Watching the Watchers with Robert Gouveia Esq.

Nick Rekieta joins WTW! Critical Race Theory Legislation Battle, FBI Responds to Pipeline Hack

May 10, 2021 Robert Gruler Esq.
Watching the Watchers with Robert Gouveia Esq.
Nick Rekieta joins WTW! Critical Race Theory Legislation Battle, FBI Responds to Pipeline Hack
Show Notes Transcript

Nick Rekieta with Rekieta Law joins Watching the Watchers to discuss the latest legal news. Critical Race Theory legislative warfare rages throughout the country as we review the battlefield. FBI responds to a digital pipeline hack that has U.S. security researchers concerned. And more! Join criminal defense lawyer Robert F. Gruler in a discussion on the latest legal, criminal and political news, including:​

• Nick Rekieta of Rekieta Law joins Watching the Watchers! ​
• Subscribe Nick at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbkjX3E0IhuUfPzL0FjSPaw Follow Nick on Twitter @RekietaMedia!​
• Washington Governor Jay Inslee signs bill mandating critical race training in public schools that incorporates the doctrine of “equity.”​
• Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill on Friday that will ban teaching of Critical Race Theory in state public schools.​
• Disney is pushing critical race theory, with major expose by Christopher F. Rufo, who reveals leaked documents from Disney’s training program.​
• Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) compiles legislation tracker for monitor and supporting legislation and opposing CRT throughout America: https://christopherrufo.com/crt-tracker/​
• Top U.S. fuel pipeline is down for the 4th day as hackers issue a new statement!​
• U.S. declares a state of emergency to keep gasoline flowing as Colonial fails to restart the hacked pipeline.​
• Review of commodities and the supply problem’s impact on east coast economics from ZeroHedge.​
• President Biden addresses the hack, saying it may be originating from Russia, although there is no evidence the Russians themselves are involved.​
• Your questions from Locals.com after each segment!​

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• Saturday, June 26, 2021 @ 7-8 pm ET – WTW Locals Community Monthly Virtual Meet-up (via Zoom)​

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#WatchingtheWatchers #RekietaLaw #PipelineHack #CriticalRaceTheory #Pipeline #OilPrices #Commodities #Russia #RussiaHack #CyberSecurity #Biden #FBI

Speaker 1:

Hello, my friends. And welcome back to yet. Another episode of watching the Watchers alive. My name is Robert ruler. I am a criminal defense attorney here at the RNR law group in the always beautiful and sunny Scottsdale Arizona, where my team and I over the course of many years have represented thousands of good people facing criminal charges. And throughout our time in practice, we have seen a lot of problems with our justice system. I'm talking about misconduct involving the police. We have prosecutors behaving poorly. We have judges not particularly interested in a little thing called justice, and it all starts with the politicians, the people at the top, the ones who write the rules and pass the laws that they expect you and me to follow, but sometimes have a little bit of difficulty doing so themselves. That's why we started this show called watching the Watchers so that together with your help, we can shine that beautiful spotlight of accountability and transparency back down upon our very system with a hope of finding justice. And we're grateful that you are here in with us today. We've got a busy Monday. We've got a lot. We're going to be grinding through here. We're going to start the show off. Hopefully I think the, by being joined by Nick ricotta of ricotta law, he's got a YouTube channel here and we were speaking about getting together today and doing a little Cole live stream to talk some of the latest legal news. And so I think he may be joining us in 10 minutes, but we didn't confirm it. So we're just kind of gonna motor on through if he's here, he's here, if not, we'll carry on through, into the next segment. So we are expecting that to happen here in about eight minutes. So Nick ricotta, ricotta law got a great channel over here on YouTube does a lot of the same things that we do talk a lot about news lawsuits, current events, legal ramifications of legal maneuvers. So go check out his channel over at[inaudible] law. Then we're going to change gears. We're going to talk about CRT, critical race theory. You know, this has been in the news a lot and it's not kind of something that I was expecting to be focusing so much time on, but it is everywhere now. And we're talking about critical race theory. The reason being is because it's everywhere. I mean, literally we have a whole different spreadsheet that we're going to show you that was put together by a guy named Christopher Rufo. That is detailing all of the legislation that is happening around this country related to CRT critical race theory. In particular, some States are passing ledgers legislation that is advancing this concept. Other States are opposing this. And so we're going to break that down and show you what some of the legislative battle looks like because it is unfolding in front of our very eyes. We've got governor Jay Inslee out of Washington who has signed into law, a critical race training bill. So we're going to break that down. We've got out of Oklahoma, governor, Kevin Stitt did the opposite. So he's now signing a bill that will ban the teaching of create a critical race theory in Oklahoma. And then we've got Disney. Now Disney has these documents that were leaked that show some of their inside training. Christopher Rufo again, revealed these documents over the weekend. Very fascinating. So he, he, somebody leaked these documents to him. He published them all over Twitter. We're going to go through some of that today because they're very interesting documents supposed to be the happiest place on earth. And this doesn't sound too happy to me, but maybe it is. I don't know. What do I know? All right. And then we're going to be talking, we're going to change gears and we're going to talk about this pipeline hack, because this is a situation isn't it. We've got one of the biggest pipelines in the entire United States on the East coast that has fallen prey to this hack. And it's looking like this is just a ransomware hack, an attack that is basically jeopardizing oil and fuel production for the entire, I don't know, half of the country. We've got some problems with that. And the FBI is out now saying that this may be sort of a money extortion scheme that is taking place. We've got a lot of reaction here on this thing. We've got the U S is declaring a state of emergency kind of right. It's it's for fuel it's for this particular issue, but that is unfolding. We've got the commodities markets now are all responding. Very interesting stuff is happening right now in, you know, and I'm not an economist, but some interesting things are happening relative to inflation and this connection between, you know, commodities prices and so zero heads, which is a great website that does a lot of financial analysis they went through and they're sort of watching all of these things stack on top of one another. We've got a Nick Ricky that just confirmed that he's going to be here through YouTube chat. So we're going to be seeing him, uh, here in about a few minutes. He just popped in. So we're going to, we're going to go over to him here in a quick second, as soon as he's ready. So we're, we're going to be talking more about, you know, some of these commodities and what, what is happening in the markets because we're seeing inflation sort of stack on top of itself. We've got, uh, lumber prices are going up, we've got corn prices are going up and, you know, traditionally we don't talk about some of these things, but the, the reason why this is important is because these consequences are going to STEM over into our lives, in the form of government, whatever that looks like, is it taxation? Is it, you know, you know, man, more mandates to do other things in order to deal with the forthcoming economic calamity that is certainly coming as a consequence of the COVID year off that we sort of took. So we've got a lot to get to president Biden is out also as well. Uh, now responding to the, the pipeline issue saying that maybe the Russians are involved, but maybe not. He's got a call schedule with Putin and there, you know, before we signed on here, I look over@rantinglee.com and 150, uh, rockets are now being launched into Israel. It's real. Uh, so it's like nonstop and I, you know, we've got a lot to talk about. And so I'm very excited to introduce and bring on here, Nick ricotta of ricotta law. And so, as I mentioned, he is a lawyer and a YouTuber. He's somebody, who's got a very nice channel over at ricotta law. And so the link to his channel is in our description and I'm going to bring him on right now. We got there he is. We got Mr. Ricotta himself. What's up, Nick? How are you my friend. Hey man. Good. Thanks for having me on. It's good to see you, you know, it's funny. Yeah. It's one of these things I've been watching you for a long time and, you know, we sort of are in, in some of the same lawyerly legal circles and I don't know much about you, so was kind of where I wanted to start. I mean, you know, it's like, it's like I've watched, I've watched your, your commentary, your topics, you know, so I know sort of have you incidentally, but like, you know, I want to really kind of get into the origin story because, you know, lawyers have this, this kind of journey that we go through and then make it onto YouTube. And then some of us, you know, uh, don't make different directions. And so, you know, I would love to kind of start there if you don't mind, you know, kind of give us a background on, on first of all, maybe the, the origin story as a lawyer, but then also as, as somebody who is now, you know, doing commentary and somebody who's sort of in the, in the media. Sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Happy to do so. Uh, let's see. Um, my origin story as a lawyer is, is one that I think is non-traditional, but not that uncommon. Um, I graduated from undergrad in 2005 with a degree in literature and creative writing, which is a degree in nothing. Uh, it's absolutely worthless as far as, uh, getting a job and making money. So I quickly moved into a field that was viable for supporting a family. I was already married at the time. Um, and, uh, I went into banking because I had worked in banking for temporary jobs and stuff like that during school. And, uh, it seemed like a good place to be. So I worked at several different banks and then eventually ended up at Thrivent financial, where I stayed for a couple of years. And then my wife and I with our growing family, decided to move out into the middle of nowhere. Um, we were in the suburbs of Minneapolis and then we moved about two hours West of the twin cities into the country where I have never lived. And we got rid of all the good stuff about the cities, like food and shopping. Um, but, uh, we traded that for stars and quiet.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And you said outside of Minneapolis, right? So, I mean, you were just kind of, that's, that's kind of a good move given the last year, year or so.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's been a disaster in Minneapolis lately. Um, I've been there a couple of times since everything started. And even when things are quiet, it feels weird. Um, it feels very, very different from when I lived there and I, to be clear, I was on the far South suburbs of Minneapolis. I wasn't really in the city itself, but I worked downtown. And so, you know, you'd have to go in, uh, every day into downtown, but when we moved out, I was telecommuting for awhile. And then, um, Thrivent was about to get, uh, a nice annual audit from the sec. And they said, Hey, uh, you have a lot of personal information at your house. And I was like, well, yeah, I work from home. And they said, uh, we want you to work back at the office again. And I said, I'm not driving two hours every day to work so peace. Right. I'll find something else to do, but turns out when all of your experiences in like back office operations and stuff like that, that working in a small town gets really difficult if you don't want to do retail, uh, banking or retail sales or something like that, which I didn't want to do. So I said, you know, where you can work anywhere in the world, that's being a lawyer, uh, you'll be universally reviled, but you'll be universally employable. So, um, I went to law school. I, uh, went to William Mitchell college of law in St. Paul and, uh, which is now Mitchell Hamlin, which is also why they don't get any checks from me as an alumni because the school I went to is dead. So, uh, so I went there, um, had a, had a good time, you know, learned, got my legal education, passed the bar, and then, um, set out, I opened my own firm. I did a private, I still do, I guess, uh, I still have a case hell, uh, private criminal defense and, um, as well as some contract and transactional stuff to, uh, to go along with that and entity formation, um, you know, the, the boring stuff that pays the bills and then small-town criminal defense, which was kind of fun, but doesn't pay very well out here. Um, there's just not enough people are shooting each other. So we don't have a lot of big cases. You got to go back to Minneapolis, right? Yeah. For that. No, thanks. No thanks. But, um, so I was doing that for a while. And then, uh, I actually transitioned into doing YouTube when I covered a lawsuit in a podcast that I watched. It was the biggest problem in the universe podcast, which is great. Two co-hosts, uh, one of them sued the other one for somewhere between 20 and$400 million. The complaint was so poorly written. It was hard to determine what the actual amount was. And, uh, I said, you know what, I'm going to drink a bunch of whiskey, and I'm going to read through this lawsuit and explain to people what's going on. And then people liked it. So, uh, I'm now that's what I do. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Great. And you do what you do. I mean, you sort of have a kind of a broad range, which is why I was asking about it, you know, cause you, you do talk about some civil stuff. Like I was just on your channel. I was looking at that. I think it was the lawsuit between H three H three and you know, and thrill. And I, and I was looking at it. I was like, I've never heard of these people, uh, because I sort of, you know, keep to a tight criminal law, you know, beat up the government kind of every day. Um, and so, so you also have some civil experience or I was, I was kind of trying to flesh out maybe some of the stuff that you cover on your channel, you know,

