Hello. I said a variation of my usual intro.
But stuff still happens. So what's up? It's the
Mamdani meltdown. Politicians, both Democrat
and Republican, are losing their shit over the
New York City Democratic primary. Zoran Mamdani.
He won in like a blowout election in the New
York City primary against Cuomo, the disgraced
former governor of New York. It's truly baffling
that the man ran at all. But, Zoran kicked his
ass so hard that despite projections showing
that the voting would have to be tallied for
a while because of the rank choice voting system,
Zoran won on the first round. Like enough of
a blowout that Dem strategists were guffawed.
I think guffaw is the only applicable term there.
So Bamdani is a brown man. who also calls himself
a democratic socialist and is Muslim. So U .S.
politicians aren't happy. And to be clear, I'm
including Democrats. Like Democrats are really
showing their hand right now and proving that
bigotry belongs to no party. It's definitely
more rampant in Republicans, and we'll get to
that. But let's start with the Democrats. So
Democrats are mostly leaning in on one claim
that Mamdani endorsed the phrase, globalize the
intifada, which is not a thing he ever did. The
phrase is a interpret it as a threat towards
Jews, and it's all bad faith. He didn't endorse
that. In fact, he's made his position very, very
clear that he would protect and support Jewish
communities and has shown that he will support
Jewish people in his actions already. There's
really not a question about his support for Jews.
It's just he's not a big fan of Israel. And so
they are going into hyper super ultra overdrive
doing that whole thing where they just say that
Israel and Jews are one in the same. which is
so deeply offensive. And so Kirsten Gillibrand
was on a radio show where she was taking calls
and a caller called in with a question saying,
hey, what about all the awful things Mom Donnie
has said about Jews? And the host of this radio
show even tried to give her a layup saying, well,
you know, some of the things the caller said
may not be true. I can't fact check in real time.
But she ignored that. and was like, yeah, you
know, he's going to have to really work on that.
And that's something I'm going to work with him
on. And, you know, we're going to work together
on making sure that Jews are supported. And I'm
going to I'm going to talk with him about that.
And it's like, what? What? You're just sitting
there asserting that you're the reason that he
would help Jews. What? Despite rambling for quite
some time and making her point very, very, very
clear, she has said that she misspoke and is
trying to walk it back. Eric Swalwell is. doing
the same thing. The, oh, he owes an apology to
Jews, kind of, also needs to explain himself,
despite not saying what Mamdani said, which is
nothing. To my knowledge, Chuck Schumer hasn't
said a specific dumb thing, but also is refusing
to just outright support Mamdani. And Hakeem
Jeffries, the head of Democrats in the House
of Representatives, He also basically did the
same thing as Swalwell, just being like, well,
you know, he's going to have to clarify his points
and be very clear moving forward because we don't
know. So that was the Democrat side. Brace yourself.
In this corner, we have the Republicans being
overtly racist. What a novel concept. Senator
Andy Ogles came out swinging, calling Mamdani,
quote, Zoran Little Muhammad Mamdani. He then
referred to him as anti -Semitic, socialist,
and communist, and then called for his denaturalization
and deportation. Nancy Mace heard there was a
bigotry party going on, and she wanted in on
that action. So she tweeted, associating Mamdani
with 9 -11. Donald Trump Jr. asserted that New
York City has fallen. And Trump himself referred
to Mamdani as a quote 100 % communist lunatic
because words Just don't mean anything anymore.
I want to remind you that all of these reactions
are to a candidate who was Overwhelmingly support
like they're just ignoring the fact that the
city voted for this and wants this and they're
losing their shit acting as if it's the end of
days when in reality It's a city trying a new
policy for their mayoral candidate. The dude's
most radical proposals are free public transit
and city -owned grocery. Like both of those already
exist in the U .S. But instead of focusing on
the catastrophic tax bill that's about to pass
through the Senate, they're just ripping on a
guy for a thing he didn't say. But speaking of
that tax bill, numbers! I'll make it quick. I'll
make it fun. So, recap. Republicans are trying
to pass a bill called the Big Beautiful Bill.
It's Trump's tax and economic plan. I say plan.
It's more just Trump wants it to be passed so
he can sign it on 4th of July and say he did
that. He has kind of shown that he doesn't actually
give a shit what's in it and just wants it to
get to his desk because he recently tweeted out
saying, hey, don't go too crazy, Republicans.
Remember, you got to get reelected. What the
fuck does that mean? He's saying I know you're
doing bad shit, but don't do too much bad shit.
