4/22/26: Fed Chair Nominee Grilled, Data Center Revolt, CIA Officers Die In Mexico, VA Redistricting

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The battle for the Federal Reserve played out in the Senate yesterday, but the morning started with Donald Trump himself on CNBC, commenting in an interview with Joe Kernan, extensively. on the war with Iran. We covered that earlier in the show. But he also talked about oil prices. Let's go ahead and roll this clip, C1. And they said, wow, that's going to be bad. I said, yeah, it's going to hurt the market and it's going to drive up the price of oil and whatever it is. But that's peanuts compared to what would happen if we let this happen. And I told them, 47 years other presidents wanted to do it. They never had the guts. Okay, so that'll hit a lot of Americans, I'm sure, as callous at best. But interestingly,

Donald Trump himself has been agitating for the Fed to cut rates for a long time. But now he promised Americans he was going to bring down inflation. He was going to be the anti-Biden and now with prices going up. His pick for Fed chair was in front of the Senate yesterday. And obviously, Trump trying to squeeze in his Fed chair is an effort to get the rates cut. The war in Iran completely changes the calculus on. whether or not that's a good idea. So Elizabeth Warren, this is Kevin Warsh,

if you haven't been following the situation surrounding Kevin Warsh too closely. Other than if he said yes to this. Yeah, well. Actually, never mind. We don't need to know anything else about him. He said yes to this job under these circumstances and conditions. We don't need to know anything else.

He's going to cut rates. He's like a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Stanford grad school. He's a pretty, to me at least he seems like he's a pretty conventional Republican pick for the Fed. Except for the fact that he said yes to this. Well, there's that. And he was trying to play that. He was a member of the Board of Governors over the Reserve System from 2006 until 2011.

Okay. He was the Fed's rep to the group, to the G20, and their emissary to the emerging and advanced economies in Asia. So he's had all kinds of these like official titles. Somewhat steady employment. I'm impressed. He was a special assistant to the president for econ policy in the Bush administration. So 2002. That went fine.

Doesn't do it 2006. And then he was doing M&A at Morgan Stanley and then vice president and executive director over at Morgan Stanley as well. How did the Bush administration economic policy and that was good. That was fine, right? Everything was great. That was good. And as far as I'm aware, Donald Trump is a fan of the work of the Bush administration. administration on the economy. So he is, he was obviously getting grilled. Now, Trump started this

investigation into corruption at the Fed over this massive, this massive renovation that's going on next to the White House. Actually, I was there that day. He toured the Fed renovation with Jerome Powell and Tim Scott. Yeah, it was a new media pool. Yeah, there's like eight of us in the, this like scorching hot. And Trump and Jerome Powell are standing next to each other. Jim Scott's third wheeling, and you could have cut the tension with a knife. It was deeply uncomfortable. And at the time I asked Trump, well, why don't you just, if you're saying that all of these interest rates are hurting American families so badly, and you're threatening to fire him

at one point, why not just do it now? And Trump said, well, I don't think it's come to that. This was playing out. Democrats were having a field day with this, of course, as you can imagine yesterday. So let's go ahead and roll Elizabeth Warren laying into Kevin Warsh. C-2. Trump has made clear that he does not want an independent Fed. In fact, he has said, and I quote,

anybody that disagrees with me will never be Fed chairman. And he's made clear that you are his sock puppets saying last week that interest rates will drop, quote, when Kevin gets in. Yeah, I think they do. Not when economic conditions change will get lower rates. Not when the economy needs it. Nope. He said when my guy, Kevin Warsh, is a.

in there, we'll get the interest rates that I, Donald Trump, wants. So independence takes courage. Let's check out your independence and your courage. We'll start easy. Mr. Kevin Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? We try to keep politics if I'm confirmed out of the federal reserve. I'm just asking you a factual question. I need to know, I need to measure your independence and your courage. Senator, I believe that this body certified that election many years ago. the question I'm asking. I'm asking, did Donald Trump lose in 2020? And I'm suggesting you in 2020, the Fed made a huge inflation problem, and you certify the election. So let me ask you another question out of monetary policy. In our meeting, you have a hundred million dollars in undisclosed assets.

And what I'm asking is are any of those with this outfit that invests in companies affiliated with President Trump or his family, companies that have facilitated money laundering, Chinese control companies, or financing vehicles set up by Jeffrey Epstein. It's a yes or no question. Senator, I've worked tirelessly with the ethics officials at the Office of Government Ethics. Yes, and you have not revealed a $100 million in assets. And have agreed, Senator, to sell all of my financial assets, including the Duquesnecine assets. Are you refusing to tell us if you have investments, for example, in vehicle sets? up to advance Jeffrey Epstein. Is that what you're telling us? You just won't tell us?

Senator, what I'm telling you is that those assets that you represent as juggernaut will be sold if I'm confirmed before I take office and sign the oath of all. So that was a pretty representative flavor of how the hearing went yesterday. Now, CNN on that $100 million in assets reports, among the key questions yesterday, quote, why Kevin Warsh failed to disclose any details about more than $100 million in assets? Kevin Warsh declined several times to say what those assets were naming only the private funds in which they were held. He also said that he would follow government ethics guidelines and convert his assets into something, quote, vanilla resembling cash within the required time frame after his confirmation.