Speaker 2:

Focuses. I do, uh, I mean, I have some civil experience experience in my personal practice. Um, I try to stay away from it for the most part. I try to stay away from practicing law because I much prefer going on YouTube and, uh, and talking and having fun. Um, but, uh, in my, I do have some civil experience, but I try to cover anything that I can reasonably translate from legal, speak into normal people talk. And I think that's, um, that's a tool that a lot of people could use, especially when you look at commentary coming out of CNN or, or any of the mainstream, even Fox, it doesn't matter. They, they all get the same thing. You get these very truncated, uh, and biased views on what's going on in a legal situation and not a lot of translation into how normal people think act, speak. So that's what I try and cover is just anywhere I can maybe add some clarification and then, you know, throw in a few opinions here and there along the way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And you do a great job of it. And, you know, I think that probably a lot of our audiences kind of overlap a little bit, you know, a lot of people have told me, Hey, you know, get ricotta on and vice versa, uh, or, or told me to go, you know, on your channel, whatever to connect. Because I think that a lot of the same value you provide is it's a lot of the same things we're doing, which is really going deep. And I think unfortunately too, you know, too often these days is it is those, you know, they take a sentence out or a paragraph out and they, some, you know, they summarize the entire claim and there's really just not a lot of truth there. And so, you know, by, by going deep, I think you, you are providing some, some, some value that is just missing elsewhere, which is, which is unfortunate. Um, I wanted to ask a little bit about your maybe your, you know, political perspectives on this, or, or sort of, you know, I don't want to paint with sort of a broad stroke here, but, you know, w where, where do you sort of fall, or I know it's a broad question, but the reason I ask this is because right there, there's kind of a handful of lawyers out there who sort of emerge from the pack. You know, to me, it feels like a very uniform industry where a lot of lawyers just kind of are lockstep with other lawyers. And I think this is a really big problem. And, you know, and, and maybe we can get into some of this about, you know, well, not, not really the election or any of the COVID stuff or anything like that

Speaker 3:

Either way. But my point is, is there, there's, there's sort of a uniform

Speaker 1:

With a lot of lawyers these days, and then there's a handful of other people that kind of break free from the mold. And I'm just trying to kind of understand how that process worked for you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, I start with the premise of, uh, I hate lawyers by default. Um, and, uh, I think a lot of, a lot of lawyers who do what you're talking about, kind of, they get into that, that sort of space because you, you, while you're practicing, you run into bad actors, um, or you run into in, uh, I won't put words in your mouth, but in my case for criminal defense, you run into those bad actors in their prosecutors or the state a lot of times. And, um, and you start to see what what's going on out there. And you, you start to realize like the incentive for lawyers to act in a particular way that might be ethical by the rules, but for personal ethics, you kind of wonder about what's going, like how, how these people sleep at night. Right. And so, um, that's, that's kind of the Genesis of my stepping away from where other lawyers are a lot of the times, but, uh, political leanings. I mean, I've, I've been libertarian right forever. Uh, I think I have very, very strong opinions on how things should be in my own personal life, but I don't want to impose those on other people, and I'm not so sure the government should be doing that in the majority of cases. And so when you combine sort of that libertarian right ideal with, uh, the, this sort of premise that a lot of the lawyers end up being kind of scummy when you run into them and you, you combine that part with a lot of lawyers that you run into, probably the overwhelming majority being at least center left at best. Um, I just get kind of, uh, I run into some friction, I guess, with how other lawyers opinion shake out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And that's kind of where I was going with that. I mean, I know Mike, my question was inartful, but it was sort of, how did you kind of break free from the mold? Because I had the same experience. I went to law school, you know, I go to the ER, I did go to the bar functions and the CLS and everything like that. And you know, of course lawyers are advocates were political, like anybody, but as soon as those things come out, I always kind of felt myself being the odd one out, you know, kind of, this is weird. Why are all these people talking about, you know, confiscatory taxes, like this is the best thing that I've ever heard, at least this, this is insane. And, and so, you know, when I started, you know, my, my channel, my experience with, with here on YouTube, sort of, you know, maturing into what we do now was very slow. It was very, just kind of, you know, coming out of my shell, very slow motion. And I got a lot of pushback. I mean, I still do from, from colleagues, you know, from people who I went to law school with, or who are in our community, you know, other defense lawyers and whatever, who just kind of, you know, Hey, Rob, we're, you know, this, that concern trolling, we're just a little concerned about what you're seeing out there. And, you know, to me, it just feels like, like, like the, the antithesis of what we're supposed to be doing as lawyers we're supposed to be out there advocating, we're supposed to be moving for social change and, you know, a guy like you, you know, you've, you've been doing it for some period of time and you've been successful at it. Does it frustrate you that you don't see more other lawyers out there doing the same thing? Or are you kinda, you know, what's your take on the whole legal situation?

Speaker 2:

Well, uh, the interesting thing is, um, you got pushback. Uh, I, I never really did from my colleagues and that might have something to do with, um, people not caring about me. I don't know. No, I'm just kidding. No, uh, actually most of my, uh, friends from law school are, I shouldn't say they have similar political views as I do, some of them do, but the other ones are just kind of ambivalent about that whole aspect of it. And they know that, uh, will disagree about a political position, but it really just doesn't matter. It kind of feels like living in the nineties again. Um, it's, it's like, Oh, well, I don't agree with you on that. Cool. Let's go grab food. And, uh, so I never got pushed back. What I got a lot from my classmates was like, how do you have time to do all this? How are you covering these topics that are in such different practice areas? How are you, um, you know, how are you able to do that? And it was like, well, I don't know. I just liked to what was kind of the answer there as for frustration with them, with people not, not being as much a voice to change most lawyers, I don't want to be a voice of social change actually. Um, most lawyers, I find their views to be troubling. And so, um, and I, and I also think that, uh, you know, talking about bar functions and CLS, we can kind of easily congregate into ivory towers and cast down thoughts from on high. And, um, so I don't want a lot of lawyers doing that, the lockstep sort of approach that, that you're talking about. I see it all the time. And I see it most on law, Twitter, which is, uh, which is a collection of people that I, I intimately involved mainly despise. Um, because I, I can, you can see the group think manifest in real time around these very, very important and nuanced subjects. And one of the things you mentioned earlier was about going deep into this stuff. And when you, when you start going deep into constitutional issues or Supreme court cases, you find out that their rulings are almost intensely narrow, but yet they're extrapolated out into the public as if they're these broad things. And that's law. Twitter is not immune from that. They make sweeping generalizations about, um, some of these legal topics and legal cases, and they ignore the nuance in the room. And so I, I, I don't want a lot of them out there advocating. And I think, um, as a society, we don't want a lot of lawyers advocating as much as we want them literally just working because the ones who are good, who are working on behalf of their clients and that's, that is the lawyer ethic that we want. We want lawyers to represent their clients and to do it vehemently. I want them doing that. And I want the ones who are really good at that, doing that as much as possible. I don't really want them commenting on society because that ethic of we need, I need to represent whoever's walking through my door, does not comport with the ethic of, uh, teaching society, how it should be,

Speaker 1:

In my opinion, you know, I, and I understand where you're going with that. And I think, I think, you know, maybe, maybe I would draw the lineation there sort of between maybe commercial practice of law. You know, like I'm a DUI lawyer, somebody, you know, somebody needs a help with the DUI. They call me, I don't give them a political spiel. I don't give them the advocacy thing other than criminal justice reform is important. And, you know, reasonable doubt, presumption of innocence, all that stuff. And that's about the extent of it. The reason why I talk about, you know, legal advocacy and, you know, more lawyers speaking up is because I've got a real concern here that it's becoming very one-sided and like you, I'm somebody who's on, you know, center, right. Ish. You know, I, I really have a lot of disdain for bureaucracy and for people telling me that they know better than I do. And I just, I want to fight against that. That's sort of the passion behind my firm and why we do what we do. But when, when we were covering a lot of the 20, 20 election stuff, and we're even seeing some fallout of it today, with all of the audits taking place all around the country, there's, there's a, there's a war going on in the courts. And there are sort of the, you know, political, political polarization of, uh, certain efforts that are almost being weaponized in the courts. And I, you know, we saw this a lot. I think, you know, Mark Elias, democracy, docket, we saw all of the preceding litigation before November 30 even happened. And, you know, there's, there's this, there's this sort of coalition of lawyers on the left. And even the ACLU, something that has been sort of tried and true about free speech and civil rights, you know, they're sort of picking and choosing their battles now. And so you've got all of these lawyers on the one side that have unlimited money funded by, you know, the Zuckerbergs and the Bezos and all of these people putting together these, these really powerful organizations to me, it feels like, you know, guys like you and I, and, you know, Barnes and Viva, and like some of those guys, you know, there's there th there, there is, you know, that sort of contingent of people who are on YouTube, sort of, you know, screaming from the rooftops. There's also the contingency of, you know, some of the Federalists people and, and, you know, some of the, the old school conservative networks, but, but are they doing much of anything? I mean, I'm not really seeing much. And so some of this apathy makes me just, you know, a little bit concerned, which is why, you know, why I was asking you about it because the people, you know, like you who are not center, right. Aren't speaking, there's a consequence to that too.

