. He went on to join the Border Patrol during a period when it was seen as a model of good racial policy by the Nazi government. In Germany, Carter rose to lead the Border Patrol, helped to militarize it, and then went on to run the NRA and turn it from a simple gun advocacy organization to the far right culture war institution it became. Everything we're dealing with today from the far right started at the border. And to quote from that song, that's still where it is today. But the border is more than just a battleground in America's endless culture war, and it is more than just the system of violence men like Carter helped make it into. The United States is border with Mexico, stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the homelands of many indigenous peoples and across the migratory trails of numerous species. And to many, many people. Today, it's still just home. Mariana Jones Wright runs a butterfly sanctuary that has, somewhat improbably, provoked the direct ire of a U.S. President and become the center of a series of conspiracy theories. She also grew up along the border in the Rio Grande Valley. In high school, she'd take trips to discotecas and bars in Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen, TX. Today she runs the National Butterfly Sanctuary, just outside of the nondescript town, which seems to have endless strip malls, big box stores, and family run Mexican food joints. You can go there and see wildflowers. Walk in the woods and if you're lucky, like we were, you might even find a snake and some monarch butterflies making their way across the continent without regard for borders or immigration checks. So, you know, growing up here. We all live very fluid lives and I use that word deliberately. I mean in the 1970s history. The races. When Carter. Literally driven by supporting gas up her cars and then come back. For lunch cocktail. Back for class, receive class and come back with football games. We were all in Mexico, partying our hair. They had the president, suppose and. And our parents were over there too, having dinner and I know people. The students who live in. Portal. Because they have reliable electricity. Y'all are laughing, but. The border for most people living there, sometimes called frontier ethos, is an inconvenience. You have to drive to a certain crossing. Sometimes your truck gets checked, sometimes the port of entry is closed and you're late for work. But in the public eye, especially during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. It looms like a scene from Lord of the Rings. And since then it's also started to look like one so growing up here. I knew there was illegal immigration. It's impossible not to know. I mean, nearly everyone knows someone who. Came across. They said family on a short term president didn't go home or they crossed the river somewhere. But you'll see here our river is wide and deep and dangerous. It's deadly. When I was growing up here and I'm 52. I have friends who lived in Mexico. Their parents had homes and businesses here and there. Some of them read rode the bus across the bridge every day for school in the morning. I mean, there was nothing we never thought of anyone's. You know, in terms of citizenship or. The House and Senate. Spread of liminals anywhere. You have the lawsuit. That's 2000 words. To navigate in both countries which may have citizenship. They have nothing. And there seems to be hardly any in between. In mainstream media, the borders presented as dangerous, as are the people crossing it. But it's hard to feel that you're in danger when you're watching the sunset over the Rio Grande and listening to the Owls who begin their work after dusk in the ever diminishing wild places along the river's N bank. Up until a couple of months ago we were coming out here four or five times a week, sometimes twice a day, on our boat and bringing a lot of journalists out. It almost never wound up in their reportage because they never saw. Right. You know they're like. On the river we want to see the illegals crossing. Yeah, we're like dude. What is 2? OK. Campaign officials were. Some of the most beautiful and fragile landscapes in the country along the southern border. Part of Mariano's work is introducing kids to them. I've been lucky enough to spend time in many of them. Camping in East County San Diego, where the PCT begins, is one of my favorite things to do. Riding my bike in southern Arizona is an adventure. I take it every opportunity, and I'm not the only one. From Jaguars to butterflies, many species of wildlife live along the border and Passover on a daily basis. The border might look serious on a map, but for much of the last century you'd have struggled to point to it on the ground as you had a GPS device and far too much free time on your hands. These kids that will be here this week as part of their academic study, they thought the Rio Grande Valley was a desert. They didn't know that. You know, that we had 11 biologically distinct ecosystems and a four county region that would fit inside San Diego County, California, that you know that. We have the river that's not a trickle when everybody flushes their toilets, you know, like it can be in El Paso. I mean, they they had no idea that we're the edge of subtropical, you know? America, the Neotropics, and America. Since 911, though, the board has become a physical thing, a landscape thriving with life that somehow found a way to exist in places that can kill you with heat in the day and cold the night, and sometimes both in 24 hours has been torn apart to provide people who have never been there with the chance to grandstand about security and various government contractors a chance to line their pockets. Ted Cruz recently posed in a boat wearing body armor and standing next to a machine gun just feet away from where we watched recreational boaters sail lazily along the river. As we walked from the centre down to the river, we spotted some trash on the ground and went to pick it up. Turned out to be a battery. The kind used in a tactical flashlight or weapon light. Mariana doesn't use those, and it wasn't there last time she walked down a trail. It's not just the wall that's ruining this landscape, she says. It's a constant presence of militarized Border Patrol who see the area as a conflict zone, not a conservation one. As I was saying, they're the ones who leave the the trash every year for other stuff as well. They're very commonly used on the kind of lights used for guns. And yeah, the little lithium 123 is like. So that you only use the flashlight? Pretty much. Mariana knows this only too well. Her butterfly center backs up to the Rio Grande. It's a beautiful, peaceful place, but since 2017 it has been under threat from the relentless militarization of the southern border. The butterflies, she says, are important for a number of reasons. So butterflies are critical pollinators to all of the green stuff, most of which we don't eat. People know bees pollinate. About 1/3 of our food. And so they care about bees now because everyone would hate to lose 1/3 of our food. But butterflies pollinate all of the grasses, wildflowers, shrubs and trees. On the planet, the ones that. Reduce erosion by holding the ground in place against wind and against. Rain and floods. The plants that reduce the radiant heat. That would come off of the earth if we didn't have the green stuff. They filter the water going into the water table and they produce oxygen for us. They filter our air. That's why butterflies matter, and that's why everybody should care about them and do what they can in their communities with their endemic native plants to provide habitat for butterflies. It's not just the butterflies who are in danger either. But it is. I hate to say entirely predict. But. It's fairly predictable in an in stage capitalist society where we're moving from military. To a border security. Where border walls and