What I'm gonna crash out I'm gonna crash out.
Anyway, I previously covered the House version
of the bill. I'm gonna give some overview of
what the Senate version changes and what we can
expect if this gets passed. Regarding taxes,
it does the same thing as the House bill in making
Trump's originally temporary tax cuts from his
first term. It would make those permanent. So
back in Trump's first term, they made temporary
tax breaks to try to reduce the overall cost
of the package and make it more palatable. This
time around, they're trying to make those temporary
changes permanent, and they're also trying to
claim that because those temporary changes are
being made permanent they're not actually changing
policy and so we shouldn't consider the financial
impact of the opportunity cost of what the taxes
would have been if they were not permanent. Put
simply, Republicans are trying to confuse the
math around accounting and that's not how math
works. No tax on tips is in there but it is also
temporary and there's a maximum income level
before it stops counting. It offers a larger
standard deduction to seniors who make under
$75 ,000 because young people don't need money,
famously. It actually increases the maximum of
the child tax credit to $2 ,500 for a child,
except it also scales that down. So the poorer
you are, the less you get, all the way down to
nothing. So a child tax credit for a poor family
would be nothing. But for a rich family... would
be more. There's a proposal to increase the SALT
cap to $40 ,000 from $10 ,000 for most states.
The SALT cap is essentially the limit of how
much of your state and local taxes you can deduct
from your federal taxes if you itemize your taxes.
There was a proposal to increase it to $40 ,000,
but the Senate is looking to try to cut that
entirely and bring it back down to $10 ,000.
This is a bargaining chip for states that have
higher taxes. To pay for not even half of these
tax cuts, they want to slash 1 .5 trillion dollars
from the budget, which was otherwise earmarked
for Medicare, nutritional assistance, and climate
initiatives. It is estimated that the Senate
version of this bill would kick even more people
off of Medicare than the House version would,
closer to 12 million people in total. It's also
projected to kick about 3 million people off
of SNAP slash food stamps, you know, nutritional
assistance. It also increases ICE's budget by
a staggering amount, and I want to be within
no uncertain terms here. We are currently, right
now, living in a United States of America that
has concentration camps. These ICE detention
centers are concentration camps. People are dying
in them due to inhumane conditions. This isn't
even the first time the U .S. has done this.
Our hands are not free of sin. With that understanding
that we are currently doing concentration camps.
ICE is getting an additional $350 billion to
fund that. This bill would push for 10 ,000 new
ICE agents, each of which would get a $10 ,000
signing bonus. It has funds for 100 ,000, quote,
detention center beds, which should be read as
funding for concentration camps. It establishes
a $12 billion grant to provide money to states
that help ICE out, and it provides a separate
$3 .5 billion grant to the U .S. Attorney General
for basically the same thing, but they just wanted
to put a line item in there that has a backronym
that shortens to Biden to have like a fund that
is for deportation efforts called Biden, just
because their brains are broken. Overall, it
is expected that this is going to add over four
trillion dollars to the deficit. So literally
never let them tell you that they're trying to
reduce spending. All right, moving on. That was
a lot. We're going to we're going to. Go faster?
I had every intention of making this a more streamlined,
less intensive, less wordy issue. That didn't
happen. So we're gonna - we're gonna - we're
gonna move - we're gonna move forward. Fuck!
More policy, I'm sorry. The Supreme Court has
ruled that judges ain't shit. So there was a
court case that went to the Supreme Court of
the United States about Trump's attempts to undo
birthright citizenship, which is wild because
that's just like as constitutional right as you
can get. But this went to the Supreme Court and
ultimately the thing that was being argued was
whether or not a lower -level court can file
a nationwide injunction to stop executive actions.