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's a, it's a big consequence. And I briefly want to mention that in the wake of all the election stuff, there's only one major election lawyer that I'm aware of that actually received sanctions from any court in regards to their election litigation. And that's Mark Elias. Yeah. To me, that's the funniest part of all of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, I didn't, I didn't know that, but yeah, but I mean, but, but that guy was he's, he's, you know, he's a, he's a very powerful force. And I feel like a lot of people are sort of overlooking the power that that guy had and the influence that he had. And, you know, even amongst lawyers, it's just kind of like the forgotten topic right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I, I think going back to what, uh, you were saying with, when, when one side doesn't speak up, it becomes apparent. And I think there's a one that's that's in insanely true. And it's, we're, we're, we've been feeling the effects of one side, not speaking up in the same way for the past several decades. And we're, we're really culminating into what that amounts to, and that is the right has backed down from public, uh, advocacy, not just legal, uh, public advocacy, but all of it, um, they've backed down and capitulated on so many issues to the progressive sort of left narrative that we're now feeling the effects of it. And the effect of it is, um, one that compounds into, I think, lawyers that have more of a perspective that we have are afraid to come out and talk, because you will, you will be ostracized from legal society. Uh, like I, I deal with lots of Twitter. Um, I have a couple hangers on from law, Twitter who will come and comments on almost every tweet that I make, despite even when I'm not talking about any issue they've ever interacted with me on, they just do. And it's part of this sort of culture that's built up where they are, uh, the predominant view they're insulated in that view and else must be punished. And so you, you see that, uh, you're ostracized from social events and, um, you, I, I think that's the place. So we're left with, we're left with guys, uh, you know, prior to the YouTube law community, really starting to grow, we're left with guys like Ben Shapiro. And, uh, I guess to some extent Mike Cernovich or something like that. And, um, you know, they have their own idiosyncrasies that, uh, that can, uh, be out there, but, but the main thing is they were cultivating very specific audiences for them. And, uh, it, it doesn't really translate into the broad kind of advocacy that we want to see right. Versus left to kind of balance that equation out. And I think that's, what's nice about YouTube and starting to see so many law channels and especially coming from the center. Right. Type of position that we're starting to get some pushback.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I'm just wondering where, where the firepower is, you know? Yes. Shapiro and Cernovich and, you know, Crowder suing somebody. And, uh, you know, Veritas, I think has also, you know, suing New York times and the Twitters and all, like, that's all great though. Those are great. You know, those are media people, um, you know, and, and their, their, their attorneys also. And I'm not trying to downplay anything that they're doing. I mean, I think all of those people are integral in a movement. They are the public facing public persona. They need to help, you know, raise some emotion and some energy behind the movement, but they, the, the, the conservatives or libertarians or Republicans or whatever, the opposition, they got to also have some heavyweights in court. You know, the democracy docket, Mark Elias, people I've read their briefs. Okay. I read their briefs. I read the other sides briefs when we were going through all of that stuff. One is good. One is not so good. And you know, it, it, if there's going to be a real, you know, real war for America, they cannot forget that battlefield. In my opinion,

Speaker 2:

I agree. And I talked to, I talked to one of the lawyers who did, um, a lawsuit up in Michigan, and this one kind of flew under the radar because it settled out. But basically, uh, Detroit, um, election worker training, involved, specific advice on how to use COVID to keep, uh, election Watchers, the poll Watchers from being able to observe what was going on. They said, well, they can't be six feet behind you. So set up your tables within six feet of the wall, that was the actual advice they were given. It was recorded, uh, by, by a friend of mine. He was at the training and, uh, we talked about it on the show and then a lawyer up in Michigan ended up taking that case on behalf of the GOP, but there were no lawyers other than that in Michigan going after anything. And the GOP and this I think is going to indicate why we saw such poor work coming out of the right. They had no legal plan going into that election and, and the way they talked and the amount of fundraising that they did and the way they talked about how they were worried about the election and everything you would think they would have had in all 50 States firms on retainer with lawsuits, ready to go, or at least in the four major swing States that ended up deciding it. And you find out that no, they had no ground infrastructure of legal teams in place to challenge any of this. It's not that, uh, it's, I think there's a narrative out there that they had something in place. And then those guys walked out and then they hired new people. No, they hired those first guys in the middle of it. And then they walked out and then they hired new people. There was no prep for it. They, they did not have everything ready to go. Whereas you could see with Mark Elias and democracy, docket, they had infrastructure, they had a website ready for their marketing. I mean, that is the democracy docket. And they had the legal teams were already drafting complaints before the first votes had been cast. They knew exactly what they were doing. They adapted them very quickly to facts on the ground. And, uh, and I mean, heck they, Mark Elias was going after Texas for stuff long before any votes even came in.

Speaker 1:

We were covering, we were covering a litigation back in, you know, during the summer. I think even before that, I think even in March and stuff, some of these, some of these, uh, the, the initial complaints and were injunctions and all this stuff were being filed like in March, it was, it was a full frontal assault. And it was very obvious that the GOP was caught flat footed. And I couldn't tell whether it was, you know, sort of intentional, like they just wanted to, Oh, you know, Trump's up in there. So we're not going to support him because he's not our guy. And that there was sort of this disconnect or decoupling where the GOP resources, you know, the Federalist people and sort of, you know, the traditional McConnell crew, they weren't going to lend any of their resources or support to, to, to, you know, to, to sort of flesh out and, and lay down a foundation for victory.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I think that was, uh, I think that's part of it. And then I think the other part is, um, you know, a bunch of lawyers made a reasonable determination that if they participated in the knife fight on the political level, on the political national level, that their firms would be in jeopardy. And, um, it's real easy for anybody who doesn't have a bunch of people that they, you know, feed the families have to say, well, you should have fought that fight, but it's like, okay, I have, I have nine staff that I got to make sure they are eating in Christmas time. And it's November. Uh, if I enter into this fight, I might not, you know, it, it might kill the firm. And, um, we we've seen the efforts that they've put into going after, uh, not just the Sydney pals and Lynwood's of the world, but they're going after anybody who represented Trump in any way. And a lot of them have gone radio silent, uh, in the post election stuff. But heck, I mean, they went after Vanderveen pretty heavily, the guy who ended up running the bulk of Trump's, uh, uh, which McCall is impeachment defense. And they, you know, they, they no problem going after and burying a law firm because there's 10 more law firms for that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And it was, and I remember seeing this, I remember seeing the motions to withdraw being filed by attorneys, you know, and, and they th there was a lot of, even the news story, the media was sort of, you know, cackling about it. Drunk, can't find any law firms. And it's like, Hey guys, you know, this is not a good thing. The fact that we've got lawyers here, who's kind of sworn an oath, you know, to go out there and represent a client, no matter what they think of the person, right. Everybody deserves that defense and that representation. And for, you know, a bunch of attorneys to just say, well, you know, I'm, I'm kind of a little bit too scared on this one and that our media and that other lawyers were sort of applauding them, left me sort of, you know, disappointed in our profession. Because I think that, you know, the country could have been well-served by flushing out some of those issues in court, because I still have questions about, you know, separation of powers and about whether a court can unilaterally modify the legislation. The legislature is, you know, setting of the election date. Those are important issues that maybe we want to understand what, you know, learn more about.

Speaker 2:

Pennsylvania is still the most amazing one to me because the Pennsylvania Supreme court basically ruled that the legislator violating the Pennsylvania constitution was just fine. And the Supreme court of the United States didn't even step in to say, you know, maybe we want to just find out if, if the state Supreme court can determine that of willful violation of the state constitution is okay, when it implicates a federal election. That's a really important question, because if you have a state constitution, which is supposed to be all your rules, and then the state Supreme court can just say, and the federal government has no say in how that impacts the, the governance of the country. I, I think that might be a problem, but we'll never know what the Supreme court thinks about it. Cause they, they, uh, they balked on the case. It just, no, we're not going to hear it. Um, because they were too afraid to, at the implications of, of what would happen. And, and the crazy thing is I, and I said from the get-go, I didn't think any court was going to overturn any of the results, but, um, I think they still feared what would happen if people thought maybe they should have, uh, overturn them. And didn't like, well, you ruled that this wasn't acceptable, but you're going to allow it to stand. I think that was a conflict that the Supreme court wasn't willing to take on. And, and it's, uh, what you said about, yeah. Seeing people praising the courts for not doing what they're supposed to do, that that has been one of the weirdest takes in this whole thing. It's like, well, no, I, I want the court to engage these issues. I don't care if they are going to overturn it or not. We have another election in two years, we need to suss this out.

Speaker 1:

Right. It's an important question. I mean, it's a really important question and it's exactly the reason why the Supreme court is set up to tell us when we've got two conflicting interpretations of how the country should run, we need you to in, that's why we have three branches. So it's not an even number so that we can, you know, so the, you know, they thought this through folks, but, you know, they, they, they didn't, they didn't even give us the opportunity to, you know, to have it heard in front of the Supreme court, which is, which is a bummer. Um, I wanted to transition a little bit just because you are in Minnesota and you're outside of Minneapolis. Um, I wanted to talk, Shovan just a little bit before we, we get outta here, uh, and really wanted to sort of get your perspective on this. I'm in Arizona. You know, most people are not in Minnesota. No most people are not two hours outside of Minneapolis. And so we had our perception of how this whole trial unfolded, right. It was national news here in Arizona, but I'm sure to a different extent than it was in Minnesota. And so I just wanted to maybe get your take on, on sort of the boots on the ground there over the last year or so what, what was happening, you know, from an everyday citizen, because we're all trying to ask, ask, ask, and answer the question, what's this a fair and impartial trial. And one of the big things that, that, that has been, you know, at the forefront of everybody's mind is no, it's been Bedlam it's madness in Minneapolis for the better part of a year. You've got jurors coming and going, how could it possibly be fair and impartial, but, you know, I just kind of, you know, I'm not asking you for an answer on that determination, unless you want to provide one, but just kind of, you know, what is the, the sense of, of the environment?