What do you think, Ryan? Seems okay, right? Seems fine. It's always weird when people don't disclose things. Yeah, you should disclose it. Am I missing something? Because that seems okay if he actually is going to sell them. Now, I think... Fair question as to why you wouldn't have disclosed this. Maybe the fear would be like he's not going to disclose it. He's going to promise to sell it and he doesn't sell it.

And then doesn't disclose that he doesn't sell it. I guess if you're already... But he's worth $100 million? Yeah. That's a lot of money. That's what happens when you're rich. You can just be like, oh, that $100 million? No.

Don't worry about it. Well, he got more questions. 100 million doesn't buy what he used to, though. That's so true. Here's Senator Smith laying into Kevin Warsh as well, C3. The roaring economy is roaring like never before. So do you agree with that statement? Is that how you see the economy that is roaring like never roaring before?

So, Senator, if I can clarify two things. One, there's a difference between the change in prices and inflation. The change in prices happen in a market economy. When inflation moves up, that's because the Fed had something to do with it. Now, on the state of the economy, I would say that the broad contours of the economy are improving. the potential of the economy, the real results of the economy are improving, but I think it can improve more. And I think in the years ahead, I think the economy's potential is strengthening. So, you know, the reality is that the economic data, understanding what you're saying about economic data being not imperfect, there was almost zero job growth in 2025.

And so that looks to me like not a roaring economy. It looks like a weak economy. And finally, take a look at this line of questioning from Senator Rock. Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia. You currently serve as a lecturer at Stanford University. If you were to assign a professor wash were to assign a letter grade to the American economy today for the average working family, what grade would you assign? Senator, it was good to meet with you in your office. You know, in modern academic institutions, they give everybody A's.

So it's not a fair comparison, especially at elite universities I know everyone gets perfect rates. Well, what grade would you give the economy? Well, if I gave a student anything other than an A, the dean would summon me to his office because I would have heard his self-image. Well, the Americans that I talked to, particularly in the state of Georgia,

who haven't had the benefit of attending some of these elite, institutions are trying to make their lives work. They're sitting around their kitchen tables trying to figure out how to put their kids through school. And regardless of how the markets are doing, consumer confidence is at a record low. So that's their grade on the economy.

So actually, consumer confidence at a record low across the board, Republicans, Democrats. That happened before the war in Iran, Ryan, which, which is a reflection on a very different presidency or how Americans are interpreting this presidency very differently than they were the first Trump presidency. And I wonder, I mean, the question of where the rates should go now that Trump is saying, oh, it's fine, that oil and gas prices will be up, everyone should have done this. They wanted to do this war. Nobody had the courage to do it until I did it. is now a very, very different question than it was even before. Yes.

Sending in a Trump hack to the Fed right after he blows up the economy is just such sad timing for us as people. Well, you're a lower the rates guy, aren't you? In general. But if you have runaway inflation, like, I think, you know, I had, read a lot about inflation in the 70s and the 80s and the political implications that it had and how hard it was on families. Experiencing it yourself, I think, is different.

And I think that's probably true for, you know, everybody out there. Like, we didn't, we haven't had significant inflation since the 80s, right? We've had a rare case of a long stretch of pretty stable prices. And then with COVID. not like sudden inflation. Then you get boom, all of a sudden, like, stuff is like going crazy. And continuing to climb. Like, it's not climbing like it was in 21 and 22, but it's still getting worse.

And now what Trump has done is he's thrown in, you know, fertilizer prices going through the roof. There's going to be food shortages. We're going to have a lot of countries going to have food rationing. We will ration it by just making it, you know, out of reach for a lot of people. But prices of food are going to go way up. Prices of all goods that require energy, which is all goods, are going to go up. And the cost of heating your home, cooling your home, putting gas in the car, going to go way up. Meanwhile, we're billing out all of these AI data centers that are also driving up prices.

Which we're going to get to in just a moment. So I'm a low interest rate person in a normal world. But if you have runaway prices, inflation is. eats away at people's, you know, ability to make it, make it from week to week. And if you keep rates low in that environment, in some ways you help the situation because you can reduce housing prices, maybe reduce rent, but you drive up the price of everything else. And, you know, low interest rates kind of juice assets, which is housing prices, but they reduce mortgage rates. So the price goes up, but they become more affordable. It's complicated.