border security are the United. People don't even know about. I have been shot at by one pack. Enforcement. People don't realize it was the CB. Overhead in mini. To understand exactly what is at stake, both for the border and the butterflies, it's important to understand exactly what the border wall looks like on the ground. The border wall ecosystem is not just a wall, it's a towering 30 foot steel structure topped with anticline plates. Along the barrier, which is often hundreds of yards from the actual border, there's a road wide enough for two of the expensive pickup trucks the CBP drives to pass each other in remote areas. A road to allow construction vehicles to get to the wall also had to be built. For landscapes that had been untouched for centuries, it's been catastrophic. That's why the National Butterfly Sanctuary fought the border wall in the summer of 2017. They found contractors on their land, using heavy equipment to destroy the plants they had worked so hard to protect. After we found the contractors here illegally clearing our land with no right of entry, no eminent domain exercise, no waiver of nipa and other laws. The you know, we filed suit against the federal government. That brought some publicity. And with it a lot of people who said. You know that we if we opposed border wall, we must be for illegal immigration, as though the issue is that simple. The wall, in addition to being a colossal expense, much of which is funneled to zekelman industries, a Canadian owned steel company which was fined $975,000 by the FEC for illegal donations to the Trump campaign in 2020, is pretty useless at the border wall is built miles inside the United States. That Border Patrol picks up ladders every day to share photos of ramps built so vehicles could literally drive over border wall like, you know, the old Range Rover commercials and and. And also whether breaches we also got a chance to explain to them that up until President Trump the Border Patrol Union itself had opposed border wall. They had called it a waste of of monies, ineffective and really irrelevant to. Their mission of preventing illegal entry to the United States. Walking along the border, we found half a dozen ladders constructed from old wooden pallets. Alongside them were ID's, clothing, and detritus that migrants had either abandoned on their journey north or had thrown out for them by Border Patrol agents who'd apprehended them. Either way, these discarded things told a sad story of young people, sometimes parents and sometimes children with siblings, crossing a river and then a wall to try to get a chance at a better life. What the border wall does do, very effectively is funnel people through the giant gaps in it. From Texas to California, the Trump administration has rushed to build as much wall as it could in order to live up to the wildly exaggerated claims that Trump made in his 2020 election debates. We now have as strong a border as we've ever had. We're over 400 miles of brand new wall. Of that over 400 miles, 350 odd, were repairs to existing barriers or secure fences, as they are technically termed, but the rest was built in places that were easiest to access. In Southern California, mountains and valleys are simply skipped. The wall stretches across the flatlands in between. People are forced to cross in these gaps and the hardest places, and as a result, many more of them die. The Butterfly Center isn't one of the hard places, but Mariana has found dozens of identity documents, some of them in evidence bags labeled Department of Homeland Security. She says that people aren't dumping them. They are being stripped of their documents when they are detained. I know that the other side has whiskey videos. At the end of January, he. That the court. My friends are there. You're right. I keep the phones. Finishing with family to say you have to send. The phone is the bank and the Wi-Fi. Not only. In support of the program. The cartel. And that's the only way that you paid and. The fact that Border Patrol is making people undocumented is something. United States on Thursday, and they will see that we find. Garbage bags full of medical records, birth certificates. Marriage licenses. These and other things from migrants that they have brought your identities and and their illness or the violence that they they suffered and everything to make their asylum cases. But Border Patrol trashes all. Throughout the four years of the Trump presidency, the butterfly Center fought to protect the ecosystem they had created and to keep the pristine riverbank for barn owls, not Border Patrol trucks. Mariana isn't alone. The South Texas Birding Preserve. Forced to back out of a deal with the feds after a community outcry at the thought of the loss of one of the very few wild places in the area. While they have so far been able to stop the construction of portions of the border wall, they have not been able to stop the multiple armed agencies that police the border, and often each other, from encroaching on the center's land. Currently in Texas, there are several overlapping missions to protect the border. Under Operation Lone Star, TX National Guard, soldiers are deployed to protect the border and prevent drug smuggling and child trafficking, at least according to the office of Governor Greg Abbott. Sadly, they're not able to protect themselves from each other. So far, four soldiers have died by suicide 2IN accidental shootings. Texas law allows National Guard soldiers to bring their own personal weapons, which were responsible for both deaths and one drowned trying to save migrants from the river. Because the troops are deployed under state orders, not federal ones. They receive fewer benefits and their families are not compensated as well in the event that they die. In addition to the 10,000 Texas troops, there are also 4000 National Guard soldiers on federal orders along the Border Task Force. Phoenix, as it's called, is a combination of 34 different guard units stitched together with very little cohesion or prior experience working together, and has been blighted by low morale. Troops in this deployment are three times more likely to have a car accident than sees illegal drugs, and a battalion deployed to McAllen had three soldiers die, the same number as the rest of the National Guard combined that year. DUI hooks are so common that breathalyzers are being issued to units. The crisis isn't at the border. The crisis is the border. It's not only United States soldiers dying along the southern border, it's also migrants. According to the missing Migrants Project and status admittedly better viewed than it is heard. Migrants coming from central or South America are far more likely to die at the US's southern border than they are at any other point on the way there. 