Speaker 2:

Uh, the, so the, the fair and impartial question to get this out of the way. No, I don't think he got a fair trial. Um, I doesn't mean, I think he's not guilty, but I think I can easily say, uh, that's, that's a much more complicated question, but I can say with confidence, I don't think he got a fair trial. I don't think there was any way he was going to get one in Minneapolis. The question with whether, uh, with how the courts are supposed to handle that is that's the weird problem, because where could someone like Shovan get a fair trial in the United States, even right now? That's a, that's a tough question. Um, but I, I think they would have been served, moving it out to St. Cloud down to Rochester, Mankato, uh, out to the Wilmer courthouse where I am, um, Benson any, any smaller town than Minneapolis would have mitigated the risk to jurors would have mitigated the amount of intimidation that could be put on because the farther you get outside of the twin cities, the more expensive it is to have a mass protest somewhere. The last mass protest in my area, which is the Willmar area had literally 20 people. And, and that was, uh, it was a black lives matter protest. And it's 20 people standing on a bridge with signs and that's it. There no buildings burned down or, or any crazy stuff. So I think they would've been better served anywhere other than Minneapolis or the Metro area. Um, but you know, they, they so far have not determined that with that being said, I mean, Minnesota has been a very, very different place for the past year. Um, we, we, we saw it start with Floyd. Um, the were big, they were news. And then I think that itself spawns a more visceral response to everything. There was a guy who shot himself on camera and, uh, the narrative went out right away that it was police that shot him. There were police there. He pulled the gun, puts it up to his, you know, up to his head and shoots himself. And, uh, the narrative was that he was shot by police in that sparked about a day of protest before that, that actually sorted itself out. And people started to go, yeah, there's video. It was him. It's pretty clear. But, um, you know, that, that sort of reaction was not something I think Minneapolis has been used to. I've lived here. Well, I lived in Minneapolis for, um, let's see, uh, about 20 years and then I've, I've lived out in the country about, uh, 12 years now. And so in, in all of my time in Minnesota, I've not seen anything like that, uh, in, in any response to, to the sort of political demonstration. So, um, seeing that, and then, uh, I have a bunch of friends who live in Minneapolis and seeing like their responses to what's going on. Uh, you've got that combines the, the riots of course, combining with COVID. And you've got, um, the city of Minneapolis telling people if you're getting held up for your cell phone and your wallet, just give it over, just hand it over to the people. Don't make a stink about it. If your car is being jacked, just give them the keys, just give them your stuff. Don't resist. Just go home. Cause basically telling them cops aren't coming to save you. Now you have to, you have to do it later. So, um, I think that feeds into just in a general intimidation that could happen for any jurors, but I don't know that these jurors were intimidated. I think many of them felt empowered to be on that jury. And that is, uh, that is a different type of unfairness that is equally dangerous.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. We saw that with some of, you know, with Brandon Mitchell, which is the juror number 52, which we've talked about a lot on our channel. I'm sure you have also, you know, this guy goes in and is basically kind of hinting at the idea that he wanted to sort of elbow his way onto the jury in order to effectuate some social change. And I understand, I understand that he may think that's a valid, legal strategy and, and that, you know, there, there are a lot of people who were probably cheering him on, but I've got a lot of issues with that because I think it is a catastrophic sort of cascade of consequences that will then spiral out of control. You're going to see it going both directions. You're going to see other people of other colors getting onto juries and then trying to weaponize the jury panel against any particular defendant. And once that starts, I mean, you sort of lose the legitimacy in the entire institution,

Speaker 2:

Right? And, and with Brandon Mitchell, one thing that if people don't understand how juries work, typically you have two, maybe three strong personalities on any 12 person jury. And those strong personalities at the end of the day are going win the arguments in the jury room. And unless you have two people who have equally strong personalities, diametrically, opposed, you're not going to get a hung jury. Someone will eventually cave in after 20, 30, 40 hours of deliberation. So when someone like Brandon Mitchell, who wants to effectuate the change that he wants to see in the world through the jury process gets in on that jury, he will be one of the most adamant people in that jury room. He's got a mission, he's got a motive. And that means that anyone there was apparently one holdout when they first went in, at least as to, uh, one of the charges and that guy's voice is going to get drowned out by the more aggressive and assertive people. And so if you're sending in agendized people, like, imagine if you took a bunch of MES and put them in jury rooms and I'm going to be like jury nullification, jury notification on just about any drug charge, right. You're never going to get a, you're never going to land a drug charge again with me on a jury. It, it won't happen. I'll laugh. I'll do it just to ruin the prosecutor's day. I don't care. Um, so the, the, the same thing goes with someone who's, uh, marching at a black lives matter event that they traveled, uh, of what 1800 miles to get to or something, Oh, no. However far it is from Minneapolis to Washington, uh, wearing a shirt that says, take your knees off our necks. Like if you want us to do all that advocacy, great. That's his thing. The jury room is the improper place.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I'm wondering, you know, sort of to wrap, wrap things up. What is the, has the tone changed in Minnesota at all? You know, are we coming down on the tension meter? You know, and what's what's happening there because the last I heard, you know, they were, they were defunding the police with like eight made million gone and they gave 6 million of it back. And it's kind of been this, you know, this rollercoaster. And so what's, what's sort of the, you know, the environment like now,

Speaker 2:

Well, Minneapolis is becoming an Island to itself, uh, in regards to police power, they do not have the sport of surrounding departments. They do not have the supportive departments outside of the twin cities. You know, when the, when the riots started, um, the like even towns by me were sending officers in to help with the riots. They would, you know, relieve officers in the cities who had been working and, and, uh, on those front lines, they don't do it anymore. And they're not going to, when the stuff happened in Brooklyn center, um, Brooklyn center is pretty much it's them in Minneapolis. Who's getting there, their officers, uh, that they don't want to send officers in because Minneapolis did not have the backs of their own officers. And more importantly, uh, less, less regards to the four officers charged in Floyd's death and more in regards of the officers who are ordered to abandoned precinct, number three in Minneapolis and let the mob burn it down. That is, uh, wait you're, you're going to ask us to come in and clean up the mess that you won't fight for. Um, the smaller surrounding communities are not really favorable to, what's been going on in Minneapolis police as for the overall tension, I think right now, um, I think a bunch of people have gotten used to the social element of protest. And I don't think this is limited to Minneapolis. I think it's all across every Metro area. We see, we saw this, you took away everything with COVID everybody's social interactions, and then you told them this one activity is just fine for you. And so when you watch videos of these protests and stuff like that, you will see people out there selling shirts, you'll see them out there, uh, with a food truck or a food stand. You'll see, uh, people playing music, you will see dancing and you'll see all this stuff going on. It's like, well, this is a social endeavor. And if you talk to people who lived through the Vietnam protests and stuff like that, it was the same thing. Um, I know people who protested Vietnam and protested the draft because it was the cool thing to do. That's where the chicks were. And so they, they actually did that. And I think we're seeing it now. So I, I don't think the tension overall is going to drop until it becomes socially unpopular to have a massive protest. Um, but with that said, I think, I think the entire, Oh, I want to be clear on this. I think the entire thing is a missed opportunity because I remember the day when Floyd died and that video went around and just about everybody I talked to was ready to have a discussion about police use of force and police violence. The next day the riots started and the right shut it off. And it was like, but there's still a valuable discussion here. And that's why at the beginning of this, I said, as for whether Shovan is guilty or innocent, um, at some point we did have a state official kneeling on a citizen until they died. And that is an opportunity for discussion about this. It's not an opportunity for riots. It may not mean that Derek Shovan is guilty or not, but if he's not guilty, we have to ask how comfortable we are with that type of scenario. And that's the discussion I wanted to have and don't get to anymore because of, uh, because of how the writing played out. And that's frustrating.

Speaker 1:

I totally agree. And I've been screaming about this. You know, I thought that the whole country was aligned after we all saw that video. We all sat down and said, okay, you know what, maybe we really do need to have a conversation about policing in America. You know, maybe it's time to have that conversation. And I, somebody who is, you know, more rights, you know, more right. But I also am a criminal defense attorney. So I have this weird overlap where, you know, I don't like big authoritarian government. That includes police. That includes law enforcement. That includes the FBI and, you know, County attorneys all over the place. And I try to be consistent in that. And so finally, as a criminal defense lawyer, you know, I've been working, building a law firm, so excited about this justice reform. We're going to talk about it finally. And then suddenly we're, they, they start burning down the whole city and I'm like, Oh, great. Right. So we have that. Then the next conversation is, well, we're just going to defund the police and I'm going folks, that's the pendulum is going back the other direction. So far out that even I, as a defense lawyer, I got to abandon ship. Right. I don't support any of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You, you, uh, as much as I don't want, like, I don't want police, uh, have, I don't want a cop to have to shoot anybody. And there are times when they absolutely have to shoot someone, right. Like I'm with it, but, um, I don't want them to ever have to do that. And so if we can have that as the ideal and then move policing in that way, that's a good thing. And then, then the second those riots started, it's like India just killed. It just ended our chance to discuss this. It's now political and will be the most political thing as it turns out for the next year. The most politically divisive topic I can imagine is a, is Shovan and Floyd to the point where, um, I won't criticize the left on this, but speaking, uh, nary an ill word is if Shovan had never done anything wrong is risky on the right right now. Uh, because you will get hammered with all sorts of comments about how, uh, Floyd did X, Y, and Z. And it's like, okay, but we can, we just for one minute, focus on this other aspect of it and talk about that. You can't really do it right now. And that's, that's a frustrating outcome of this. It's like, okay, well, I guess I'll have to wait until someone else gets killed. And then we can maybe have that discussion again. But then, you know, we run into the issue of the media, not covering those stories. The biggest one, which I'll advocate for all the time is Daniel shaver. Uh, the guy getting gunned down in the hallway there in Arizona, wasn't it

Speaker 1:

Right here in Mesa. Yup. Yup. And, and Phillip race, braille barrels for the officer who's walked free after murder

Speaker 2:

And got a reinstated to the point where he gets a pension now, which is just insane.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, so quick on that one, what happened was this officer, this was the hotel room where this officer is barking orders at Daniel. Shaver's young man who is on his hands and knees, following all the instructions in the world that he can possibly do. And they're telling him, stand up, sit down, hands up, hands down, hands behind your back, whatever he reaches back to sort of lift his pants up as he's crawling on the ground. And this cop just executes him right in the hallway. It was a Mesa police department, Mesa. They let him go while this whole thing was pending. Trial goes, happens in Maricopa County. This guy had a, your F you know, sort of ingrained into the side of his, his assault weapon. And he, uh, you know, basically executed this guy. No question about it. If you watch the video, no, not a threat, not a danger executed him. So Mesa PD dumps him trial goes forward trial, you know, totally rigged in my opinion, whatever he gets acquitted and, uh, Mesa temporarily reinstates him so that they could give his pension for the next, you know, 2000 years, whatever, and then relieve him again. So, you know, it was, it was such a crooked, corrupt deal. That was one of the first cases, uh, that made me want to get on YouTube. It was too early in my career to get on here and start screaming about that stuff. But I'm with you, man, you know, this type of stuff. It is so reprehensible that we, you know, we got to talk about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's a, and someone says, what, what was he reaching for? Literally his shorts. Uh, he didn't have anything to reach for. And the problem with that situation is you had something like six officers, uh, one perpetrator being a shaver who wasn't really guilty of anything that we know of. And, um, and, uh, they, they chose to yell and scream orders at him, uh, in a hallway rather than employ any of the six officers to have him lay down on the ground with his hands over his head, go and effect some sort of arrest while the other officers covered them. They could have, they, they just, they did everything wrong in that situation.