But then the price of everything else goes up. So there are occasions where you do actually need higher interest rates to get inflation under control. I think it would be nice to have somebody who was like thinking about these things seriously. And I don't think that's what what Trump wants. Trump wants somebody just going to lower rates as much as possible into the election. And we should mention Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who is retiring, used his time during yesterday's hearing to say he wants Trump to drop the Fed investigation and then he will vote to confirm Kevin Warsh. And that could be a real, I mean, that could be a real problem for the administration going forward. Tellis has been a thorn in their side on this issue for many months now. So it's possible this investigation into Jerome Powell, which let's just say, I mean, the fact.

the renovation, obviously, looks lavish. I really don't think there's a question about that, but that it raises to the level of anything other than, or that this is anything other than warfare is a little bit absurd. Also, how do we care? The Fed literally prints money. If they want to print a billion dollars and build themselves a nice building. Yes. It's MMT in a building. They believe in MMT. Now we know. If they're using tax dollars, that's one thing. They're not. Like, they're just printing money, giving it to D.C. contractors. A lot of things that get upset about in this world. That, that one, I've never been, like, really upset about the Fed printing money and building themselves a nice office. You're a money printer. You're going to build yourself a nice office.

Now, Kevin Warsh probably found a lot more sympathy with Republican senators when he was talking yesterday about mission creep at the Fed wanting to end mission creep at the Fed. Obviously, there was a lot of, I think there's truth to some of the allegations that the Fed under Jerome Powell has been dabbled. in cultural politics over the last decade, though, a lot of that has since gone away, is my understanding. So he probably did what he needed with most Republican senators, Thom Tillis seems to like him. He's just holding up the vote over whether or not the investigation stays open, goes away. Futures, as of right now, have risen after the ceasefire extension, but midterms coming up in just a number of months. So Donald Trump gets into office promising to decrease inflation. Now all of these down-ballot Republicans, Trump's not on the ballot, obviously, in November, are going to have to face the music.

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I'm Munga shit together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole. of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever, for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble.

I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Let's talk about data centers. We've got to talk about data centers. Always should be talking about data centers which are rocking many, many places in the country, local politics, rocking all kinds of, you know, different. I mean, let's just put this element up on the screen. This is D1. This is a tear sheet from the free press,

which had a wonderful piece of reporting. We got to give credit where it's due. A wonderful piece of reporting into what happens when, the headline is, what happens when a data center comes to town. This is about a rural Ohio County where there's this 800-acre data center being planned that would produce, get this Ryan, the massive total of 50 permanent jobs. I think it's like typical. That's all of these too, yeah. Yep, of course.

Typical where they'll have about, I think it's like 2,000 or you have 1,200 construction jobs for the first phase. And quote, at least 50 permanent jobs once construction is complete, it will generate hundreds of thousands. of dollars in greatly needed tax revenue. And one local man said, he hasn't seen this, he's the county commissioner, told the free press, he hasn't seen this sort of local investment, quote, in my lifetime. It is a very poor county. But the peace reports, not all the neighbors feel that way. After announcing plans for the data center in January, dozens crowded into the local courthouse.

They're wondering how much water the data center will use. Will their power bills go up? What about the noise? We played a video last week on the show about someone recording just. from their back deck, the noise from a nearby data center, absolutely insane. According to Google's own assessments, the free press reports, each individual data center consumes anywhere from 10,000 to more than 1 billion gallons of water. But the reality is that nobody really knows what those numbers will look like for Franklin Furness.

So this is a Google data center. It would involve a 75% tax abatement. And they're, again, looking for 800 acres of land right by the river. You can see how this would get on people's bad side very quickly. Just in Wisconsin recently, I think it was Whitefish Bay. There was a referendum where voters came in and rejected. It was one of the first big referendums in the country where you saw local voters rejecting future data centers in a big, big vote. Breaking Points, we've been covering this for a long time.

Dave Weigel has been covering this at Semaphore. but, you know, we can actually throw up on the screen here in New York Times. This is going to be D3, New York Times tear sheet. Job cuts driven by AI are rising on Wall Street. It's coming not just for rural Ohio, Ryan, but rapidly in some of the white collar sectors as well. Let's move to D4. These are just two headlines from yesterday, AI, meta, to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI. training data. So big data center is going up all over the country, job cuts even on Wall

Street, mouse tracking to train AI at meta. Everybody's happy. Everyone's loving it. And so if you're in this rural area where they want to take 800 of your acres along the river to install a whirring, like water guzzling, energy guzzling data center. with tax breaks that you don't get. Tax breaks that you don't get for a couple bucks, for a couple jobs. And tax revenue. What on earth? And maybe some time.

Okay, so I was going to say. Hopefully some tax revenue. What on earth would be the argument for doing that? The best argument, I guess, could be, yes, tax revenue. You get, and you put that into schools and, okay. So that, if you actually believe that that was going to come forward, then, okay, that that's at least an argument for it. What I would say is like that this is the,

this is the place where the public has their, has their leverage to strike some sort of grand bargain with AI where it's like, okay, you want this and you need this from us. What do we get? Pitch us on how AI is going to bring us a better world. Right. And I and like Grock being able to take the clothes off of a 12 year old isn't it? Or to prosecute wars in the Middle East, which is the other thing.