1248 people died or went missing last year making the trek N 595 of them at the border. Given that the border, both under Republicans and Democrats, is a weapon that's increasingly effective at killing people and increasingly present in political debate, it's surprising how many people have never been there. The border, at least a bit of it without the wall, doesn't feel violent. One night while we were in Texas, we sat on the Bank of the Rio Grande and looked across the river at the sunset. Behind us was a wall, funded by private donations to a group called we Build the Wall. It's built so close to the river that the wake from the Border Patrol boats will see it undermined and washed away in less than five years. Across from us, little cabanas and bars studied the shoreline. It looked idyllic. Or not. For the thousands of armed people who make it their job to stop it, it would have been quite nice to swim across for a drink. Swimming over was out of the question. But the peaceful border we encountered was not the one you'd recognize if you've seen Fox News over the past four years. For much of Middle America, the board is constructed as a lawless land, somehow also as a desert, despite the fact that 1200 miles of it are marked by river. And a place where cartel violence goes unchecked, human trafficking runs rampant. A young children are snatched away from their families and sold into sex slavery. Of course, young children are snatched away from their families at the border, but that's your taxpayer money at work, not the Zetas or cartel heliskiing with generation. Sadly, the Butterfly Center's opposition to the wall combined with this political theatre at the border to place a group of people who just wanted to be left alone, to be nice to butterflies at the center of a culture war. Wanted nothing to do with. At some point, the Trump White House became aware that 100 acres of Texas grasslands were holding out against all the legal and questionably legal efforts of Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration to destroy the Little haven along the Rio Grande. Kushner said in May of 2019 in the Oval Office. We solved the butterfly thing. And and Steve Bannon had been, you know, the former former special adviser to President Trump. And then he is the one who started this siop. And they took aim at us and. Instead of us being against the wall and possibly for open borders. They declared that we were a cartel front and actively engaged in trafficking humans and drugs that we were. Not about conservation at all, but we were selling women and children into sex slavery, Mariano's Twitter bio and a time of writing reads. Do no harm, take no ****. And that's approach she took as the MAGA community began to sling an increasing amount of **** at her. The North American Butterfly Association filed suit against Brian Kolfage Slash we build the wall, Tommy Fletcher Slash, Fisher sand and gravel slash, TRG construction, and Lance Newhouse, slash Newhouse and sons. On December 3rd, 2019. Kolfage, a US Air Force veteran, attempted to crowdfund the war after Congress wouldn't fund it to the ridiculous extent that Trump desired. He raised over 25 million. In August of 2020, Kolfage was indicted along with Steve Bannon, two other Co defendants. On federal charges of defrauding hundreds of thousands of we build the wall donors. Federal prosecutors said that despite repeatedly assuring donors that Coliphage would not be paid. The defendants engaged in a scheme to divert $350,000 to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle. Kolfage was separately indicted May of 2021 on federal charges related to his falsification of tax returns. In April of 2022, Carthage entered a guilty plea, having accounted for about 10 million in spending and a little under 5 miles of actual wall. Kolfage's attempts to build the wall in Texas were hammered by the National Butterfly Center lawyers who argued that it was a flood risk because it is. And by various tax issues at colleges teams seemed entirely unaware of. While they hope to transfer the war they built, which they called the Lamborghini of walls, to federal ownership, CBP wanted nothing to do with it, as they were building their own wall outside of the floodplain. After ignoring a 2019 ruling, coffee eventually built about 3 miles of wall in Texas and then declared the project complete. November of 2019, with litigation ongoing, Kolfage took to Twitter to accuse the National Butterfly Centre of having. A rampant sex trade taking place on your property and the death sick bodies when we first saw Brian Kolfage's tweets and the we build the wall videos using my image and talking about the butterfly lady and everything and and the butterfly center. At first. You know, we we kind of reacted with. Humor like this is too funny. Like, who in their right mind would believe any of this? And, you know, we even tried addressing, I mean, I didn't know who Brian Kolfage was at the time, but, you know, we replied like, you have a very, very active imagination or you're a really, you know, twisted person. And we used the hashtag liar, liar pants on fire. Because we really did think it was ridiculous, but. Any notion that this was not deadly serious was soon dismissed, and now I've become this light. Extremism. Current politics. Others? I've had, I've, I've had a lot of journalists ask me. Feel like to. Crossroads of the culture wars in America. And I'm like I'm not at the crossroads of the culture war. I live in the Borderlands, which are the proving grounds for fascism in America. That's where I live. And we're going to see it more and more. Everybody's going to see it more and more. They test things like the aerostat balloons here and the fact that we didn't cut them loose and shoot them down and set them on fire. The fact that we were like, oh, that's kind of a pretty innocuous. You know. White balloon in the sky, we can live with it. Means that now it's gone out from under DHS, DoD, and it's being deployed across the United States, coming soon to a community near you. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. 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Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler free reviews. From the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. A few weeks after Kolfage's tweet, the Butterfly Center closed its rusty gate. It reopened in late April of 2022. But the almost three months in between were harrowing experience for Mariana and for the staff when we arrived at the center in early March. There was a police surveillance tower posted in the car park. And young men in Humvees on the road we travelled down to get there despite them, or perhaps in a sense because of them and the theatre they represent. Mariana doesn't feel safe. She carries a gun on her property. Even without the wall, the militarization of the border has had a huge impact on the centre. If you walk down to the river, she shows us some of the roads and access routes that have been built. Concrete goes here in the base of the levy or midway in the levy. The gap to make this road up here wide enough for two to three vehicles. Down here they'll have a high speed all weather Rd, so we fully expect there's border wall and then there's border wall system. The road, the lighting, the sensors. Those sorts of things are part of the system. Clearing all through this course. Otherwise they come down this high speed, all weather Rd have to slow down go up. Drive along the canal. And we know the number one killer of Border Patrol agents is motor vehicle accidents. As we walk along one of the roads, we talk about the impact that Wall has had on wildlife. I tell her a story about a deer I saw tried to get around the wall to a pond. For whatever reason, it was so desperately sad that I can't forget it. The devastation, the border reads on. Human life tends to get the most press, and rightfully so. But Mariana has spent years watching the wall spread like a cancer at the ecosystem she loves. The addition of herbicide. You know, keep the enforcement zone dead and free of any vegetation. It has to do with the installation of all night bright lighting that disrupts mammals. And of course the wall when it eliminates range area when it when it forms that barrier for land mammals and reptiles you eliminate. Genetic diversity from from breeding you eliminate seed distribution. All kinds of other things. So no, there's no way to build a wall. Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Conservation. Of course, the human cost is even higher. Mariana first became aware of exactly what was at stake when she, like millions of other people, opened up her phone and learned about the most recent in a string of hate crimes. Inspired by anti immigrant rhetoric, a very disturbed young man drove from Plano to the Walmart in El Paso and massacred 22 people and injured dozens of others. We were very much aware of that and believe that is ultimately what we build the wall seeks to provoke here. The shooter who openly targeted Mexicans and believed in the great replacement theory, which is common among white nationalists, had posted a manifesto on 8 Chan before he started his killing spree. In that manifesto he complained of a Hispanic invasion and used rhetoric that mirrored that of Kolfage and his fundraising collaborator Steve Bannon 2019. As the year the 8 Chan shootings dominated news coverage on extremism, I found myself as the world media's go to guy for explaining what had happened. The hardest thing to get across was how much of the hate that had ended in dozens of murders had started with shitposting people spreading racist memes and hateful jokes within the confines of a digital echo chamber. For Mariana, the El Paso shooting was a wake up call, hard evidence that online ******** can turn into deadly violence. The longer she spent online reading far right conversations, the more she. Realized Kolfage's baseless allegations might mean real danger for her and her colleagues after we filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security. And and there was publicity about that. And honestly, the timing of that was kind of good because. We filed suit at the beginning of December, so by the time media picked up on it, people were really already distracted by Christmas. You know, they were holiday planning and partying and shopping and all that. So there wasn't this enormous explosion of of publicity and negative backlash, but we did start getting what we call disaster tourists. People who would show up going, we heard they're going to build the wall across the butterfly center. Show us where they're gonna build our presidents. Big beautiful wall. And as long as they behaved, you know, we have maps, we would take their entry fee and say, OK, now you got to walk 1/4 mile that way to the canal. That's where they're going to build it. And then walk another 1.2 miles to the border, to the actual border. And again, it gave us a chance to educate people. And there was a lot of head scratching with people going, but why would they build the wall? Things seem to be going well, but then they took a turn for the worst. Kovash had tweeted that quote. The only butterflies we saw were swarming a decomposing body surrounded by tons of rotting trash left behind by illegals, and his lies had become something of a fixture on the places where MAGA and Q Anon overlap. Almost none of these people had ever visited the border, but years of propaganda had given them a fixed set of expectations about this place. They spun up ever more ridiculous fantasies, and by late 2019, some of them had even started to show up in person. About that same time, police arrested two young men with Adam Waffen in West, TX, and they had been stopped and and, you know, pulled over and they had all kinds of weapons and munitions and grenades and, you know, improvised explosive devices and everything in the car. And they said they were headed to the border. Then the militia people started coming here. And. I was here the day the first ones came. The 1st that we know of came inside the building to case the joint. And sometimes I sit here at the conference table to work. Sometimes I'm in this office right here, but I can always hear what's going on at the front counter and we have a door chime and so. There are questions that people ask when they're first time visitors. There are questions people ask when they're part of our tribe, when they're naturalists, when they've come for the butterflies and the birds and all of that. And then there are questions people ask that make all of your Spidey senses, you know, go off. And I heard that kind of questioning. And whenever that happens, I get my phone open. To camera, and I go out there, what the question you heard was that kind of triggered, they were asking about the lay of the land and how they would get to the river from here. And those aren't regular, regular questions. When most people show up, they're like, we're here on family vacation and on our way to South Padre. But we heard there was a butterfly center, so we stopped to, you know, so they may say, like, where are the butterflies? People show up thinking we're a butterfly house and, you know, but when people immediately say, like, how do I get to the river from here or explain to me where the access points are? And they're kind of like, OK, we know that's. And I took a picture of them from behind. And then I went out there and I was like, you know, hello, gentlemen. Can I help you? You know, and make sure they, you know, it's like we are looking you in the face. We can identify you. And one of them kind of turned and walked off, and one of them stayed to talk to me. And they're realizing, well, we've just, you know, never been here before and tell us which all are all about. And it was the week of Thanksgiving, and we'd actually just had our potluck for staff and some of our members. So they're like, and you've got food. And they're like, can we have some pecan pie? Sure, have a slice of pie. But the other guy who had peeled off, I noticed him walking around. He came and looked back here he was noticing the cameras and all the places he he made his way toward the back of the building and started the same thing. And I was like, oh, and I told Luciano, go outside, photograph all the vehicles in the parking lot, you know, get license plates, get all the identifying information that we would need. And sure enough, there were two trucks. Backed in with the Punisher stickers and the 13 stars in a circle and the you know the don't tread on me and this and that. One of them was from New Mexico and I believe the other one was from I want to say like Oregon or somewhere but it was yeah I mean it was. I've still got all that information and then I so after they left, we downloaded the security camera video and put our photos and everything together, and I emailed everything to the commander for DPS down here, as well as the mission police chief and and then asked to meet with them. And of course the Mission PD guys had no idea about the Atomwaffen people being arrested. In Texas they had no idea the militia was in town and then they more and more of them kept coming and you know one of them would drive up and down Sherbach and his huge jacked up truck is a red truck with the Trump flags and he had two big great Danes that you know he would just be loud and and annoying. He wanted everybody to know he was here on patrol and and ready to intimidate. That was disconcerting, but the police responded. They wound up having several interactions with various militia people, and even taking at least two of them that we know of into custody, and at least one of those was turned over to the FBI. The man arrested had outstanding warrants and had been flying a drone in a controlled airspace. Another had been impersonating a law enforcement officer. Seeing the threat, Mariana realized that if she wanted to stay safe. He was going to have to take matters into her own hands. We don't know if it was done here or somewhere else. I assume it was not here because they didn't tell us it was here. Oh no. The Mission PD officer who is there liaison with the FBI, came and met with me and thanked me for sharing all of that information. I mean, we knew what hotel they were staying at. We and we had. We've had to become our own sort of security and detective. Worse, because nobody else is doing it. And I think most people in communities around the country think the police know what's going on and they're out there, you know, safeguarding us when we have learned the hard way that that is absolutely not true. Soon she was plumbing the parts of the Internet that she'd only heard mentioned on passing in the news. We were aware of Pizza gate. Yeah. Yeah, we were aware that they had declared that. Hillary Clinton and associates were running a satanic child, you know, sex ring with, you know, ritual sacrifice and all kinds of other preposterous stuff