Speaker 1:

So I got you off track on that. Sorry, I went off on a pirate because that one gets me so angry, but, you know, but, but you had a point to make you were saying that was the one that, that you, you know, you sort of go back to, well, that

Speaker 2:

That's one where I say we have, we have potential problems with state violence and that's what, uh, that's where the focus of these discussions should come up. And for me, um, being kind of libertarian and very much in favor of personal Liberty, that question should be asked every time an officer fires their weapon, uh, or, or ends up, uh, being involved in the death of a, a citizen, whether or not the officer is guilty is actually less important to me than the discussion about why we have a dead person. And similarly, when we have an officer who is on the losing end of one of those struggles and the officer's killed, we have, we should be asking the same questions. Was this law, a reasonable law that should be enforced with violence because at the end of the day, every law ends with a bullet. It's a matter of time until it happens, whether it's, whether it's loose cigarettes up in, uh, New York selling loose cigarettes, ends up with Alton Sterling dead, um, uh, or, or, you know, some guy just getting reported for, uh, what was that? Uh, Oh, that was another one. I think that was in Arizona. Um, or New Mexico where a neighbor called on their downstairs neighbors who were playing music. And he's like, he had a noise complaint and he said, Oh yeah, it's domestic violence or whatever. We'll get a cop out here. Fast enough. The guy answered the door at night, holding a gun. And the police officer shot him in the back of the head. And it's like, okay, uh, these are the times we have to ask these questions, but if the media is not going to report on anything except, uh, interracial violence between police and the citizenry, and they're going to report on it in one way, we'll never get to have that discussion. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That sounds like, I mean, that's sounds like the, sort of the beginning of a solution. If you, if I was going to ask you sort of work, you know, how do we start to solve some of these issues? It sounds like maybe that's where you're going. Right? Some of these laws that were stopping people for that lead to the Dante right. Shooting, or that lead to the George Floyd or that lead to these things are not necessary anymore. Maybe they're from a bygone era. Is that, is that kinda where you're going with that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, there, there are ways where we can deal with these sort of things. I mean, um, I, I'm not for like a speed trap camera or something like that, but there are, there are certain things that are, uh, they, they came out of the seventies, uh, and this idea of proactive policing, which I'll talk about this till the end of time too. But those were studies that were generated to figure out how to police high crime areas. And because of things like the fear of racial profiling and stuff like that, they got put out just everywhere instead. So now you'll get pulled over for an expired registration. You'll get pulled over for a, a license plate light out, and that'll be a primary offense that you'll get pulled over because they say, Oh, there could be guns or drugs in the car. And so those sort of interactions we have to start asking, do we want to put our police officers at risk of getting into a violent encounter with a citizen, uh, over this, over this thing. Now, if it's drunk driving, maybe because they're dangerous, right. If it's speeding may be because it's dangerous. If it's the light on a license plate, I'm not so sure. And so, uh, all of these laws need to be reevaluated, but, uh, the way that this stuff is covered in the media and kind of as a final point, I guess this'll be the why I'm happy to see so many lawyers popping up on YouTube and, and being sort of those counter narrative lawyers like you, uh, Robert Barrons, Viva fry, all of these guys, um, is that we have, we are on the edge of where communication and media distribution is going. And those CNN analysts and stuff like that, they're going to fall by the wayside for the mainstream public eventually we're ahead of them in that game. And, uh, and that's, what's encouraging to me is we can start having these conversations in these places and we'll be ahead of where society will eventually end.

Speaker 1:

Right. And I agree. And, you know, I think there's, there's a reason for that because we've already talked about this. There's some depth there, there's some analysis that's taking place and you get to have a real connection with the person who's behind the camera. I mean, you can sort of see it in their face when they're disgusted by what they read or when they're irritated or whatever, a different than what you get with the, you know, the Anderson Cooper's, you just read from a teleprompter all night long every night, you know? So you, you get to build this connection. And, you know, I think that these are very meaningful conversations. I'm absolutely thrilled that you're, you're having so many of them. I, you know, I follow you, I subscribe over there and, you know, you're prolific, you put a lot of content out and that's great. And, you know, so, so let's wrap it up here. Where can people, you know, uh, obviously with you, so obviously your YouTube channel, we link that down below, but I know you have some other platforms, right. Are you're streaming on Odyssey now or, or, or tell us about that. I have,

Speaker 2:

All of my short content is mirrored on Odyssey. I would love if people watched over there, I think Odyssey is the, uh, sort of disruptive video platform to watch. Um, and they're really good to creators. So, uh, I I'm over on Odyssey. I am also on locals, ricotta law.locals.com. And that's a place where you can get direct interaction. I know you're on there too, cause I saw your face on that call.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It was a great call. And, and, and I love that you're over there because I think it's a great, you know, that call was awesome. I thought, you know, I think they're really sinking a lot of time into people, uh, in, into the creators. And there are a lot of amazing people in that group. So I'm very excited about the direction that's going.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So you can, uh, you can find me over there. You can find me on YouTube. You can find me being a complete jerk to people on Twitter. Look, uh, the, the thing that I fell in love with, with the internet years and years, and years ago was you can just go on there. You can be who you are and, and that's, uh, you know, what you see is what you get and we're moving so far away from that, with all of the moderation and with everything. And it's like, um, I, I try and hold on to as much as I can. So, uh, I, I try and be unfiltered and, uh, irreverent, because that's, that's who I am in real life too. So if you like that stuff, come follow me somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And it is good stuff. And I will tell you this, it is impressive to sort of watch your work. You know, you're, you, you are very, you're very much authentically you, you know, and, and even on Twitter, I watched you out there, man, you're get out there and you start throwing elbows on there. And, uh, and it's good, you know, it's good. You're, you're out there engaging. And I, I really, really admire it because I think we need more people doing that because right now there's, there's a lot of activity on one side and we're seeing what the consequences of that are. Right. They've captured Facebook, they've captured Twitter. They've captured a lot of these other platforms. And until people start to get a little bit sick of it and support other people who are out there screaming from the rooftops like you're doing, uh, you know, it's going to continue to be a fight. So, yep. So, uh, Nick or Kate up. So I really, really appreciate you coming on the show. My friend had a good time. Yeah, man,

Speaker 2:

I'm going to have to get you on mine and we'll have a late night, a whiskey session. Really just throw it back.

Speaker 1:

Love, love, love to do it. Love to do it. We'll connect offline. And, uh, I'm going to send people over to your platform over at YouTube and over on locals. We're on locals too. So if you're already on our locals, just go and find Nick as well. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot, Nick. You have a good rest of your night. We'll connect again.

Speaker 2:

Thanks man. It was great to meet you and great to be on the show.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. YouTube. All right, everybody. So that was Nick ricotta, ricotta law. That was fun. That was a good conversation. You know, I really, really appreciate the work that he's doing and

Speaker 4:

I love his, uh, his sort of

Speaker 1:

Authenticity about it, you know, very deep thinker. And I liked his answer on, uh, on the idea about the laws, you know, sort of rolling back some of the laws that we have because I made this point on this channel a lot, a lot, a lot saying that when you wake up and drive to the office, you break five or six laws every day. You know, everybody sort of likes to Dogpile on the back of somebody, who's a criminal, but our society is so overly criminalized that you're breaking the law at every turn, everything that you, every time you turn around, you've broken some law. And so what, what, uh, Mr. Kato was saying, of course, was let's roll some of those back. Maybe, maybe not having your license plate light on shouldn't result in a traffic stop. Just the thought. All right. So good stuff. So go check out his platform over on locals and elsewhere. And then we are going to change gears. So let me get things queued up. All right. So we're now we're going to be talking about what's next critical race theory is back in the news, probably going to be in the news for a very long time. We now have a number of different States that are taking action on critical race theory in particular, banning it or mandating it. We're going to go through Washington. We're going to look at Oklahoma. We're going to look at Disney. Disneyland is now getting involved in this critical race stuff. And then we're going to go look at a lit legislation tracker by a guy named Christopher Rufo. Who's sort of assembling a landscape overview of what the critical race theory battleground looks like throughout America. So let's start by going over to Washington, Washington state just passed and signed a new bill into law that mandates critical race training. And so you'll see this year, Washington, governor Jay Inslee signed into law, a bill that incorporates the doctrine of equity, cultural competency, dismantling institutional racism all into the training for all K to 12 educators across the state. So we've got this coming down the pipe, we got Senate bill five, zero four, four, which just passed the state legislature in April. And the governor signed it into law today. It says here that the school districts in Washington must use one of three professional learning days to specifically train all staff in the topics of cultural competency, diversity, equity, or inclusion. Isn't that nice. The topics were among several listed in the Bill's texts. And so we're going to go through the bill itself, but this is now signed into law, right? The Washington governor signed it, the legislature passed it. Now this is in effect. And so I'm going to show you, we've got some excerpts from the bill. Let's take a look and see what this says here. The legislature's plan. Okay. Yeah. I've got this here in this next clip. So let me show you this. So when you, when you go through a bill and when new laws get enacted, typically what you'll have is a section that's called legislative history or legislative intent. It's sort of where the government has given you the framework, the basis for why they're passing this bill. Why are we doing any of this to begin with? And so they're going to come out and say, well, we need to tax you some more to raise money for schools. And our government has done a study. And we think that schools and education are, and therefore, that's why