Yeah, that's not it either. Like what is the what is the society that you're going to create that is better than the one we have now in order for us to agree to do this with you? because you can't do it without the land that people control. So there is this big movement that is fighting back against these data centers. And it really does seem to be the only thing that humanity has against the creep of these robots. One of the things I love about the story is that it focuses on the history of this particular place in Appalachia and Ohio and how they have had the rug pulled out from under them during the last decade or the last, the last decade, the last century of industrialization, where you had these plants that it's a chemical plant,

so sun Coke energy at one point. The plant makes up material called Coke, critical for steel production, but a decade ago the plant was fined by the EPA for violating the Clean Air Act. And McDavid claims, one of the people in the story, residue from the plant still rains down on the houses and cars in the neighborhoods nearby and just over and over again, how you get economic opportunity. rug is pulled out from under you because the opportunity goes away. The jobs go overseas. I think there was a printing business in this area as well at one point. The story is fantastic. And then you get

people who open plants like the Suncoq one and it has like just dirt raining down on you and you're promised over and over again. This is going to be a great investment. This is exactly what the community needs. And now they're asking for it again with something that's not even intangible. It's one thing when you're like, okay, we are making this. We are making that. I can see it. I get it. Right now, you have, what, 35% of the S&P 500 is these Mag 7 companies. Feels like a total bubble. And nobody even, other than people who are, you know, using... Prompt up by golf money. Propped up by golf money. That's another good point. And there was a study that came a horrifying study that came out the other day where it showed, I'm actually just going to pull it up

because it's worth mentioning. This is from a Google deep mind researcher. It's called the abstraction fallacy, why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness. Oh, wait, that's the wrong study. That's another good study. But there was a study that came out the other day that a huge proportion of LLM use is actually personal,

something like 60%. It's not work-based. So people are using AI for conversational needs in their personal lives, AI therapy, conversation, and that sort of thing. How to fix the water heater? How to fix the road? No, I think it was actually not even just those types of questions. Yeah, but like actual personal questions.

So anyway. How do I tell this person I'm not going to the happy hour? Right, yes. Questions like that. That seemed really personal right. I don't know which happy hour you're planning on skipping. I say no to them all, so. But anyway.

I don't need chat GPTs help with that. And yeah, the consciousness study too, important one, because the Google deep mind researcher was arguing that LLMs can ever be conscious not in 10 years or 100 years. And it's like, this is what, this is the waters that we're swimming in right now. People are being expected to give tax break to these massive companies that want to push these technologies on you without producing juice that feels like it's worth the squeeze. Yeah. But yeah, Jon Ossoff clearly sees a lane there.

There are some efforts in the Georgia legislature to crack down on the data center buildout. Those efforts have been stopped. And so Asaf clearly, who was running for re-election and is talked about as a presidential contender assuming he wins. Here he says he's invested. He sent a letter to the Georgia power plant company or utility, which is now run by a Democrat, right, after that big win. Asking them to investigate precisely how it is that AI data centers are impacting rising power bills. And the reporting out of this is that that he sees. he sees a wide open lane now in Georgia.

That he's going to be the guy who's going to take this mantle and say these data centers suck. And if he can drive down the Republican margins in rural Georgia by being the guy who is willing to say that, he's got a lock on Atlanta already. And he's very good at trying not to be a Democrat. I don't know if you saw his speech the other day

where he was going after. is united and corruption in politics. And he repeatedly said both sides are infected by this. Which is a big problem that a lot of centrist dens have. Yes. Centrist, yeah, a lot. Who are trying to be populist. They can't quite, like even in their act, they can't quite get it right. You have to be able to do that. Because their whole identity is that Democrats, good, Republicans, bad. Right. So any admission, both sides are bad at something. It's like, how could you possibly say that?

And this is where Trump succeeded. And it's where Bernie succeeded. succeeded. Yeah. The other person who's trying to take this lane among Republicans is Ron DeSantis. So if Ronda Santos runs in 2028, it actually makes me think he's more likely to run in 2028 that he's trying to own or pave actually this path of being an anti-Data Center Republican lawmaker and sort of pushing back on some of this stuff in Florida. So quietly making that his thing, possibly if you wanted to blow that up into a campaign attack against other Republicans. potentially at JD Vance, who's very close to some of these tech oligarchs or has been throughout his career, should this issue, I mean, the polling on this has shifted dramatically. Over the last

year, we've reported on some of that here. So the tech companies, you know, at the very least, need to do a better job of selling this to the public that much is abundantly obvious. So Republicans now in the midterms have to own that Trump on what day two of his presidency did his major press conference with all of these AI oligarchs behind him promising to support their data center buildsouts with the support of the federal government. And every Republican now has to face that part of the GOP agenda on the ballot. It's good because this is our chance. This is all we got against these guys. Now let's go ahead and turn to Mexico, Ryan. On Deck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team,

bridging cash flow gaps. OnDEC's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, On-Dec delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at on-deck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On-Dec or Celtic Bank. On-Dec does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amount subject to lender approval. Okay, not so fun fact. Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise.

Cases are climbing nearly 20% every year. I know. Terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis superativa. And most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it, and I felt kind of alone.

Like, am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are, well, a disappointment. We talk about the flare-ups and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right.