out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor. You know, where the pizza parlor didn't even have a basement, much less a satanic ritual child sex trafficking ring. Just a few weeks after the shooting in El Paso, we build the wall broke ground on their phase two project. Within sight, and very much within shooting distance of the National Butterfly Center, Myrna was under no illusion about the stakes. They know that they have the ability to incite violence in that way, to motivate. People to take action, and they use a lot of really inflammatory rhetoric. Even Steve Bannon's broadcast is called the war room. You know, we're all at war. We're at war against the cartels and we're at war for the soul of our nation. And we're at war against the Democrats. And, you know, and and now they're at war against the butterfly Center in addition to her. Huggins gathering she started taking steps to protect herself and her workers. They weren't exactly the sort of thing she'd expected. When she took a job where she'd hoped to write grants and talk to kids about butterflies, we had to develop some very rudimentary safety plans. Like if there were a shooting where you would shelter how we would try to. Safeguard visitors and other things to like the women on staff, even the guys on staff. Like I never have my hair down. I always keep it up or under a hat or something because you just learn in basic self-defense that somebody's going to grab your ponytail or your hair as the fastest, easiest way to take control of your whole body basically. So we just, we all take. A variety of precautions, and it has radically changed the way we we operate here and the way we perceive this place, which used to be. I mean, we were blissful idiots coming to work in this Oasis of. Of flowers and and butterflies every day. And you know, my children described me as Snow White, that I'm out there just. With the, you know, the butterflies landing on me and the hummingbirds coming up and saying hello, luckily she wasn't alone. As soon as people heard about the threats to her in the centre, she began to receive messages of support. It turns out it's not only right wing Grifters who can summon people to remote part of southern Texas. Where the Rio Grande twist through the reeds, a local switch to English and Spanish as a mood suits him. Groups from across the country, from veterans to indigenous nations, reached out to offer support. So first we had the water protectors and indigenous peoples like the karisoke crudo and Navajo and other nations people came here. And set up camp. They were good being here night and day to be our eyes and ears and a deterrent for the militia entering the property. And along with them came others, like the Sierra Club's military outdoors program participants who also camped out here for a week. And we had the Brown berets and. Veterans for peace and even folks from the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. I mean, I hate to even include that, since we get called pinko commie libtard snowflakes and all of that, but those folks showed up willing to help in the face of fascism, in the face of these militia. But all this stress? And the need for constant patrols and vigilance took its toll. Even with support. Being the center of a fabricated firestorm of lies is no fun. It wasn't just Mariana who's impacted, the constant stressed and the non-stop over flights of the Border Patrol helicopters impacted her staff as well. And then in 2019 like all bets are off. Anybody can say anything they want. They can. You know, I hate to say it, but people get mental health days now if they pay, if they just for whatever reason or like, I can't deal with this **** today. They don't have to come to work and and I've lost good employees. In 2020, briefly, we built the Wall, won an injunction, and kept building their privately funded wall. Massive erosion quickly undermined it, but the international boundary and Water Commission report on the construction wasn't completed until March, by which time we build the wall had completed 3 miles of wall. The consensus among hydrologists and engineers interviewed by Pro Publica for a report on the wall said that the Rio Grande had scoured against the base of the wall. Using erosion and putting the wall in danger of collapse with its very shallow foundation, coal filters, wall was an immediate danger of toppling into the river. In response to this, Trump did what Trump does and took to Twitter to blame everyone else. In July of 2020 he tweeted. I disagreed with doing this very small tiny section of the wall going on to say it was only done to make me look bad and perhaps it now doesn't even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles. I should also note that he misspelled perhaps in that tweet. While Copage was still reeling from this condemnation, the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York announced indictments of Kolfage and Bannon for wire fraud. The charging documents themselves are an unusually compelling read. We did a couple of episodes of behind the ******** covering them. The whole situation would be much funnier, though, if it weren't for all of the lives that Kolfage and his cronies directly threatened anyway, it turned out they had been taking huge sums for their own personal use while concealing their use of funds that donors thought would be spent on the wall by creating quote. Sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes. Initially, all four entered not guilty pleas. They seemed to be buying time, hoping that Trump would pardon them. In the end, he did pardon Steve Bannon, and you can make of that what you will. But the others were left to hang in the wind. This April, KOLFAGE entered a guilty plea to these and other charges. The failure of Bannon and Kolfage's grift didn't stop them from using the butterfly sanctuary as a punching bag and their fundraising rants that they published to whatever sites had not gotten around to banning them yet. As right wing radicals were deep platformed from Facebook and Twitter in the lead up to the 2020 Election, Mariana stopped getting tagged in their rants. But they didn't stop ranting. Soon, as it became clear that Trump had lost the election and refused to concede it, he began to lie about the election and then attempted to overturn it by encouraging his supporters to storm the US Capitol at this point. Became clearer that the same people who were fanatical about building the wall had also become entirely detached from reality, even after Biden had been inaugurated and their life had failed a who's who, or perhaps a who's not in jail for sedition. Yet of Maga grifters continued to focus their rage at the Q Anon adjacent fantasies they'd concocted about unspecified cartels smuggling children across a butterfly sanctuary to sexually abuse them. Sometimes, they claimed, they cut the heads off of children so that the corpses were easier to transport. It's the kind of habitual. Unhinged escalation that liberals and lefties on Twitter love to consume, mockingly, via aggregator accounts that enable mass gawking at the far right. But for Mariana, it was not at all amusing. Like, I didn't even know Rumble existed. I didn't know what rumble was. And then we were sent the video that Christy Hutcherson and Lindsay something from South Carolina made here in front of the butterfly Center. And you know, of course there's the Ben Burkham stuff. And. You know, we don't watch war room, but sometimes I I do have to go find and film portions of those broadcasts where Steve Bannon is still bashing us and and using that platform to bolster. The lies and. And, you know, really stir up the the. The terrible sentiment and and ultimately we fear the stochastic terrorism. Let's stop for a second and go into more detail about the people she's referencing here. Christie Hutcherson founded a group called Women Fighting for America. On their websites about page they