Speaker 4:

We need to raise your taxes. Then the rest of the bill comes and they raise your taxes. So they have to explain it and tell you why it's justified before they actually do it. So that's, what's happening here. When we go over to this bill, you're going to see the legislature finds that the state resources have been invested to do what identified model standards for cultural competency. All right. So let's see, you know, how these fit cultural competency. Okay. That's not really a bad thing, right? We all want to be competent. Culturally. We want to incorporate cultural competency, competency standards for effective teaching. All right. Well, we all want to be culturally competent, uh, for para-educators. Okay. We want to, what else do we want to do? Develop cultural competency training programs for staff develop a plan for the creation of cultural competency training for school, board and superintendents. Okay, well that doesn't sound bad, right? It's just some cultural competency. We all want to be competent, right? Have some good culture and be competent. So this doesn't sound too bad so far. Let's see what else it says under paragraph two, the legislature plans to continue the important work of dismantling institutional racism in public schools. Oh, there it is. Now we're okay. So there is institutional racism in public schools, and the legislature also recognizes the importance of increasing equity, diversity inclusion anti-racism and cultural competency training throughout the entire public school system and providing training programs for classified staff, certificated staff, school directors, and on and on and on. So legislature made a finding the governor, signed it into law that the government of Washington remembers and knows, and is acknowledging and confirming that they are going to continue the important work of dismantling institutional racism in public schools. Literally that's in the bill that was signed off on by the governor today. They also recognize the importance of increasing equity, diversity inclusion anti-racism and cultural competency quote throughout the entire public school system. How are they going to do that by providing training? So they're going to now train everybody in order to effectuate these policies so that they trickle down throughout the entire state of Washington. The bill goes on and it says, here there's a new section that is going to be added. And while I want to also show you is now some definitions. So we just went through some of the legislative history. Why are they doing this while they, they want to dismantle institutional racism in their public school systems? Okay, well, what are they going to, how are they going to do this? What types of knobs are they going to maneuver in order to taper down some of that institutional racism that exists in Washington? Well, we have to define some of our terms. So what does this stuff even mean? Cultural competency. Let's see. What does it, what does this mean? This includes knowledge of student, cultural histories and contexts, as well as the family norms and values in different cultures, knowledge and skills, and accessing community resources and community and parent outreach and skills in adapting students' experiences. Okay. How about diversity? What does diversity mean? According to this Washington bill, this describes the presence of similarities and differences within a given setting collective or group based on multiple factors, including race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation. We have disability status, age, educational status, religion, geography, primary language, culture, and others. Then we get to the big one. Now we've all heard this one, a lot equity. Okay. Equity, very big concept. And as soon as sort of the administrations changed, we started to hear this word being thrown around a lot more. And a lot of people would hear the word equity and they go, Oh yeah, equality. Yeah. I love equality. We want everything to be equal, equal. Don't we, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about equity. And it's the difference between the equality of the opportunity to everybody starts at the same starting line versus equality of outcome. We're going to make an equitable outcome. You can all start at different start lines. We're going to make sure you all cross the finish line at the same time, because that's equitable. One is equality. We're all starting together, but equity means we're all going to end up at the same line. And so that's what they're talking about here. Developing, strengthening, supporting procedural outcome, fairness, procedural, and outcome fairness in systems. So if you didn't like my definition, if you say Rob, you're making a bunch of nonsense about that. Equity doesn't mean that we're going to make everybody the same, read this. It includes developing, strengthening and supporting procedural and outcome fairness in systems, procedures, and resource distribution mechanisms to create equitable opportunities. Now we get back to opportunities for all individuals. The term includes eliminating barriers that prevent full participation of individuals and groups. So outcome fairness, then we have inclusion, which means of course, we're bringing everybody together. Now the big question here is how is all of this going to be rolled out? How are they going to mandate that this stuff be disseminated throughout the entire public school system? Well, let's take a look in the 2021 and 22 school year school districts must use one of the professional learning days that have been previously defined to do one of the following. So we must use one of the professional learning days to do one of the following topics, cultural competency, diversity equity, or inclusion, and then beginning in 2023 from 2023 to 2024 year. And every other school year thereafter, school districts must use one of the professional learning days funded under this program to provide school staff with a variety of opportunities, for training and professional learning, aligned with cultural competency, equity, diversity, and inclusion, standards of practice that are developed under this board for the purpose of this section, what does it mean? Cultural competency, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Well, it all the same stuff that we talked about at the last on the last slide. So that's all coming down. That's taking place in Washington. You might love it. You might hate it. What's happening in Oklahoma. So we're going to go from one coast down into Mauro, central America, middle of America, not central America, middle of United States America. And what's happening here. We have Oklahoma governor signs, a bill banning the teaching of critical race theory. This was written by Dr. Susan Berry posted on May 7th last week, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill Friday that will ban the teaching of critical race theory in the state's public schools. He says, or this article over from Breitbart says CRT is a Marxist based philosophy that embraces the concept that all social and cultural issues should be viewed through the lens of race and racial identity. Critics of CRT say its emphasis on identity. Politics creates greater division rather than unity. So we've got a clip here from governor Kevin stint, who is going to be speaking here. Let's listen in. I got to pull this up because I am still in interview mode. And uh, there we go. So let's listen in and see what he has to say.

Speaker 5:

My fellow Oklahomans, governor Kevin Stitt here, I just signed house bill 1775 in the law. Now more than ever, we need policies that bring us together, not rip us apart. And as governor, I firmly believe that not 1 cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex. That is what this bill upholds for public education verbatim. It reads no teacher shall require or make part of a course that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex, to be sure we must keep teaching history and all of its complexities and encourage honest and tough conversations about our past nothing in this bill prevents or discourages those conversations. In fact, this bill clearly endorses teaching to the Oklahoma academic standards, which were written by Oklahoma educators and include events like the Oklahoma city bombing the Tulsa race massacre, the emergence of black wall street, Oklahoma city lunch counter sit-ins led by Clara Luper and the trail of tears. We can and should teach this history without labeling a young child as an oppressor or requiring he, or she feel guilt or shame based on their race or sex. I refuse to tolerate otherwise during a time when we are already so polarized, we cannot revert to 100 year old banking that a person is any less valuable or inherently racist by the color of their skin. Martin Luther King spoke of a day when people in America would be judged, not by the color of their, but by the content of their character house, bill 1775 codifies that concept that so many of us believe in our hearts, including me and as governor, I will not stand for publicly funded K through 12 schools, training impressionable minds to define themselves by their sex or their race. Thank you, God bless you. And God bless the great state of Oklahoma.

Speaker 4:

Interesting, interesting. So we have a, we have a pretty big division sort of developing in this country, right? We've got Jay Inslee over there on the one side out of Washington saying that they are going to be now training this stuff. And you're going to, you know, obviously the teachers are going to learn about it and then that's going to pass down to the students and the administrative support staff, all of those people, you go over to Oklahoma, not happening. They're not even going to talk about it instead. They're saying, well, no, we're just going to teach, you know, the same stuff that has already been approved. We're going to leave all of the racial stuff out of it. And he's leaning largely on this concept of the children. You know, why should a ten-year-old kid in fifth grade or whatever that is, you know, go through and have to answer the question about why there's such a racist piece of garbage for being 10 years old and being white, right? We do. We want that happening in schools. I'm not saying that that is happening, but uh, but close. K if you are, if you are somebody who is a bad person because of the color of your skin, naturally without doing anything wrong, because it's, the society is systemically racist. That's a, that's a problem. Anyways. Now Disney's getting involved in this. So if you think the kids are immune here is Disney now breaking Disney pushes critical race theory on staff teaches them to reject equality. Recently there's been Disney related situations like when Kevin Faige said Dr. Strange, wasn't in one division elsewhere. All right, what else is going on? They even retcon Lando and a shocking scoop from Christopher Rufo, Walt Disney corporation, internally practices, critical race theory on a corporate level. There's a white privilege checklist and minorities have been segregated into affinity groups. This comes over from the post-millennial dot com. It says here, Rufo heard from Disney staff, multiple Disney employees told me that the political environment at the company has intensified in recent months. It says there are almost daily memos suggested readings, panels, and seminars that are all centered around. Anti-racism said one employee of the company is completely ideologically, one sided and actively discourages, conservative and Christian employees from expressing their views. It says your quote, if you are feeling confused, shocked, or have recently awakened to systemic racism recognize that this is probably not new to your black African colleagues. One message reads Disney goes so far as justifying race as quote, a tipping point. And I, and heightened awareness of the movement. Employees are instructed to reflect on how their race either gives or not gives them access and advantage to that end. The document claims everyone has a level of unconscious bias. Earlier this year, Mandalorian star Gina Carano was fired from film for social media posts. That included messaging that urge for unity in our current state of political division. Something that appears to go against what Disney wants. Disney's internal materials even include the image where people watching a baseball game stands on crates to demonstrate, demonstrate equality versus equity. Now, let me show you this. Now this is, I told you this, starting at the finishing line. Here it is. We've got Christopher Rufo over on Twitter. Go give him a follow. If you want to follow somebody, who's really, really doing battle on this topic. He says Disney tells employees that they should reject equality or equal treatment. Instead they should strive for equity or the equality of outcome. They must quote, reflect on America's racist infrastructure, and then quote, think carefully about whether or not their wealth is derived from racism. So this is a, this is a picture here that Chris Rufo posted comes directly from Disney says looking forward equity, not equality, okay? This is equality where everybody is starting from, what is this? The ground, I guess, equality is a noble goal, equal treatment and access to opportunities. Help each of us perform our best within a shared set of parameters, but we really need to be striving for equity, where we focus on the equality of the outcome, not the equality of the experience by taking individual needs and skills into account. So here we see this, right? These are all people with boxes. Well, the boxes don't work for this guy in the wheelchair. And, uh, they might work for this young girl over here, but this guy doesn't even need a box. So these look like equal starting points. Don't they? Right? But this guy can't use that because he can't start there. So what do we need? Well, we got to sort of adjust what people get. So this guy doesn't need anything. Okay. So it's kind of like Karl Marx, right? From, from each, according to his fro, from each according to his ability to each according to their needs. Anyway, the tall guy doesn't need a box. Okay. He doesn't need that. So he doesn't need so she, but she does. She needs to so that she can see clearly, and this guy doesn't need any boxes. He needs a ramp. So they say a challenge. So what can you do about racism? Do this to combat it in your organization, take some time to step back and reflect on diversity and inclusion strategies you are presently pursuing, right? So, so that's one document Disney back to 21 day, racial equity and social justice challenge. They were participants are told they all been raised in a society that elevates white culture over others. From Disney. They're made to complete a lengthy privileged checklist where statements about gender and race are listed. I am white. I've never been mocked for my accent. My family and I have never lived below the poverty line. I've never lied about my sexuality. I've never been depressed among others. This activity tells participants to quote, pivot from white dominated culture to something different critical race theory is a contentious issue. Infecting education systems across the United States so much so that States like Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona are pushing to ban it from being taught on the grounds that it's divisive and polarizing Disney claims that America has a long history of systemic racism and transphobia and tells him employees that they must quote, take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-black racism and not rely on your black colleagues to educate you, which is emotionally taxing. So they have down here, you know, Walt Disney's company, re-imagined tomorrow recognize that your colleagues are also processing the ways in which that the pandemic is disproportionately affecting the black community. If you were feeling confused and shock and have recently been awakened to systemic racism, recognizing that this is not new to your black friends, avoid messages. Like I can't believe this is happening. The murderers of Briana Taylor, Shawn Reed, a Arbery George Floyd, Tony McDade Dina pop Ray shard, Brooks, Adam, Trey, Ori, and other countless others are part of a long history of systemic racism and transphobia in solidarity with us protests, we were seeing similar protests. Current unrest represents a tipping point. Take ownership about educating yourself against black racism. Do not rely on your black colleagues to educate you. This is emotionally taxing, taxing. We've talked about a lot of those cases on this channel. I've always put the fault on that on, uh, cultural issues and policing issues. Maybe with some racism issues overlapping, but they're just saying it's one issue, racism and transphobia. So we have Christopher roof all also saying white employees are told to work through their feelings, reflect on the diversity of your personal and professional networks and how racial and other dimensions of your identity give or do not give you access to advantage at a acknowledge your emotional reactions, recognize your colleagues are also processing these things. Be involved, do not question or debate black colleagues lived experience. For example, are you sure they meant it that way? It's not a race thing. I'm playing devil's advocate instead reserve judgment and offer statements of validation. If someone shares their experience, acknowledge and listen with empathy. When black colleagues share their lived experiences, avoid saying, I feel you I've been there. And instead saying, I instead say, I hear you tell me more about what that felt like. Avoid conflating black experience with other communities of color. While other people of color are subject to racism. There is a unique history that has led to anti-black racism and the ways in which it shows up. So Disney's in on it to get ready for it. That's coming everywhere. Every single organization is going to be touched by this thing. And there's going to be a certain segment of the PSAs of society that just refuses to play that game. And I think longterm, maybe they are the victors. Christopher Rufo also put together a CRT legislation tracker. So he's got a, if you want to go check this out, you can take a look. He's got a, a spreadsheet that looks just like this, and it's got a lot of information on it. So it says here our movement to abolish critical race theory, indoctrination in public institutions has caught fire state legislatures across the country, have introduced legislation to prohibit public schools and state agencies from promoting race, essential ism, collective guilt, and state sanctioned racism, sign up for his newsletter today. And I encourage you to do that. I have. So it is a good one. And if you go and follow this, just, uh, the link is in our slides, but you can also go and just go to Christopher rufo.com/crt-tracker. And you will see it. He's talking about an Arizona bill passed the Senate in the house, waiting for the Senate to pass what the amendments we've got 1532 SB, 1532 prohibits public schools and state agencies from requiring courses or trainings in controversial policy or social issues, prohibits training with divisive concepts and establishes a monetary fine schools or agencies violate the amendment. So Arizona's on top of this stuff. We've got the great seal from the state of Arizona. You can see what this looks like. Here's just a quick snippet of the bill. I'm not going to read through this whole thing. I know many of you are not in Arizona. Uh, this is a floor amendment. So what are we doing here? Let's see. They are saying that this prohibits a school district from discussing controversial issues requires a teacher to prevent controversial issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective. If the teacher chooses to discuss controversial issues, prevents a teacher and employee from requiring or making part of a student's, uh, alright, public policy position. So this goes on and on and on. You can see, this is what the actual bill looks like. So we'll see if the governor signs, this sounds like there was an amendment that was taking place. So this is, this is happening, right? Probably happening in your state. Let's jump into some of the questions we've got Sharon quit. And he says, I don't know about you, but if I were forced with mandatory CRT training, along with mandatory struggle sessions, one, I would quit to get a major lawsuit going. The CRT D indoctrination is not only racist, therefore unconstitutional. It is also abusive. It's the kind of stuff that takes place in labor camps and prisons. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't subject myself to that. No question about that. I would, uh, I'm out, you know it, look, if you think I'm a piece of garbage and you don't want me working here and you think that I'm so racist and reprehensible, then I just won't work here. Right? I don't want to be around people who think that about me just naturally, Oh, you're a white guy. Therefore, everything you do is what's wrong with America. Let's go work somewhere else. The Darla Sierra says, when they say cultural competency, they actually mean cultural Marxism. And when they say dismantling institutional racism actually means dismantling the constitutional system and transforming it into a full fascist state. They are opening saying openly saying they are traders to the country and the constitution. And no one does anything. Well, Chris Rufo is doing something about it. He's really, really, uh, keeping good tabs on everything that is happening around the country. We have LT. 13 says, Rob, I do agree with giving extra resources, mainly ends up being kids who come from poverty, because if a kid can read on grade level by third grade, it will make for a better society. Yeah. Listen, uh, I I'm I'm for that, right? I'm not for kids who can't read or anything like that. Like I want everybody to have all of the opportunities that they can, uh, but just not at the expense of other people, which is sort of what this sounds like. You know, this person has too much. So we're going to take from him and give to that person. And everybody's going to be sort of equal, which is definition of Marxism. I mean, that is not what, what made America what it is today. So it's troubling to say the least the Darla Sierra says, I don't understand why the federal courts can't or won't do something about this and that type of stuff that blatantly violates the constitution and encourages destroying our current government system. This is treasonous behavior. Is it not well it's cultural stuff, right? It's, it's really cultural. And when you start to see this intertwinement between the governments now that are sort of imposing these cultural norms, you may see the courts get involved, that you may see some equal protection claims coming up because it's sort of benefiting one particular demographic at the expense of another. And that is a problem. Our constitution says not supposed to do that, supposed to have equal protection of the laws, but then the co the corollary, the converse argument there that these woke CRT people are going to be promulgating is that their system provides more equality, that there is no equal protection under the law because the law is systemically racist, right? In order to create true equality, true equal protection under the law, you got to unwind the racist constitution that was created by all of those white guys back in the 17 hundreds, right? We also have Robbie McCann says, in my opinion, Robert will make a great law professor. Should he ever decide to go down that path? Excellent explanations. And the ability to express both sides of something, even when he doesn't agree is a rare trait these days. Well, thank you. Thank you, Robbie. Hey, Robbie, McCann. Good to see you. When I was a young boy, Robbie was my name and it was with a Y I got a lot of grief over that. Apparently it's kind of a feminine thing I think was supposed to be, I E supposed to be male. I went with a Y don't know that you can read anything into that. Maybe ask my mom where that came from, but Robbie and Robbie here has two eyes. So it's a whole different, okay, Robbie, right. Look at that two eyes down there. So I'm thrown for a loop on that one. Good to see you, Robbie. And I appreciate that. Nice compliment. I, you know, I try to do that. I know that I am less than perfect. I know that many times, I forget to argue the other side. Cause I get so fired up, but I appreciate your, um, appreciate your comment. We have LT. 13 says isn't Disney owned by China. Now there's your answer. Yeah. Well, that's a good point. Isn't everything we have. Farmer's daughter says, why is it that we must respect each individual experience of a black or Brown person, but none of us white folks have unique experiences. I can't stand it. That comes from farmer's daughter, who is presumably white, whose experiences not as important. I mean, they're important to me, but not as important, obviously. Alright, good to see you. Farmer's daughter. All right. So thank you for that. We've got another, uh, our last segment of the day, we're going to wrap it up. The us government is still under attack from a hacker who has taken control of a pipeline more or less. It's not working. The name of the organization is called dark side, which is very ominous and scary, but they are seriously causing some havoc with the U S fuel grid. I'm talking about the pipeline hack. The U S is now in the fourth day of this thing and the ha the hackers who have seized control of this pipeline, which provides oil to like half the country on the East coast. They have now issued a statement. The hackers have sent a statement over to our government saying that our goal is to make money, not create problems for you in society. So we all going to go into this. Joe Biden gave a statement today about this. This is an issue, right? We are seeing sort of a slow creep of these types of attacks. Months ago, we talked about the solar winds hacked and about how catastrophic that was. And lo and behold, the whole stinking government just kind of wipe that thing under the rug swept that aside. It was, they had at one point on this channel, we talked about a story where they had access to the U S nuclear energy building or whatever. So people were pressing the panic button and the same type of thing is happening. Now, what is going on? Why does our infrastructure keep falling prey to these foreign groups? We have an entire DOD on entire Pentagon. We've got a lot of very smart people that are, that suck up a lot of money from our federal budget in order to make sure this stuff doesn't happen. This type of stuff doesn't happen. So what the heck is going on, all right, over from reuters.com says the top us pipeline is down for the fourth day. As hackers issue a statement group of cybercriminals, allegedly responsible for the ransomware attack. They shut down the largest fuel pipeline in the United States on Monday, said it only wants to make money, not disrupt society, Washington scrambled to help restore the network. The colonial pipeline is in its fourth day of a shutdown, said it has a phase restart program and hopes to quote substantially restore service. By the end of the week, the attack on colonial source of nearly half of the fuel on the U S East coast is one of the most disruptive digital ransom schemes reported the hack triggered worries of retail, gasoline spikes, and laid bare the vulnerabilities of the us energy infrastructure to hackers. And if you've been on Twitter, uh, there, there, there are, uh, two, I don't have my phone with me right now, but there were two people who are, are, are sort of posting a lot on, uh, of other tweets of other people who are experiencing gasoline shortages on the East coast. So my point here is that there may be some, some, some actual problems with this. If there is a run on gas on the East coast, if people are, you know, sort of racing into the gas stations and suck up all the guests, the pipeline is down. So they're not gonna be able to refill the pipelines. And so calm down, not, not everybody needs a full tank of gas, but this happened here in Arizona years ago, I was in high school and the pipeline that came down from Tucson or from California, one of the two broke. And it was a huge problem in Arizona. I mean, everybody was freaked out. We were, you know, nobody was driving anywhere. It was a, it was mayhem for like, you know, six days. So we'll see if that happens on the East coast. I'm certainly hopeful that it does not the FBI on Monday pin the blame on the cyber group, dark side, a statement in the group's name said, quote, our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society. It statement did not mention the colonial pipeline by name, dark side could be based in Russia or Eastern Europe, according to experts because it's ransomwares is rigged to avoid encrypting computers, set, to use Russian Ukrainian Kazak or other language keyboards associated with the former Soviet republics. Ransomware is the type of malware designed to lock down systems by encrypting data and demanding payment to regain access. And so, you know, they'll, they'll get access to your system. They'll lock it all up. They'll install some software on there that makes it so that you cannot access it. They'll say, Hey, we want, you know, five Bitcoin transferred over to our, our Bitcoin address, which is essentially, you know, non traceable. And if you give us that, then we're going to send you the code to unlock your systems. It's like ransom, like, like kidnapping a kid and saying, we'll give you your kid back. If you pay us$10 million, same concept. But this is with cyber computers, cyber cybersecurity, and this involves oil pipelines. Very important stuff. Since the incident, us lawmakers have urged stronger protections for critical infrastructure. White house has also made restarting the fuel network top priority. They've organized the federal task force to access the impact and avoid more severe disruptions on Sunday. Colonial said it restarted some smaller lines between fuel terminals, full restart of the 5,000 mile pipeline is not known when the situation remains fluid and continues to evolve. We're going to facilitate a return fuel demand in Southeastern us has already picked up gas stations in States like Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee. We're seeing some abnormal buying fed by demand fears that somebody over at gas buddy, the region will likely be the first to see pump price increases because it's the most dependent on the line. The Arab American automobile association said that the average gasoline price went up 6 cents to two 96. Department of transportation announced emergency measures on Sunday to facilitate deliveries, lifting driver restrictions on fuel hollers in 17 States. So they are lifting all the restrictions. So now truckers can just deliver the oil because the pipeline can't all right, we've got colonials pipelines. It moves 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. And the us declares a state of emergency. This is over from zero hedge. Us government declared a state of emergency late yesterday on Sunday lit they lifted permits on the transport transport of fuel byte road. Colonial pipeline says this declaration addresses the emergency conditions, creating a need for immediate transportation of gasoline. The VOT said, Jen, Psaki over at the white house, said that as the administration works to mitigate potential disruptions to supply as a result of the pipeline incident, DOD is taking action today to allow flexibility for truckers in 17 States. The move lifted the limits on the number of transports a fuel by road. Here is her statement from Jen Saki. Here's what the pipeline looks like. This is pretty interesting. And this, uh, you can see here, it comes over from Texas starts. The system starts down into Houston. Texas goes through Louisiana. We go through Mississippi, uh, three stops. It looks like in Alabama that we've got Georgia where it breaches or sort of breaks off. We go North into Tennessee over to Nashville, down into Southern Georgia. Then back up through South Carolina and North Carolina passing through Virginia, the system ends in Linden, New Jersey. So a lot of activity, one line for gasoline, one line for diesel and jet fuel from Pasadena, Texas. So we've got potentially 900,000 barrels a day traveling back and forth. That's a lot, uh, updates colonial said it's in the process of restoring service. So I'd be very curious as to how this is how this is unfolding. You know, how do they restore service? Did they just swap out the hard drives? Hey, re-install windows throw that in there and restart it. Do they restart the machine? Meanwhile, downstream customers, which includes pretty much the entire Eastern seaboard are starting to freak out as they face a new week without the primary source of gasoline supply for hundreds of millions of customers. All right. So price, let me see this price differential here. The AAA national gasoline price, 2021, it looks like we're going up pretty quickly right here. See that 2020 it's already been going up in 21, a little bit of a dip now going way up. Let's see if it continues to go up on Friday. National average is two 96. We'll see if it we'll see if it passes$3 here. As soon enough, they say no physical damage to the pipeline inventories and above seasonal gasoline in ports would materially tighten local supplies. So it's going to get tight. As prior outages have shown resupplies further likely to be rapid. So when they do fix it, it's going to fill up quickly. Colonial pipeline was running below capacity. So our resumption of flows would accelerate. The restocking kinder Morgan is working to accommodate additional barrels and its line vessels from us CG and others takes seven to 14 days to arrive. Us administration could waive the Jones act. So this is a big problem, right? This is a big deal. Now this is some technical, you know, gas line oil commodities stuff, but you can see this could have some pretty serious ramifications. So this is the commodity spot index. What is this showing us strongest reaction on record to global growth, 2000 and twenties right here, spot index trading days later. Uh, well, we'll see the hackers now say that their aim is cash. We already read through some of this and this say, they said this was posted this statement, which had several spelling and grammatical errors appeared. Gore appeared, geared towards lowering the political temperature around one of the most disruptive digital ransom schemes ever reported. All right, well, so let's see what Biden has to say about this. And then we will hop into some questions. I've got to share my screen. Here. Here is Biden on this. Now he's saying that the Russians may be