Listen to Season 3 of Our Skin, a personal discovery podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga shit together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here's some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five-year acceleration.

And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. To make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Two CIA agents were in a car accident in Mexico, which conveniently ended with all of the evidence going up in flames. We can put up E1 here. The Washington Post and others reporting that this car accident involving two Americans was, was in fact connected to the CIA, that these were CIA officers dying in Mexico. The last time a high-profile American official died in Mexico would be the DEA agent in the 1980s, which sparked a massive cartel war as well as, what, an HBO or Netflix series. Anybody who've seen Narcos knows the story of that one. So joining us to try to unpack what the heck is going on here, Wanda Virohas.

Wanda Vee, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me back on, guys. Yeah, you got it. What happened here? Like, where did this happen and what do we know about the circumstances? It's, I mean, yeah, we don't exactly know. This is the official story. So in the border state of Chihuahua and Mexico's north, the borders with Texas and New Mexico,

on the way back from a counter-narcotics operation, there was a car accident. And the Chihuahua State authorities claimed that around 2 a.m., this convoy of around six vehicles, it was dark, apparently, presumably, and the vehicle carrying the two CIA agents, along with two Mexican officials, crashed, and the four of them died. I mean, I will say it's possible. I mean, you know, that late at night, you're in a rural area mountainous. I mean, it's kind of strange that there aren't really more details and kind of odd that all four of them died. I mean, hard to say.

And what do we know about the operation? Right. What kind of operation is going on here? Yeah, the official story is that these two CIA officers were training Mexican officials on how to use drones. to destroy methamphetamine labs in rural areas of Chihuahua. That's the official story. And I will say that that's fairly normal in Mexico, that, you know, U.S. officials provide intelligence,

support, training to their Mexican counterparts. This has been going on for decades under the current president, previous presidents. What's odd is that, you know, typically that would be, you know, the purview of like the CIA, even the FBI, although collaboration with the FBI typically isn't in person, although, you know, we had Kash Patel with a Ryan Wedding, the Snow King, and we could talk about that case as well. But what's odd here is that, hmm, CIA officers, counter narcotics isn't actually the purview of the CIA. That's more like regime change in supporting, you know, wars abroad.

But the reason for that is because last year, Trump designated Mexican cartels, along with a host of all other kinds of like, drug trafficking organizations in the hemisphere as foreign terrorist organizations. And that gives the CIA leeway now, you know, to treat these, you know, cartels as national security threats, terrorists, and drastically expand operations in Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere, which has definitely happened. And one, you covered Omlo closely. My understanding is that Amlo had put safeguards in place essentially to take, to, to to shore up Mexican sovereignty when it came to potential CIA, DEA operations.

And you had, what is it, AEI in Chihuahua doing this big drug bust. I'm reading from another great reporter, Yoan Grillo, right now, who says that the, I mean, just make sure I have the right part of this. Officials initially gave mixed and confusing explanations as to what the agents were doing. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, himself a former CIA agent, broke the news by reporting, quote, the tragic loss of two U.S. embassy personnel. Others were claiming that the agents were doing training to the point that you made. AEI picked them up en route, but didn't go.

They did not go on the operation, which is obviously a huge point in question right now. Claudia Sheinbaum is claiming she didn't know about the op or the role of U.S. agents, according to Yohan over at Crashout, which everyone should subscribe to, and that it should be investigated. Chihuahua is ruled by the opposition party in this case. So how is this playing politically, for Shine bomb. And with the Mexican public, it's such a sensitive question about the country, its sovereignty itself. Yeah, yeah. And it was funny, I was talking to Joan yesterday. And what he

was telling me is that we, you know, we probably wouldn't have found out about this at all if just Ron Johnson, who actually I know personally, by the way, wouldn't, you know, just blurted out that, oh, hey, we had, you know, two over guys killed. He, like, tweeted this out on Sunday. you know, at the time you didn't specify that they were CIA, and, you know, later this came up, but still, it's kind of curious that he felt compelled to just, you know, blurt this out. As far as how this is playing in Mexico, I mean,

there's a lot of spinning going on. And again, I mean, I don't want to speculate too much. I think that would be irresponsible. But, yeah, Claudia Sheinbaum, she says that they're going to get to the bottom of whether the two officers were there. illegally, any sort of foreign official, especially security official, needs to be authorized by the national government to be able to conduct, like, you know, any sort of assistance or support with officials inside of Mexico, including state officials. Chihuahua actually signed a security agreement with Texas in 2022. And this was authorized by the national government.

But the fact that she says that, you know, she didn't know, the Mexican government didn't know, a lot of people within the governing party are basically saying that the Chihuahua state government, who's run by the right-wing pan party, like they invited these officials without permission. And that would be a huge scandal. If these guys were there on tourist visas, I wouldn't put it past Madu Campos. the opposition governor. But, you know, it's also possible that they had permission hard to say. I mean, either way, I think the bottom line of this story is that, yeah, we kind of have boots on the ground now in Mexico. And whatever exactly happened here, I mean, you know, you can just connect the dots. What if, like, you know, next time it's confirmed that, you know, CIA officers were killed by one of the cartels.