note today Americans closely held beliefs and freedom seemed to be under constant attack from mainstream media, elitist academia, judicial activists, foreign aggressors, and many times elected politicians. These attacks highlight the two extremely different ideologies fighting for our country's future. Will we stand by and let America become a socialist, Marxist or communist nation and give our children up to this hopeless vision? I should also note that women fighting for America actively solicits donations which they note are not tax deductible. Hutchinson incited rioters during the January 6th insurrection, and is generally what you might call a B list. Maga star Ben Burkham is a correspondent for Real America voice, the network that hosts Steve Bannon's war room podcasts. In general, the folks most focused on harassing the butterfly sanctuary are a lower grade of MAGA influencer than the major national names, but they all have connections higher up to those. Big names. And when they do land a successful line of propaganda, it tends to filter up quite efficiently to those bigger names. In January of 2022, a year after the failed coup at the Capitol, some of these MAGA holdouts came to the Rio Grande Valley to pick on a target they thought they might have a better chance of taking. The We stand America Border Security Rally was headlined by the few remaining Q Anon conspiracy theorists and supporters of former President Trump who had not gotten in trouble for the capital stuff, in part like the entire phenomenon. The conference was a giant grift, but for many of the people taken up with its religious proclamations and wild lies of child trafficking and sexual abuse, it was the last chance they felt they had to stop something evil. Mariana, up until that time, hadn't been aware of how serious the threats against her sanctuary were. Then a friend involved in local Republican politics reached out and told her be armed at all times or out of town. Ahead of the rally, Ben Berkum appeared in a video on Gitter outside of the sanctuary, holding a pair of children's. Choose, which he claimed were evidence of trafficking and stated that he and the butterfly center were calling on Joe Biden to shut down the border. We're down here, actually heading down to Benson State Park to look at the end of the wall where Joe Biden stopped building the wall, and this place, the butterfly center. They said they were afraid they had some credible threats that something was going to go on. So we came down here and we want to join our voices with the Butterfly Center and say we stand against the credible threats of the cartels trafficking children through the butterfly. There and we demand we call on Joe Biden. To close this border down to protect the butterflies, because we all care about butterflies. I mean, you know, the children that are being sold. These shoes are from one of the children that was trafficked across. This wristband was from one of the children that was trafficked across smaller than my 4 year old daughter's arm, but what really matters? To the Democrats are the butterflies, and so we unite with them. If that's what, if that's what it's going to take to shut this border down, we unite with them and say, protect the butterflies, Joe, close down the border. Because we know you don't care about the kids. The same day Piper, Loomis, and Hutcherson appeared in their own video holding the same suspiciously new looking children's shoes and their horrifically overexposed video. They suggested that NBC was, quote, more concerned about butterflies than the little children, and that the butterfly Center was used as a route for the sex trafficking of children. Together, the video's title said they would save America. Hey everyone, this is Lindsey Piper Loomis. I'm here with my bestie Christie Hutcherson and founder of women fighting for America went to the. Order with her last year for six days. We are here at the butterfly center. Look at the credible threat. They said there's going to be a big protest here. There's no protest. Protest? They're protesting. What? Tell them about this, butterflies. Tell them why? Like what was the big deal? I'm not really sure, but I got news. I've been hit by every single tabloid there is, but there's some kind of credible threat with butterflies here in Mission, TX. From we stand America and women fighting for America. I can tell you, women fighting for America loves butterflies and we care about. Butterflies. Very much so. I wanted to come down here and see what the credible threat was. And if we have to protect the butterflies, we need to protect the butterflies. I agree with that. So, Biden, why don't you build the wall to protect the butterflies? It's really that simple. But my question to this administration and to the National Butterfly Museum here why are you more concerned? Why are you more concerned about butterflies than you are, than the little children who are being trafficked right behind? This center and they use the the butterfly land to come up through and bring these children who are trafficked and these women who are trafficked. You know, Tom Homan yesterday was speaking on stage and was telling one of the stories where he's seen a little child where he had to rescue and that one child had over 22 different peoples DNA inside of them. That's disgusting. Yeah. So as much as I care about butterflies, I can tell you this, Lindsay. I care a lot more about our children and the children who are coming up and being. Exploited from the different countries by the cartels. Yeah, that's what I care about. So I've been telling you guys about how children are tattooed according to how they're gonna be trafficked or sold into what type of trafficking, organ harvesting, sex, drug and human trafficking. How they use their body. They kill them. They use their body cavities to haul drugs across the border until the bodies start decaying. They find the bodies Decapped, decapitated. Told you about the rape trees. But here we actually have a shoe from. And this actually, this is this is what? So, Lindsey, this is a little bracelet. And there's a little how much money it costs for this person to be brought aside to to America from the cartels. The other thing is, is that the cartels, when they're getting ready to move children, they call them tickets. So they have no regard for life. They don't care. They'll throw them in the river, they'll leave them in the desert to die, and they call them tickets. That's that's how disgusting this whole thing is. And America needs to wake up and understand we are at a war with the cartels, we are at a war to save our children and every so much. It's a border state, and South Carolina is ranked one of the top in the nation for trafficking Lindsey Piper Loomis with Christy Hutcherson. Together we're saving America. God bless, but this time they didn't stop with posting. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Mgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now and more markets than ever. 