Speaker 3:

Protect critical infrastructure from a criminal after helping possibly protect it from a state actor, you can do both. Do you think Russia is involved at all

Speaker 6:

Conference? I'm going to be meeting with president Putin and, uh, so far there is no evidence-based on from our intelligence people that Russia is involved. Although there's evidence that the actors ransomware is in Russia. They have some responsibility to deal with this.

Speaker 4:

All right. So maybe the Russians are involved. We'll see, we've got one question on this topic from Todd trout says, so the solution to the hacking is to put Joe Biden and the whole effects of the federal government on it. Uh, I don't, I don't know what the solution is. I don't know that the federal government can solve much of anything. Todd feels like they're just sort of slapping some duct tape on the side of it. That'll hold. Right. We got leafy. Bug is in the house, says I smell a false flag. The U S government. It's the Russians again. Now thereafter your gas. We need to surveil you all much more to keep you safe. Meet the Patriot act Mark two. Yes. The Russians, the Russians are responsible for everything, right? Probably gas prices too. And critical race theory, stinking Russians. And we've got Sharon Quinney in the house. It looks like to wrap us up on the show today. We've got does. I'm kind of with leafy bug here. I'm wondering if this couldn't be some kind of an inside job. Don't know the whole thing doesn't smell right to me. You know, I think it probably is a hack. I mean, we have the solar winds hack. We had this one and it's, it's kind of a thing. Now. We just, our infrastructure is just falling apart because of, uh, gross and competence from the bureaucrats in charge from the politician. So it, it, it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, we've known this, right? We we've known that there is this cybersecurity warfare that's taking place all throughout the world. We've got entire agencies that are focused on that. So when one of them's squeaks through it, it doesn't surprise me. And remember, we've been doing it to remember what happened with the Iranian centrifuges some years ago. I think that was back during the Bush years. It's been very interesting. And I think that this is going to be what we have for the foreseeable future, you know, tanks rolling across deserts and countrysides. Not so not so sure that's going to be the, the, the, the battlefield of the future. I, it's probably going to be digital. It's going to be political. So it's going to be psychological and we're in the middle of it right now. So great questions. Thank you for those. Those all came over from watching the watchers.locals.com. We got some new people who signed up, want to welcome them. We have neuro rads. We have Brad Patterson. Welcome to you. We have D spy. I number one. Welcome. We have Savage grandma in the house. Oh no, it's going to be trouble. We have Patrick 10 30 and I also said Brad Patterson, but you get another one. Thank you so much for supporting us@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com and to all of those who ask questions today, Sharon[inaudible] Robbie McCann, farmer's daughter, Todd trout, and the leafy bug. Thank you all as well. We've got some people on our community at locals. I want to tell you about and shout out a couple of these people. Rich Brown. We have Ash Digger. We have curious one-on-one little TLC's in the house. We got Frankie rust, us Taylor, 45 Hugin Menin. We have chasse scout, Rob[inaudible], JMO Lynn fish tearing them. We have Gail oat, Sasha SEASHA Dan and Nana man. We got Nancy spells fund Bama, Likud L eclectic prophet Schnuck gums. Robert Barnes what's up Robert tutes macoutes is in the house. Doctor EMB newbie of death, Valerie w zero one, two wise one norovirus, Jill ricin, Britt Reed KK, blazing guns. We got sir, Michael Cera, Smothers, blue eyed, hillbilly, and the few SCO all. Thank you so much for supporting us on our platform@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. And we're, we're gonna be doing some more stuff over there. We've got a monthly meetup that's scheduled for May 22nd. We've got June 12th. We have a law enforcement interaction training that we're going to be doing. It's a seminar all only for locals people. So go on over there, watching the watchers.locals.com so you can participate in those things and also grab a copy of my book. It's called beginning to winning. It is free and available for you to download down here. You can grab a copy of the slides. Download my impeachment party documents, download my existence systems, share links throughout the day and meet very good people. My friends there's a lot going on over there. And I want to invite you to check that out. It's at watching the watchers.locals.com. And before we get outta here, one final reminder that I am a criminal defense attorney here at the R and R law group. So if you happen to know anybody who has been charged with a crime needs, any help clearing up an old criminal case record or quashing an old warrant, or if they want to restore their rights, or if they have an active case and they need, you know, they got court tomorrow. They need somebody there. We can help. We'd be honored and humbled. If you trusted our firm enough to send them our direction. That is it from me, everybody. I want to thank you so much for being here. We are going to be back here. Same time, same place tomorrow. It's a 4:00 PM Arizona time, 5:00 PM, mountain 6:00 PM. Central 7:00 PM on the East coast. And for that one, Florida, man, everybody have a wonderful rest of your evening sleep well. I'll see you right back here tomorrow. Bye-bye.