You'll have Lindsey Graham and the other hawks advocating for us to go into Mexico, unless maybe we're still in Iran. And last question, like, so let's, it's hard to figure out whether or not, okay, the opposition governor allowed them in, or Claudia Sheinbaum knew about it and doesn't want to say. How do their policies towards the cartels and towards American cooperation differ, the shine bomb versus her kind of right-wing opposition in that area. Good question. The great question and a hard question. And, you know, this is the sad thing. I'm basically convinced, unfortunately, I hate to say this, but I'm probably going to be on the show again in the future

when we're discussing military operations in Mexico because that's just kind of Trumpism and Trump himself work. What's sad is that both the Trump administration and the Shidemount administration have like objectively really good accomplishments on this front. I mean, first of all, you know, and increasingly this is Trump's most lonesome achievement. You know, border crossings through the southern border are at like a 50 year low. But in addition to that, fentanyl flows have dropped like 50 percent. And fentanyl seizures south of the border are at record highs. Claudia Sheinbaum is going really, really hard against the cartels, but she's doing it in a smart way. Independent analysis like the economists have shown that under her first year,

homicides have dropped at least 15%. And that's historic since the drug war in Mexico began in 2006. No other administration had managed to have homicides drop in its first year. she has this superstar security minister Omar Garcia Garcia Harfuch who himself was the victim of an attempted assassination by the CJNG you know what was it two months ago

El Menchel the head of the CJNG was killed in this huge operation and what's interesting about that is that yeah we saw a lot online about subsequent violence but that actually only lasted around like two days they surprisingly were very capably able to contain subsequent retaliation pretty quickly. It's not to say that everything is perfect all the time everywhere in Mexico. It is a complex situation, especially in different states.

But there's definitely achievements that both governments can point to and can law in terms of their cooperation. Marco Rubio has done this. But unfortunately, a lot in Maga and Trump as well, they don't really seem to talk about this, recognize or realize it. Well, and what Claudia Sheinbaum wants to avoid is we can put E2 up on the screen. This is a drop site headline. Rare survivors of Pacific Boat Strikes allege U.S. forces kidnapped and tortured them. Everyone should go read this piece.

And Ryan, you may have more to say about it, but it is really fascinating reporting. And for leaders in Latin America, what they don't want to look like is they're cooperating with a brutal American regime that's also encroaching on their sovereignty. So Juan David Rojas, thank you as always for jumping on the show. We were excited to have you on to help us understand what on earth could possibly have been going on in Chihuahua over the last several days. Appreciate it.

Anytime, guys. Cashflow crunch. On Dex's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at on deck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank.

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Voters in Virginia went to the polls to decide whether or not they were going to radically gerrymander the state. We can put up F1 here. They said, yes, let's do it by a very narrow margin. Democrats basically outvoted Republicans. What is it? we had 501, 49, something. It's going to end up being very close. As of right now, it's 51.5 to 48.5.

And it's going to take a congressional delegation that is currently six Democrats and five Republicans, which is about as fair as you can get in a state that went by like, what, six, seven points to Kamala Harris. And it's going to take it to 10, likely going to take it to 10 Democrats, one Republican, Oh boy, what a wipeout. Put up F2 here. This is one of the... This is hilarious. It's a good tweet.

This Cameron Corderoy, I've read the name because it's a... You have a good tweet like this, a banger. You get your name read. It says, welcome to the new rural subjects of the Arlingtonian protectorate. All voters will be required to provide at least two sets of pronouns to vote in upcoming elections and it's showing um this this wild district that's drawn where you have deep deep blue arlington voters who will then overwhelm this like deep stretch of rural virginia that rolls through the suburbs out the out the out the highways there and then deep into actual rural virginia where

there are many fewer people yeah and many fewer democrats it looks like a lobster if you're listening to this, it looks like a lobster. The tail is the Arlington area, and then the claws are like rural, central, western Virginia, like Appalachia. The original term, as nerds in D.C. know, gerrymander comes from a district that was drawn in like the 1700s to look like a salamander. Incredible. It looked like a salamander, and that's where Jerrymander, I don't know where they got the Jerry. She called it Jerry Lobster. Yeah. But so this one looks, this one actually looks almost rational compared to some. Yes.

Some of the Maryland ones are wild. Yeah. And so there was so much delightful back and forth over this, whether it was Republicans complaining about it after having launched the war. I think it's unclear who technically launched the war in the big picture, but this cycle, Republicans launched the war. It started with Texas, went to California. Right. The gerrymandering fight goes literally back to like

forever. We can't keep blaming the wigs. Right. No, wigs weren't even around yet. But the actual mid-cycle, doing it mid-cycle rather than every 10 years, that was Republicans doing it in Texas. But let's read Hakeem Jeffries, who's feeling his oaths. He's never felt so good. We put up F3. So this is from the Democratic leader. It's expecting to turn this into becoming Democratic Speaker.