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And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. On the day he was inaugurated, Biden signed an executive order rescinding Trump's emergency declaration at the southern border and ending some use of the DoD funding Trump had relied upon as an end run around accountability. But he didn't, as he promised he would stop building immediately. During the Biden Obama administration, Trump campaigned on build that wall. Are you willing to tear that wall down? Would be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, number one. Like so much else, Biden didn't live up to his promises on the border. There have been some small victories for basic decency, but Biden's record is deeply mixed. He's reunited hundreds of children with their families that ended court negotiations about a financial settlement for them. Migrant apprehensions climbed to 1.7 million, a record, in fiscal year 2021. But they also reflected an unusually high rate of adults attempting to cross the border multiple times. That's because Biden's administration defended Trump's use of Title 42, part of a 77 year old law called the Public Health Service Act, which has been interpreted to allow CBP to release migrants back into Mexico without booking them. Often this means they turn right back around and cross again in a more remote and often more deadly place. Biden hasn't lived up to his promises on the wall, either. Mariana showed us a pile of wall sections, essentially giant metal poles just a little shorter than Trump Wall. You could be forgiven for thinking they are identical. But these, she explained, were not technically wall. And you see the border wall that was being constructed there, some of it has the tall bollards with the anti climbing plate. That's Trump and then this short. Calling this levy repair. And guardrail. Well, I snap Moody black and white photos of the wall from on top of the levy as I have all along the hundreds of miles of landscape that it cuts through like an open wound. Robert went down to see who made these new pieces of the Biden barrier, but we didn't have much luck finding a label. The wall segments lay out in giant pallets surrounded by construction debris and dirt. Every pallet is labeled, and so were all the shipping containers, but the wall materials themselves had no clear makers mark on them. As we walked back along the dirt Rd, we asked Mariana about the video that brought us here in the first place. If you haven't seen it, it's a video of Kimberly Lowe, a long odds mogga congressional candidate from Virginia. Kimberly is an interesting figure. She started out as a Sanders backer in 2016 and has radicalized since to such a degree that most of her local Maga people want nothing to do with her. Some of them think she's some kind of double agent. Audio from the incident makes it clear why people might view Kimberly as unhinged. I'm sorry, no, you are here to promote your agenda, and your agenda is not welcome here. So you're not for keeping the illegals out. So you're not. That has all these poor people in the communitarian crisis. That's what we're here. That's our agenda. No, that's not trafficked and raped, and that is not at all what this is about. We have Girl Scouts spin the night here. That's how safe it is. Yeah. I have children in the car. I know it's safe here. Yeah. Anyway, we're not here to it. No, you're you're here to make a show and to promote your agenda so you can leave now. Thank you for leaving now. Thank you so much. But I'm sorry that you're OK with children being great. I'm not OK with any of that. And your ******** is a big problem. That's really asking. Person will let Mariana explain what happened. So I was sitting here actually at the conference table, and my son was at the front counter. He doesn't work here, but he was covering for a staff member who was out sick. And as I was saying, you hear things that are like. You know, so I was on a conference call. I had my headphones in, but my son came over and he gave me a note and it said, you know, this woman says she's running for Congress and has her Secret Service agent with her. And, you know, I thought that was strange. But then I, you know, I'm still on this call. But I, you know, I took my headphones out so I could hear them. And the one woman Michelle was claiming to be Secret Service. And I mean, I've had people like Beto O'Rourke, when he was a congressman, come visit Michelle Beckley, who's the state representative. I mean, I've had. I've had people come visit and they don't have Secret Service, you know? So I knew that that was not true, that this woman was not Secret Service and the congressional Rep I asked my son get her name and he did, and I just did, you know, literally like one or two-minute Internet search for her and it was immediately apparent that she was a MAGA. Candidate and my son said they want us to open the back 70 for them, but they don't want to pay admission. And on her Facebook page I could see their Facebook live stream from just like 5 minutes earlier where they had driven down sherbach to the gate where y'all have been and seen. You know, we have a great big private property, no trespassing sign. And then they went up on the levee and interacted with the Texas National Guard there. Her video ended before that, but a reporter with stars and Stripes I know was on the levy with the National Guard and interacted with Kimberly and Michelle. So they trespassed on to our property. Then they came here demanding that they be granted access without paying admission and declared just right up front we want to go see the river and the illegals crossing on the rafts to the butterfly center. The rafts they were talking about were referencing a doctored image circulating around the right wing conspiracy web. We stood at the dock in the image. On that afternoon. There were no rafts. Mariana decided to try and talk the two women down. So, you know, I I put my phone on record, carried it out there. I got 2 business cards because it is my job to be professional and greet these people when they come. So I went out there and I said hello and the rest of it. History as they say you have that audio or. You know of, of. Me saying I know who you are and what you're up to, and I knew then it was a setup. For someone to come here and say those things and be doing their own, you know, sort of Project Veritas Facebook live stream border adventure. From Virginia. As they say, none of it smelled right. You know, that didn't work. So she asked them to leave. Well, it was when I told them they needed to leave. And if they weren't going to leave, you know, we would call the police. And I told him I just turned to my son. Just do it, you know, go ahead and call them. Call the police, which he did. And they they were like, no, no, we're leaving. We're leaving. They went out the front doors, but then they stopped. So I opened the door behind them, like, keep it moving, ladies. You know you have to leave. And I was focused on Michelle. He was on my left who was again saying she was Secret Service. And laughing at her when I turned and Kimberly was on this side of me and had her phone up like this, so I didn't know if she was taking photos or filming, but we talked about how everybody now has their own triggers. I do not want my photo taken. I do not want anyone filming me. I don't. I don't want any of that because of how coal fashion Bannon and their fake news outlets and everything else have used my image and and have. Put a target on my back. So she's standing there going, we're here at the butterfly sanctuary or whatever she called it, and I'm with this not nice lady. And I was like, Oh no. And I just put my hand up to block her from photographing or filming me or to swat it away. And then I immediately turned back toward the doors to retreat inside the building. But I didn't make it inside the building. I was flat on my *** on the ground. And I didn't know if Michelle had grabbed me from behind, or if Kimberly had pushed me or whatever, but then my son busted out of the building and was sort of over me. And I'm trying to get up off the ground, and all this is caught on the video camera from the building. In a previous video, the women had indicated that they were armed, which is generally a safe assumption. When Maga types show up accusing you of child trafficking, the situation was rapidly growing more dangerous. My son. Feared for my life. He thought Michelle was gonna stomp my face or my neck or my head. And she's a big girl and. And at that point, Kimberly ran to her car. Somewhere in the midst of all that, she she fled to her car, where she had her three children waiting. Because this place is so dangerous and lawless and and everything. She brought her three children here for her opportunity to, you