There's about two dozen of these nationwide injunctions
right now from various judges who have been trying
to stop the Trump administration from unilaterally
just signing an executive order and infringing
on people's rights. When the president signs
one of those orders that's not okay, the judge
says no and they can't do it until it's resolved
in the courts. But not anymore! Now they can
do it. Fuck you. The Supreme Court basically
ruled they can't stop the president from just
doing the shit he wants to do, and the only way
that they can stop the president now is if they
file a class action lawsuit against the federal
government. And in that case, the people who
are in the class can be protected. So if the
government is infringing on your rights, you
have to either be in an individual lawsuit with
the government or part of a class action against
the government. to actually not have your rights
infringed, and only while it's going through
the courts. But that means that unless your attorney
general is on board with protecting your rights
from the Trump administration, they're not going
to do anything. And so this creates a patchwork
legal system. We essentially just have 50 different
countries now. Because you can go across the
border and whether or not your child has birthright
citizenship could be in question And so to that
end the SCOTUS did sort of like leave some wiggle
room about like not fucking with birthright citizenship
But this can affect everything any policy that
Trump wants to put out There's gonna have to
be a lawsuit pushing back on it specifically
covering you It's gonna cost a ton of money and
the point is to overload the system so that nobody
can actually stop them Now, were there a lot
of nationwide injunctions recently and a massive
spike? Yeah, there was absolutely an anomalous
spike in nationwide injunctions in recent years,
starting with Obama. So I would point your attention
to one Mitch McConnell, who famously weaponized
the courts against the presidency. And now that
they don't like that it's happening against Trump
as he's trying to just trample on people's rights,
They got rid of it. Thanks, Mitch. Your entire
political career has been spent screwing over
the next generation. Rot in hell. Regarding the
Iran bombings. There, you know, we bombed Iran.
There was a war between Israel and Iran. Well,
Israel was bombing Iran. Long story short, that's
simmered down for now. We don't know what the
actual impact of the strike was. US intelligence
is reporting both a unilateral success and questionable
success. International aid groups say that the
uranium that was enriched in Iran is likely fine,
likely got moved somewhere else, so we have no
idea. What actually was accomplished, if anything,
but after there was a ceasefire put into effect,
Israel decided to up their attacks against Iran
in the final hours before the ceasefire actually
went into effect, just to do as much damage as
they could. And then they just kind of ignored
the ceasefire for a while. Iran also struck back,
and so Trump got big mad, and now famously went
on TV and said the F -bomb, which is to say Far
-Quad. He went on TV and said Israel and Iran
have no idea what the fuck they're doing, and
it was the most relatable he's ever been. The
US is planning to restart talks with Iran about
their nuclear program, the talks that Trump killed
in his first term. It doesn't look likely that
Iran is going to be willing to play ball. They
are not going to accept the US's terms about
having basically no enriched uranium. Regarding
ICE bullshit, there's three quick things I'm
going to touch on. The first is Kilmar Briego
-Garcia, the man who was quote unquote mistakenly
deported by the US government to El Salvador
to a death camp. He's back on US soil because
the US government is trying to charge him with
a crime to undo their mistake. That's not how
that works, but while he's now on US soil, he
has petitioned to go at least to his home district
to be where his wife and kid is. That has been
denied, and a spokesperson for the Justice Department
said that Kilmar will, quote, never go free on
American soil. This man has not been found guilty
of anything. Meanwhile, ICE is still abducting
people off of the street. One notable story of
thousands is an Iranian woman who's been living
here for 47 years was abducted by ICE while she
was out front of her home gardening. She had
tried to apply for a visa. It was denied, but
she was issued a stay of removal and she had
met the requirements to not be removed consistently.
For nearly 50 years, she tried for citizenship
and was denied. They didn't let her because of
technicalities. And people are just like, what
the hell happened to my nice neighbor who was
just a part of my community? She was gardening.
And then finally, there's the JD Vance meme situation.
So... A 21 -year -old Norwegian guy named Mads
Mikkelsen, not the actor, was coming to the United
States of America. Freedom. As he got to our
freedom center, the border control, they asked
for access to his phone. which is fucked, and
on his phone they found a widely shared meme
of JD Vance, and that pissed off the officer
for some reason. They took the guy into an interrogation
room, interrogated him, put him into a holding
cell for hours with no food or water, they forced
him to give a blood sample and fingerprints,
and then deported him to Oslo. I shit you not,
the US maintains that it wasn't the JD Vance
meme that got him deported, but was instead the
fact that he said that he had previously used
cannabis in a country where cannabis was legal.
The US technically can deny you for drug use.
And they did that. Who knows what this man could
have been capable of. He smoked the ganja in
the past. You're telling me weed makes you time
travel? Obviously dangerous. Get him out of here.
World stuff! This is a brutal episode. I'm so
sorry. I promise there's cool stuff at the end.