He says, last July, Donald Trump demanded that Texas drew five, draw five new Republican seats in the middle of a decade, igniting a chain reaction of corrupt MAGA state legislators attempting to rig the midterm elections. While many expected Democrats to roll over and play dead, guilty, I'm sure I did. We did the opposite. Democrats did not step back. We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard. We won Prop 50 in California, which redrew California to give Democrats a bunch of new seats. Reclaimed a seat in Utah. True. They're going to get another Democratic seat there. Pushed back extremists in Ohio. They did block the Ohio stuff and halted toxic GOP efforts in Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska,

and Kansas. A lot of the credit for halting those efforts actually goes to Republican lawmakers who didn't want their own seats to redromed. And some of them, just on principle, didn't want to see it happen and actually faced, in Nebraska, like, significant threats of violence from Republican legislators faced threats of violence from Republicans and stood up to them to block this. And he goes on, this war is not over. This is one of your take on. Next week, Ronda Sanchez is hauling the Florida legislature back into a special session to redraw maps because Republicans know they're on the verge of an epic defeat in November. Ron DeSantis is clearly more interested in illegal gerrymandering than lowering the high cost of living, blah, blah. If Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump's dummymander in Texas. That's from Hakeem Jeffries. He said dummymander.

Bro thought he ate. He did eat. We will aggressively target for defeat Mario Diaz Ballard, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Jimenez, Cat Camnack, Anna Paulina Luna, Lord. morally, Cory Mills and Brian Mast. No, not Cory Mills. We are prepared to take them all on and we are prepared to win. Maximum warfare everywhere all the time. So the one reason he's eating here is it was a dummymander in Texas in the sense that they misunderstood the depth of the support they had among Hispanic voters in Texas.

They drew a bunch of districts that require them to have levels that are close to 2024. To keep them. to keep those seats. So the way you do a gerrymander, you have a seat that's like 70-30, right? So you take it down to like 55, 45, 45. So you're going to win that one. And then you take the Republicans or the Democrats, whoever's doing it,

and you move them into a district that previously the other party held, move those voters over, and now you win both. Yeah. That's why they call it. That's the goal. If you move these voters over here, and they don't vote for you. And the voters that you had over here

are these, let's say they're Hispanic voters or others who voted for Trump but now hate Trump. And they flip. Now you lose both these seats. That is a legit dummymander. So now it would be illegal. The Florida Constitution is probably going to save Ron DeSantis

because it's very clear. In the Constitution, it says you can't gerrymander for political purposes. Yeah. Like straight, it's like very crystal clear. Maybe they'll do it anyway. So what they're arguing here is if you take these cats that we just listed down to 55%. Yeah, they're in trouble.

We're going to overperform. We're going to beat them. Yep. So go ahead, make our day. Yeah. You feeling lucky? So. Which is also what Republicans are saying about like Cory Mills.

Right. But no, they want to keep that seat. So I've seen it. There were a decent number of Republicans who were like, look, I told you that doing this Texas thing was a bad idea. It's wrong in principle, but also the politics is wrong. Trump has now once again started a needless war and he's losing it. It's one thing to start a war for no reason and win it.

Yeah. One little political gain. He's starting wars and losing. It became a proxy for who's willing to use their raw political power when the other side has seemingly to voters, discarded with the principal. And that's understandable. I mean, it's completely understandable.

Now you have Republicans waxing sanctimonious about how gerrymandering is anti-democratic and unprincipled. Barack Obama, like, congratulated Virginia Democrats on taking a step to uphold democracy, which is just hilarious. When you look at districts like the Arlingtonian, what was it, Arlington Stan,

whoever the great tweeter put up, that was a great one. But it's California, Texas, now, Florida, Hakeem Jeffries is using the, quote, illegal gerrymandering term is interesting because he's defending the gerrymandering in Virginia. Florida actually has a law in its constitution that you can't gerrymander. So whatever they do in Florida, they're going to have to be really careful about for obvious reasons. Now, this could, my understanding is it's possible it could go down at the Virginia State Supreme Court shortly, but that it's unlikely. it gets rejected by the Virginia State Supreme Court and that Democrats have picked up probably, what, five seats.

And then 10 in California, Republicans picked up somewhere around like 7.10 in Texas. So just absolutely duking it out for control of the House going forward. But I think that's what it's really become is just this proxy for failing the Michelle Obama test. When they go low, we go high. We all now, like the base, as Americans, we all want political parties, not you and I.

but everyone wants the political party to fail that test. To say when you go low, we punch back harder. Isn't that what Hakeem Jeffries said? It's funny to hear Hakeem, like to read that post in Hakeem Jeffries voice, which is just like impotent. But speaking of which, Ryan, we should get this from the president pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia. We got to put this post up on the screen, F4. She's been on fire.

L. Louise Lucas. Yeah. I have the utmost respect for Senator Kane and Senator Warner. but we do not need, quote, coaching on redistricting coming from a cuck chair in the corner. How about you all stay focused on the fascist in the White House and let us handle redistricting in Virginia 0 to 1? And if you look at Louise Lucas's Twitter profile picture, she is an elderly woman. So it's even funnier to hear her talking about the cuck chair. It's incredible.