know? Interact with cartel or whatever. I mean, it's just the whole thing just gets more bizarre and and Michelle at that point had taken my phone. And I was just telling her you're not leaving with my phone, give me my phone back while Kimberly is again live streaming from her car, yelling at Michelle to come get in the car. Michelle did walk to the car, declare. She's not bothering me. About me. But my son had run to close the front gate because he didn't want them. I mean, he had just called 911. Unbeknownst to us, there was a visitor in the parking lot who had also dialed 911. And you guys have been here. There's police on the corner. There's police, right? I mean, there's police everywhere. So my son ran to close the gate. One, so they couldn't leave with my phone. Two, so they would be here when the police got here. But then the police didn't come. And as she fled the property, she's filming herself and she's gunning it the car. As she raises towards the the gate, screaming. Get the **** out of my way, get the **** out of my way, and then she swerves like this at my son, who had to leap. To the ground out of the way to avoid being hit by her Red Range Rover. The center was full of visitors. Some of them called 911, but no one stepped in to help prior to this experience. Yes, I would have expected our visitors. Any. Decent human being to respond to a woman screaming. Help, help. Help me. Please, please help. But nobody did. Only my son. At first they didn't fully grasp what was happening, but soon Mariana had worked out who her attacker was, and so I relayed all of that to my boss and to the police. And you know, my boss was kind of like, well, do whatever you want if you feel like you need to close next weekend. And close next weekend. So we did. We closed that Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And then we came back in the next Monday and that's when we saw and people started sending us the videos. That burkham and Hutcherson had filmed here presumably on Sunday, and there's probably a lot more stuff out there that we haven't seen. After leaving the Butterfly Center one day, we went for a walk towards some nearby trailer parks. They're full of people who the locals call winter Texans, people from the colder parts of the US who spend a few months in trailer homes on the border so they can wear shorts in March and not pay expensive heating bills. We bumped into some winter Texans who are on their way to a bird sanctuary we just visited. They said they'd missed their usual trip to the butterfly centre. Their friends in Minnesota, they said, can believe that they would go down to the border. The stuff you stuff you get in Minnesota is not reality as to what's going on on the border down here and what people don't understand. Well, they wonder, why are you coming down and putting yourself in such danger? What really is the idea? So just parts of people attacking you, you know, it's like the people coming out of Ukraine right now. I mean that's that's the impression they get and we say no. To watch you go in the Mexico, they do their best to help change perceptions, they said. And then we try to, we try to do as much as we can to get factual information back home. Stuff like that would work. We haven't come the last few years for the COVID. 4-5 years ago we were working with the respite center here with the charities and there were so many people. I don't think that people realize because of the river there's not a straight line. Yeah, you can't just build a wall. And then people live in their houses South of the wall. Yeah, you know, and people's farms are South of the wall. Yeah, sometimes there's a wall and sometimes there isn't a wall. Everywhere we go along the border, we see division. Locals are losing places they love, and people from a long way away are performing a charade for personal and political gain. But it's not all that cut and dried. One Taco shop we walked past has a special parking spot reserved for DHS employees. A trailer park we drive by has thin blue line flags flying. Despite my best attempts at pulling the clueless foreigner card, when we call them, they won't tell me why they have the flags or what they mean. Some of the National Guard troops we spoke to have been out of work before they came down to the border. OK. OK. Wow. Yeah. You get active duty pay while you're somewhere, but it's like. It's different because it's stable. Yeah. Everyone on the border wants to feel safe, including Mariana. But the reason the border is remarkable at all is because so many people have to cross it. Some cross for work, some cross for fun, some cross to change their lives. But without people, the border doesn't have any significance for Mariana. Without people, she can't even enjoy the quiet and calm in the sanctuary. She hopes she says they can reopen soon. I mean, honestly, I hope it doesn't last a whole lot longer, because. We all miss one another we miss. Being here. You know, really of all the jobs that a person can have in the world, one where you get to interact with wildlife and garden and breathe fresh air and, you know, feel the rain on your face. I mean, it's pretty awesome. And and interact with people who were absolutely thrilled and fascinated, especially the children. Just delighted, gleeful about their interactions here. We want to get back to that. But we have to have more. We have to have more help before we can do that. We we need a professional guidance beyond what we've received three years ago, when the first wave of Community defense and and mutual aid hit the ground here. Mariana doesn't know when she'll feel safe, but even with the center poised to reopen as we write this, she isn't secure yet. You know, I feel like. It's a cat and mouse thing. And they're the cat and we're the mouse. And that they are going to continue to come back again and again until. Something really bad happens. I think it's almost a challenge maybe at this point from what I can tell about their. Their psyche? You know, it goes right back to that winning. Yeah. You know, Steve Bannon's no loser. He's not used to losing and anything short of achieving his goal. Whatever that may be. Is not winning. If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what you can do to help. If, like most Americans, you live a long way from the southern border and have never visited, it might seem strange to take up and travel there to meet a nice lady and talk about butterflies Q Anon, while you have to drive past soldiers in fatigues with assault rifles to look at her pollinator garden. But Mariana says that even the small acts of solidarity make a huge difference, even people just sending really nice e-mail or letters. Is so good. We'll probably have a wall of that when we get back. Because the flip side of that is the hate mail, the ugly messages, the death threats, the voice mails that are so horrible. So do you hear from people that do support us and stand with us and feel like what's happening is horrible? People who write to say, you know, I told my quilting circle about what's happening at the butterfly center or, you know, I mean. And. And we're going to make a quilt for you or, you know, whatever it is, you know. It it helps. It really does. And then they they can share our story, because it's not. Just about the butterfly Center, it's about what's happening to our democracy. It's about how these operations work. To manipulate people with lies. I don't want to call it conspiracy theories or misinformation or any of that anymore. They're just lies. And people need to start to understand that, whether it's about COVID or the trucker convoys or trans kids or the butterfly center. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now. It really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history. Without all the stress, while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. 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