There have been many reports of people in Gaza
being mowed down at aid distribution sites. There's
an organization that is backed by the US and
Israel that's supposed to be distributing aid
to people in Gaza. But instead, when people in
Gaza have been going to these sites, there have
just been bullets sprayed into the crowd. Hundreds
have been killed and the international charity
Save the Children has said that the vast majority
have been children. killing children at aid distribution
sites. I wonder why people aren't thrilled with
Israel right now, but I also want to be very,
very clear that it's IDF and US, quote, defense
contractors, private military forces from the
US. But we're not involved in Japan. The character
limit has been reached. In 2017, there was a
guy known as the Twitter Killer. He was a serial
killer in Japan who lured women to his house
and murdered them. He used Twitter to find women
who were depressed or conveying suicidal ideation,
and he said that he wanted to offer help. That
help being killing them. Now, when he was arrested,
his attorneys tried to argue on his side that
he had permission to kill them. It was murder
with consent. He took issue with this and clarified
that he did not have consent to kill them. Don't
put that evil on me! I didn't get consent! He's
dead now. They killed him. Capital punishment.
In China, the women be horny. Can't believe I
get to talk about... So, okay. Boy's love. Boy's
love is a genre of fiction that is mostly written
by women for women and stars male protagonists
in a homoerotic relationship. This has been surging
in popularity among women in China and the Chinese
government is not particularly happy about it,
labeling it obscene. And so multiple authors
of Boy's Love content in China have had visits
from authorities that either interrogate them
or actually charge them with obscenity. It's
apparently sparked a bit more of a debate about
the role of the government in policing morality,
but largely it's just fucking whack that I'm
talking about Boy's Love novelists in the context
of global... politics, because there's like legitimate
overseas havens for hosting boys love content
so that people in China can read it. Shit damn.
I'm telling you, these women be horny. Cool stuff.
Let's do cool stuff. Just cool stuff from here
on out. Maybe. I didn't look ahead, actually.
Exoplanets. The James Webb space peeper has done
another amazing feat and took a photo of an exoplanet
for the first time. Context. Exoplanets are hard
to see. Because they're really far away and you
have to squint. They're usually by a star, and
if you look at a star, it's bright and kind of
overshines everything else around it. Kind of
like my head. But given how powerful the Jimmy
Wimmy Telescope is, they were able to actually
filter out the light from the sun and get an
image of like a Jupiter -ish planet. So that's
cool. If you've ever seen a photo of an exoplanet
before, you haven't. That's an illustration.
It's a mock -up. We don't have that technology.
Meteors over Atlanta, free band name for anyone
who wants that. Yeah, there was a massive fireball
spotted in the sky over Georgia, seen here as
a part of 7 -Eleven's increased marketing budget
apparently. But for real, a meteor fell out of
the sky and rammed through someone's roof all
the way through their floor into the concrete
of their home, which... Thankfully nobody was
harmed, but holy shit, new fear. People were
scrambling to figure out what exactly that was.
Of course, there was just a fireball in the sky
caught on some dash cams, and a bunch of weather
radars were like, is that lightning? There's
no storm happening. But we eventually figured
it out. God hates us. Hey, let's talk about ad
block for your face. A Belgian software developer
has used artificial intelligence and augmented
reality glasses to make a prototype of real -world
physical ad block. It streams video from the
glasses to an AI that tries to detect what is
and is not an ad, and if it sees an ad, it projects
just like a red box over it and says, like, this
was an ad. This is a prototype. This is not anywhere
near an actual product. I do want to note that
it uses Google's AI to do the computation, which
is hysterical because Google is literally an
advertising company. but also dystopian as fuck.
Neat, though. Lightning Round. Facebook and Meta
are testing a system that will feed your phone's
images up into their AI, even if you haven't
uploaded them to the app. They're saying this
is a test, and they're saying that it is not
currently being used to train their AIs. Currently.
They're bringing back the Spider -Man trilogy.
There's an extended cut of the Spider -Man trilogy
coming to theaters, like the original. Edward
Corastine, the guy who called himself Big Balls
who worked at Doge, has resigned. America lost
a great asset today. That's not true. Speaking
of dumb resignations, the president of the University
of Virginia resigned under pressure from the
Trump administration. Because he's a big weenie.
Protect your wallets! The steam summer sale is
going on right now. Send help. After the Key
Bridge in Baltimore got mostly destroyed last
year, they are finally demolishing the rest of
it. And finally for today, it was looking like
Texas was going to have a complete ban on all
THC products, but Governor Abbott actually managed
to veto it. This is very dangerous because now
someone might have THC in Texas and thus become
a national security threat, and we must deport
them all to Oslo. Thank you for listening to
today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head
to skh .news for sources, bonus content, and
that good old -fashioned Texas THC. My name is
Endeavorance. Thank you so much for being here.
Take care and be well.