No, it was crazy. Well done. She, like, you should just scroll through her whole Twitter feed. Is it good? The whole thing is good. At one point, I can't find it, but she said something like, hey, look, when Republicans gerrymandered all of the black voters into one district, they said we should be grateful to gifting us, you know, this representative district. She's like, now we're putting all of you into one district. Right.

So thank us for it. You're going to love it. See how you like it. The other thing is, you know, you never have a push for unilateral disarmament. So it's just an armed, we're in a gerrymandering arms race. To Louise's point, we're in a gerrymandering arms race. Maybe that wasn't her. I think it was, though.

I can't find it. Either way, not just in Virginia, but across the country. And Ryan insisted that we put up F5. This is a classic post on X from 2019. Ryan, why don't you go ahead and tell us what we're seeing here. Oh, the old reaping and sewing. That's right. It's incredible.

The quote is, ha, ha, fuck yeah, yes. Republicans in Virginia. Oh, so, yeah. Yeah, the tweet is, me sewing. Ha, ha, fuck yeah. Yes, me reaping. Well, this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

Shout out to the golden sir. Reaping great. Screaming but calm for that one. Reaping, sewing not so great. Yeah, never. But the reaping and the sewing will continue until morale improves. and morale does not seem poised to improve.

No, no indeed. I have one other little nugget of news to get out for people before we move on from this one. So if you've been following Philadelphia's congressional race, it's an open contest. We had Chris Rab on the program. Before we had him on, since we had him on, he's picked up like endorsements from like everybody. from like Jamie Raskin, Justice Democrats, like real progressive kind of consolidation behind him. Grimmentum.

The breaking points mentum. He's endorsed by Philly's DSA chapter, and he's running up against Sharif Street, who is more of the kind of establishment pick, kind of a legacy dynasty dynasty, guy, a lot of ethical challenges, you could say. And Alas Stanford, who is one of, who was a leading candidate who has gotten more than a million dollars in support from this super PAC called 314 action, which I previously reported back in 2024, APAC was using it as a shell to funnel money

into some congressional campaigns. It claims that it supports scientists and doctors. And it does often support scientists and doctors, but usually to the tune of tens of thousands or maybe low six figures, it's extremely rare that 314 action has more than a million dollars unless they're working with APAC. APAC is not publicly endorsing anyone in this race because they're so toxic. But people have suspected because of that 314 action support that Stanford is getting APAC money. And they also then were like, oh, she's totally getting APAC money. when she was asked why it is that she is unwilling to say that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, and she said that using the G word is similar to using the N word. And people are like, I'm sorry, what?

So she was actually, what? So she was asked again about this last week, and she said, there are a lot of Israelis who get very hurt feelings when you accuse them of committing genocide. So this is like her campaign line, that she's not going to say that Israel's committing a genocide because it could hurt the feelings of the people carrying out the genocide. So we do have some news on that. Finally, went through her FEC report

and found nearly $30,000. I think we're going to find more if we keep looking. nearly $30,000 of contributions that flowed through Democracy Engine. Democracy Engine is the payment processing platform that APAC uses. And so that's how you can now confirm Al-Stanford is getting APAC money. So what they do is they'll send out emails to their major donors and say, privately, here are the candidates that we are supporting. please make a contribution through this democracy engine portal.

And then sometimes on the FEC report, it shows up as having been funneled through this democracy engine portal. And so thankfully, in her latest report, we can see a little over $27,000 having run through democracy engine and from candidates who are, who have in the past, given huge amounts of money to APAC and to APAC super PAC. So case closed, it's done. She's getting

APAC money. She said in her recent town hall, where she was, where she made this comment about Israelis hurt feelings, that she's not getting any APAC money. So that's a lie. She is getting APK money. Good stuff for him. Yeah. So we'll, so this is, it's going to be an interesting race. And we'll see if, like, Philadelphia Inquirer actually shocked, shocked the world by endorsing Chris Rapp. I saw that. Because that's like, they're not known.

It's like kind of progressive leaning. But anyway, we'll see how that race goes. Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. Thank you so much. If you want a premium subscription, breaking points.com is where you can go to support. Our independent journalism, help us keep going. And you get, well, actually, Ryan has declared the Friday show is totally free. But you do get the show every morning in your inbox in full, which is really how it's meant to be watched.

But if you pay, you also get it free. There you go. Ryan, also we wanted to mention if you find yourself in the area or you want to travel, Michael Parenti, his memorial is coming up. You can go to eventcreate.com. That is where it's in Berkeley. Yes, it's in Berkeley. Do we have the precise details?

It's April 25th. Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. Yes. So check that out. 2 to 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Saturday, April 25th, if you're in the Bay Area,

a memorial for Michael Parenti. All right. We'll see you. business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amount subject to lender approval.

I'm Munga Chitigula and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talked to scientists, biopunks, kermudgens, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. To make it look more defined.

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